Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Welcome back into the Financial Safari. Consumer advocate Thomas Lipscomb here with you alongside Phil Graham, special friend of the show here alongside bestselling author, America's Wealth, Financial, and Income Coach, Coach Pete D’Arruda. Get your own questions answered or tune in to past episodes and check out all of our free resources by heading over to FinancialSafari.com. Again, that's FinancialSafari.com. And don't forget to subscribe to us on YouTube. FinancialSpeakeasy.com is the way to get there. Again, that's FinancialSpeakeasy.com. We're releasing new videos all the time. Great way to make sure that you are up to date on what you need to know heading into retirement. Let me give you one more site while we're doing it. PlanOncePlanForLife.com. That's where you can, if you go there right now, we'll send you one of these e-books out right away. The Modern Planning, PlanOncePlanForLife.com.

00:47 Thomas, there's five, and Phil, and everybody else out there in Radio Land, there are five quiet drains on your retirement paycheck, all right? These are quiet assassins. We don't like quiet assassins when it's touching our money. None of these is a scam, and nobody's going to call you about them. Every one is a rule working exactly the way it was written, and every one of them is far easier to deal with before it applies than after. Very, very important. That's why we're going to talk about it. That's good. Now, I've sat across the table from people who did everything right. They saved steadily. They stayed out of debt. They retired with more than they needed, and still watched a few thousand dollars a year walk out the door for reasons they never saw coming. So we're going to talk about what they are. And it's not because anyone cheated them, Thomas and Phil and everybody out there. It's because a threshold moved past them, or a look back caught them, or a rule that they had never heard of finally applied.

01:42 That always stinks to be zinked by something like that. So what follows? We're going to talk about the five I see the most, the five quiet drains on your portfolio. And all the figures are 2026 figures that we're going to talk about here. So they're pretty up-date. But the first one is something that, Phil, we've talked about this, Thomas, as well, off show. And it's one that came out of nowhere. It's called your Aunt Irma. I-R-M-A-A look back. Thomas, not a good thing. Doesn't sound like a good thing. And when I first heard this word, I thought, because my wife is from Holland. Hold on. I feel like I've heard that as a name before. All right. Let me tell you what it stands for. It stands for Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount. In plain language, it's your income. If your income is above a certain line, you pay more for Medicare Part B and D.

02:31 And these are two things about it that catch people. All right. The two big things. First, it looks backward two years. So your 2026 Medicare premium is set by your 2024 tax return. Whoa. Now, a lot of people didn't realize that. No, that's interesting. And not this year's income. Not last year's. The one you filed in 2025 for the year 2024. Talk about confusing. Phil, what do you think about that? Can you repeat the question? Can you just listen to it? I was listening to the years, and in my brain, I'm trying to track. And then that last part, I'm like, now I'm lost again. I don't know. That was the correct answer right there. You're lost. Yeah, I can't figure it out. Yeah. So keep in mind, if 2024, we're talking about 2024 and you're in retirement now, possibly

03:18 that was your last full year of work. Or the year you sold a rental property. Or the year you did a large Roth conversion. And now it puts you way over that threshold. And second, it is a cliff, not a ramp. You know, ramps are easy to deal with because they're slow and steady and gradual. A cliff. Now, I've never jumped over one or walked through one or walked over one of you. You wouldn't be here. Exactly. No. You know, I think of those movies, though, where you see all the buffalo or wherever it is, and they're following each other, and they'll just go right over this. Yeah. So what do I mean when I say a cliff? Well, there's no gentle phase in. One dollar over the line. One dollar over that line that they say, the line of demarcation. Just one dollar. And the full surcharge applies for the entire year. Talk about a government penalty. Wow. How does that make you feel? Don't like it. Now, there's something called a QLAC.

04:06 QLAC. Qualified Lifetime Annuity Contract. Now, these have been developed. They've been around for years, but a lot of people don't realize what they are. And what this is, is for IRA money, which really can kill you when you start doing those minimum required distributions, right? MRDs. You can take the money off that MRD equation by every dollar you put into a QLAC. So let's say you have $500,000 in a regular IRA, and you don't want to keep paying those minimum required distributions on that. So you transfer, let's say, $300,000 into a QLAC. Okay. Now, the QLAC now, that takes $300,000 off of your MRD equation. In other words, you're not taxed on that each and every year. You don't have to take the money out. Oh, nice. And the QLAC says, and this is what confuses people, the QLAC says you have until age 85

04:51 to start taking that money out. The confusion, Phil, and I think you'll agree with that, is a lot of people thought that once you put money in a QLAC, you could not touch it until age 85. Is that correct? That's what people thought. Correct. But that's not the case. No. You can basically take it anytime you want. But when you take it out, now you have to start reporting it again on the MRD equation. Yeah. Uncle Sam's usually flexible when it means that they're going to get tax money sooner. Yeah. So I wrote a book about this called Quiet Money. And when you think about it, the money you put in a QLAC turns quiet. It's not sitting there yelling at Uncle Sam saying, hey, come over here and tax me. It gets really quiet and it hides legally. I like that. So that's a good one. That helps with a tax torpedo. We don't like tax torpedoes. Most people believe Social Security either is or isn't taxed.

05:37 It is neither. How much of it lands on your return depends on a number called combined income, which is your adjusted gross income plus any tax exempt interest plus half of your Social Security benefit. Cross that first threshold and up to half of your benefit becomes taxable. Cross the second one and up to 85% of your Social Security, which was a tax to begin with, by the way, is now taxable. Wow. Oh, man. Thanks, Uncle Sam. Here's the part that makes it a torpedo rather than a bump. Those thresholds have never been adjusted for inflation. Think about that. Have we had inflation the last few years? That means they're low is what you're saying. In other words, a lot of people are triggering that and didn't even know it.

06:23 So $25,000 was a real income in 1984. It is not one now, is it? 1984, $25,000. The Social Security Administration's own historians note that the thresholds were deliberately left unindexed and they document the result. The share of beneficiaries owing tax on their benefits has climbed steadily. In other words, if you have money, you're going to pay taxes now for Social Security because they're not adjusting that inflation amount up. So, I mean, it's $25,000. It's nothing anymore, but that starts triggering things. Yeah, sure. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Wow. Phil, how does that make you feel on that? Not good. And when I think about that, Coach, we always talk about it's based on your taxable income. Is there a way to get not taxable income that doesn't trigger that so I can still put the money in my pocket and spend it, but I'm not triggering all these phantom taxes?

07:10 Well, one of the ways is a Roth conversion. And a lot of folks, like David Walker, when he was on here, was talking about he has most of his money in Roth IRAs. And he should know he was our former comptroller general. And he said, Coach, the taxes are going up. There's no doubt. He said, so converting to Roth, it does hurt a little bit. Having to pay the taxes, he said, but now I pay taxes once and never pay again. Again, plan once, plan for life. And you don't have those required minimum distributions where you're forced to take it and your beneficiaries inherit it tax-free. Uncle Sam shows up next year. The tax man says, well, let me start taxing you on your IRAs and say, you know, I don't have any IRAs anymore. I have Roth IRAs. And so you just slam the door in his face. So if you want to find out about the Roth conversion strategies that make sense to make sure you don't get tax torpedoed, call right now. We'll do a plan for you that encompasses everything we've talked about today.

07:57 When you come in, you'll leave with three books. One being this new book, Modern Planning. Plan once, plan for life. You'll also leave with the 22-step total retirement plan. It's a workbook. It's $99. We're going to give it to you. But it's an interactive one. We will cover every step with you or behind the scenes for you and we'll categorize everything on one color-coded page that makes a lot of sense when you see it. There's no need for hundreds and hundreds of pages to confuse you. Put it all on one page and understand exactly what's going on, not only now, but later and after you're not here. All on one sheet. Thomas, tell folks how I can get this. Glad to. That number, 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. Or you can text the keyword plan to 600700. That is the keyword plan to 600700.

08:43 And it's true. A total retirement plan is a lot more than that IRA or two or that 401k or two that you have. It is a true total plan. Well, here's a good question. Ask yourself, how much bigger would your nest egg be today if 10 years of fees had stayed in your account instead of leaving it? Oh. Bill, you've got a second point on that, don't you? Yeah. I look at it as, I used to say, coach, when is a 2% fee not a 2% fee? It's my little riddle. Yeah? Batman. Because 2% doesn't sound bad, right? It's only 2%. Well, but it's every year it sounds bad. But let's think of it, if you earned 10% in a year and you subtract 2%, that's actually 20% of your gains.

09:29 So that 2% fee actually wasn't 2%, it was 20% of your gains. Wow. So if you're giving up 20% of your gains or more, that starts taking a huge chunk of what could have been credited to your account. And again, what's the value for it? What did you get for it? Are you getting any value? Is it just evaporating and it's just coming out every quarter every year? Those are things that need to be addressed and looked at. And I think the consumer needs to understand where those fees are coming from. And most people have no idea what the total fees are because there's also the internal fees that you can't see in a lot of contracts. Financial termites. You know, it's not only where the fee's coming from, but where are those fees going?

10:18 Good question, huh? Good question for your broker. Right. What are you getting for those fees? So, you know, let's put this 20%. Now, 20% sounds bad enough, but let's look at a $100 bill. So a $100 bill comes in to your house. Before you touch it, it turns into an $80 bill. There's no such thing as an $80 bill. It turns into the 420s. One of the 20s goes away every single time you get that fee. And then that money that should have been your account's not there anymore. So now we have compounding badness. That's a good way to look at it. Yes, it is. And we've done a report before looking at a 2% fee over 20 years. If you had an account with no fees, and they both are in the same interest. So the only thing different was an account with no fees and one with 2% fees. It's about $500,000 difference. Phil, there's where the money went. Wow. That's a lot of money. That's a lot. That's the difference between a beach house in retirement or a trailer park in retirement.

11:07 That's right. There you go. Not good. So let's do this. Let's put a total plan together. It's been a great show, by the way. I appreciate your time today, Phil, coming in. Absolutely. Always love it. And it's very enlightening on some of the taxes that are out there and some of the ways we can bypass it, though. So it's been a positive show. We're talking about ways to bypass the will and the trust and the court, and also bypassing a tax man as much as possible. And legally, by the way, there's no such thing as illegal. You've got to pay some taxes, but there's nothing that says you have to overpay. So if you want a true total retirement plan, folks, we're going to make that offer for the next 10 of you to call. There'll be no fee or obligation. We've seen others charge over $1,000 for plans that I don't think are anywhere near as good as this. But you're also going to get that financial termite inspection report, which will identify these fees we're talking about here. Put it in real black and white. And then now you'll know if it makes sense to continue paying those fees or not.

11:55 Thomas, next 10 people, no cost, no obligation. And that number is 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. You can also connect with the team at Capital Financial by texting keyword plan to 600-700. That is keyword plan to 600-700. Well, for Phil Graham joining us from the Charlotte area, Thomas, Denise, Jose working the board. It's Coach Pete. We'll see you next week. Same time, same station, right here on the Financial Safari.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Welcome back into the Financial Safari. Having a wonderful show today. I'm Thomas Lipscomb here in studio with bestselling author, Coach Pete D’Arruda. We also have Phil Graham on the line, a friend of the show, who has been a financial strategist for going on 30 years. Coach, you have such great friends. Well, yeah, I keep good friends around. If they're very nice people, then I get along good with them. They're not trying to jump off a bridge, right? No, we don't want any of that. You know, we talked, I teased people before we left. I said six accounts that never read your will. And that's a strange way to look at it, but what does that mean? Well, you spend a lot of money on a will or even a trust, and some accounts that don't depend on that or don't even look at it, or you can bypass that. And so people spend real money on a will and then assume it governs everything they own. For a great many households, it governs almost none of it.

00:48 In other words, it doesn't really handle much at all. So the largest accounts pass from a form somebody filled out years ago. It's a form you fill out when you get in certain things. We're going to talk about that. And the will never gets a vote. In other words, there's some ways to bypass that will or trust. This is not a loophole, and it's not a mistake in the law. It's just how these accounts were designed to work quickly, privately, and outside of court. That's a good thing, by the way. The trouble is that the form is usually signed on the first day of employment, filed away, and never looked at again through a marriage, a divorce, a death, and 30 years of life. So, Phil, in other words, the 20-year-old Coach Pete has nothing to do with the 60-year-old Coach Pete. Right? A whole different thing. What if I had filled out a form when I was 23 and I started a 401K with a company, and now I'm 60?

01:36 I don't remember filling that form out. I don't remember what I did yesterday these days sometimes. What I had for dinner, that kind of thing. So there's six accounts, though, that you can buy. This is a good thing. I set it up to make it sound like it was maybe mysterious or not good. These are good things to bypass the court, bypassing probate and bypassing even trust a lot of times. You have to know what forms. A lot of people write all the language in the will or trust, but no one will ever read that because they filled out a form that bypasses it. So, Phil, do you want to give one of the six that don't depend on the trust or will? I would say probably 401K because it has a beneficiary. Exactly. But the real question is, do you know who the beneficiary is you have on your 401K? Could be an ex-spouse.

02:22 Is it your ex-wife? Yeah. So you never know. That's why we encourage people to review your beneficiary forms. And a lot of people don't even remember filling it out. But once a year, if you can, at least every five years. And when we get closer to retirement or in retirement, maybe every year because things speed up. That's right. I mean, years seem to go faster. So 401Ks, 403Bs, and TSPs. Now, TSPs are the Thrift Savings Plan. We've got a brand new book out called Thrift or Thrive. And if you're a federal employee, you really need to get your hands on this. And by the way, I love federal employees, Thomas. That's our mail people, and they do a great job. Anyone who works for FBI people. I love my FBI people. Don't want to get mad at me. But, you know, federal employees, you spend all your time. I mean, think about the mailmen and women. They're working seven days a week now, it seems like.

03:07 I'm getting mail all the time. So I really appreciate them. So I want to donate to them my appreciation. I've got the book, Thrift or Thrive. If you are a federal employee, all you have to do is call now, and I will send you a copy of this book. It's over 100 pages of very helpful tips and techniques to make sure you can maximize and truly benefit from your retirement plan and make sure you're doing the right things. So, Thomas, federal employees, the next 20 right now. All right, folks, just call 800-661-7383, 800-661-7383, or you can text keyword free to 600-700. That is keyword free to 600-700 because, Coach, great gift here. Yeah. Phil, this is just a fun topic to me because this is talking about bypassing probate. We've heard that phrase before. I just rephrased it a little bit. But bypassing probate. So we've got the 401Ks, 403Bs, and TSPs.

03:53 We count that as just one group. So there's five more places that you can make sure to fill out correctly and bypass that trust or will. Do you want to give another one or do you want me to? Well, one that I talk about a lot because there's certain accounts that don't naturally have beneficiaries. Sure. Bank accounts or certain investment accounts don't naturally have beneficiaries. So you have to add a TOD or POD, a specific form to specific people to transfer that money on death or pay that money on death, which does avoid probate to allow those accounts to go around them too. I've been amazed over 34 years of talking to folks in the financial arena that most people have never heard of this and many times didn't fill it out, especially when you open a bank account.

04:40 POD. Phil, basically you gave me two answers, too. You gave me two of the six right there. That's right. I'm an overachiever, Coach. But POD is payable on death, and you fill that out ahead of time. And that means when you pass away, as long as the death certificate is supplied, that money goes right to the beneficiary. You don't have to go through probate. That's the POD with the bank account. Your CDs, anything you signed up with the bank. Call your banker if you don't have that or don't see it or can't find it or don't remember it. Or bring in what you have here. We can call the bank for you, with you. And then we talked about brokerage accounts. That's where you have signed up, you know, online, maybe the E-Trades or wherever you have a brokerage account at. You probably either did or don't remember or maybe didn't do a TOD form. That means transfer on death. Phil, big question to you. Why do they just name them both the same thing?

05:26 I mean, they both do the same thing. They just want to be different, I guess. TOD for brokerage accounts and POD for bank accounts. Is there a reason? My understanding is the transfer on death transfers ownership, so that way you don't have to liquidate those investment holdings to pay it out. Whereas at the bank, it's just cash. You know, you're not worried about is the stock market up or down. Now, tell folks a very important thing about when we die, the money in our stock accounts, when the money passes on or transfers on to the next of kin. What kind of taxes are owed on that stock? Let's say granny bought UPS at, let's say, $5 a share. And that's $500 a share when she passed away. That's a $495 per share capital gain. What did the beneficiaries owe that day they inherited that money on granny buying that five, and now it's worth $500.

06:14 What do you owe capital gains-wise? If it's set up correctly, you can get a stepped-up basis. So what does that mean? It means you don't have to pay any tax, and me as the person inheriting the money, my new cost basis, what my future tax is going to be based on is that higher value, which is what a lot of wealthy people do, is they borrow from their brokerage accounts versus actually liquidating so they avoid the capital gains or at least defer it almost in perpetuity. Now, that's great. If you can afford that and don't need the money, then that's the best way to pass it on. Unfortunately, a lot of people have most of their money tied to the stock market, and they need to fund their retirement plan. And I've heard this phrase now three times from my advisors in the last couple weeks where people have said, I've got too much of a gain. I don't want to liquidate my stock right now, but they need the money to live on.

07:02 But they're worried about paying taxes. And my phrase, and I've used this phrase, well, I'd rather pay tax on a gain than have a write-off on a loss. And let me ask you this question, Phil. Do you think we are in, historically, are we in a good or bad tax environment for capital gains tax? We are in some of the greatest tax rates in history. So they're on sale right now. And with our debt going up every day, with more people needing Medicare, more people needing Social Security, and fewer people actually paying taxes, I think tax rates have – mathematically, they have to go up. Yeah, and whoever's paying taxes is going to be left footing the bill.

07:48 And now they're starting to go after your retirement income heavily from a tax perspective because that's where the bulk of the income is coming from. Yeah, well, we had David Walker on, former U.S. Comptroller General under Clinton and Bush. So he's on both sides. And he said, Coach, I had to resign because I got tired of signing checks and we're going to bounce. And he is agreeing where tax rates are going to go up like crazy. And so if you're delaying liquidating a gain now because you want to somehow hope for some imaginary tax deduction, I don't think those days are coming. And if you need that money, you're torturing yourself right now by not paying those taxes. And you're going to torture yourself in the future when you could have paid tax rates at what it is today. And what if we do this wealth tax they're talking about where they're going to tax you on all your gains anyway?

08:35 Or all the money you have in your accounts, by the way, not just gains. It doesn't make any sense. And taxes have been as high as 99%. Ronald Reagan, when he was an actor, it was the reason he got into politics is because any dollar he made over $100,000, they taxed at 99%. So he only did two films a year at $50,000 each because he goes, why would I work for a penny on the dollar? Yeah. So if you're in this situation, and a lot of you are, where you need money, but you're going without now because you don't want to pay capital gains tax, but you've got plenty of money sitting there captive in the market. And the only reason it's captive is because in your mind, you don't want to pay taxes. Folks, I don't either. I hate taxes. But you're going to have to pay some. But pay it now and get it moved before, number one, let's say that gain turns into a loss.

09:21 Well, now you're going to kick yourself if you didn't maximize your gain. And if you sell way up here, even if you pay taxes, you're going to have more than if you wait for it to go down and then sell at a loss. Amen. So call right now. We can go through with you all the different options you have, and there are more than you think. So Thomas, give our number out. The next 10 people call. We'll do a full review for you. And we'll also do that financial termite inspection report. You really need to know how much money is coming out that doesn't need to be. And it's hidden a lot of times. We have special tools and techniques. You can identify that. Call it a financial termite inspection report. It's included in my recipe for success. So call right now. We'll do it at no cost or obligation. And you'll leave with three books when you come in. And that number is 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. Or text keyword plan to 600-700.

10:08 Keyword plan to 600-700. All right, Phil. That's six places that you could bypass basically probate. We looked at 401Ks, 403Bs, and TSPs. That counted as one. We looked at bank accounts with a POD form that's payable on death. We looked at brokerage accounts with a TOD form that's transfer on death. So that's three of the six. What's number four? I would have to say life insurance. I don't think we've said that yet. No, we haven't. Very good one, too, isn't it? And that's the one I think most people think of first is life insurance. Yeah. Well, the only thing that's required then is, number one, you have a policy. Well, true. And number two, you answered the questions truthfully on the life insurance app. Phil, we see with any kind of insurance that you have to be honest.

10:54 And so if you were a smoker and didn't say you were a smoker and you died, they're going to deny that claim when they figure out you were a smoker. They're going to give your beneficiary the premiums you paid back, but they're not going to give you the death benefit. So make sure you're honest on the life insurance contract. We talked about Ronald Reagan. We talked about Abe Lincoln. Honest Abe. Be honest Abe when you're filling out a life insurance app. There you go. Because they have a whole FBI-type staff there to make sure you're telling the truth. But all that's really required for life insurance is a death certificate. And number one is your beneficiaries, your folks that you're leaving the money to, they need to know you have that. And so we have the little green book of life I wrote a couple years ago. And it's 100 pages, interactive pages, which you fill out yourself. And it asks you all these questions. And you fill it out with policy numbers and phone numbers so that when you pass away, your next of kin doesn't have to waste years, if not even not finding things,

11:45 not knowing where you put stuff. So this is your treasure map for the grave. And so I'm going to give this out, Thomas, to the next 20 people who call and come in for their no-cost total retirement plan. Folks, this is invaluable. It puts you ahead of the financial world and tell folks how they can do that, get that. And we also leave with my book, the Total Retirement Plan. That's 22 steps. It's $99 on Amazon, but it's free if you call right now. And that number is 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. Or text keyword plan to the number 600-700. That is keyword plan to the number 600-700. And we're going to cover the rest of the list when we come right back.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Consumer advocate Thomas Lipscomb here with you alongside America's wealth, financial, and income coach, best-selling author, Coach Pete D’Arruda. Excited for the show today. Coach, you always have such special guests that come on the program, no less this weekend as well. Well, it's been about 20 years since I've known David, and we're having David Walker, folks, former U.S. Comptroller General, and over with both different parties, so it's not like one party. And I remember, David, we saw each other in 2012 when you were in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. You were on your 10 million a minute bus tour. Remember that day? I remember. It ain't worse now. I know. I was telling Thomas and my daughter Carrie, who's my summer intern here, I told those guys, I said, I'm going to talk about it being 10 million a minute, and David's going to get mad about that.

00:45 Now, what is it now, you think, David? It's over 10. I haven't calculated. Let's put it this way. You know, back then, our total liabilities and unfunded obligations were $70 trillion. Now, they're $136 trillion plus and going up rapidly. And so, you know, we've lost control. There's just absolutely no question. You know, when do you think, because Congress, both sides, they meet, you know, they meet all the time, and who knows what they do up there, but they never accomplish what they're supposed to. They kick this can down the road. They can't even agree on a spending bill anymore. We keep having these government shutdowns. How are they ever going to agree to pay this debt? Well, first, Congress is very good at doing nothing. And that's okay when things are going well. But when things aren't going well and they're getting worse with the passage of time, it's

01:34 not acceptable. And it's a bipartisan problem. It is. You know, whether the Democrats are in charge or Republicans, they've both been kicking the can down the road. You know, there's only one thing in the Constitution that Congress is supposed to do every year, only one. And that's passed all the appropriations bills on time. The last time they did it was 96. They've only done it four times in my lifetime. That's an F minus. So look, here's what it's going to take, Pete. You know, it's going to take a statutory, meaning by law, fiscal commission that will educate, engage the American people on the facts, the truth, the tough choices, solicit input, make a package of recommendations for up or down vote in Congress. And secondly, a constitutional amendment that limits how much debt we can take on as a percentage

02:23 of the economy, absent limited and extraordinary conditions. A constitutional amendment is the only thing that will force the Congress to restore and sustain fiscal sanity. They're not going to, I mean, why would they do that? I mean, I can't even get folks a lot of times to pay attention to the fact that a Roth IRA is a great place. You pay the taxes now, you put the money away, you never have to worry about taxes again. People don't want to even think about spending or paying money right now. And same thing with Congress. It seems like they, you know, they can't get enough traction. I mean, you tried very hard there in 2012 to get attention. How far up did we get in the polls as far as people being aware of the debt and wanting to get something done? Do you remember? Well, first, I have done Roth transfers last year and this year. Okay. So I believe in leading by example. Yes. Secondly, people are getting more concerned about it.

03:11 And it's not just Main Street America. It's our investors. We're starting to have a supply and demand imbalance. We need to issue a lot more debt and the appetite for our debt is going down. China has significantly reduced its debt holdings. Other countries are becoming reticent about buying as much of our debt as they have historically. You know, we're having to pay higher interest rates in order to be able to finance our deficits. The second largest expense is interest. The fastest growing expense is interest. And what do you get for interest? Nothing. And so things are changing. I'm about ready to go back on the road again in late 26 and 27 because while these issues won't be a top priority for the midterms, they will be for the 28 election.

03:58 And I've got a new book coming out this fall that hopefully will be a basis to be able to get people much more informed and engaged. Do you have a title for the book yet? Yes. Saving Social Security in America. Common Sense Solutions. What do you think of the top two or three solutions people can push their congressmen or woman to do now? Well, you know, we need that commission. There are bipartisan bills in both the House and the Senate that hopefully can get moved to the lame duck session. Nothing's going to happen before the midterms. Congress is not going to pass a constitutional amendment. And so we need to go with Plan B. Plan B is what the founders envisioned. The states need to get together, propose an amendment. But Congress should have called a state-led convention as far back as 79.

04:44 They didn't do it. They're stiff in the states. And now I'm trying to get a state attorney general to sue the Congress for failing to call the convention. I think these are very two significant things that are either going to happen or not happen in calendar 2026. And so let's hope that they do. You know, Social Security, the trust fund goes to zero in 2032. That's an action-enforcing event. And that's why I say that while it's not going to be a big issue in this year's midterms, it will be in 2028. We need to start telling the ground on it, turning the heat up. It's right when I was supposed to start getting Social Security in 67. I hear you, my friend. By the way, the 67 is probably going to go up one month a year over 24 years.

05:31 Wow. Yeah. Well, I mean, you can't afford to pay us. We're living longer. And we don't have that money there. It's not there. So the Roth IRA, it makes a lot of sense now because at least we know where the tax rates are now. And if we put it in a place that the government supposedly can't touch, I mean, how confident are you that they won't try to change those rules going down the road? Well, your grandfather, okay, even if they try to change the rules going, they're not going to do it retroactively. And I do think that the individual income tax rates are as low as they're ever going to be. And while the problem to be able to put our finances in order are primarily a spending problem, we're going to have to have more revenues. And the single largest source of revenue is individual income taxes. That's not the one I want them to get revenue from. I understand that.

06:17 Yeah, that was raising tax rates. Folks, we're talking to former U.S. Comptroller General Mr. David Walker joining us on the show today. David, it's just frustrating when we all can see this, but it doesn't seem like Congress really cares. Well, the biggest deficit that we have, Pete, is a leadership deficit. You know, we have too many laggards, not enough leaders, too many people living for today rather than help create a better tomorrow. You know, the sad thing is, is for the first 200 years roughly of our republic, we believed in the concept of stewardship, which is not just generating positive results today, not just leaving things better off when you leave them when they came, but leaving things better positioned for the future. We've abandoned that.

07:29 People in it. And it's called Grow It or Blow It. Grow It or Blow It. And it's about, like, people you remember in the past, like the Commodore Vanderbilt, all the famous people, the big millionaires and billionaires who made the money. And within three generations, many of their fortunes they left was gone because the grandkids never saw mom and dad working as hard as they did. The kids usually kept it alive for the most part. It's the grandkids because they didn't see all the sweat and equity that went into building this empire. And so fast, the empire disappeared a lot of times. And that's what's happening here with our government, if we're not careful. Our whole U.S. system could go the same route as some of these inherited wealth folks had the trouble with. Well, we need to learn from history. We need to learn from others.

08:15 There are plenty of superpowers that have existed in the past that no longer exist. The leading indicator on the way up is economic power. The leading indicator on the way down is loss of economic power. We're not exempt from the laws of prudent finance. If you can't put your finances in order, you will lose economic power with adverse consequences both internationally and domestically. Not only economic consequences but also national security consequences. Now, a lot of people listening say, ah, this doesn't really apply to me. I don't really care. The government's going to do it or they don't do it. But what can we really do? Let's take it down to the grassroots level. People are listening. They're getting mad. They should be getting mad because the dollars, folks, that you've been putting aside are worth less and less because of this. And especially if taxes keep going up, the money you thought you were going to have isn't going to be there anymore.

09:00 And, David, what can the average consumer, the average citizen that's listening right now, how can we get this to a point where we can get that grassroots to grow to 60%, 70%? If we can get up to 70%, 80% of everyone on Congress, they'll have to do something. Well, I'm president of a new and emerging effort that has not gone public yet called We the People. And we're going to try to have a major citizen education activation campaign for the 28th election to get 50 million Americans engaged and communicating with their current and prospective elected officials to make these issues a top priority in the 2028 election. And let me give you some numbers, Pete, that I think people can relate to more.

09:47 Most people can't relate to billions, much less tens or hundreds of trillions. So let's say that Uncle Sam is a real person. And I'm going to take the financial statements for the U.S. government for the year ended September 30, 2025. And all I'm going to do is drop eight zeros. So this is what Uncle Sam's finances look like. He made $52,000. He spent $73,000. He's in the hole for the year $21,000. He's got total liabilities and unfunded obligations of $1,362,000. But don't worry. He's got $61,000 in assets. So he's only underwater $1,301,000. Would you lend Uncle Sam money?

10:33 No. Get out of my office, I'd say. By the way, Jamie Dimon, who's a pretty smart guy, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, was asked this past week, would he buy long-term U.S. bonds? Personally, he said no. Yeah. I mean, so it's just frustrating when we talk about these kind of things. Folks, if you're interested in finding out how to get that Roth conversion started, because you're going to have to pay taxes when you convert the money from a regular IRA or 401K or 403B or thrift savings plan over to a Roth. But you better pay it now than pay it later over and over again. It's the analogy of a farmer who has a bunch of IRS agents come up when he's planting the seeds one season, and they say, hey, Mr. Farmer, we can either tax you on these seeds and never come back again, or we can let you not pay tax on these seeds today but come back every year at harvest and tax you over and over again.

11:26 I think we all know where we'd stand on that. When we come back with David in a little while, we're going to talk about the We the People tour. We're also going to talk about common-sense strategies we can all employ to make sure that we're on the right track. We'll be right back after this. Loving the conversation today. This really, truly is a special interview that we're having today. Coach, you've brought in David Walker, former Comptroller General of the United States. Folks, if you want to catch up on the conversation, maybe the radio dial has just tuned in to us. Find podcasts online at FinancialSafari.com. Again, that is FinancialSafari.com. David, it's frustrating because you and I both can see this happening, and I know a lot of folks out there can see what's going on with the government. But nobody wants to do anything about the debt. And it's, you know what happens, it's going to keep growing.

12:13 Can't ignore it. Ignoring is not going to make it go away. No one wants to make these uncomfortable decisions. They don't want to get voted out, I guess. So it's a lot easier to promise people a lot of free stuff than it is to tell people we need to tighten the belt a little bit. Well, everybody wants something for nothing. I mean, you know, one party wants to have tax cuts. The truth is not all tax cuts stimulate the economy. Very few pay for themselves. The other party wants to grow government even more, even in circumstances where we're not generating the results that we need to achieve. The truth is we're going to have to reform Social Security and make it solvent, sustainable, secure. We're going to have to do the same thing for Medicare. But we've way overpromised on health care. We're going to have to dramatically reform our health care system. We can get into that if you want. Yes. Social Security is very easy to solve.

13:00 We can exceed the expectation of every generation of Americans. We can talk about that a little bit if you want. But the toughest choices are going to have to be on health care and taxes. Those are going to be the toughest choices. Well, we were talking when I told Thomas that I was going to have you on this week. Well, last week we started talking and I said, you know, this debt is out of control and people don't realize it. And David's been talking about it for a long time. The Social Security aspect, the health care aspect, and nothing is good about this. So Thomas was excited to have you on because he did want to hear about your opinions on, I know, Thomas, you mentioned the health care there, because the Obamacare, when it came in, was supposed to lower prices and all it has done. It was a big time bomb, wasn't it? It was. It's been especially having four kids now. We have to have these conversations.

13:46 It feels like every month or two, do we go to the doctor or not? And I can't believe in America I'm having to ask that question. Yeah. So what do you think about the health care, Dave? Well, first, we've over-promised, over-subsidized, and we have failed on the three elements you have to have to have a successful and sustainable system. Now, we're in baseball season. Let me tell you what those three are. Number one, you have to have properly designed incentives that encourage people to do the right thing and discourage them from doing the wrong thing. You need to have adequate transparency, including things like cost and quality, to provide reasonable assurance they will do the right thing and discourage them from doing the wrong thing. And then you have to have appropriate accountability, which means positive reinforcement when people do the right thing and accountability when they don't.

14:35 In the case of health care, we're zero for three. That's a strikeout, okay? And so we need to step back and ask ourselves how much universal health care, and I did use the word universal, how much universal health care is appropriate, affordable, and sustainable? And most Americans believe that's preventable wellness and catastrophic care that everybody ought to get. If you want more than that, then you get it from your employer, you get it from your union, you get your industry association, or maybe you buy it through the Affordable Care Act, which is, by the way, misnamed, just like the Inflation Reduction Act. How does that work out, okay? But, you know, you've got to keep in mind Congress is not subject to truth in advertising laws, okay?

15:22 If they were, a lot of people would be in trouble. But, so, you know, we need a dramatic reform because we spend about 50% more of our economy on health care than other industrialized nations as a percentage of GDP, and we get below average results. Yeah. Well, you know what's been very troublesome to me is the amount of fraud we keep seeing, like billions and billions of dollars of fraud. I'm kind of mad that I didn't think of one of these things and open up some phony companies with phony patients and no beds and bill the government for billions a year and just get away with it. Because I really haven't seen anyone, you know, we're not seeing these perp walks. And if you don't see the perp walk, I mean, you start thinking maybe I should try something. Well, you know, criminals go where the money is. You know, remember, you know, people asked in the past, why do you rob banks?

16:07 That's where the money is. That's Willie Sutton. Yeah, yeah, I remember they said. Health care is where the money is, okay? Right. But understand this. The federal government needs to learn a lesson. You need to have adequate controls up front before the money goes out. Because once it goes out, you're probably not getting it back. The other thing you need to do is you can't have self-certification. Newsflash. Criminals have no problem self-certifying if they're eligible for something they're not eligible for. And then thirdly, you have to have information systems that will share information, you know, across these different systems. You know, so you're not paying things to dead people. So you're not, you know, very simple things. But again, the government is a lag indicator when it comes to these things.

16:56 And so, like, Social Security, what's the solution for that? Because we're coming right up. I mean, we're right here on the deadline now. It's just a few years ago where people are going to start feeling catastrophic changes. Well, here's where I think we're going, okay? As I said, we can exceed the expectation of every generation of Americans because young people don't think they're going to get it. And they're wrong. They are. They're going to get it probably at a different age and maybe a different amount. Seniors think they're going to get cut dramatically. That's not going to happen either. So we can reform it, phase in the changes, and everybody gets more than they think they're going to get. I think that's exceeding expectations. So what are some of the things? I think we're probably going to see a further gradual increase in the normal retirement age because we are living longer. Secondly, I think we're going to see a significant increase in the taxable wage-based cap, but not an elimination of the taxable wage-based cap.

17:48 I think we're going to see an effort to try to prevent, or if we can't prevent it, minimize tax rate increases because that's a very regressive tax. I think we're going to see adjustment in the benefit formula so we end up keeping more people out of poverty, but we don't turn it into a means-tested welfare program. But upper-middle and upper-income individuals get somewhat less of a replacement rate than otherwise. I think we're going to see changes in the cost-of-living formula, if you will. And I think we're also going to see, for people that don't have an employer-sponsored retirement plan, an automatic savings supplement that would come on on top of the reform-defined benefit system.

18:34 And I think we'll keep the defined benefit system because most everything else you have in the retirement world is defined contribution, where the individual ends up bearing the investment risk. Again, folks, we're talking to former U.S. Comptroller General, Mr. David Walker, joining us, generous enough to join us for two segments today. David, here's what Thomas said to me the other day, and I looked at him and he said, I could say it. We did this little back and forth, and he said, oh, you could say it. We were doing our little communications by sign, baseball signs. I was throwing signs to him. And he said this to me. He said, Coach, if they would have let us have our own individual Social Security accounts when we first started this system, we could have all picked where we had our money, but we all would have had our own money in our own little accounts. Why did the government not do it like that? Well, for one thing, the government created this program in 1935.

19:21 It started paying benefits in 1940. It's a pay-as-you-go system, and therefore the people who ended up getting the early benefits got a huge return on investment, okay? You know, the simple fact of the matter is is that most people don't understand that Social Security is three insurance programs. It's just not a retirement savings account. It is retirement income. It is disability income. And it is survivor's income. And one of the guys that's going to be going on tour with me is a guy by the name of Joe Penland Sr., Joe from Texas. And you can find out more about it at his website, Joe from Texas. And he benefited from all three of those programs when he was young. And he's lived the American dream. He's now wealthy.

20:07 He's a very successful entrepreneur. But, you know, you need to understand what the system is. Insurance system, not just, you know, a savings and retirement account. Yeah. Well, it wasn't designed to be that. It was designed to be a safety net, which that's – Correct. We want to keep that safety net. We can't live – like, you need other money to supplement that, but it's a good way to help pay the bills, I guess, to the living expenses. Well, you know, when we formed it, it was intended to be the foundation. And like a house, you can't just live on a foundation. You need – Get rain done. You need a sponsored plan. You need personal savings on top of that in order to have a habitable dwelling. Yeah. We've got a couple minutes here before we let you go. I want to ask you what you think about this, what appears to be a push towards socialism. Where do you think the money is coming to get all these political ads to push socialism?

20:55 Do you think it's coming from other countries that are trying to bring us down by making us try to get too many people interested in socialism? They've never told them the bad things about socialism, have they? Unfortunately, many Americans don't learn from history and don't learn from others, and this is a perfect example of that. There has never been a true socialist, which many times converts into communism, that's been successful, that stood the test of time. And if you want to scare the bejesus out of somebody, have them read the platform for the Democrat Socialists of America. It's basically paralleling Saul Alinsky's, you know, communist principles, you know, take control of education, take control of health care, don't worry about deficits and debt, tax the rich.

21:43 I mean, it's, you know, it won't work, okay? But again, the problem is people don't learn from history and people don't learn from others. If they did, they wouldn't have anything to do with this. And I'm one of the national co-founders of a group called No Labels, and No Labels is trying to fight the wingnuts, including the Democratic Socialists of America, and provide support to the Sensible Center, which is mainstream America, no matter what your political affiliation is. I think the Sensible Center is about 80% of the people, and like you call them, the wingnuts are 10% on either side, right around there. Yeah, the Sensible Center is at least 60%, at least 60%, and last time I checked, that's a winning formula. It is. It's a majority. Let's say change those rules. That doesn't meet the filibuster requirement, but yeah.

22:29 You know, once I started studying Saul Alinsky, you see it all the time these days. I mean, if you study his rules for radicals, I mean, you can, I can see it. I said, oh, here, they're trying that method. And you know why? Because it works, because nobody's really, nobody calls them out on it. But we see it. I mean, you can see it, and once you see it, you never don't see it, can you? Nope, that's right. Folks, his name is David Walker. David, when is the book coming out, and when is the tour? I think the book will probably come out on Amazon around October time frame, and you know, we're going to start doing some events later this year and continuing into 2027, because as I said, this is not going to be a big issue for the midterms, but it will be. It must be for the 28th election. Well, when the book comes out, we're going to have you back on. How's that? That'd be great. All right, folks, David Walker, former U.S. Comptroller General, thanks for your time today, and folks, we'll be right back after this.

23:18 Thanks, David. Thanks, Coach Pete. Take care. Thomas will get you a copy of this when we get it done. Yes, sir. Sounds great. Take care. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 We're going to offer this to listeners. If you have anyone trying to peddle a non-traded REIT, I would say stay away and run. What do you think about non-traded REITs? Yeah, anything that has limited liquidity, just stay away. There's too many good products out there that you don't have to go searching for some weird thing. And then all of a sudden, the real estate market takes a turn, and those things are worth half of what they were. And then you can't get out of it because there's a thing that you can only get out once a year, once every three years or whatever. I would stay away. There's too many great products out there. It's just amazing. People are trying to come up with income alternatives when the best alternative is right there with a fixed index annuity, a fixed annuity a lot of times with income. What do I tell you, the people that are saying, and again, this is usually coming from the brokerage side, your money's not liquid if you put it into a fixed annuity. Is that true or false?

00:46 That's false. Liquidity is a lifetime event. It's not a one-time event. And any time you're in, let's look at both types of annuities for, you know, if you're getting income, that automatically increases your liquidity, okay? And nobody's saying put all of your money into an annuity. Nobody says that, okay? You need to have some money liquid. We're saying you should at least have enough income to cover your basic living expenses. As far as a fixed annuity or fixed indexed annuity, most of them have 10% withdrawals each year that you can take out penalty-free. Some of them have cumulative penalty-free windows where, you know, if you don't take it for three years, then you can take out 30%. So there's all kinds of liquidity things. And again, don't put all of your money into any one thing. You should have some money liquid for emergencies. You don't want to cash in your 401k because your roof has a hole in it or something or that you, you know, that you need a new car so you're going to cancel your or take money out of your 401k.

01:38 That'd be crazy. So, you know, have some liquidity, have some guaranteed lifetime income, have some investments for growth to fight inflation. That's, it's all based in math and science. You can read the books. You can read the research yourself. There's white papers on this. And coach, here's the bottom line. There's three reasons why you need to put an income annuity into your portfolio, retirement portfolio. Number one, it will improve portfolio performance. And the reason it will is that annuities outperform bonds. So don't compare them to stocks, compare them against bonds, and you're going to be great. Number two, the research shows you're going to be happy in retirement with guaranteed lifetime income. And number three, the research now shows you're going to live longer if you have guaranteed lifetime income. And I can show you numerous studies that have all documented all of this. So all those brokers who are anti-annuity, they're saying they want you to die younger and they don't want you to be happy and they want your portfolio to perform worse.

02:30 And I just don't see why anybody would be for that. Why do you think that people live longer when they have guaranteed lifetime income? The number one killer of people, believe it or not, is not cancer. It's not heart attacks. It's not heart disease. It's financial stress. That has been the number one killer in the National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER. You can Google it. They just came out with a report. 2026, they studied 600,000 people. And it was clear. People with guaranteed income don't just live a little longer. They live significantly longer. There was an article by attorney Patrick Tricker in the Journal for Financial Service Professionals. And he said the average 65-year-old male who purchases a lifetime income annuity can expect to live 20% longer than a 65-year-old male. It's not. You know, Jane Austen wrote about it back in 1811 in the book Sense and Sensibility, that people who have annuities live longer than people who don't.

03:20 So, I mean, this has been known for hundreds of years. You talk to thousands of people a year about retirement. Why do you think so many people keep taking on more market risks than they really can afford to lose even after they've retired and don't have years to recover from a bad market cycle? Why do people continue to pile money onto that risk train that you can see is going to go off the tracks down the road a little bit? Because we've been in about a 15-year bull market that just has been ridiculously to the high side, which I think is great. I mean, I own some stocks. I own some cryptos. I mean, I participate in that. But I don't put all of my money there. I have paychecks and playchecks. I have guaranteed lifetime income, you know? I mean, because retirement is about peace of mind. You don't want to be worried, oh, the market's down 30. My goodness, now I can't have dinner tonight or something.

04:06 That's ridiculous. Have a floor of guaranteed income so that no matter what happens, you're fine. And then invest. And then if that goes up and down, you can let it go up and down. But you do not want to have a portfolio where you're taking money out of the portfolio while the portfolio is going down. Here's my rule. You will never, ever, ever, ever take money out of a portfolio that's going down. If you're going to do that system, you better have a buffer plan. You better have like a whole life policy or a money market fund or a CD or something that's guaranteed. That in those years when the market's down, you take money out of there. Never, ever take money out of a decreasing portfolio. Because when you do that, you're taking all that money out. Or when the market goes back up, none of that grows back. And that's the fastest way to run out of money is to take money out of a portfolio that's going down in value.

04:55 Never do that. If you're going to be the portfolio, if you're anti-annuity, then you better have a buffer. You better have something else where you can take money out if the market's down. Yeah, I mean, it's one thing to be against something. But if you don't have an alternative, like if you're talking to somebody and say, oh, those are bad, bad, bad. Well, you say to them, what do you have that does everything I just told you annuity does? And they'll get quiet or they'll come up with something that's not true. That's what I hear. Yeah, well, if you remember back in the great financial crisis, 2009, what went down? Everything. Stocks went down. Bonds went down. Housing went down. Gold went down. Bitcoin went down. Everything went down. You know what didn't go down? My annuities didn't go down. You know what didn't go down? My life insurance didn't go down. And so you want to have some things, not everything, just some things that when everything else goes down,

05:43 that you say, wow, I'm so sure glad I got this financial bunker right here because this can take care of me until things get back to normal. Now, I say a term, and it's not going to resonate with a lot of folks, but I think anyone listening who it does, it really needs to pay attention. Wealth transfer. So why do you consider life insurance one of the most efficient tools for passing wealth to the next generation, especially compared to just leaving it in a lump sum and throwing it through the tax game to give your next of kin some money? Yeah, don't leave your kids money. That's the stupidest way to leave money. If you say, I just got this money and this is going to my kids, put that into life insurance because you'll double, triple, quadruple, quintuple it depending on your age, depending on your health. You can leverage it. Plus, they'll get it tax-free. You know, I see way too many retirees who say, well, I'm going to just leave that IRA to my kids.

06:31 Don't leave your IRA to your kids. You didn't save your IRA and your 401k for your kids. You saved it for your retirement. Guess what? You're in retirement. Spend it. That is the worst money to leave to your kids. They might not even get 40 cents on the dollar after they pay federal tax, state tax, and who knows? Sometimes there's estate taxes. No, don't leave that to your kids. Leave your kids life insurance. You get leverage and it's tax-free. Talked to a planner once and he said he had a client who, instead of doing the 401k when he started work, just started funding a life insurance policy. And that client passed away at age 48. If he had been doing the 401k, there wouldn't have been much money there and it would have been taxable and all get out, go into the next again. It wouldn't have been any money. But instead, he had been funding a big life insurance policy.

07:17 So his children, he had three of them. Each one was a millionaire when he passed away. You could not do that with a 401k. That's the self-completing feature of a life insurance policy. Do you want to explain to folks what self-completing means? Well, self-completing means while you're paying it, if you live, guess what? You got all these living benefits. You got money for yourself. But if you die, the plan is complete and it pays your kids out. And you can even have a disability waiver that if you're disabled, the company will pay your premiums for you. There's all kinds of different bells and whistles you can put on it. But the key is you have an ability to leave generational wealth to your family. And you can do it for pennies on the dollar with life insurance. You can't do it if you're just trying to leave them a bunch of money. Like if you saved up $2 million to give to your kids, if you put that $2 million in life insurance policy,

08:04 you might be able to give $6 million or $8 million to the kids. Folks, we're talking to Tom Hegday. He's internationally known in the financial circles. He's a speaker. You've seen him. Maybe you've seen him. Maybe you've heard of him. He's been on public TV. Don't Worry, Retire Happy is the name of his public TV special, as well as the book he's written, as well as Paychecks and Playchecks, two outstanding bestsellers. Thomas, when we talk about Roth, you've mentioned Roth-based annuities and tax-free positioning as a big part of your own plan. How does life insurance fit into that same tax-free strategy or maybe even better than that? Yeah, well, so, and I will even say, I wish I wouldn't have converted all of my IRAs because there's a code in the provision that you can do qualified charitable distributions out of your IRA. And I wish I would have saved a bucket of money for, because we give to charities and we give to our church.

08:54 And I could have been giving out of that bucket and had Uncle Sam helping me. But anyway, I did it. I converted it all. I'm glad. I'm glad I moved the money I did into whole life insurance. Now I got a fully funded, beautiful policy there. And it's like a freight train. You know, people who pick on whole life, they say, well, you know, you put this money in, and for the first year, there's hardly any money. It's all going to that greedy agent or whatever. No, whole life is like a freight train, okay? If you watch a freight train, it goes slow. But when it gets going, you can't stop the freight train. You can't stop the freight train. And that's like whole life. It starts out slow, but boy, you can't stop it.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Welcome back into the Financial Safari. Loving the conversation today with bestselling author Coach Pete D’Arruda. Also in the studio with us is Phil Graham as well as Gary Marriage. I'm trying to keep all of these boys on track. I'm consumer advocate Thomas Lipscomb. Catch up on that conversation by heading to FinancialSafari.com. Again, that is FinancialSafari.com. Coach, I see you itching over there. Well, subliminally, as we've grown up, we've always been told to put a plan together. Yeah. And we've been hearing it. But a lot of times we procrastinate, put it off. And so people are saying, well, Coach, what do you mean we've been told about it? Well, there's a show here. Maybe you remember this guy. The plan. The plan. It's a little guy on Fantasy Island. He always pointed out and said, the plan. The plan. So important. Tattoo. We just overlook it. Yeah, tattoo. He was really saying the plane, but it sounds like he's saying the plan. Yeah, it does.

00:45 And so the plan is important. You remember Fantasy Island? Oh, yeah. That was a cool show, wasn't it? Oh, yeah. That guy's name was Ricardo Montalbano or something like that, wasn't it? Or the big guy. Between that and the love boat. Oh, the love boat. Now, I had Gopher on the show years ago. Oh, did you? Fred Grandy. Yeah, really cool guy. Cool. It's probably one of those that got lost when we moved offices, Thomas. That was back in 2011. I had Fred Grandy on. The ones and the zeros have disappeared, unfortunately. We had Klinger from MASH. Shoot, do we still have that one? Yeah, I'll have to look it up and see. Yeah, see, I got some things to do here. Chuck Woolery? The Chuck Woolery one we still have. We have that one. The dating game? Yeah, he was good. Oh, yeah. I had him take us out. He said, we're back in two and two, he said. That's what he used to say. Now, he's passed away also, you know, unfortunately. When you come on my show, you don't stand a good chance. Sorry, boys. Welcome in, Phil and Gary.

01:31 Because Charlie Daniels came on, then he passed away. And Eddie Money came on, then he passed away. Yeah, yeah. And I wanted to have both of those guys back on. Because, you know, Charlie Daniels is from Gulf, North Carolina. He's a North Carolina guy. I didn't realize that. So, Charlie, really cool guy to talk to. Was it a rainy night? That's Eddie Rabbit. Oh. Wrong Eddie. Oh. Remember Eddie Rabbit? Yeah, I remember him, too. I was thinking Eddie Money, Eddie Rabbit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Eddie Money had 21 top 20 hits. He did, yeah. Take Me Home Tonight. Rainy Night was not one of them. No, it was not. Two Tickets to Paradise, one of my favorite ones. Two Tickets to Paradise, great song. So, I was at Madison Square Garden a couple weeks ago for the Big East Tournament. And you ever been to Madison Square Garden? Yes. My first time I've ever been. Really cool place. Oh, wow. But on the entrance, at the entrance, they have this big old glass room. You're not allowed. Cops watch you when you get close to it.

02:18 And inside that glass room is a piano. So, Billy Joel donated to him at his 150th concert he did over there. He said, the 150th concert's Billy Joel, the piano man. Wow. I don't know what I had to do with anything. But, well, we do. Now, I had an autographed song sheet of Billy Joel in one of his first cassettes in our office. So, we get that as a collectible item. Yes, you did. But Billy Joel's one of my favorite artists, too. And don't worry, folks. I'm not going to have him on the show. Yeah. We don't want to curse him, do we? But I've never seen him in concert. I thought it'd be cool to see Billy Joel in concert. I agree. I agree. I agree. What's your favorite concert you ever saw in person, Phil? Oh, man. Ever saw in person. I did front row center stage for Jimmy Buffett one year. Jimmy Buffett was always fun. Came to Raleigh a lot back in the day. He'd come for two nights, and they'd extend it a third night. And I'd go every single night.

03:05 And I had tickets for one of the nights. But it was more fun in the parking lot with all the pair of hats. Oh, yeah. And you could still hear the concert on the inside. Nice. And my buddies and I would walk around. Every now and then, somebody would leave a grill with some food on it to go into the concert. We'd eat very well in the parking lot. Very nice. Very nice. How about you, Gary? What's your favorite concert you ever saw? I've got to tell you, it was Kenny Chesney. Kenny Chesney is a great performer, right? I like country music, too. But he... Doesn't he do Nationwide? Is it on your side? No. No, that's the other guy. That's Brad Paisley. Oh, Brad Paisley. Okay. See? We all confused. The other guy. So you're talking about the parking lot parties, right? Those are like the best. That's right. It's like before football games. But Kenny Chesney concert, somebody brought a pontoon boat. They dragged it behind their truck and they had it in the parking lot. Yes. Kenny finds out about it, comes out in the crowd and decides to start playing on a pontoon

03:53 boat that's in the parking lot. And it was sick. It was so cool. That's so great. Like a private concert with him. Just a good guy. You talk about a way to party. They do have a party bringing a pontoon boat. I've heard of RVs before, but not a pontoon boat. Too bad they didn't have to go to Lake. They could have put it in. He was having so much fun. They had to rush him back to the stage. They're like, hey, you're going to actually do a concert now. Oh, how cool is that? Thomas, what about you? Oh, yeah. You know, I love a lot of different music. Lately, I went with my kids to see Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, which is a swing band. So if you go back to the 20s, 30s, that kind of style of music sounds like that. Wasn't that Brian Sitzler from the Stray Cats? Yeah. So Brian said he does that same style of music. Yeah. He had a huge hit a while back. Yeah. I love that. I got one right, coach. Yeah. Good job. And we did the book, Through the Years, it's called. So we go from 1909 all the way to 2024, tell you relevant facts about each year.

04:41 And then I said, Thomas, I said, we need to make a soundtrack for the book. You know, you have movies have soundtracks. Why don't books? Exactly. Right. Come on. So then we came up with one. For each decade, we had a song. And now we're going to have a second soundtrack coming out because there were songs that were really close. We had to decide between the two. And I said, Thomas, let's go ahead and have a set two come out. There you go. And then we're going to have a country set come out for the decades, each decade country song. But do you have, I know this is random, Thomas, but do you have a song we can get real quick on one of the decades? Well, you know, talking about Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, let's go back to the 30s. All right. The rain gave out the dust blew in.

05:37 We stuffed the cracks with cloth and tin. Five cents for beans, a dime for rice. And bread stayed cheap in half the size. The 30s hit like iron rain. But Seabiscuit ran through the strain. Shirley smiled on silver screens and Mickey's dark broken dreams. A Sears vest cost us 49. But hand-me-downs still fit just fine. One farm and four lost crops to spoil.

06:25 So supper came from garden soil. The bread line stretched a block away. So great, so great. Well, all right, so to the average person listening saying, well, that's just a song. But the cool thing was you had, you designed the lyrics of every song. So every song's lyrics have something to do with that decade. They do. Every single line is mixing. You can learn history by listening to songs. I probably could have learned that way. So we have that book available, folks. It's on Amazon. What is it, $24.99? I believe so, yes, sir. Yeah, it's called Through the Years. And you can get the soundtrack for free. Thomas, tell folks how they can listen to, like, all the decades of the songs anytime they want. Well, and again, freely available. Of course, you can go on Amazon or Apple and buy it. But also the streaming platforms, Apple Music, Amazon, iHeartMedia, Spotify, you name it.

07:12 Just search Through the Years Coach Pete, and it'll come right up there for you. Through the Years Coach Pete. It has a great, colorful cover. And we go all the way from 1910 on this album all the way through 2020. Tried to style each decade as if it was coming right out of that time. You know, my wife, she's a teacher, and she said, Thomas, I got to bring this to middle school next year because this is the way I can teach my kids about the difference. Like I said, it's a good way to learn. Yeah, yeah. Now, what about, do we have electronic book posted for the Through the Years book? We do, yes. You can find it at CoachPete.com. Very easy website to remember, CoachPete.com. So here's what I'd recommend, folks. Go to CoachPete.com, download the book for free, and then go online to any, wherever you get your music from, Spotify, iTunes, whatever, iHeart. I love iHeart. That's what I use. But anyway, you've searched Through the Years Coach Pete. You can read the book, different decades, with your kids or yourself or your family,

08:00 and then play the song. There you go. And see how relevant it is. Did I see some on vinyl somewhere, too? We do have the vinyl. We have the records, too. Yes, that was a fun thing. We're not, I don't think they're for sale, though. No, these are limited edition. But, you know, we do have CDs. Contact me directly on eBay. But by the way, by the way, here's an interesting stat for all you guys listening. Yes. First year, this year or last year, was the first year that vinyl has sold as much as it did back in 1982. So it's as popular today as it was in 1982. Well, I know that because my daughter wanted a record player. I said, gosh, Daddy had one in an attic somewhere. Yeah. But we went and bought her a new one on Amazon. Sure. Where else does everything come from? Sure, sure. But they sell vinyl. Like, the record's now a lot more expensive. Like, back when I was listening to records, I worked at Kmart in 1984, and the records were $7.99.

08:46 So I would get my sticks and, you know, all the, like, Eddie Money, all the albums there, $7.99. Wow. Nowadays, she's paying like 30 or 40 bucks because these are special ones. They're different color. Back in the day, our records were black. Remember the black records? Yeah. Now they have red ones, blue ones, you name it, right? Fancy, fancy. And even ours is splash colored. Yeah, we have some very cool pink and blue splash colored ones. Yeah. So folks, go to coachpete.com, download the book for free. There's other books you can download for free there, too. Or you can go to Amazon and buy them. I really appreciate it when you go to Amazon and buy them because it helps me out a little bit. But you're welcome to go download it for free. We have that service for you. Yeah. We want to make sure you get all the facts you need to make sure your retirement is successful as it should be. It's true. And as you head into retirement, you want to make sure that these things that might have, you know, we've heard about in history class that happened in the 30s, that happened in the 70s, they can happen just as easily today.

09:33 So make sure all of these crazy concepts that we don't hear about until the financial red zone, sequence of risk return, all these different things to make sure that we actually have a plan as we head into retirement. It's fun to talk about through the years. But at the end of the day, you need to have a plan, an actionable plan that you understand. And that can begin by contacting Coach Pete's team at Capital Financial, 800-661-7383, 800-661-7383. You can also reach out via text, just text keyword plan to 600-700. That is keyword plan to 600-700. And maybe you're out there, you just have a question for coaching the team. Just text that to 600-700 as well. Whatever your question is, we'll be here to answer. Well, that's a sound where you can get ready for retirement. Buckle up, folks, because I've got a free book offer for you as we leave for the week.

10:21 I've got my book, The Tax-Savvy Retirement. Now, you can buy it on Amazon for $24.99, or you can call right now or text right now. If you're one of the next 26 people who will call or text, we're going to mail this book out to you at our expense. We're going to pay for the book. We're going to pay the postage. We're even going to pay for the handling, whatever that is. And so if you're one of the next 26 people who call, this book is over 230 pages. Tax strategies you may be overlooking that will help you keep more of your money in your pocket, not only now, not only later, but all the way through retirement. And when you're gone, making sure that more money goes to your family tax efficiently by reading the strategies in this book. We put it all in writing for you so there's no excuses if you're paying too much in taxes. A lot of advisors won't talk about this.

11:07 We pride ourselves in talking about tax planning, and we have a lot of strategies here that your current advisor might not be explaining to you. They're all packed in this book. And you get this book right now if you call the number Thomas is going to give you. And the number is the same, 800-661-7383, 800-661-7383. Remember, this is no cost, no obligation. We will get it out the door, and you can get this educative material to make sure that you are being most tax advantageous as possible as you head into retirement. You can also text keyword free to 600-700. That is keyword free to 600-700. People love it when we give the book away. Yes. And we have a lot of you calling. And we're happy to have you call, and we're happy to get you a book. You can, if you're impatient and don't want to wait for the book to come, even after you

11:53 call, you can download it, you can download the PDF at coachpete.com. If you have any questions for the show, if you'd like to hear your own voice, ask a question, go to financialsafari.com and click that little button there that says ask a question, and we'll make sure to answer it on a future show. And if we do, if you submit a question and we ask that question on air, I will get you a bottle of my wine for doing that. We have to come pick it up. We're not allowed to send wine. We're not bootleggers here. But we will give you a bottle of my newest wine. So, for Coach Pete, right here. For Thomas Lipscomb, back there with Jose working behind the board. And our special guests, Phil Graham and Gary Marich. It's Coach Pete. We'll see you next week, right here, same time, same station, on the Financial Safari.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Welcome back into the Financial Safari. Loving the conversation today, and you can catch up on it by heading over to FinancialSafari.com. Again, that's FinancialSafari.com. I'm consumer advocate Thomas Lipscomb here with you, as always, alongside America's Wealth, Financial, and Income Coach, Coach Pete D’Arruda. Also in studio with us today, friend of the show, friend of Coach Pete's, Amanda Daughtry. Amanda, it's great to have you here. Thank you for having me, Coach. Lord, I might say whatever. She's fun to talk to, isn't she, Don? You never know what I'm going to say. Hey, let me ask you this. It's American Idol. Remember that show? Yeah. Maybe it's still on. I don't know. My wife used to watch it, and I would watch it. By default, I'd have to watch it. It's on in the bedroom. Yeah, I get that. My daughter loved it, too. Yeah. But there was a guy named, he had a last name Daughtry, right? There was a Daughtry, he was a North Carolina guy. Yeah. Greensboro. You're not related to him, are you?

00:45 They ask me all the time at the bank, and I'm like, well, what kind of money does he have in his account? Well, I think he made some, what was his first name? Chris Daughtry. Chris Daughtry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's pretty funny. It's a small world sometimes. A small world after all. Somewhere on that tree, you're a branch over there on the Daughtry tree. Never seen him at a family reunion, but it's never too late. But I haven't heard much from him either lately, but I mean, that's pretty cool to have the same last name. But you're pretty famous, too. Okay. Okay. Well, yep. I do the morning show with Mike Wheelis at 94.7. Oh, yeah. And we have a really good time here in the Raleigh Market. Yeah. Just trying to give back to the community. Trying to survive. Now, one of the things I did with you at the end of the last year is we filmed a series, and we also put together a book called Women and Money. Six very important chapters here. The big picture is the first chapter.

01:30 The moment is here. In other words, when should I start planning, Coach? Now. Right now. When you ask Coach if you should start planning, yes. Right? Never too young or too old to get a real plan together. Coming out of college, building your foundation. So when people come out of college, they're always saying, well, I need to find a job first. Once you find a job, then you start spending money like crazy. You buy a house, and then, you know, it's not cheap to buy a house. That's the cheapest part almost sometimes is buying a house. Then you have to furnish it and all the other stuff, right? Yes. And it never stops. It never stops. But getting started, because then you start building equity that way. Then getting married. So we go into little steps, right? So you get that job, and then you get married. And merging your money with your spouse. That's a tough one. Uh-oh. I'm going to have to sit down with you, Ryan. We're going to make sure. Uh-oh. Because I always recommend, and what I've seen, I've seen a lot of people, over 33 years get divorced, unfortunately.

02:17 It happens. Life gets in the way or whatever. But one of the main causes of that is fighting over money. Yeah. And so I advise that the husband and wife have their own joint checking account, which they figure out what their bills are, their mortgage payment, the utilities, and maybe an emergency account. And they both contribute an equal amount or whatever ratio they want to that joint account every month. But then they have their separate checking accounts. Because it's no fun as a spouse to get a gift for, like, Christmas or a birthday. When it came from the joint account, you already knew the money got spent anyway. So it's no fun to get it from somebody else. So you have your separate accounts. And therefore, you're never fighting about money. And you have little meetings. You have team meetings. We do this with our clients every year. We sit down and have that team meeting. I feel like I'm Dr. Phil sometimes, the Dr. Phil of the financial. Yeah. Sometimes it gets a little heated. But it's better to have a referee around than try to have that conversation together

03:05 with nobody around, right? So, and I don't take sides. I give, I'm just an impartial judge. See, I got a little gavel here. I make my ruling, right? So you can choose to ignore it or whatever. But so that's getting married, making sure that everything goes right. But then the next chapter we covered is getting divorced. That's the logical step after you get married for a lot of people. By the way, I'm getting married in August. Yeah, there you go. So we're going to walk through this and make sure you guys are on that right path and try to make sure that the bad stuff doesn't happen. But if you do become suddenly single, many times the man has handled the finances. That's just by default that's happened a lot of times. And so the female, when they get divorced, they have no idea what's going on and they get half the money. So you need to do the right thing. And that's when the sharks appear. When they find out you're divorced, you'll suddenly a new friend will appear and want to help you.

03:51 And a new man friend maybe sometimes. And all of a sudden they want that money and they'll spend through your money and then it'll be on to the next victim like that. It happens. Yeah. It's almost like they make these news magazine shows and they could do a whole, like they did to catch a predator, to catch a scam artist kind of thing. Oh my God, that's scary. Yeah. I'm scared about it. So now you plan your financial future without losing yourself when we have divorce planning or widow planning. Like that happens. You become single. It could be divorce or widowing or whatever. It's hard to talk about, but it's real. Yeah, we need to talk about it now. You're either going to talk about it now or later. There used to be candy called now or later. Now or later? I'm going to tear my feelings out and get in trouble. But then we have approaching retirement, securing lifetime income. And we call that, of course, the financial fill-up strategy.

04:37 And if you have these accounts, and a lot of people do, 401Ks, IRAs, 403Bs, Thrift Savings Plans, all these lump sum accounts, stock accounts, you have a big lump sum there. It's fun to look at. But then you say, well, gosh, I don't know how long I'm going to live. I want to live as long as I can. But I want my money to be there, too. So I have to start taking money out of this lump sum. How do I know I'm not taking too much out? How do I know I'm not cheating myself and not spending enough? So we put together a true spending plan. Not a budget. A spending plan. So we can figure out how much you can spend. And then we also say, well, gosh, we want to spend this amount of money because we have these needs in retirement. But we also want wants. We want to go on vacation. So we need to build up enough money that we can do fun things, too. And so we put the money in a place now that guarantees you lifetime income. That's where we get that financial fill-up strategy from.

05:23 So then now you're in control of retirement. You approach retirement on your terms. Thomas, you've seen this happen all the time. I have. And people are happy now. And here's what happens, Amanda. Like we get this set up. Somebody retires. They come to see me year one. And I make them spend some money because they have the money coming in. And sometimes they come in. They haven't spent it yet because they still don't trust the plan or whatever. But new money is going to come every single year. And you don't want to build up a gigantic dam of money. Right? Right. Picture the Hoover Dam of all that money you could spend. Because when you have spending money, you need to spend it. And even dams have an emergency thing where the water runs over. Truth. That is true. But we want to make sure you have more than enough money to enjoy retirement. And we do that with a true spending plan inside our financial fill-up strategy, inside the total retirement plan. So if you'd like your very own plan, call now. And matter of fact, Thomas, it is time.

06:10 E-A-B-A-B-A-B-A-D-O! For Mr. Fred Flintstone. Oh, yes. If you call now, you'll get the plan done. But if you're calling, you're a female. And you want a copy of our video series and the book right here, Women and Money, we will send you the Women and Money book. And then we'll put you on the video series. Every single week, you'll get a video on each chapter showing you the important information in the book, just in case you don't feel like reading. Yep. Right? Or you want to figure out what you just read. So that's the worst thing. Somebody hands you a book, goes home, it ends up on the bottom of a stack somewhere, and then on a bookshelf or maybe at the thrift store, and you never read it. This is a book meant to be read, but meant to be read over and over and used and even written in because we want to help you design your very own total retirement plan, income plan, and peace of mind plan. So call right now.

06:56 The next 26 of you, though, we'll send you this book before you even meet with us to make sure you're on the right track. All right, folks, that number to call is 800-661-7383, 800-661-7383, or text keyword plan to 600-700, plan to 600-700. I wish I would have had a copy of that years ago. I mean, when I was, I was married before in Nashville, when I lived in Nashville. Right. And it didn't work out, but I found out that there were a lot of things that were hidden from me. There you go. And I didn't know about. You didn't know what to ask. Oh, yeah. You didn't know what to look. I didn't, but I also was, I wasn't mature enough to have that conversation. Right. Well, when we, before we got married going, hey, you know. It's not your fault. What do you have? And what do, I mean, because, you know, it's like uncomfortable. We're like, well, what kind of finances do you have? Or what kind of stocks do you have?

07:42 And I didn't know. And then we bought Bitcoin together. Uh-oh. And then he was trying to hide some of the returns on that. Wow. I mean, it was kind of scary and messy. And money makes people crazy. It does. And marriage and death and all the things. But being informed puts you in control. So, Thomas, let's open those phone lines up right now. The next 26 of you, you'll get a copy of this book, Women and Money. We'll send it to you ahead of time. You also qualify that golden ticket. You have your very own total retirement plan to get all the worry out of planning and living in retirement. No doubt. So, Thomas, tell folks that I can do that. Absolutely. We have two easy ways to do this. Just call 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. Or text a special keyword, keyword free, to 600-700. That's keyword free to 600-700.

08:30 And we're going to build a TV show around this, too. You guys have got to be on the Financial Speakeasy Network. You and Jana and Jackie are going to be on there every week. So, folks, get started now. Make sure to bookmark. Go to FinancialSpeakeasy.com. And then it will give you the option. You can either go to YouTube or Rumble. And you sign up there to make sure you get updates every single day. A new show will come out. Well, we do a lot of shows. But going live in about a month. Yes. So, get set up now and you'll be notified. We already have this. The Speakeasy Network is already going 24-7. But we're going to have a man to show there in the next couple months there on there about women and money. So, every week a new situation, a new hypothetical situation or maybe something you've seen. You'll learn a lot about me. But it's important, I think, to not be scared about the money world or not be uninformed.

09:16 So, if you're uninformed, you believe anything because you don't know. 100%. And so, we need to make sure that we have the right plan but the right team behind us. And, you know, I've done this for 33 years. We kind of know what we're doing here. We want to make sure that everybody understands you don't have to be alone approaching this big topic. But you can also do it yourself with our help. There are a lot of do-it-yourselfers. Yes. So, we can help you do it yourself but make sure you have income and everyone needs at least one financial fill-up strategy. A guy I know who was a retirement planner for 30-some years, his name is Tom Hegna. He has 14 different financial fill-ups, 14 different streams of income. Goodness. And I wish I was Tom too. But he's already retired but he's not even taking most of the streams of income because the first three streams are getting him all he needs right now.

10:04 Let's go. So, he can leave whatever he doesn't spend to his kids and grandkids too. So, again, get your very own total retirement plan but the financial fill-up strategy is the most important part. And we're going to have a show on the financial fill-up strategy on the Financial Speakeasy Network as well. So, all the different terms you hear on the radio, you'll be able to see them every day on the Financial Speakeasy Network. That's right. That's right. And all that journey begins at FinancialSpeakeasy.com. Got a great website there. The resources we are mentioning are there as well. FinancialSpeakeasy.com. FinancialSpeakeasy.com. We're going to have some live studio audience shows there. And we're building right now. We're trying to build a game show. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. And I've been in talks with Greg Fischel. Remember, he used to do the brain game back in the day. Oh, that's so cool. And so, we're going to try to design a financial-type game show to be filmed in our new studio.

10:54 That is awesome. So, we're looking to do a lot of exciting things coming up this year. Yes, yes. And so, Amanda, we've got about a minute left. Anything? What's next on your list? You're getting married? What's going to happen next? Getting married and taking our honeymoon at the end of the year. Where are you going? I think we're going to go to Greece. Oh, okay. I've never been to Greece. I actually told him, Ryan, my other half, or as I say, Ryan, that's what I call him when I'm mad at him. He's planning. So, he knows where I might want to go. But it's his thing now because I planned the last two trips. So, he's planning the honeymoon. So, we may end up somewhere on a ranch because if it were up to him, it would be that. Go to a dude ranch and rope some cattle? Oh, man. I would believe that he would do that. Yellowstone Ranch? Yeah. He would 100%. Montana, Jackson Hole. Yeah. We went to Montana this past year and I loved it out there.

11:40 So, that's next. And then, after that, we're going to start saving for some land and we want to build a house. Yeah. You never go bad buying land. Land never goes to zero. The only problem with land is you have property taxes and they keep jacking those up every single year. Yeah. Another 10%, 10%. Don't get me started on that. Yeah. So, unfortunately, that's one of the main things. You never really own the land even if you pay off the mortgage. True. Because if you don't pay the tax on it, you're going to be in it. Or somebody gets hurt on your land, they can sue you. So, you need a good insurance. So, it's all sorts of things. We never thought about growing up, did we? Yep. Things that, the hidden costs that never go away. Yes. Yes. But, most importantly, when we get to retirement, we need to, and this is something people don't think about, having a lifetime income plan. Having your own personal pension. Our relatives used to work for companies. They'd retire and the company would give them a check every single year for the rest of their life. Not anymore. That's a pension. So, we can design your own pension.

12:26 If you call right now, the next 26 of you will do it at no cost or obligation. The number to call, 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. Or text keyword PLAN to 600-700. Oh, well, Thomas Lipscomb for Amanda Daughtry. For Jose behind the screen working the board, it's Coach Pete. We'll see you next week. Same time, same station, on the financial. Safari! Safari! Safari! lid

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 All right, welcome back into the Financial Safari. Having a wonderful show today. I'm consumer advocate Thomas Lipscomb here with America's Wealth, Financial, and Income Coach, Coach Pete D’Arruda. If you want to catch up on that great conversation we just had with Sheridan Murphy or check out past episodes, just head over to FinancialSafari.com. Again, that is FinancialSafari.com. And, Coach, we are continuing this great show with another special guest in studio. It's not every day you get to have a former Nashville star in studio with you. Okay. I'll tell you. I'll tell you. Amanda Daughtry. Ah, thanks for having me. Coach has been a fan of 94.7 QDR for some time, and I'm on the morning show there with Mike Wheelis. And as many know in the area, he's a fellow UNC guy like you, and he has been on the air there almost 34 years. Wow. And I'm joining him from JoCo, Johnson County.

00:48 Johnson County. People from there know, right? So if you know, you know. If you know, you know. And I've been on the show five years. Luckily, we've had you on air with us for over three doing some wonderful commercials to educate our listeners. Yeah. And I'm pumped. I've got your through the years book. And if you don't have the book, you have got to go to Coach's website, CoachPete.com, and you're going to get this book. He's going to give it to you if you sign up for. Those are awesome. We'll come in for a review. We'll go. You'll leave with a bunch of books, but that's one of them that we like people to have because it's 1909 through 2024. Every single year it's featured, showing you important information that's the same information each year. So what did a loaf of bread cost this year? What did it cost that year? Inflation. Price of gold. Who was born that year? Who died that year? What famous things happened? All sorts of cool stuff. Yeah. And we also have a soundtrack with it.

01:34 I see you working over there, Thomas. We have a soundtrack. So Amanda, I want you to pull, randomly pull out a year, and then Thomas will get you to play the soundtrack for that year. Okay. Awesome. I am just going through here. Let's see. I was on a page earlier. Let's see. Let's see. 1961. 1961, Thomas. The 60s. Oh, here we go. Oh, the 60s. There's that soundtrack. We've got a soundtrack for every decade. Now, Thomas, to lower that volume a little bit, let's talk about some of those facts. Okay. 1961. All right. We've got inflation at .7. So that's not too bad. No. Actually, that's awesome. Under one point on inflation. That's amazing. Yeah, 9% a couple years ago. 9% inflation. We didn't want that. A dollar from 1961 in 2024 would be $10.53.

02:20 Yeah, man. So it costs you $10 in today's dollars to buy what a dollar bought you back in 1960. Wow. That's what they call inflation. That's the damage inflation does. That's why I call it a financial termite. Inflation, taxation, unnecessary commissions, fees, expenses, and taxes are all financial termites that can eat away what you thought you had. That is crazy. All right. The cost of living. Let's go down some of these. Right. Bread was 15 cent a loaf. Good old days. Wow. There's probably better bread back then, too. Probably. Probably. Milk was $1.04 a gallon. Man. $1.04. Gold was $35.50. Smack your mama. That is nuts. Don't you wish you'd get in a time machine and go back there? Of course, that's more than 60 years ago. Good gosh. And I mean, that was a lot of money then, too. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, yeah. Again, it was worth 10 times that.

03:06 So, when gold was, what did you say, $34 an ounce? $35.50. So, multiply that times 10 because you said it would take $10 today to buy what $1 did then. So, basically, adjusted for inflation, that's how they do it, $350 an ounce. Good gosh. But still cheap compared to when you saw gold hit like 5,000 ounce. Yeah. That's true. Around there. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And if you were at the candy shop and you're buying my favorite candy, Snickers bar is $0.25. There you go. Nice. $0.25. Mortgage. Oh, I wish I would have bought a house then. 4%. You know, candy bars. I used to get candy bars for a nickel and a dime. So, I don't know. Maybe that was a misprice here. Because I'm not that old, by the way. Yeah. In the 70s, I was buying candy bars for nickel. Wow. Real candy bars. Maybe that's when the Snickers came out. And we had a Kmart there. It used to be a nickel. Then they went $17 for $1.

03:51 So, you can only get 17 of them. Good gosh. And when I was working at Kmart in, was it 1984? Right before I went to college. I worked the summer at Kmart. And it was $5 for $1 back then, candy bars. Still a good deal compared to today. Five real. And the candy bars were bigger back then. You know. They shrunk the candy bars now. Look at the little bite-sized ones for Halloween. Oh, they're so tiny. It can't even fit the logo. It has one little N for Snickers on it now. Truly, truly. That's just enough to make it mad. It's smaller than a Hershey's Kiss. And they rebranded them, too. You know, it started as snack size. And then they started calling it bite size. Probably because they got called out on it. They should have a microscope size. Really not. Inflation. Yeah. That's what happens. So, that's deflation, too. So, inflation is when things get more expensive. Deflation is when they shrink the size of things. Like a Krispy Kreme donut. It's nowhere near as big as it used to be. Don't even get me started.

04:37 Because what you buy at certain stores, you have to look at the ounces. They'll try to give you a better deal. Oh, yeah. And it's just a different package. And I'm like, okay, uh-uh. I'm getting too smart for that. Well, there used to be a pound bag of potato chips. A pound bag. Now it's six ounces. Oh. And they pump it full of air. So, 16 ounces in a pound, by the way. So, it's 10 ounces less for about five times more than it used to be. That's ridiculous. Ridiculous. But, anyway, hey, it's forced dieting. Forced dieting. I can't afford all that state chips. All right, Coach. The average home was $11,900. Wow. You know, I remember my parents bought their first house in 1974 in Laurenburg, North Carolina. Three bedrooms, two baths, nice big backyard and a deck. Two-car garage. $34,000. Oh. What? And then that sold back in the 90s. They sold it like it ended in like 1996. Sold it for $300,000.

05:23 So, that's where, you know, stuff started going up. But, back then, in the 70s, the mortgage rates were a lot higher, too. So, again, everything works out. And that's why you should never delay buying a house. Say, I'm going to wait for the mortgage rates to come down. I'm going to wait to buy this house. Yeah. Well, if that happens, then it'll be more of a seller's market because everyone will want a house then. And so, there'll be a lot more competition. So, the price of the house may go up. So, the best strategy is to find the house you like right now because houses are a lot cheaper than it will be if rates go down. Lock in the house. Get in the house. And then, when rates go down, do a no-closing-cost mortgage and refinance down to the rate you deserve at that time. Yeah. But now, you don't have to compete with other people for the house. Because you remember back in the day when a house would come on the market, there'd be bidding wars breaking out. And a house that listed for, let's say, a million would go for $1.3 million because too many people wanted it. Yeah, that's true.

06:08 And so, now you cost yourself $300,000 by being in that bidding war instead of buying it when no one else wanted it. So, shoes are always on special when you don't need new shoes. Oh. 100% true. When you need them, you can't find them or they're more expensive. So, again, buying on your terms, we call it. But also planning your retirement plan on your terms. So, if you want a true retirement plan and you're not in retirement, that's the best time to get a retirement plan. So, call now. We have a 22-step Coach Pete's Power Plan, we call it, which includes the biggest step. It's that financial fill-up strategy. But it's 22 steps. We do the work behind the scenes. We're going to waive our fee, our planning fee. We've seen others charge over $1,000 for plans like this. But for the next 26 callers, Amanda, we're going to do it at no cost or obligation. So, Thomas, tell the listeners how they can call in right now.

06:53 Yeah, happy to. The number to call, 800-661-7383, 800-661-7383. You can also connect with us by texting that keyword plan to 600-700. That is keyword plan to 600-700. So, Amanda, tell me about Nashville. How do you like it there? Oh, Nashville was great. I was there 10 years. But now, remember, I was in Nashville. When I moved there, let's see, 2010 is when I started kind of going there and saying, okay, I'm going to move here. 2011 made the final full move. There were still taxis downtown. There wasn't an Uber. There wasn't a Lyft situation. And you could park in front of the bars downtown and play as you get. Oh, right on Broadway right there? You could park right on Broadway. Wow. There wasn't even a meter or anything. You just pull your car up, get a spot, load out, and watch your car from the stage. Now, I mean, they call them bollards.

07:39 There's those things that line the streets where you can't even get on the sidewalk easily. There's Lyft. There's Uber. They're starting to shut the streets down on the weekend. It's like Beale Street in Memphis. So, you can't even get dropped off at all in front of the bars. Yeah, you've got to walk like 1,000 miles. And, of course, every star has a bar now. But when I moved there, it was different. You had your three bars that were owned by the same guy. I've been there since 19-whatever. Layla's. Layla's one of the oldest bar on the street. How about Tootsie's? Did you ever play at Tootsie's? I never played at – that's the Steve Smith bar. I never played at any of the Tootsie's. But I played the Stage, Legends Corner, Second Fiddle. All those are owned by Rubel Sanderson, who's still there. Second Fiddle actually just closed. Oh. But he still has – That's a cool name, Second Fiddle. It is. He still has the Stage and Legends Corner, which was my favorite spots, right next to the Ryman, right next to Tootsie's.

08:26 I played there every Saturday and Sunday. Those were my bread and butter gigs. So you worked on tips only back then, right? Because when I'm in Nashville, I see the tip jars are out there. The bands are all like – Tootsie's has three different bands going at one time, Thomas. Front stage, backstage, and upstairs. And upstairs. Well, now we got a bass, but when I first started down there, Second Fiddle was my first gig. It was a Monday night. Nobody wanted that shift. It was a late shift, too. So the band started at 10 o'clock in the morning, and then they end at 2.30 a.m. And so that was the late shift. I'd get on stage at 10.15 p.m. I'd play until 2.30 in the morning. On Monday. On a Monday. Nobody's in there. And our bass was, I think, $35 a person. And then we'd be lucky to make $5 to $10 in tips apiece. It was rough, but you had to pay your dues, you know? And that's what – a lot of folks do that because they want to be noticed by somebody.

09:12 And there are a lot of famous people that go in and out of those bars down there in Nashville scouting out the next talent, I guess, right? It's true. I actually just listened to a podcast with Haley Williams. She was a singer from the band Paramore, and she was discovered at 12, 13 years old. Actually, she said in the interview, they won't let you sing if you're 12, so they might have fibbed a little bit early on. But it started in 13. That's where she was discovered. That is crazy. I was singing at Second Fiddle one night. At that point, I'd had gigs at a lot of the different bars. But I was there on a different night. It was in a Monday. I think I might have been moved up to a Friday at this point. And a girl was sitting at the bar who has been working for Alan Jackson for over 25 years. And she would always come in, but I never knew what she did. And super friendly. And she pointed at me when I was running the tip jar, and she said,

09:58 I'm going to have a job for you at some point. I'm going to have something cool for you. And it had been a year since I'd seen her. And next time I saw her, she said, hey, Alan Jackson is opening a bar across the street where the Full Moon Saloon is. Full Moon Saloon. That sounds like a whole name. Or actually, it shared the wall with the wheel. They kind of did some things there. So it was really the wheel. It used to be a Civil War hospital. That's a whole other segment. Oh, wow. But really cool spot. And she said, he's going to open a bar there, and we're going to ask you to play Friday night more than likely. And I said, oh, heck yeah. But if I had a dollar for every time I met somebody in Nashville that said, I know somebody who knows somebody. Everybody knows somebody. Make you famous or whatever. I mean, I'd be rich as you know what right now. But it worked out a year later. I got the gig. And then two years later, they said, hey, Alan's taking some of the talent from the bar on the road.

10:48 Do you want to go on tour? And I'm like, do I want to go on tour and play some marinas with Alan Jackson? Like, pinch me. Does the folk wear a funny hat? Yeah. Sure does. I'll be going. That was a fun time. And we got paid a little bit. We sold a ton of merchandise, which I thought. So where'd you guys on tour? Where'd you go? We went to Jacksonville. We went to Pennsylvania. Jacksonville, Florida. Florida, Pennsylvania. We went to. Can't wait to go to Jacksonville, North Carolina. We did play Winston-Salem. Oh, Weston. Did you go Ziggy's up there? Or where'd you play? We played all the arenas. Okay, the arenas. Okay. And so we were playing. And Winston-Salem, they gave us jerseys. So I got a jersey for the Deacons, I guess that's who they are. Yep, yep. And I got my name on the back of that. Where else did we go? We went one other place. And I'm drawing a blank right this second. Demon Deacons. It was a lot of fun.

11:34 It was an incredible run. And I had a good time. And you know what? And that's what I tell people. It's a joy, parts of life. Because you wouldn't worry about certain things. Now you're worried a little bit about planning for retirement. But you're still only 40. So you've got plenty of running. I was broke as you know what back then. You've got 25 years at least to the traditional 65. And I got my Social Security statement the other day. It said I can't retire to 67, even though I'm never going to retire. So you have plenty of time to get on the right track. And if you're listening now, if you want your very own total retirement plan, call right now. We'll put together a total retirement plan at no cost or obligation for you right now. All right, folks. That number to call is 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. Or text keyword PLAN to 600-700. PLAN to 600-700.

12:20 And we'll be back with more with Coach Pete D’Arruda and Amanda Daughtry after this.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Well folks welcome back into the show. This is the time of the show where I like to go out around the world and find someone who is making a difference reporting on people making a difference or just overall a cool guy to talk to and I've talked to him for years over a decade now. I've talked to Niall Nichol. We've had him on the show before and he's one of my designated tech experts and Niall welcome in. How you doing? Man I am doing great and I'll tell you what tech

00:45 is exploding so we will have no shortage of things to talk about. Yeah well before we even get into what I wanted to ask you what do you think is the number one tech aspect that's going to change the way everyone listening does what they do in the next five years? You know it's been in the news so much but quite frankly I don't think people take it as seriously as they should and that is AI. Yeah. And AI has been really since its introduction into the marketplace it's just made huge leaps and bounds but what most people don't realize is it's been in development in serious development for 40 years. Wow. So you take it to the marketplace and you take it from a handful of tech geeks and

01:33 scientists you know like me and you put it out to where literally it's not millions of people anymore billions of people are using it a day it gets smart real fast and it just something called a large language model which means it takes all this information people ask it questions they correct things that it says wrong and all of that and it gets very sophisticated and so when you start getting billions of people using it it gets really sophisticated really fast across cultures and it is going to radically change our landscape in the next five years. Well a lot of jobs that are done today simply aren't going to exist in five years. Yeah that's that's so what makes you happiest about

02:18 this and then what makes you saddest and what scares you the most? There's a three three-part question there. What's a happy thing about this? So the happy thing to me is it's called artificial intelligence and I really wish that they would rename it to assistive intelligence. The reason I say that is it is great I probably use it you know I bet on a on a given day me interacting with it I might use it two hours a day. Well but I use it as as an assistant and it's an assistant that I have to train I have to correct I have to review what the assistant gives me and as long as you interact with this artificial

03:05 intelligence platform whichever one you want to talk about in that capacity it makes me very happy because it lets me get probably I bet it lets me get easily two to three hundred percent more done a day than I do without it. Now by the way I can't just press a button ask it a question press a button and then spit it out because it's also wrong a lot it's wrong an awful lot but just like an assistant you know you hire an assistant you have to train them you have to get them sophisticated you have to review what they've done for you to make sure it's correct and after you build up some trust maybe you let them go a little bit but that's sort of what this is like so that's what makes me the

03:50 happiest. Yeah so unlike a human where you have to tell them the same thing over and over again I think AI remembers it the first time right when you when you correct it it doesn't make the same mistake or does it? Well you would think that would be the case but no as a matter of fact you'll laugh at this and if you don't there's something wrong with us I argue with it quite frank quite frankly often oh yeah in fact I'll even curse at it every now and again does it curse back? Sometimes yeah or it will say Niall now now now but uh the flip side is is um I have had to tell it to do the same thing over or make the same corrections sometimes five six seven times and you might say well why do you do that again it still improves my productivity. I see Thomas nod and Thomas you agree huh? Oh it's totally true

04:41 and I think you know you can think of the AI the artificial intelligence I like what you said there and assisted intelligence uh as this silver bullet but it's not but it is definitely helpful it's uh so it's almost like a footstool instead of a ladder. Yeah I would say so I think I love your description there Niall because I because I agree with you I use it a whole lot and and it's not an end-all solution but it is certainly amazing. So what makes you the saddest about it Niall? The saddest is that I do believe even though I'm telling you where it's going to go in five years or so I think it's over full today um you know it sort of reminds me as we talk technology you know when high definitions televisions hit the market. Oh yeah. Everything had HD on it. You could buy HD sunglasses. Now how did that

05:31 change the sunglass? It didn't change it a bit. It changed the price. Well you're starting to up. That's exactly right. It did change that but you're starting to see AI in everything and AI certainly has its place. It has its place in a lot of devices um you know some of the things that we might talk about like uh lawnmowers uh you know that that were introduced at CES this year um you roll the lawnmower out it gets the weather forecast and it might say you know what I'm going to put off mowing the lawn until three o'clock because it's supposed to rain. It sounds like I used to do but I just put it on for a couple days. Exactly. You wouldn't go back out to do it. Yeah right. And and you might say hey there's HOA rules that only allow us to mow you know between eight o'clock

06:18 and and 11 o'clock in the morning and we can't do it on Sundays at that off limit. So um it could ask you some questions like that and it could learn and then by the way if it happens to be mowing your lawn for you and it's geo-fenced because it will do that um and it finds something peculiar in your yard that you weren't expecting well not only will it document it'll mow around it and you know if it could do something to uh to take care of the situation it will but otherwise at least it notifies you there's a problem. Wow. Now for remote homeowners this is great because after it mows your lawn it goes back and parks in the recharging station and it's ready to go again. You know that reminds me of this Roomba thing we have in the office it goes around in vacuums and stuff and it then recharges itself empties itself out and it's like it's almost self-sufficient right Thomas? Every day when

07:06 it gets stuck on a wire or something or a power cord. In the lawnmower's position it's going to be a beer can that the construction worker threw. Or a snake. Or a snake in the yard. And that's where the that's where the AI is coming into into play because it recognizes those things and it might say yeah you've got beer cans all over your backyard. Who's getting drunk that's gonna call the cops on you? Drinking! Oh you know if you could think of the Roomba and uh or Rumbo whichever way we were to say it uh if you could think of that device that learns what's there you move furniture around and it learns that it has to adapt its patterns or whatever uh you know that that's a great application for AI. It's amazing as folks we're talking to our tech expert Niall Nickel and he's uh he's been uh a guest

07:52 on the show for over 10 years now a decade Niall pretty funny and now you're retired supposedly but you're working harder than ever it looks like. Yeah yeah I had hair at one point in time too not so much now. It's a great hair migration you had the same thing happen it went from the top of your head to your chin. That's exactly right. Hey uh all right so what is the scariest thing to you about AI going forward? The scariest thing to me about AI is uh when it gets into certain applications that it shouldn't be in and that there's nobody checking it or verifying it um it it as I said it does produce bad results um that I still use it um because I'm able to identify that but for people that don't

08:39 uh recognize that it's not perfect um it gets you in a lot of trouble in fact there's been attorneys because quite frankly uh AI today is great for law but there's been attorneys that have used it in briefs and it has it's made up information that's just not correct and it puts it in a brief and let me tell you a judge is not very happy when that happens. Yeah you know and they find it. You can't blame anybody but yourself even if it was AI though you're supposed to do it yourself anyway. It's sort of like Dennis Rodman the famous basketball player for Chicago Bulls back in the day and uh he had an autobiography came out which means it's all about himself he supposedly wrote it and somebody asked him about a quote in the book and he said I was misquoted. It's his own it was supposedly his own book so you know you can't blame anybody but yourself who's got two thumbs and it's to blame you right so you got to be

09:27 careful. Well he did he didn't want to talk about the multiple personality disorder there but we'll just leave that alone. All right well that's that's funny so the CES the consumer electronics show this year there was amazing things I heard about drones that could fly you from one side of the city to another like your own personal aircraft uh robots that could do everything mowing the lawn and then fold your clothes and all this other stuff what what do you think is going to be in the like let's say in two years from now what what from CES is going to be almost a household item do you think? Wow that's that's sort of hard to predict. Yeah it is. A couple of things I would say are going to be radical changes and one of them we're already starting to see a lot but you probably don't realize it and that is smart city technology integrating with smart cars. The way that we're

10:19 seeing a lot of smart city technology right now is we're seeing road signs that automatically update based on road conditions accidents and things like that. You might think that there's a person sending out those messages most likely it's not there's automatic or automated traffic monitoring they start to detect backups and they reroute traffic automatically but now with smart cars you're getting those messages because it knows your route in fact I've got a 2026 model now and I don't even have to tell it when I'm heading home it knows it updates the route if there's any problems and it gives me my ETA so now when my wife calls and says when are you going to be home I could say 13 minutes. You can't blame traffic anymore can you? You used to have that built-in excuse for about 15 minutes. Oh

11:08 yeah it was caught in traffic. No you weren't. Where's my buffer? No you weren't. The car texted me and said you weren't. So is that a 2026 Tesla by the way? Is that what you're talking about? No no no believe it or not I I've driven pickup trucks now for I don't know how long and I bought a 2026 Chevrolet Silverado diesel so I was blown away with the fuel mileage. And it has that technology built into it. Okay that's cool. It does. Wow. It does but in the city I'm getting 25 miles per gallon on our road I'm getting between 35 and 50. Wow that's like the old days back when before they had the catalytic converters in the car. Exactly exactly. Wow that's amazing. Yeah but it does have that technology and and it's it's really awesome from that perspective because it does save you time as

11:54 well. But we are so going to see now I'm not going to tell you this is in two years in fact my prediction on this is we're going to start to see it major metropolitan areas probably in eight to ten years. Okay. But you're going to start to see traffic lights get smaller or be removed overall and that's where we're going to start to see technology migrated into vehicles that are predictive as cars enter intersections. They know what cars are coming what direction and literally they're going to thread those cars together. And so if you happen to think about traffic moving without having to stop it changes fuel mileage issues pollution gets you from your point a to point b more quickly.

12:40 But I'll tell you what the first time we do that I don't know how I'm going to feel about that one. Yeah I'm not going to look. Close your eyes. Some people are doing that now anyway. Yeah oh I know. Well you know they call that the zipper the zipper merge and that's like when people are merging in you're supposed to like one car merges in the other one lets it go they like every other car that's a zipper and that's what you're talking about is no wasted space that's how you're supposed to merge into traffic even though there's that one person that tries to cut in front of everybody it makes everybody mad. I was here first. Then they jam on their brakes and it backs up things right. Yeah yeah yeah yeah and so then road rage happens and all that stuff. We are going to see we are going to see driver-based cars go away and a lot of people don't believe that but it's the insurance companies that are pushing it. Right now you know you hear about accidents that are from automated or autonomous

13:32 vehicles but right now today and the technology is about is evolving rapidly they are a hundred times better at driving and having fewer accidents than the best human that they compare to. Okay. Now you tell me what that does to insurance companies and everything else. Well it will be here. But to me insurance companies then should charge a hundred times less but they won't. Exactly. Because I don't know why they're mouthing off because they make a fortune charging people all sorts of rates when like if my neighbor has a wreck I get I get charged more you know that kind of thing. That's exactly right. To me they better be careful what they wish for they're going to do that FAFO kind of stuff and they're going to be out they're going to be out of business when no one's having any wrecks. Yeah. Won't need insurance. That's good. Yeah. The next thing related to these automated vehicles. Yeah I wasn't either.

14:21 In today's age if you don't know it go look it up. Ask your AI. Yeah really. That's it. That would be an interesting conversation. But you know in addition to that as we start to see that assistive technology in cars and autonomous vehicles you know I don't know about your vehicle mine should idle most of the time probably 95 percent of the time. Yeah. And I figure I drive a fair amount but it's still suicidal most of the time. So what we're going to start to see is shared vehicle services where when you want to go somewhere it shows up and takes you there and you know then it drops you off and goes and gets somebody else but you won't have to really wait. Yeah. But that's not that far down the

15:11 road either. No. We did a movie with a guy named Peter Diamandis back in the day. Him and Elon Musk and Richard Branson were the X Prize people where they had the X Prize with for the I think it was a five million dollar prize for the first person that could launch a rocket have it go around earth once and then come down and land safely. And I think Elon Musk won that award. But Peter said. And now he's doing it right. Yeah. But Peter told me back then this was like 10 years ago he said there'll be a time where you won't own a car and you won't even need garages anymore. And basically you just when you're ready to get picked up you press a button. Sort of like Uber and Lyft do now. But it'd be even better. And it's just amazing to think about it. And it's coming but it's certain people I kind of like the freedom of being able to just get in the car and drive. So if I'm in a bad mood I get in the car and drive around listening to some tunes every now and then. I guess you won't be able to do that. Maybe get in a simulated car and not even go anywhere. Well then maybe that'll be the case. But yeah.

16:01 But yeah I mean think about that you know when we get assistive AI in the home. Right. Obviously if you're getting ready it's easy for a technology like this to determine that. Yeah. And it's looked at your schedule right. It probably has a very good idea of when you're going. In fact you might even get reminders to tell you hey you need to step it up or you're going to be late. Yeah. And you walk out and the car's already there. You didn't even order it. So you know. So you know. It's almost I mean it sounds cool and it's great for technology in the future and all that. But I kind of like the freedom of doing what I want to do whenever I want to do it. I think we're going to have to overcome that with the more of a automated and structured society going forward it looks like. Well the technologists have been that this is one of the issues that

16:47 technologists and psychologists have been analyzing. Interesting. Because especially in the American culture driving is a rite of passage. Right. Yep. Getting your driver's license. It's a big deal. It is. Well guess what. You don't need a driver's license anymore if that's the case. Right. You'll just need an. Yeah. You'll just need an ID. Yeah. But. But yeah there are there are shifts like that that are going to occur. But right now the thinking is is it's going to open you up to some things that you've always wanted to do but you didn't have the time to do. Yeah you're right. Um and so you know like you said you might want to cruise around and listen to tunes. Well now maybe you want to cruise around and just look at the sunset driving down the beach or going through the mountains or in the countryside where you're not driving and you don't have to pay attention to

17:35 the road. Well um and oh guess what now you could have the bottle of wine open right because there's no more open container restrictions. It's almost like being in a limo all the time. There could be a lot of things. You know Thomas has a Tesla. That's right. Thomas has the you have that what do you call it on your Tesla where you don't have to drive anymore. Full self-driving. And you do that right. I do. Yes. So he just basically chills on the way home now. You don't have to have your hands on a steering wheel or anything right. Do you still watch every now and then. I do watch just because uh as we've said assisted uh intelligence as opposed to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Still don't trust it. Still don't trust it. Trust but verify. There you go. There you go. No but it's getting good. It's getting good every year a little bit more. Well now I've caught you. I've kept you a little longer than I wanted to because uh we were against a clock but uh but I really appreciate your time and and I mean I think we should keep in contact. Maybe you have your AI

18:21 contact our AI when something big happens. Yeah well you know what we didn't talk about printed human organs and I'm really. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. Here because I like like 15 or 20 years ago I invested in a company called Orgagenics and they were going to print body parts out and I lost all that money because it never did anything but again I was ahead of I think I was ahead of the curve on that because it makes a lot of sense using a little of your DNA you can print out a new liver so you can drink all you want there in your driver's car you can drink all the time now. There you go yeah well they started printing and I don't know because I've seen you at CES I believe once or twice. Yes we did. Or we talked in passing there. Yep. But they've been printing food 3D printed food for a while now and a lot of critics are saying you know what they've gotten to the point that you

19:07 really can't tell the difference. Wow. So now they're starting to print skin for example. Yeah. So if you've got a bad burn or something you need a skin graft no problem. It's amazing. Blood vessels from your own DNA technology they are working on right now and they think they're less than a few years away from hearts and kidneys. Wow. Now heart's a big muscle and a kidney is a big filtering organ vastly different but they think that they're probably going to be able to enter clinical trials trials I can't say that trials in less than two years. What's that guy? Maybe I have too much to drink I don't know. Hannibal Lecter like he liked like with a Keontae liver. Kidney and fava beans. So they can print him out some kidney seed now so there's food for him right? Yeah and then he doesn't even have to kill people

19:52 anymore to get it right. Or he can just get the ones they take out of people it's all been marinated in the body for a while. So this is amazing though. This is amazing to me. The skin thing is a big thing for burn victims though because usually they never recover like the skin always looked bad. Now you can just peel off the bad skin and put they'll put new skin on. It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. The skin grafts have they're in the marketplace now. Wow. So if you know that you've got something coming up that needs a skin graft they could grow the new skin and and it's not rejected. Amazing. You know it's your DNA. So yeah that is probably to me one of the most exciting things that that really has been progressing well and was a huge big hit at CES. Longivity you'll go up tremendously if you can just print a new heart outfit instead of getting a pacemaker or you know anything like that. I mean just put a new one in.

20:38 That's yours and it won't be rejected because your body will think it's the same one. Uh if we deal with brain aging problems uh guess what but that that's going to be a big big deal. It's I mean that's that is that is a Thomas what do you think about that it's pretty amazing. It is amazing it's uh the words aren't coming to me because it does it can extend so you coach we talk about live to 121 and beyond talk about beyond. Yeah that's important of lifetime income now because lifetime could be even longer insurance companies be mad about that too. Yeah really really. So uh but have you have you yourself Niall have you have you ever eaten uh 3d printed food and known about it before or you eat it and then someone told you afterwards or have you ever had it to begin with? Uh yes I have I did that probably and I'm trying to think it was four or five years ago at CES and and what they did was they gave you an AB a taste comparison can you tell the difference?

21:24 And could and you couldn't? I couldn't. And what was it steak? Um they I I believe they gave me salmon um they gave me hamburger which is easy uh but you know they gave me hamburger and then they gave me some vegetable I don't know if it was zucchini or I wouldn't have been broccoli because I wouldn't have eaten it but um they gave me a couple of things and and quite frankly I I couldn't tell the difference uh the salmon had a slightly different texture but it tasted like salmon. Wow and how about the ground beef uh it's same exactly? Ground beef tastes identical identical um interesting but you know what what they're doing with beyond burger and things like that where they're doing plant-based meats now yeah they've got those to the the point where they're hard to tell the difference quite frankly. It's just amazing I mean uh I mean I guess we're living through a new

22:13 generation generational shifts going on here like uh when they when the horse and buggy was replaced by a car that's about the kind of you know the phone and electricity all that kind of stuff we're seeing that right now on a broader and uh more advanced scale think about it. Yeah well we we talked about AI obviously at the beginning of the segment here but you know we didn't talk about where it's going because AI is just the first step. Generative AI is where it goes next and that's where the AI starts to think for itself and gives you recommendations that maybe you didn't even think about. And this is where we get into 2001 the space odyssey when Hal decided he didn't need the humans anymore so we have to be careful about how much we got them think right? That gets to be the scary part. It is and the Terminator remember the movie Terminator that's when the machines took over they didn't need the humans anymore so we need to make sure we let them know

23:01 that they always need us somehow and plant that into their DNA they always need us friendly humans here. Well we didn't go down talking about some of the robotics because that gets AI and it takes it to a different level so we'll talk about that sometime in the future. Well I mean do you want to I mean I've got five more minutes you do you want to get time I mean the robotics thing it's just so many interesting things I just didn't I didn't know where to even start talking about it here but I mean all right let's talk about the robotics real quick what do you what are you thinking there? So we are starting to see humanoid robotics and the real progress has come out of Japan. Japan has a major health care issue with older folks right for a number of reasons and and so they started working heavily on robotic technology about 15 years ago that was a

23:50 system in health care and one of the things that they found out pretty quickly was the robots did a much better job with the care than the humans did because the patient could be as grouchy as insulting or anything else as they wanted to be and the robot doesn't have a an emotional response right? I hear you. Uh so but what they found was in order to get the human to engage with the robot they had to put a face on the robot and the more human like they made the face the more humans engaged with it well it got to the point even in its infancy with faces that sort of looked human they weren't great um that the health care patients one of the robots instead of the humans uh so guess what they solved the problem

24:42 fast forward to ces 2026 to demonstrate how mobile and agile these humanoid robots were they had a martial arts an mma if you will of two robots fighting now that means they're trying to knock each other over they're not getting up like rock'em stock'em robots except unprogrammed wow and it what it did was it demonstrated exactly how agile the robots are how well they could move and then take a step over to the next booth and you've got robots that are lifting 600 a thousand pounds moving it around in a in a warehouse type setting move over to the next booth and they've got an exoskeleton that you could

25:30 strap on for people that are quadriplegic or paraplegic that does the brain or eye connections to be assistive technology and allow you to move around without a wheelchair or anything like that sort of like robo cop back in the day remember the cop was basically killed and they brought him back and he's put the exoskeleton around him it's amazing how hollywood hollywood is ahead of uh science or science is ahead of hollywood it's like that kind of thing if science follows hollywood sometimes it does by the way those things were all available and demonstrated at the ef this year it's not we're not talking about future technology we're talking about do you want it would you like it delivered you know next week next month or or whatever so what's the price on something like if you wanted to one of those robots to like lift weight lift like move stuff for you and work in a warehouse i guess like 30 000

26:22 well it really varies they start at the low end uh about six to ten thousand dollars for the the home assistive robots that do your house cleaning and can do some cooking and things like that um so low in there but they'll go up to well over a hundred thousand dollars depending on what you want and you know you could take that as far as you want to take it because they have robots that do what you might imagine they might do and that's a porn convention exactly in fact they walked from one booth to the other to go to that convention and as a matter of fact the uh the sex technology uh at ces has actually become about 20 of the ces floor these days sex sells man i'm telling you you know i'd like a big technology emerald gazi chef robot and

27:12 he'd like say bam and then bring my food to me you know like uh remember yeah right chef ramsey one that's cussing in the kitchen and bringing a good food beef wellington from grow program it any way you want to it's just amazing man you know it's also worrisome at the same time because a lot of careers are in jeopardy now when when these robots can do such a great job uh and all you do is i guess how long do you have to plug them in or how long does like one of these robots go without a charge and how long does it take to charge them coach pete oh man i'm shaking my head now no they they decide when they need to be charged based on what they see the workload to be and they just they take the break if you will and go charge them so okay um avid do they need to do a fast charge or you know can they shut down for the night because you're not going to need them for the next four to six to 12 hours

27:58 so if they charge too fast does it become a smoking break a smoking break well good that's a good one i like that there you go thomas wait we got to give you one of these wrong batteries and we've got that problem right well man we're going down all sorts of rabbit holes here with all this stuff it's amazing it really is amazing we're in a we're in a amazing time of uh basically history think about it it's i mean gosh they'll talk about this like they did the roman agents uh 3 000 years from now i think you know if we're still around i agree i agree and some of us may be yeah i can't i can't imagine trying to think you know we we talk in here really we talk short term maybe five to ten years right i can't imagine where this is in in 25 to 30 years i really can't um it's progressing faster than the human imagination can really keep

28:50 up with it yeah and imagination drives this stuff by the way well of course i mean you think about all the stuff you mentioned it's just amazing i mean it's i never even thought you could have a robot do you know back in the day a robot would just like gone lost in space warning mr you know that kind of thing but now the robots are more agile than we are crazy yeah and and by the way they've improved that face technology like we were talking about with recognizing emotions uh being able to have more facial emotions with the eyes the mouth the everything and uh you know they've gotten to the point where if you just do a quick glass and glance and passing you won't know that it's a robot they're that good but remember there was a movie probably about 25 or 30 years ago michael keaton it was dupe duplicity or something where you may invented like five or six robots that look just like him so basically he

29:39 just sat home and he sent them out to work and do all the hard stuff and he took all the credit made all the money and then the then the robots started getting mad at him though they they started getting smart on him you remember that movie ganging up on him yeah what if what if we could just invent a bunch of coach peets and send them out all over the place i only have one question yes sir is the world ready for that i don't think so give him some time give him some time uh folks his name is nile nickel and uh what a fascinating conversation nile we're gonna we're gonna air this uh we're gonna put this on our financial speakeasy network too we're gonna put some good video behind this as well so uh we're gonna air this on radio and uh have this everywhere because it's just amazing what what your imagination after listening to this i mean you could spend some time talking to your get it to come up with more ideas probably well yeah and by the way we didn't even talk about

30:29 setting your ai voices to whatever voice you want do you want a male voice a female voice do you want it to have an accent do you want to train it on somebody my wife doesn't like my grok voice right now she says it's too sexy and she wants me to change it too so you're too sexy for your voice i'm not gonna go there either and well nile thanks for your time today and uh yeah let's uh thomas let's make sure nile gets a copy of this but let's let's make sure to stay in touch now maybe every three or four months we need to talk about some advances if anything really big comes we need to talk about that as well well it's always exciting and i always enjoy the time like our personal meetings when we meet on the road but it's been a little while so we'll have to figure it out where that is the next time maybe we can meet next year or the year after at ces because i haven't been in a couple years so i need to you need to go this year i don't think we need to get there and see what's

31:14 going on man it's a lot of things are changing yeah a lot of things are changing absolutely well listen it has been a pleasure i hope it's been enlightening for everybody yes sir well you take care and we'll be in touch soon i'll nickel folks take care

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Welcome back into the Financial Safari, having a great conversation here with bestselling author Coach Pete D’Arruda, as well as NHL Hall of Fame broadcaster Chuck Kaiton, former voice of the Carolina Hurricanes, also in studio with us is the voice of the Wolfpack, Tony Haynes. I'm consumer advocate Thomas Lipscomb. If you want to catch up on this conversation that we're having, just head over to FinancialSafari.com. Again, that's FinancialSafari.com. By the way, we got a great video there where Coach Pete is interviewing one of his friends who just went to CES 2026. You can see how robots can fold your clothes, flying cars, all sorts of crazy crap that's going on out there. His name is Joe Casey. He was an MIT grad, and he went to Ohio State and then MIT. So he's a pretty smart guy, and it was amazing to hear how fascinated he is.

00:45 He's a tech guy, but he was fascinated with what he saw at CES. It was about a 40-minute interview, and you can watch it and listen to it. It's about FinancialSafari.com. It's also, if you just want to listen to it, it's like CoachListens.com. That's correct. That's correct. It's such a great website and great interview at the end of the day. Again, flying cars, robots that fold your clothes. What can you not want, right, guys? I mean, it's just amazing to be able to talk to people like that, and it's amazing to have both of you guys in the studio. I mean, people that are listening, they've heard you on the radio for years and years. Carolina Hurricanes, if you ever listened to Hurricanes, the game on the radio, Chuck Kaiton was doing the game. Matter of fact, I recognized his voice one time. I didn't know what he looked like, but I heard his voice at a golf tournament. We were in the 18th hole little, what do you call that thing? The 19th hole. Yeah, the box. Yeah, the box. Yeah, the sky box. We were watching a golf tournament, and I just heard this voice bellowing

01:31 from the other side of the box. Nice. I went over, I said, you're Chuck Kaiton. You're Coach Pete. And I didn't get into any trouble because nobody was putting at the time I was talking. So that was good news. They used to do the quiet sign. They'd be waving all over the place. And then, wow, Tony. I mean, it seems like just yesterday I was listening to you do the Wolfpack games on the radio. Well, it was a little bit almost yesterday. I'm only a month into retirement. And what's different about this month? No more paychecks. Well, the paychecks have to come from you. That's right. Their own personal pension, basically. You have to set it up correctly. That's why I'm sitting here. And make sure to, yeah. And it's scary, but it's not complex if you do the right thing. And unfortunately, people wait until the last minute. They start making impulsive decisions and do the wrong thing. So it's important to plan it out, sort of like a game plan. And we're talking about your retirement. You're basically in the first quarter of retirement.

02:16 We've got a four-quarter game, at least. We need to make sure that money lasts longer than you do, not runs away when you're still here. All right. Well, speaking of that, before we get to Chuck's real fun questions, here's mine. Most of my money is tied up in a traditional IRA. Right. I'm at the point now where I have to look at different options. Maybe rolling over part of it anyway to a Roth IRA or annuities or something else. What should be my strategy at this point? A good time to roll to a Roth is when you don't have much income. If you don't have much income, you don't have to pay many taxes. You're in a better position than if you have a bunch of income. And many people can't even qualify for a Roth if they have a lot of income. So there's backdoor IRA options, too, to get a backdoor Roth, it's called. But you're in a good position now to look at how much you still got to pay taxes when you roll it from a traditional IRA or 401K into a Roth.

03:03 So we have to see, well, what's the break-even point? How many years will we have to go now that you have to make up for the taxes you just paid in a lump sum to move that money over? And we do that side-by-side comparison. It makes sense. One thing we can't control is how high taxes are going to go in the future. We don't know what they're going to be tomorrow, much less next year, next decade. And I think it's real important what you said. Coach, when you talk about a Roth conversion as opposed to a contribution is what you're saying. And we had to do that in 2019. We bit the bullet and did the taxes. But we love it now because we have that Roth and both my wife and I have it. You don't have to worry about taxes anymore. Basically, you isolated. You put an offensive line around there that can never – like they protect that quarterback forever. Right. You're never going to get to that money. The IRS can't because you've already fulfilled what they told you how to do.

03:51 Yeah. So that's important for you. Your point was well taken because I did it well after I left the hurricane. So I didn't have to worry about added income. Yeah. And that sometimes throws a wrench in the play and makes it less advantageous than now when you don't have any income. Exactly. You see how savvy Coach is? He uses sports analogies so we can understand what he's saying. I hear you. Well, I love sports too. Offensive line. I mean, Coach beat offensive line. What's important, like you see how powerful and how important a good offensive line is when you don't have a good one. That's right. So when you watch a team consistently getting sacked or if you have a planner who keeps fumbling your retirement, then you're in wrong place. That's true. You don't have to be in a place like that. Great question, Tony. And then also maximizing Social Security, what you're entitled to. Make sure you claim it at the right time. I'm about to start that. Yeah. And then your MRDs later on start taking some money out that the government makes you take out.

04:38 Chuck, you kind of like that MRD because it gives you suspended money every year. That RMD, I mean, yeah, I guess so. I mean, it's, again, one of those bittersweet things. We have to pay taxes because we were, you know, in a situation where we deferred them for a long time. In my case, 30 years of it. So time to pay the piper. But you do it with the strategies that you're talking about here at Capital Financial and the people that help me through it. Yep. We minimize those. We mitigate those taxes. And we also have that lifetime income that you're talking about. And right now I just set up a plan, not only getting the RMD in January because I put that money into a savings account, but now I'm going to start taking money every month. Like you say, that lifetime income. And I'm going to actually turn that faucet on starting in a couple of months.

05:25 That's good. I mean, that's just another stream of income coming in. Absolutely. And so with the IRS, it's either pay me now or pay me later. They're going to get their money. The beautiful thing there, the money you did convert to a Roth, you don't have MRDs on there. You don't have to take any money out of the Roth unless you want to. That's a beautiful thing, too. So it puts you more, Tony, it's all about putting you in control and staying in control, sort of like a driverless car that you're in control of. But you basically have the comfort and safety of having a driverless car. You're never going to get me in one of those. I saw that in the video, but I'm not sure I'm ready to get in that. I don't think our generation is going to be good with driverless cars. I guess I, you know, my nephew in San Francisco took one of those cabs, driverless, and he left his wallet in there by accident. Nobody left to find it. No. Right.

06:11 The next person in there got a windfall. That next person was so honest that they looked at his identification. He had a couple hundred bucks in there along with his credit cards. And the other money again, the wallet came back. And the guy traced him back to the next passenger and gave him his wallet back. There aren't many people like that these days, unfortunately. That's a good American. That's good. Now that you drop a credit card, it's being used within five minutes. Yeah, it really does. Yeah, true story. That was my story. That's amazing. Pretty cool. So it's about automatic pilot, making sure you have your total retirement plan in place when you get to retirement or right after. You don't have one yet, Tony, but at least you're smart enough to be thinking about things like that. And it's important for everybody to at least have a plan in mind. You don't have to have the plan done. Have it in mind. So, Thomas, folks that are listening now, if they have a plan in mind or they want to get a plan.

06:59 And so folks have asked me, well, Coach, when's a good time for us to call, like age-wise? And I always say when you're in that financial red zone, which is age 50 and above, it's time to start mapping out, getting your ducks in a row, mapping out what you have already put aside, looking at maybe Roth conversion strategies, looking at tax reduction strategies. So it is never a bad time, but 50 or older, that's when you're in the ultimate time to get everything organized right. And so if you call right now, we'll help you get that organized. We have an organizer that will help you get organized, and we'll do it all for you at no cost or obligation. If you call right now, we'll introduce you to the firm and make sure that you get comfortable with us, just like we get comfortable with you, and put a plan together that will take you all the way through retirement with no worries on the safe side at all. It's true. Lifetime income. So tell folks how to get that. The next 26 of you call, we'll let you come in, and we'll give you three of the books I've written, and we'll give you a plan.

07:49 It's a golden ticket. It's worth over $1,000. Call right now. All right, folks. You may be sitting on the edge. Remember, the average investor underperforms the market by over 4% a year simply to emotional trading. And we don't want to worry about emotion. We want to worry about the process. We want to develop the plan. The number to call, take advantage of this. 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. Or you can text keyword plan to 600-700. That is plan to 600-700. Coach, you were talking about running plans earlier. And I'm a soccer guy, so I go back to Germany when they were. Football! Yes. But the German national team, when they were playing the World Cup, and this has been several years back now, you could just see them executing plans as if it was nothing. They would just walk out onto the field.

08:35 It didn't matter if it was, you know, if it was Spain or Holland or France or whoever they were going against. It was a... And granted, they didn't win the series in this instance. But you could tell they had that plan and they were driving. And I think you guys see this. Chuck, I'm sure you see this with Brenda Moore, process over emotion. Well, that's what makes him a great coach because he doesn't vary or vacillate away from the plan, the team. You know, we talk about the team here at Capital Financial. The team comes first. And how you contribute to that team. And it's the same thing in basketball and football, as Tony could tell you. And that's what makes him a special guy with the Hurricanes. You're pretty close to Rod still, right? Oh, absolutely. You just had dinner with him the other night, I think, didn't you? Yeah, I had it with him. What's his favorite meal? Oh, my God.

09:20 You're not going to believe this. He actually, you know, he's the most fit 52-year-old. Well, he's the most fit coach in the NHL, easily, because he still works out like a maniac. Good for him. But he did have hamburger and french fries. I hope I'm not breaking his cover. But he does. Let's go. He eats like normal or obese people like myself. Well, if you're working out all the time, though, it's good. He needs some carbs in here to work out. I thought you said he likes sushi, too, right? Yeah, he does like it. But the bottom line to me is that he'll go off the wagon, so to speak, once in a while. Well, you've got to cheat on a diet every now and then. Especially in the summertime, you know, when he's not stressed out as much. So he'll eat pretty big, but he'll work for two or three hours, work out. Wow. He's a terrific guy, and he's done a great job.

10:08 It's all about balance. Never in my life did I have a workout for two hours. Even when I was in good shape. I know. He's crazy, but he's obsessed. He loves it. Try to maximize the workout time in 30 minutes, get all the stuff done. Tony, what's your favorite food? Oh, goodness. You know, I've always been fond of Italian food. I had a really good chicken parm last night, if that's done right. Spectacular. The power of advertising. Anytime anyone says chicken parm, who do I think of these days? Ray Ferraro. Oh, that's who I think of. Peyton Manning. Oh, yeah. Remember, he would do the chicken parm all the time. The commercials would always happen. Well, he does great commercials, too. He does. You know, I mix it up, though. I think I have a very diverse taste in food. Most recently, I made a salmon piccata at home. You like to cook? Yeah, I do.

10:54 Nice. People customarily like a chicken piccata. Chicken piccata. I watch a lot of YouTube videos, yours included, but many of them are chefs, and you get these great ideas for recipes. That's pretty cool. So I just made the piccata sauce, but over salmon, it was spectacular. We need to have maybe a recipe show on our Financial Speakeasy network, Thomas. That would be very cool. By the way, folks, we have a 24-7 video network on YouTube and Rumble. It's called Financial Speakeasy. So all you have to do is go to YouTube and say, put in there for the search bar, Financial Speakeasy, or go to FinancialSpeakeasy.com, and it'll take you right to the choice between YouTube and Rumble. It is easy. It's easy. And it's such great content on there. We also have the interview with Joe Casey about CES 2026 on there. We go live every weekday with new stock just happenings and things happening in the business

11:39 world. Great channels. We've got a bucket list show coming. Morgan Patrick's going to be doing that. Maybe get Tony on there about bucket list items, too. That's always fun to do. Chuck will be good on there, too. Yeah, thank you. I would love to help you. Well, we've got to run away, and I know you guys are both out of here after this, so I want to thank Tony Hayes and Chuck Kaiton for coming in and visiting with us on the Safari. And folks, we'll be right back after this.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Having a great time here on Financial Safari. I'm consumer advocate Thomas Lipscomb in studio with best-selling author Coach Pete DeRue. The studio here has gotten a little bit bigger. We've got some great voices in the studio with us, Coach. Yeah, before we tell folks who's here, do you have a sound clip you want to play? Maybe it'll get people an idea who's here on one side of the studio. Then I'll introduce who's on the other side. Yes, let's do it. All right, check this out. The end of the football season, Tony has worn a variety of hats during his 28-year tenure. He has served as a game day host and sideline reporter for football. Broadcast also served as a host for football and men's basketball coaching shows. Tony, a proud NCC graduate, has brought joy to Wolfpack fans everywhere. Wolfpack fans, please give it up for Tony Haynes.

00:51 Well, Tony Haynes, welcome in on the left side of the studio. Raise the roof. And now, Thomas, do you have a sound clip for the other side? I do. Here we go. With a 3-1 decision, a complete reversal of form from game number six, where it looked like the sun was setting on their hopes. They have come up and have risen from the hockey morgue and have won this Stanley Cup of 06 with a tremendously large team effort. And as they are mobbing each other, as I said earlier, John, 9,393 days of frustration.

01:40 And on the 9394th day of NHL existence, the Carolina Hurricanes, the final organization till 97, have won the Stanley Cup. And my friend, I am so happy you are at my side to see it. Wow. And that was in reference to... What a moment. Yeah, who was I talking to? John Forslund was the color man at that time. Because TV doesn't do hockey after the first round of the playoffs. Doesn't he say, oh, man, now I want wings. And we would have wanted the wings in 0-2, but we lost in five games to them. Hey, you know the story, Chuck.

02:26 We've talked about this. But do you know where I was in 2006 when they were winning the Stanley Cup, that Game 7? Guess where I was? Where? In Arupa. And I talked a bar. They love soccer over there. But I talked a whole bar into becoming Carolina Hurricane fans. Hey! Beautiful. And I talked him out of the soccer game that it was on, which is football. Yeah, sure. Into watching the Carolina Hurricanes. That's amazing. So we were all, I was buying beers all over the place. It was fun. Nice. Fun time. I was at Emerald Isle, family beach vacation. The whole, like, my father's six siblings were there. It was a huge time. Huge time. All right, so Chuck Kaiton, NHL Hall of Fame broadcaster, former voice of the Carolina Hurricanes, and Tony Haynes, voice of the Wolfpack, who just retired. Oh, yes. Well, we got an all-star cast here. And then, of course, me and Thomas. We have a cast here today, don't we? And when you were in Aruba, they were saying ice.

03:12 What's that? Yeah, ice, ice. Exactly. Careful when you say ice these days. Ice, ice, baby. So, yeah, that clip you play was the last home game I did at Carter-Findley Stadium. Yep. And NC State and Wolfpack Sports Properties were so nice to honor me on the field with two minutes to go in the first half. And it was such a surreal moment because, you know, I'm somebody who has called NC State games for all these 26 years and seen the greatest stars like Phillip Rivers and Russell Wilson and Bradley Chubb get standing ovations. And there I am standing there with two minutes to go in the first half. And all of a sudden, the ovation is directed towards me. Yeah. Wow. That's like something you'll – It's pretty awesome, huh? It's surreal, but it'll be with you for the rest of your life.

03:58 Phillip Rivers now, he just played again. How about that? He came out of retirement. Now he has to wait five more years to get to the Hall of Fame. Well, I've said it, and being around Phillip when he was at NC State, there's no one player that I've been around, and I've been around a lot of them, that loves football, playing football more than Phillip Rivers. So I wasn't totally shocked that he actually came back as a grandfather at age, whatever, 44, 45, like that. He has a bunch of kids, too, doesn't he? Yeah, he's 10, I think. Does he have any that are going to be really good athletes like he was? Yes. He has one. His oldest son is actually being recruited right now by many of the major schools around the country. Yeah, we call that, Thomas, we call that a retirement plan. Oh, yes. Yeah, there you go. Phillip has his own money, but I mean, if you have a good athlete in the family. Just saying, just saying. You know the best thing for Phillip, though? He came back, played those four games with the Colts.

04:44 You know what that does for him? That gives him- Health insurance. Health insurance for five more years. For 10 people. For a very big family. Wow. Hey, I read that article. It's pretty smart. That's right. That's good. Because health insurance ain't cheap at all. Oh, no. Considering, you know. So, Chuck, how have you been doing? I've been doing very well in retirement, thanks to you and the team here at Capital Financial. Well, we just try to do what's best for everybody. Absolutely. And it's worked very well. I'm in that situation where I take those RMDs. Some call them the dreaded RMDs. Required minimum distributions. That's right. Because I had a 401k plan with the Whalers and Hurricanes for a number of years that we converted to an IRA. And it was the- I didn't know what a qualified account was from an unqualified account, but I learned very quickly.

05:30 It's still funny terminology. Well, gee, all I tell people is it means you're qualified and have to pay taxes on that account. There you go. Exactly. Well, I don't want to pay taxes. I don't. Too bad. I know I'm qualified. And when Chuck and I are having dinner, he uses another word to describe those RMDs. Oh? We probably can't talk about that. No, we can't. I'll keep it adrened. Yeah, exactly. It's almost like McEnroe, isn't it? But again- McEnroe. You cannot be serious. You're serious. That's what you think about when taxes come over. Yeah, I know. We do live in the greatest country in the world, so I can't complain. And you're right. They were deferred for many, many years, 39 in all for me. And so I can't go- Actually, not 39, because the 401k plan started in Hartford in 1987. So 30 years, yeah. Well, the theory is if you defer pay in taxes, that means the money you would have lost in

06:16 taxes stay in your account and earn interest. Exactly. Or participate in market gains. And that's the only problem is then when you get to time to retirement, then you have to pay tax on any gain. Yeah. And so, hey, it's good and bad, but it's better to have the money than not have the money. Absolutely. And you've got to tell young people, and I'm sure many of them listening here, hey, save that money. Make sure if you've got a job that pays you matching money from your 401k, maximize it. Yep. Because over the years, it worked for us. Put the money away. You get a tax write-off, too, when you put the money in. And now you're building up your retirement account, and you're building your confidence. Exactly. When you retire on your terms, like both of you guys have, which I'm proud of both of you guys to retire when you wanted to, instead of being told to retire or being forced out. Right? That happens a lot in our business. It does. It does. Again, we're here with best-selling author, Coach Pete D’Arruda.

07:01 If you want to make sure that you are on the right track into retirement, give us a call right now and secure that complimentary consultation with a member of his team, 800-661-7383, 800-661-7383, or text keyword PLAN to 600-700. Coach, I'd like to say, you know, we listen to Chuck, we listen to Tony there, having thousands of fans in the stadium, just cheering them on at different points in their career. And I think we all can minimize ourselves because we think we don't have those thousands of fans around us. But every day that we're saving for retirement, every day that we're putting that money aside for us, we're creating that quote-unquote fan base that's going to applaud us later on. But you have to make sure that those fans are happy. Well, everybody wants to be a retirement hero for their family. In other words, you don't want to be a burden. You'd rather be a hero.

07:46 In other words, being able to do things for your family instead of asking them for money. Yes. And that's a big difference. Really? Everyone knows the person that's always asking for money. Truly. So be the person that has the money and make sure you have the plan. Yeah, absolutely. And that's the most important thing. Tony, 28 years, a long time. What was your most fondest? And this may be a tough question because you probably have a lot of them. But what's your fondest memory of broadcasting at NC State? Nothing tops what the basketball team did two years ago. Oh, that's amazing, wasn't it? That was the most incredible run. Yes, it was. I still think about it. And I still don't believe it, what I actually watch. You're talking about a men's basketball team that lost their last four regular season games. You go into the ACC tournament. Everybody knows the coach is going to get fired after the next loss. And what they do is unthinkable. They proceed to win five games in five days at the ACC tournament.

08:34 That's amazing in itself. And the last three wins were over Duke, Virginia, North Carolina. I know. That was an all-star lineup. At that point, you say, okay, I've seen it all now. No, we hadn't seen it all because they get in the NCAA tournament. They win four more games. Find themselves in Glendale, Arizona for the final four. You found yourself there, too, didn't you? I was there. Yes. That's a nice place out there. That is an amazing facility. It is. It's just so huge. And I actually went up to some of the Bob Euchre seats in the stadium during one of the practice days. And literally, the court looked like a little post-it stamp. Now, Thomas, Bob Euchre was a famous broadcaster back in the day. Sorry, Thomas. He was always joked on about being put in the worst places and not getting any respect kind of thing. Ah, I got you, got you. No, I love it. I love it. So, for our listeners who don't know, I'm the music head.

09:21 They're the sports guys. I am fitting in. Well, that's a little older. Thank you for the definition. Thank you for the definition. Bob used to be on TV with a beer commercial, just a bit outside. That's right. I was in the movie Major League. Major League. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice. He's the guy that says, just a bit outside when the ball was way over there. Okay, okay, okay. So, that's your fondest memory, and I'll tell you, I'm a Carolina guy. I went to Carolina, and I did get into NC State, almost went there. You had to select your major ahead of time, and I was pre-dental. Imagine that. But I ended up getting to Carolina. But I rooted for NC State in 1983 back in the day. Yeah, I was in school. Remember the cardiac pack days? Yeah, I was in school. And so they were an easy team to root for, and I don't hate anybody. Right. But, you know, it's like you guys hate us, I have to hate your pack sometimes. But, I mean, I was rooting for State a couple years ago, too. That was an amazing run. It was an amazing run. It was an amazing run, wasn't it? You can't make it up.

10:06 No. Especially a team that was stumbling into the postseason the way they were. They were missing a couple of guys, and there was no sign that they could somehow create some momentum in the tournament and do what they did. But that's the beauty of sports. I've always said about sports, it's the ultimate reality show. It is. There's no script. Oh. So, you don't know what's going to happen. Yeah, you hope there's no script. That's right. These days, I hear people talking about some things. Well, there you go. That's a good point. Yeah, but, no, it's just fun. And it's real team ball. They were playing team ball. And we work as a team here when we build retirement plans. And I want people to know that you have a team here on call anytime you need help on planning for retirement, making sure you get that tax reduction strategies in place before and during retirement. That's important. When you're having to send checks to Uncle Sam, it's less money you can send on fun things for you and your family.

10:56 Can I say this? Yes. Because one reason NC State got hot at the right time, they made adjustments. Yeah. Half time. And you and your team have to make adjustments. Constantly making adjustments. Chuck, we've made adjustments. Absolutely. So, it's about getting a plan first and then making the correct adjustments as you go forward. And so, what we want to do here is offer you a golden ticket. But I'm going to do even better here. I've got a Fred Flintstone. Hee! Abba-dabba-doo! They came in last week on the show. That means the next 26 of you who call, we're going to send you a book at our expense. There'll be no fee, no obligation. We're going to send it to you. All you have to do is give us your address. There's going to be no postage and handling. We're going to pay that. It's the Tax Savvy Retirement Book. It's over 250 pages on how to reduce taxes and maximize retirement income. And this is going to go out next week to you if you call right now. Thomas, tell folks that they can get this book and a golden ticket that will get them their very own total retirement plan as well.

11:45 Very easy to do. Just call 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. Or text keyword plan to 600-700. That is the keyword plan to 600-700.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Welcome into the program. Consumer advocate Thomas Lipscomb here with you alongside Dave Perkins, as well as author of Wall Street is Not Your Friend, Russell Hackman, also in studio with us. America's wealth, financial, and income coach, bestselling author, Coach Pete D’Arruda. How are we doing today, boys? Doing great. Awesome. How about you? I'm excited for this segment. I'm very excited for this conversation. This is going to be great. We're going to be talking about how the market is up double digits, but should we still be worried considering this? What are your guys' thoughts on that? Well, I'll tell you, yeah, you're looking at, you know, when we meet folks and it's like, hey, guys, the, you know, the S&P's up 100% over the last five years, you know, last three years have been double digits. And, you know, coaches, you say, it's like, hey, like, and your big box advisor, your 800 number, you know, advisor

00:51 is not diversifying you. And, you know, all you got to do is look at history and be like, at some point, we're going to get a 30, 40% drawdown. And if, you know, it's one thing to lose money, but it's another thing to lose money you made. Right, Coach? Yeah, you don't want to lose that money. No, in doing some research before this, I found out in 1987, the markets jumped 40% and then dropped 22% in a single day. Oh, yeah. In a single day. It's important to lock those gains in. So what good is it to have a gain if you lose it? I always tell my clients, you're not up until you're out. Yeah. See, I got a good gain. I said, did you liquidate? No. I said, you don't have a good gain yet. Right. So not liquidate all of it, but liquid, you know, lock in. I always say if you're up, if a stock hits an all-time high, I sell a third of it.

01:39 Right. Because, and then it goes up and hits another all-time high, I sell another third. You're always going to have some because you're only selling a third of a third. So you're not going to say, well, if I sell it three times, I'm out. No. Yeah. Because a third of the two-thirds is still a number. So you're still going to have some, even if you do it 15 times, a third of that. And so therefore, you never are going to be at a point where you say, well, I used to have that stock and now I don't, when it's like an Nvidia kind of thing that keeps going up. But at least you're locking profits in so you can play another day, we say. And that's important, Russ, because the stock market doesn't go up forever. And a lot of these stocks from back when we were growing up aren't even around anymore. Remember Hungry Jack Biscuits? They actually still are around. Oh, they are. Okay. Well, they used to advertise all the time. Remember Pudding Pops? They're gone. Yellow Pudding Pops. Oh, yeah.

02:24 So things come and they go. We all remember Mr. Whipple back in the day squeezing the Sharmin. That's right. He didn't like people squeezing the Sharmin. Well, we don't want people squeezing the money that we have for retirement and taking it away. And so the way you can do this in the retirement game is to make sure you're always winning, not losing. And when you lock your gains in, at least taking some profits, you're never going to lose. Russ, that's just my philosophy. How about you? Yeah, I agree. You can either, you know, and there's so many solutions now that people are just not aware of either. Well, first of all, we talked, Coach, about like, hey, if you have stocks and you have bonds, that's not diversification. And bonds are probably going to be lousy for the next several years as inflation is still around 3%, right? So, but then you have all these great alternatives and whether it's terrific annuities, these are not

03:14 your grandfather's annuities, but ones that provide income for life for you or your spouse, or they put a floor under your gains and give you upside. There's the ability to do that in securities form. There's some novel exchange traded funds that, again, have that profile where, hey, if the market takes a big beating, you're going to be fully or partially protected. And who wouldn't want to switch from, at least for part of your stock portfolio, to switch from an expected gain over the very long term to 10 years, but knowing you could lose 30, 40, 50 percent to something where you're never going to lose more than 10 percent or you're fully principal protected and your expected gain is 7 percent. I mean, that's just a smart trade-off for some.

04:02 It's true. And there's a recent Fidelity survey. It says 61 percent of investors admit that they're waiting for the crash. And so there's obviously a lot of folks out there who know, you know, we've had a few good years here. And the big question is, why do people stay all in? This is a great time, like you said, Coach, to push some of those gains to the side and make a clear path forward. Well, fear and greed get people in the wrong times, those two emotions. And so the greed is why people stay in. Like, oh, I'm just going to, oh, I'll liquidate tomorrow. Well, as soon as it gets to here, I'm going to liquidate. Then it never gets there and goes back down. So you're always waiting. And I'm sure everyone listening has been in that situation where you have a stock, it's a high flyer, and all of a sudden it's not a flying high anymore. And so we can't have that happen, Russ, can we? Well, you were talking, Coach, about, you know, the biscuits. And I couldn't.

04:53 Do you remember when the hot stock was Krispy Kreme? Oh, yeah. Like it was the hottest stock. Sure was. And I remember, I can't remember if that was 1999 or when that was on, but it was like, are you kidding me? These are like donut stocks. So at least we got better stocks now that are doing okay. But again, I mean, we make this point that, hey, 45% of the stock market is technology. 35% of the stock market is seven stocks. And there's a lot of debate about, you know, there just ain't anything that goes up forever. And they're underperforming now, right? Russ, the Magnum 7. Way, way underperforming. They're way down Krispy Kreme. And number one is, they've raised their prices outrageously. And they've shrunk the size of the donuts.

05:40 Speaking of greed. You can't do both. That's a shrinkflation where you're cutting the size and raising the price. It's ridiculous for dough. It's dough with sugar and a little yeast. A lot of sugar. Yeah. And so it's just ridiculous. It's about $20 a dozen if you want the specialty donuts, which is crazy. Anyway, they're making Dunkin' Donuts, same problem. I remember Dunkin' Donuts used to make the donuts right in each shop. They had a guy in there, the commercial, the guy would wake up at three in the morning trying to make the donuts. And they don't do that anymore. They don't. And it's ridiculous. I used to, my favorite one was only available in the New England area at Dunkin' Donuts, but they had donut sticks. And so they had an apple donut stick, which was, it was an apple filled stick. It was a stick for them. And it was cinnamon on the outside. Oh, that sounds good. Awesome. And it was crispy too. A little crispy. And then they had a lemon stick, which was

06:25 powdered sugar on the outside and lemon on the inside. And then they had a jelly one, which was like a jelly donut, but it was crispier. Again, a stick with jelly in it. Those are my favorite sticks. My grandpa used to get those all the time. And they're, why they have, coach, why would they have a stick for them? So you could dunk them in the coffee. Right. Exactly. That's the name. I love that. Yes. And so they stopped doing it. And it was easier donut to make than the round ones. Why would they stop? Well, because, because, because, just because the money got involved and you got investors coming in and say, how can we make more profits? Right. We can make the donut smaller. And when they do that, they make the boxes smaller too. So they fit in the box perfectly because they're smaller. Russ, it makes me mad. I, you know, I'm a food guy, so I hate it when they mess with my food. And my palate hasn't changed that much over the years, but the taste sure has it, the donuts. Yeah.

07:11 Oh yeah. Well, well, speaking of, you know, sort of shrinkage and inflation, you know, coach, both you and I do with our teams. When folks come in to see us, we address like, hey, what if inflation, and we've run the numbers, what if inflation is two and a half, three percent for the next 25, 30 years? You break out your super calculator on that. And that has prices doubling or even tripling. And Thomas, maybe you can give us some guidance on how folks can get a plan, get a consultation, get a plan and discuss like, how do I keep my purchasing power up over the next 25, 30 years when I don't have a paycheck and they're going to keep shrinking my donut? Yeah, it's very, very true. And we have a very easy way to connect so that you can get

08:00 your own desires, your dreams for retirement, make sure that they're lined out in a true written total retirement plan. Just give us a call right now, 800-661-7383, 800-661-7383. You can also text keyword plan to 600-700. We're having a great conversation here with Russell Hackman, Hackman Wealth Management. He's the author of Wall Street is Not Your Friend. I'm consumer advocate Thomas Lipscomb in studio alongside Dave Perkins, as well as bestselling author, Coach Pete D’Arruda, better known as America's wealth, financial and income coach. Going to have a great conversation today about the hidden issues investors don't realize they have. Makes me think of the movie Jaws. And in this movie, you might have seen the shark that got you, but it's often not the shark you see that bites you. It's the one that's kind

08:48 of hidden under the portfolio, as it were. Sure. You guys have been working in the financial arena a long time. Coach, you've developed the seven financial blind spots. And when we talk about hidden issues investors don't realize they have, blind spots are huge. And I'm going to open this up with you, Russ. What are some blind spots you see that investors have out there? Yeah. And I'd love to hear Coach's seven. I think I've seen them before, but he's going to knock me over the head and give me a reminder of them. But I think blind spots, again, just letting equities run and thinking they're going to do the job for you forever. Yeah. Not understanding that your fiduciary actually probably does have conflicts of interest. In my book, Wall Street

09:35 is not your friend. We explain, and Coach talks to his listeners as well, about, hey, these big box firms and these 800 number firms, they do have conflicts of interest, yet their lawyers are so good at writing four pages of documents that it's in there that they, oh, we're allowed to have a conflict of interest as long as it's disclosed here. Like, oh, we can only choose from these 10 mutual funds because they actually pay us to be on the platform. Right? So that's a blind spot. And taxes are very often a blind spot. And the ability to influence how much tax you pay in the future, that's a big one that I know that we talk about with folks when they come in,

10:25 and so do you guys, Coach. What are your seven blind spots? Tell us about your blind spots, Coach, as you frame them. Well, I don't want to bore people at all seven because I wrote a whole book on that. But let's talk about the number one blind spot. It is not having a lifetime income that will never go away, not only for you, but for your spouse, using the money you've already put aside, by the way. It's not like you have to make money to put this. You've already got the money. You've got it in your 401ks a lot of times, but you have a lump sum there. So we have to convert that lump sum into what a monthly or yearly income would be from that for life. An income that will never go away, an income that could increase as we are still working. We can be working and have that income account continue to grow. And it ties itself to the stock market on the upside, a stock index,

11:12 but it never goes down. So when the market goes down, you don't get anything but a zero. If the market goes up, you get the share and the gain. And then when you decide to flip that income switch, you have income forever. So that is the most blaring weakness in most people's plans is they don't have an income plan. So I always say, if you don't have lifetime guaranteed income built into your plan, you do not have a retirement plan. You've just got a financial plan, which is okay. That's step one, getting money put aside in a financial plan. But step two, the most important step is converting that to lifetime income. Well, I agree with that, Coach. And unless you got $10 million in the bank, but even $1, $2, $3, $4, $5 million in this world, we've talked about how prices can double or triple

12:01 over a 30-year retirement. Yeah, you better have something besides Social Security that you can't now live. Correct. Right? Yes, absolutely. And the thing is, is a lot of people want to run to cash, you know, liquidity is good, but you can't live on idle money. You've talked about, Coach, losing money to inflation and these things. And you need to have that method that still gets you a return without giving you all of the headache, you know, as my mom has experienced in risk of the market. Yeah. Well, idle money is like having that lazy roommate you had that would always leave the dirty dishes in the sink. And so you need to make sure that your money works for you just as hard as you did to get that money. And a lot of people forget that. And how does the money work for you? Well, if it can give you lifetime income you never outlive, you've got what we used to call a pension

12:47 now. And that's what kept our grandparents and aunts and uncles from back in the day when they were enjoying their retirement. That's what kept them from worrying because they knew they were going to get a new check every month. And that's an important thing that most people overlook here as we approach retirement in this modern age of turn the TV on and watch Kramer and watch stocks all day long up and down. And then you always feel like you're missing something because you're not in the newest hot stock. So you sell your good stocks and you convert to these hot stocks and then you lose all your money. And you forget about the main thing is converting some of that money to lifetime income that's not tied to the stock market on the downside. Very important to get those income plans. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And yeah, it also, as you say, Coach, this is can often be a matter of just deploying the money that you have. So you know, you said perhaps

13:36 it's in your 401k. Sometimes we see, hey, somebody, you know, big box advisor or 800 number firm put a portion of folks' portfolio in bonds, our bond funds. And these bond funds are actually basically flat or negative over the last like four or five years. They all got crushed during the big inflation in 2022. Correct. And it's instead, you got to make sure all your assets are being used effectively. So sometimes you could just take some of that. You don't want to have any dead money in your portfolio. Take some of that dead money and turn it into something that is income producing. Right.

14:22 Right. And again, I think that's what inspired you to write the book. Wall Street's not your friend because Wall Street's about Wall Street, not about your safe and comfortable and reliable retirement, is it? That's absolutely right. No, Wall Street is about, you know, and I was on some of those fancy trading desks back in the day. But, you know, just like the those casinos in Vegas weren't built on winners, neither were the fancy buildings in Manhattan and Boston and everywhere else. Right. So, yeah, no, they're looking for their own edge. And the good news is with the right tools and the right guide, you can find and put together a plan that actually is tailored to you. It avoids, I tell people there's about, you know, five things worth investing in and about 10,005 not worth

15:13 investing in. And the key is to know which ones to avoid. Yep. And so we offer folks that chance, to come in and actually work on a real plan. Let's let's hear how that works, Thomas. Yeah, I agree with you. The thing is, you don't need to be Googling retirement or GPTing retirement. Folks out there, you have worked so hard for your money and you deserve a true map from a fiduciary planner, someone who doesn't just have one tool in their toolbox, but really wants to make sure that you have a holistic plan looking at what you need as you head into retirement. The number to call to get your own questions answered by the team here is 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. You can also text keyword plan to the number 600-700. That is plan to the number 600-700. And what's going to happen

16:02 is we're going to be able to sit down with you and simplify the complexities of retirement planning into clear, actionable steps. And you're going to receive that tailored financial roadmap that we like to talk about that shows you not only where you are now, which is important to understand clearly, but also where you need to go. It's a chance to have that real conversation about your retirement and make sure that your plan really is aligned with your goals, your dreams, your risk tolerance. The number again, 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. Or text keyword plan to 600-700. Welcome back into the program. Having a great conversation here. We're going to continue with Russell Hackman, author of Wall Street is Not Your Friend. I'm consumer advocate Thomas Lipscomb

16:47 here in the studio alongside Dave Perkins, as well as bestselling author, Coach Pete D’Arruda. Now, guys, we have had a lot of great conversations together. And what I want to talk about today is interesting. It's the turn off the TV strategy. And, you know, the more you watch CNBC or whatever it may be, the more your blood pressure owns, let's say, some stock in Lipitor. And I think my mom can relate to this. You know, she's called me. She just headed into retirement in the last couple of months. And as she's headed into retirement, she said, Thomas, I want to understand what's going on here. You know, my father, my mother, whomever, had pensions, they had their investments, and they kind of knew what was going on. All I have is this 401k with a health insurance company that she worked with. Is she more in tune since retiring to it? Well, after getting a plan together. And

17:37 that's the thing is, is obviously I have great connections here with you guys. She's come in, she's gotten that plan together, and she feels so much more secure. She actually transitioned about, oh, it's been about a month now. And she's very, very happy. She says, Thomas, you wouldn't think your time would fill up as much as it does after retiring. Right. But let's talk about this. I want to talk about the idea of turning off the TV and that strategy of not letting those everyday headlines become your everyday concern. I just paused for one second. I was just blanked out for one minute, but you just teed me up to talk about the TV plan, turn off the TV plan. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Perfect. Well, here we go. So yeah, turn off the TV plan. Well, as you allude to Thomas and the coach,

18:23 I'm sure you'd agree with this. Yeah. People spend too much time watching financial television and also just news in the first place. Right. And there's actually a friend of mine. I know she's sort of semi-retired and all that she watches is the Hallmark channel. You know, the Hallmark channel is good because every story is happy in the end. Right. Yep. And so, but if you turn on the, you know, CNBC, if you turn on the news networks, it's obviously it's the opposite. Right. Cause they, they thrive on scaring you. Right. Or as coach sometimes points out saying, Hey,

19:11 why don't you buy this hot stock and everyone's getting rich and buying stocks, but you, right? So we coined a term, turn off the TV plan, which is, which comes after you come in and sit down with our team or coaches team, you make sure you have an adequate amount of safe assets. They're going to be okay. No matter what, uh, in, um, in terms of, you know, if the market takes a big hit, these assets are going to remain stable, right. And income producing. And if you have the right amount of assets doing that in retirement, then, you know, to me, the, the, the reason we coined a term is,

19:59 is it like, Oh, Hey honey, I saw that the market dropped 20% today. Well, Hey, turn off, turn that off. And we have in our page, the one page lifetime income plan, turn off the TV plan, which is basically a summary of our plan. We worked on with Russ and his team, our coach and his team. And what it does is it says, Hey, here's how even in a down year, we have the same amount to spend. We're still taking that same, that same vacation. And we have a good sense of no matter what happens with inflation, market fluctuations, interest rates, that with the right tools and the right partnership, we know that we're going to be okay, virtually no matter what. Now, no one can prevent us all from

20:48 being hit by a meteor, right? But in that case, you know, we're going to have bigger problems. And I encourage people to, you know, give us a call, give coach pizza team a call that what that does is that allows you to, you want some boundaries to know that you're going to be okay. Right. And I think that's the biggest thing that is missing from wall street is they're kind of like, here's your portfolio. I'm managing it. Here's your, you know, rubber chicken, 25 page, you know, plan with, with multicolored graphs in it. And don't you feel just fine. And most people come in and talk to me and my team and say, well, no, I don't really feel just fine. How about you, coach?

21:37 Yeah. I mean, feeling is not, is, is not a good thing. I mean, you need to have proof. And why, why do you feel fine? Well, I mean, if you don't have an income plan, Russ, you shouldn't feel fine because you're going to go to retirement. You're going to start taking money out of your stock accounts. If you don't have a real income plan and you're never going to have fun because you're always going to be worried if you're taking too much. And if the market's in a, in a downward cycle, you're never going to be able to come back because you're going to liquidate those losses because you need the money to live on. That's why we can't have all the money we need for income in the stock market, period. And so if you want a real income plan, Thomas, tell folks how they can get that real income plan. Yeah, I'd be happy to. It all begins with a conversation that discusses where you are right now and where you want to be in retirement. To begin that conversation, start it with a phone call, 800-661-7383, 800-661-7383. We also have a great way you can

22:28 text us. Maybe you're a bit of an introvert like me, or you're in the car and you just want to start with that text message. Get the conversation started. That's the most important thing more than anything. And that keyword is plan because that's what it's all about. Keyword plan to the number 600-700, plan to 600-700. That number again, 800-661-7383, 800-661-7383. You know, guys, while you've been talking, I've tried to pull up some stats here. And it's interesting. Did you know that people who check their portfolios daily earn 40% less on average? I had to pause there for a minute. I was shocked by it. Well, the worst enemy of the investor is themselves because emotions get in the way and the fog of war, they call it. When you're watching a stock go down, you might make some bad decisions. When it goes up, the same thing. You might start buying more when it goes up.

23:17 What we see is people usually sell when it goes down and buy when it goes up. And it's exactly opposite about what Warren Buffett always said. It's the truth, though. I have Morningstar here says investors trade four times more after negative news weeks. So there you go. What do you think? Right. And Wall Street loves that because they just, when you trade, they make money, right? If you avoid short-term trading, then you make money because you make money off things that generate income. You make money off the companies that produce profits, right? But if you try to do a bunch of back and forth, back and forth, you're just competing with a million other people, some of whom are just, and about a thousand computers, by the way. And you're trying to add value when there really is no value to be added.

24:08 If you're paying someone to manage your money, they better be managing your money. That's all I have to say. We see a lot of folks that are just collecting fees and not doing anything for their clients, and that's not good. So again, get the plan that is something you deserve, the plan that's going to be one that's customized for you. I know, Russ, you do a great job of customizing plans, folks. So if you want to get your customized lifetime plan that not only has income, but also has proper balance of where your money is right now, where it should be, and keep some money in the stock market, but has true managed growth attached to it, or the attempt or the chance of managed growth, wait, that has true managed growth attached to it, Thomas, that's what they need to get. So call right now and get an appointment with Russ and his team. All right, folks, listen, if you're wondering if your retirement plan is set up to handle these future challenges, the number to call is 800-661-7383, 800-661-7383, or text keyword plan to the number

25:01 600-700, plan to 600-700. Welcome back into the program, having a great conversation here, going to continue it with Russell Hackman, author of Wall Street Is Not Your Friend. He's with Hackman Wealth Management. Also in studio with me is Dave Perkins. I'm Thomas Lipscomb, and leading the charge bestselling author, Coach Pete D’Arruda. And today we're going to be talking about why today's annuities aren't the lousy ones you've heard about. And I think this is going to be a great conversation because I think a lot of us can hear a rumor or think something and apply it across the whole spectrum of things when it's completely not true. I think of like, you know, eight tracks. They were clunky, they were confusing, hard to get in and out, but that doesn't mean music is bad. Right, right. Or that other forms of ways to get it were bad. Exactly, exactly. So let's start

25:53 at the beginning where, you know, not everybody has, you know, a bad taste in their mouth with the word annuity, but for those who do, why do you think that happened? Well, I mean, for one thing, there's some money managers out there, we'll leave them unnamed for now, that basically market against annuities and say, hey, and they just sort of wave their hands and say, hey, all annuities are terrible and too expensive. And what you need is us charging you a point and a quarter, a point and a half forever. So there's a lot of self-serving advertising. You know, number two is there are some previous generations of annuities that were kind of lousy and some people are still in them. And, you know, if you're out there and in these, don't fear there, there are remedies out there,

26:43 but there's a class of products that call that's called variable annuities, right, that can have like 3% fees again, you know, an annuity is just an investment contract with an insurance company. So when you did, when you generalize and say just, hey, annuities are terrible, you know, that's like saying all mutual funds are terrible, you know, it's just not true. And, you know, today's annuities, as Coach and I talk about, you know, they can give you guaranteed lifetime income for you and your spouse. And someone, and by the way, if something happens to you in the early years, your beneficiaries, you know, get the money. So someone tell me what's wrong with lifetime income, right?

27:31 Well, you know, it's misunderstood, but you have some, a lot of folks on the radio or in the media that are talking negative about annuities all the time. Matter of fact, I used to be a Dave Ramsey, SmartVestor Pro. And I decided to resign last year because Dave kept slamming annuities all the time. And I said, Dave, it's malpractice to be saying bad things about annuities all the time when you're cheating people out of a lifetime income by saying that, because a lot of people do whatever Dave says they do. And then it turns out Dave isn't even licensed in the financial world to be giving any advice. And therefore people are, it's sort of like a guy who's not a doctor telling you to cut your hand off if it hurts. It won't hurt anymore. Got some leeches for you. So I just couldn't, I couldn't stand it anymore. I said, it doesn't make any sense for you to be slamming annuities. Now I said, I did admit there are some bad annuities out there, but they're not all bad. Sort of like,

28:21 you know, I had a bad car once. I had a 1968 Volkswagen Bug. I had to push start it. I had to push it, jump in and pop the clutch. But just because I had bad experiences in that car didn't mean I never bought a car again. Cars have improved every year, just like annuities. So if you haven't looked at an annuity in the last 10 years, even the last five years, you're cheating yourself out of a potential worry-free retirement that you're not going to get in the stock market. And I would love to focus on that because that's really what it's all about. People can focus on a name, but what we're trying to do here is drive a solution to a worry-free retirement. And the way that we like to focus on that is by focusing on two aspects of a retirement plan in general. That's the core, that's the explorer. And unfortunately, social security can't help us completely satisfy

29:06 our core. And this is where elements like the annuity are able to come in and be that superpower to fulfill that. Isn't that right, Coach? Yeah, it's just important. I mean, you know, superpower is a good thing. I've pictured missile silos. So you've got plenty of income missiles, missile silos when you have the income annuity. Every single year, it reloads it and then it fires off more income. You're never going to run out of money if you have a lifetime income annuity. And nothing else, Russ, nothing else I know of, your piggy bank will run out of money eventually. Your stock market, if it's stocks, especially if the market's down, your bonds, cash them in, they're gone. Savings bonds, everything runs out except for a lifetime income annuity. So now it's not a perfect fit for every part of your money, but for money you're going to need for income, we need to figure out how much income you need. And then let's

29:51 make sure we get you that income with 100% certainty it's going to be there every single year for the rest of your life. Now, that's not rocket science. That's just common sense 101. And a lot of people overlook that, again, trying to chase the best returns or listening to the wrong people on the radio, unfortunately. That's absolutely right, Coach. And it's not like you own no equities when you have a lifetime income annuity. You can have 30, 40, 50% of your money in equities, and you should have a decent amount because that really helps you keep up with inflation over the very long term. Correct. But you can't be having 70 or 80% of your money in stocks and funds, or you certainly

30:41 shouldn't be having any money in bond funds. That's just dead money. And if someone wants to explain to me why bond funds are better than something that pays lifetime income, I mean, I think that that's just a debate that's over before it starts. Well, in the money world, it's widely known that we should follow something called the investment rule of 100. And it takes your age. Whatever your age is, put a percentage after that. So I'm 59. So 59% of my money should be in a safe place. Well, if I'm going to be in a safe place, I might as well have lifetime income with that safe place. So 59% of my money should be in a lifetime income annuity. And so again, rule of thumb, if you're a very big risk taker, you love to go to Vegas every couple of months and lose money, then maybe you don't need as much money in safe places. But me, I never want

31:27 to have to worry about where the money's going to come from. And I never want to have to worry if the money's there at all. And so I really do endorse the lifetime income annuity for the retirement plan. And so Thomas, tell folks how they can get their own review. And we will go over the complete investment rule of 100 with them and put together a total retirement plan that does encompass some of the lifetime income plans in there. And that's why I'm proud to be here because it's all about that total retirement income plan. Folks, pick up the phone right now and take advantage of this opportunity to speak with a true fiduciary advisor, not someone who's just going to take that one hammer off his tube belt, but someone who truly has a range of tools to be able to help you create a balanced plan. The number 800-661-7383, 800-661-7383. You can also text keyword plan to the number 600-700. That is plan to the

32:18 number 600-700. Now get this statistic. And you're going to call me out on this, coach. I know you are, because I'm going to say AARP. And you're going to say, what does that mean? Because we define our terms. Is it the American Association of Retired Persons? Anyways, I haven't joined yet. I don't know. Get this. Six in 10 retirees wish they had invested in a safe product sooner. That's experience right there talking. Well, because, I mean, we get caught up in the euphoria of a market going up. And so we throw money in. We never should have put in there. Then we don't realize it until the market's way down that we made a big mistake. So don't make the mistake. Let me tell you right now, before you do it, don't do that. You know, again, have that proper balance that Russ talks about. Have the proper plan. Have a total retirement plan that has risk, safety, and lifetime income. Thomas, everyone

33:06 listening is entitled to that if they call right now. All right, folks, let's do this. Listen, Wall Street bets on volatility, but Russ and coach can bet on sleep at night. Income is how you win the game. The number 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. Or text keyword plan to the number 600-700. Plan to 600-700. For Russ Hackman, for Dave, for Thomas, and for Jose, it's Coach Pete. We'll see you next week right here on the show.

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Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 each and every week I talked to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it so stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoyed this newest weekly segment on coach business folks it's coach Pete here I'm live on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange with mr. JW Roth who has just launched his public traded company venue JW welcome in coach it's good to be here it's good to be here fun day for you it's a fun day you rang the opening bell today he rang the opening bell we opened the New York Stock Exchange it's funny you know when you're a when you're a kid or you grow up in your you always think of the New York Stock Exchange and how you

00:46 picture it yeah then you get in business and you start to dream about how you know where your company's gonna ultimately go but then to actually do it to stand out there and ring the bell on the New York Stock Exchange it's surreal it's pretty amazing it's amazing you look like a pro up there doing it yeah listen that I got him fooled I got him fooled now all right let's take a step back tell me how you got started in the business world yeah let's do that let's do a quick history here yep a couple minutes yep because that'll help I think folks that are watching it'll help them understand who you are and why you're doing what you're doing yeah yep so you know I did not start in the hospitality or entertainment space I'm the founder at Roth premium foods my background is all agriculture and in and in building food lines so Roth is a prepared food manufacturer but I think about the third largest in the United

01:33 States well we we we build for almost every grocery store in America and we do service every grocery store in America every day bill between a hundred and hundred and fifty tons of proteins for US consumption every week so that's what Roth does being a music nut about six years ago I sat down with my family and our partners and I said you know what I've got another one in me I want to go build another one my son had had been at Roth all the way along was in a perfect position to just continue what we were doing there and in fact I tell people this all the time he's actually in a lot of ways done better than the old man would have done but it gave me the opportunity to then leave I took a handful of my key people and we worked out a transition plan and over the course of a year or so

02:21 transitioned out my CFO and some of our business development folks and that kind of thing and I started venue the idea was as a music fan I've been to I've been to venues all over the world mm-hmm and I can tell you that they're old they're dilapidated especially live music venues outdoor like amphitheaters yeah most of them are 40 50 60 years old and so they lack a lot of what the fan is demanding think about the NFL and major league baseball it's kind of who I copied I took a page right out of their playbook I looked at them and said look at what guys like George Steinbrenner did or Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys you know he took he took old dilapidated stadiums work with municipalities and built unbelievable experiences and unbelievable ambiance in stadiums now so now when you go to a

03:11 football stadium you're not out there drinking a lukewarm beer eating a lukewarm or cold hot dog yeah you're going out there and you're enjoying club service and all of the things that go on with the stadium I wanted to do that in music so I started going around the country hired Ryan and company to start putting public private partnerships together and this last summer we opened the the most premium amphitheater ever built in history Ford Motor Company put their name on it's the Ford amphitheater in Colorado Springs Colorado 92 fire pit suites beautiful owners clubs it's an incredible place today would on top of that we have another billion dollars or so of construction going on throughout the US in in five different markets as we build as we build amphitheaters we're gonna we're gonna do it music with those two guys and I admire both Steinbrenner and Jerry

03:58 Jones what they did in football and baseball amazing business people unbelievable business people I've been to the Colorado Springs location folks amazing yeah the fire so just an amazing place you don't even think you're at it like a traditional concert no Ryan Tedder is interesting you know Ryan Tedder out one Republic has stepped out on stage he's sold out three shows for us this last summer but he stepped on stage and he goes geez I feel like I'm in Dubai you know all of the fire going on and the fire pits going on and it's it's it's incredible it creates an unbelievable vibe and an unbelievable ambiance yeah so I mean this idea though came like let's build amphitheaters or I mean how that that's what you said here's what I said okay I said I wanted I'm a fan yeah and I'm tired of the venues that I go to and they're they're they're they're terrible

04:44 but I go to football games and baseball games I'm thinking man these are nice I could do this so when I left Roth premium foods I left for one specific rate and that is to disrupt the venue space in live music disrupting because I it was something like the major league and football places yeah their video screens are better than the TV at home no question no question and the food is unbelievable I mean you have five-star restaurants now in baseball parks and so you know we built the seafood and chop house in the in the Ford Amphitheater in Carr Springs you know the five-star seafood and chop house inside of a music that's amazing yeah it's got dogs and a slice of pizza right exactly right no more hot dogs and slices of cold pizza all right so now you've made you you've got the idea let's do let's build big amphitheaters and let's get the let the people to come but how did you get the financing in place because that's that's

05:31 a big proposition you see yep you see all the NFL teams and major league teams they have they have to really consider building something new yeah I mean they're there it's tens of millions of dollars to build these and so basically I have three there's three parts to my financing strategy first is the municipalities have to participate so 35% or so of all of the financing comes from the municipality the municipality provides the ground provides the tax incentives it's it's they're a big piece of the financing and then I go out and I pre-sell I build the structure of my amphitheaters like a condominium building where we own the condominium building and then we pre-sell condominiums in the form of fire pits and so about 35% or so of all of the financing for these come from those suite owners

06:17 and fire pit suite owners and then the balance comes from our ability to then finance and and put small amounts of of sale lease backs on the ground underneath the underneath the amphitheater but you know these have these like in McKinney you know it's a 300 million dollar amphitheater to build the it's the it's the most seeded amphitheater in the history of the world that we're building there opens for the 2026 season it's a beautiful if you've not seen what we're doing down there it's incredible but at the end of the day you could never make it pencil if it wasn't for really forward-thinking municipalities like the city of McKinney George Fuller mayor George Fuller he's a forward-thinking mayor he's a wonderful man and he you know in his way of thinking he brought the city council along and next thing you know they're supporting it we have great

07:06 fire pit suite owners down there got a good friend in Troy Aikman Troy Aikman's Hall of Fame quarterback for the for the Dallas Cowboys he and I partnered on on eight as a as a as a sponsor at our venues and then we're building the Aikman clubs and so you know we've just got really good partnerships good sponsorships and so at the end of the day you know we have we have a financing strategy that works and works well and it works good for our public company shareholders yeah that's a good question so a lot of people before they invest in the stock they say well let me see how much debt this company has that's right how are you looking on we have very very little debt we you know over the last eight quarters or so nine quarters I guess we we've built a balance sheet of about a hundred and eighty one million dollars we'll cross two hundred million and add

07:53 a billion dollars in 2025 with a B net with a B net tangible assets and so you know at the end of the day we are we are focused on our balance sheet and as a result of public-private partnerships and mark-to-market valuations we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna cross that number this year now someone is just finding out about venue for the first time and they say gosh how we how do we get an amphitheater like this in our area yeah what are the steps you've been doing and where you're going next yeah so you know right now we're finishing up amphitheaters as we build down through the Tulsa market and Broken Arrow we'll be in Oklahoma City market we're building the Dallas Fort Worth market in McKinney which is an unbelievable venue getting ready to start our construction down in El Paso it's interesting El Paso is such an interesting market people think of El Paso but they only think of kind of north of the bridge right listen south of the

08:42 business bridge is just as big of a market Latin music has exploded it is exploded yeah and that market has exploded and so at the end of the day I tell people all the time don't count El Paso out as might be the most profitable venue we build in the next 10 years for that exact reason when is that on the schedule that you know it will we're booking it and it will open in 26 so we're about 15 months out well let me ask you this if people stop liking music the world ends right yeah if people stop liking music I think the world just ends it's the only thing I can think of that is unifying right at the end of the day 2025 again for the 10th year in a row it's the number one leisure activity in the

09:31 world in the world is live music so bigger than baseball bigger than football bigger than soccer worldwide number one leisure activity live music and it's more and it's most unifying think about this where else can a Republican and a Democrat and an independent all sit together and sing in harmony and be harmonized in whatever they're doing live music right everybody I don't care what what if you're a Democrat Republican or independent you know the lyrics to Hotel California and you sit there and sing it together in unison and it's it's one of the only places that happens doesn't happen in baseball parks because there's two different teams in the Hayden church and they don't have any baseball two teams in the Hayden church live music is the only place where everybody is everybody there is there for one thing and that's to be unified in

10:19 whatever band is playing it's amazing how you can have an album listen to it over and over again at home but then you go see that band live and it's a totally different experience it's so much better isn't it no no no no question it is live music is a I tell people this all the time live music and everybody that's watching this has been they know it's a vibe it's a it's a feeling there is an ambiance about live music you don't get anywhere else and and it's something that you tell stories about music I can play a song and it takes you back yeah you can remember where you were who you were with and what you were doing good point um because that's what music does music creates memories live music creates even better memories because you enjoy it with somebody else yeah and you've got the collective energy of

11:07 everybody around you I think that's right we don't even know the metaphysics on that these days no question I think the group mentality of everybody on the same side no question I mean it just lifts everybody's spirits yeah no question no question album or live that's exactly right so my point my next question is do you ever see live music going away of course no never never not getting better and better it does get better there is a point though I think there's going to be a point where live music even expands so live music today is usually enjoyed we're together and we're at a venue but I see the day coming where live music will be enjoyed virtually virtually in the sense that pay-per-view or live music events that you that's an audio like a 3d room like a 3d room yeah I see

11:53 that coming someday we'll see what happens but um with AI you never know I think with AI I think you're gonna see that happen yep well that's about it's exciting where the uh name venue come from well here's what happened the company started off I named it notes live and notes is obviously music notes right and live is what we do so notes live was the name of the company I started dealing with the New York Stock Exchange and we started looking at symbols and uh and Paul Dorfman said you know some of the coolest companies in the world the name of the company is also the symbol you know what I mean and so there's some there's some thought that a lot of companies then put into that so we started thinking about all of the various symbols and actually venue obviously is a it's a five-letter

12:43 word that we turned into a four-letter word and uh it just it's just so descriptive of who we are it is and then the New York Stock Exchange worked with us to make that our symbol did you get a theosaurus out yeah exactly exactly I do that online yeah exactly word exactly if I can't pronounce one word exactly all right so then uh let's talk we've got a couple minutes here yeah absolutely talk business yep for someone who's watching this and they uh and they are interested in investing yeah what would you tell them as far as a brand new investor what kind of steps should they take and what would you recommend yeah so you know I'd love to have you as a shareholder um our symbol is venu traded on the New York Stock Exchange I would love you have you as a shareholder we are aggressively um disrupting the venue space we are well capitalized we have strong shareholder uh base and support um and I am

13:34 committed to building a balance sheet and a P&L so uh at the end of the day you would be investing in a in a space the music space the live music space that is exploding never been a time in history where the demand of tickets has been higher than it is today and there's never been time in history where the supply of new artists is higher than it is today so here you've got a industry with the high demand high supply we are the exchange we are where fans and artists meet and nobody is doing it better than we are symbols venue live by the way yeah great symbol venue live yep now uh somebody who wants to invest in one of the new places you're building is is that possible for someone to have a stake in the the next amputator absolutely and we have a great team that does that go to our website um venue dot live

14:26 as coach said and when you go there you can click on investing and you can look at all of the venues that we're building any place in the united states um and it will give you information on that you can also come to our offices um whether here in dallas or wherever and and use virtual reality to actually sit in any of our venues or buy a ticket come out to the ford amphitheater this summer and catch a great show i saw the steve miller being the last really good steve miller band was a great show we had this year but we had just so many great shows a fun place so someone should come and look at it because you can actually invest in one of the vip fire pit that's right spaces right yeah right and is that a lifetime ownership it is lifetime ownership and i tell people this all the time too at the end of the day the best way to understand what we do is to experience what we do and the best way to

15:11 experience what we do is come sit in my suite at uh at the ford amphitheater i did yeah you did dang right you did yeah jw roth folks and the symbol is venue dot venue and then the website venue.live then you dot live love to have your shareholder always great coach thank you yes see you later folks bye bye

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 And welcome back into the Financial Safari. Consumer Advocate Thomas Lipscomb here with you once again alongside best-selling author, Coach Pete D’Arruda. Coach, I'm excited. You always bring in some great guests into the program, and you've got someone else with us here today. We have an author who I've followed for years. Her name is Cheryl Moore. She's president and CEO of Moore Market Intelligence. She's co-author of the Encyclopedia to Index Products, Annuity, and Life, and her research and articles are regularly featured in a lot of different insurance trade publications and also Forbes, Fox Business, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and a lot more different places. And Ms. Moore works closely with regulators. Her research is regularly presented to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners Conference. And here's a good thing. Neither Cheryl Moore nor Moore Market Intelligence sell or endorse any financial services or products.

00:48 So she's basically a research company. She's not trying to get paid by anybody. Tom Hegna calls her one of the best sources on annuities he's ever talked to. So does Wade Fowle. These are two big names. We've had them on our show before. And we hope to have Cheryl on in the future again to talk about this in more detail. But we're going to talk about a book she came out with just recently, Why I Bought Indexed Annuities. Cheryl, welcome in. Thanks so much, Coach. Now, where are you joining us from today? Des Moines, Iowa, the insurance capital of the U.S. Here we go. I've been out of Des Moines. I've been out there in the wintertime, too. Good for you. Hey, let's start from the beginning. What is an annuity? So an annuity is a financial services instrument that can help you save for your retirement. And when you're ready to retire, you can actually receive a paycheck every month until the day

01:39 you die with these products, even if you live to be 150 years old. Yeah, that's the amazing part of the annuity world. The insurance company is taking all the risk for longevity, we call it. If you live longer, they're still paying. And we like to set up joint annuities. So if a spouse passed away, the other spouse continues to get that same payment. Yeah, they're very flexible and provide a ton of great benefits, Coach. Yeah. Now, in the book, you write about he or she who controls the media controls the financial world and the financial services world. What does that mean? Well, a lot of people don't realize that the media actually has an agenda and their agenda is to serve the advertisers that pay for ads with them. And often that means that the financial services media is catering to stockbrokers and Wall Street,

02:26 not necessarily the insurance industry who sells products like annuities. That's a good point. Right. So yeah, whoever pays gets the better press is what you're saying. Absolutely. Pay to play. We've talked about it for years, Thomas. I mean, the big guys are spending millions of dollars a day on advertisements. They're also, when you got the advertisements or somewhere, they're on the media. And the media knows that if they start saying bad things about that company, that the advertisers may go away. So they want to keep saying good things to keep getting that ad revenue. Because that's what it all comes down to. It's all about money. Unfortunately. Yeah, unfortunately. But who really benefits from that? I mean, the consumer doesn't benefit when the articles are slanted the wrong way, do they? No. And that's kind of what motivated me to start my business. I just run a market research firm that has actual information on these products,

03:14 and I use it to fact check for the media. Yeah. That word fact check these days. This is good fact checking right here, folks. This is your money, keeping your money in the right place by fact checking, not political fact checking. This is money fact checking. Big difference these days. Yes. But now, speaking of fact checking, let's just spell some common annuity myths. You do a great job in your book. Let's go through a couple of the myths that you featured. One is, quote, if I purchase an indexed annuity and I die the next day, the insurance company keeps my money. True or false? Absolutely false. With an indexed annuity, your beneficiaries or loved ones are going to receive the full value of your annuity regardless of when you die. Very, very important, isn't it? It is.

04:00 Now, another one is indexed annuities or annuities in general, when I see the featured articles, but when I read articles or myths, a lot of times they really do feature the indexed annuity, which lets you participate in the upside of different market indexes, but not on the downside. In other words, you get to share in the gains, but not the losses, which is, that's my kind of strategy right there. But why do they say that indexed annuities have high fees? Well, really, the most common type of annuity historically has been a variable annuity. And variable annuities do have fees. And sometimes the media just tended to assume that all annuities are variable annuities. And today, variable annuities don't sell as well as they used to. In fact, indexed annuities are about to eclipse variable annuities on sales, and they don't have fees largely.

04:52 So, it's a really huge misunderstanding. 32 years I've been in the financial arena, and not one time did offering a variable annuity make sense to my clients. So, I've never offered one. Yeah, I understand. They don't make sense for me either, Coach. You know, the people that talk about the fees a lot of times are the people on the managed money side or the brokerage side. They talk about fees on safe instruments, yet they forget the fact that they're charging a quarterly management fee if they're a managed money person. When you look at a 10-year period, you'll pay a lot more in fees on managed money than you'll ever pay on an annuity. Matter of fact, there's no fees, and most annuities have set up correctly. Well, and what's interesting, Coach, is that I did some market research and found that annuities that are sold by commissioned salespeople are actually more consumer-friendly for the client in the long run.

05:39 Yeah, because when we offer annuity, and I make sure to say this on the show, when we offer annuities, we are compensated by the insurance companies, not by the client. In other words, the client puts $100,000 in, $100,000 goes into their annuity. Whereas on the other side of the equation, on the managed money side, many times if you're dealing with a broker, by the way, if you put $100,000 into, let's say, a real estate investment trust, you'll get $90,000 going to your account. $10,000 goes to the broker who sold you the real estate investment trust. Right. That's a fee. All right. Yeah. So again, folks, we're talking to Cheryl Moore, and her book is Why I Bought Indexed Annuities. Very good read, by the way. Available everywhere good books are sold. Here's another myth, Cheryl. My money is locked up and away with an annuity. True or false? Absolutely false.

06:26 Almost every annuity gives a penalty-free withdrawal provision that allows you to take about 10% of your annuity's value every year. Plus, there's other features like surrender charge waivers and withdrawal benefits that allow you to take money out of your annuity, and it's not, quote-unquote, locked up the way people may think. Yeah. Well, the people that are talking about your money being locked up, when you think about it, if you buy a stock, and I'm a money manager, too, so when we tell people to take a managed account or buy stocks, that's about a 10-year time horizon. We say you really shouldn't touch your money for 10 years to give the market the real chance to work through its cycles. So, in effect, your money is locked up longer in a stock account than it ever is in an annuity, because you do have that liquidity every single year with some of your money in an annuity. Not enough people talk about it.

07:12 Well, but you don't want to spend all the money anyway, because this is your retirement account. I mean, who's going to blow through all the retirement? But, really, it is a preventive measure to keep you from blowing all your money on things you shouldn't be buying many times. So, we always encourage you to have some liquid money anyway. So, keep liquidity and use that for emergencies and vacations, and keep your money for retirement, your annuity, ready to go and give you that great retirement you deserve. Absolutely. Here's another myth. Indexed annuities don't include the dividends on the S&P in their performance. True or false? That's actually true for most indexed annuities, but what most people don't realize is that although you're not receiving the dividends off the index, you're also not receiving the losses in your value due to the index's performance. It's a little bit of a trade-off.

07:59 Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. I mean, there's no perfect situation anywhere in the world. So, you basically take the ones that are closest to what fit what you're looking for. I mean, it's not a Cinderella account. Well, the other thing people don't realize is that because you're not directly invested in the index when you buy an indexed annuity, you can't receive the benefits of the index because you're not invested in it. Right. Here's one final one. You can build a better annuity on your own with some stocks and a bond fund. And I've seen a lot of this lately because the money management world doesn't like losing their money over to the annuity world. And I've seen these articles come up on how you can build your own annuity. I mean, why would you try to do it yourself when there's something already built? Well, and the important thing to remember is that if you bought some stocks and a bond fund, they can't promise you a paycheck every month until the day you die.

08:44 That's something that's very exclusive to an annuity. An annuity is the only instrument that will provide you a paycheck for life. That's very important, by the way, because the reason why I set up annuities for my clients is to make sure they have that pension like we talked about earlier, making sure you have a stream of income you can never outlive. That gives you peace of mind to approach retirement on your terms. Absolutely. One chapter I wanted to talk about, which I liked, it was home runs are possible. What would you have in mind when you wrote that chapter about home runs being possible? Well, you know, there's so many people that say we don't know how indexed annuities perform or a lot of money managers tend to, say that indexed annuities don't perform because they're comparing them to equity. And what I wanted to do was provide real life examples that show the power of indexed annuities.

09:33 So those are actual policyholder annual statements that I've put into the book that show fantastic gains. Now, that's not a realistic expectation for regular performance on indexed annuities, but it does show that home runs are possible. The beautiful thing about this is strikeouts aren't. So as long as you have the money in the annuity, you may not hit a home run every time, but you're not going to strike out. And striking out is where you get in trouble. That's why you say in one chapter, zero is your hero. That's exactly right. Good analogy, Coach Pete. Well, thinking of home run, I think of Babe Ruth, because you know what? During the when he was hitting all his home runs back in the 20s when everybody else was losing money, he had all his money in annuities. He probably went up to the home plate with a lot of confidence in his head. He wasn't worried about having his money all lost in the market because he had the money in annuities.

10:19 He was hitting home runs because he had nothing else on his mind but hitting home runs. And studies do show that people who purchase annuities sleep soundly at night and have less anxiety about retirement. Yeah, I agree. Well, I've purchased my own annuities. And I know you talked to Tom Hegna. He said he's got like 12 or 13 different annuities all ready to give him a retirement. He's retired now. He basically still speaks because he wants to, not because he has to. Well, you know, I bought my first annuity when I was 29 years old and I own several of them now. And like most people, I sleep soundly at night. Well, and you know, we're going to have to cut the segment here because we're running out 11 minutes. This is the fastest 11 minutes I've ever had on the radio. Cheryl, I hope we can have you on again soon in the future to talk about this because I think a lot of people listening need to find out the true story about how annuities can help. Absolutely. Thanks for helping me to get the word out, Coach. Folks, again, her name is Cheryl Moore.

11:04 It's S-H-E-R-Y-L and M-O-O-R-E. And the book title is Why I Bought Indexed Annuities, available on Amazon and anywhere else books are sold. Cheryl, thanks for your time today. Thanks so much, Coach. And folks, we'll be right back after this. .

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Hi, this is Coach Pete, and if you've got questions on how to properly structure your assets and build retirement income, you're in the right place. Welcome to the Financial Safari. Broadcasting from coast to coast, it's the Financial Safari with your host, Coach Pete DeRuta. Coach Pete and his guests are some of the nation's top financial professionals. They make it their mission to guide investors through the treacherous jungle of the financial world, showing them how to grow, keep, and leave their money for their loved ones. Coach Pete is a frequent contributor to Fox Business Network, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and many other news outlets. They come to Coach Pete for their answers, and now so can you. So stick around and find out how to make it through the jungle of the financial world on

00:48 the Financial Safari. Welcome back into the Financial Safari. consumer advocate Thomas Lipscomb in the studio alongside bestselling author Coach Pete D’Arruda having a fast-paced show. Coach, you've got a special guest for us here, though. We sure do. A few months ago, I was in New York City at a special conference, and when you go to these conferences, you meet people. You have to. You have to. Well, some people don't. Some people sit in the corner and are unfriendly. Thomas, you know those kind of people. That's me. I try to at least meet people. And it was a smaller group. It was a mastermind group on how to maximize income while minimizing taxes. And we had a great speaker that day, and it was fascinating, some of the techniques and tools he was sharing. And I said, gosh, there's got to be a way to get this guy on the radio. And matter of fact, he's right in Raleigh, North Carolina.

01:35 We're in our offices in Apex, our studio. Big studio is here right here at Apex. His name is Chris Gaddis, and he's a benefit specialist from Raleigh, North Carolina. Chris, welcome in. Well, thank you, Coach. Now, let's talk about this. What is a main problem? As business owners, we have a lot of problems. What's one of the main problems business owners, every single business owner has, don't even realize it sometimes to the end of the year, but at the end of the year, they realize they have a problem. What is that? Taxes. Paying too many? Too much in taxes or paying less? Too little? Too much is usually the problem. Yeah. So you've got some really good strategies to help business owners reduce taxes. So let's go through a couple of them. Yeah. Yeah. I think what's interesting with the first one I want to share is that it helps benefits the employees as well. Okay. So it's a double win. It's going to benefit your employees and benefit you as a business owner by paying less taxes.

02:23 Absolutely. All right. Let's go through that. Yeah. Yeah. So it's actually pretty simple and it comes by way of the ACA, which we all love from 2010 Affordable Care Act that brought into place the ability to expand wellness programs that have typically been bolted on to medical plans. So these wellness plans are usually underutilized. They've been underutilized. They're things where you get smoking cessation programs, weight loss. Oh, who doesn't want to hear about weight loss these days? Yeah. I know a couple of pharmaceutical companies are making a fortune on that, right? Yes. And so, you know, it's one of the things that really opened up this way for wellness plans to expand and to create an opportunity for this win-win scenario. So in a nutshell, employers can save on average almost $500 per employee per year. $500 per employee per year.

03:10 That adds up. You have a lot of employees. And the nice thing is it's not a credit or something they have to wait for. It's coming right around in their payroll every time. Immediate. Okay, good. Right to their bottom line. Payroll reduction plan. Reducing taxes. Yes, sir. Sounds good to me. Yeah. And also the employees themselves, they save on average a little over $100 each as well. So the employees save money too. And that's a month, a month. So about $1,200 a year. Wow. All right. That's a nice benefit. All right. So what else can you tell us about that? Yeah. So I think there's a couple unique things about it. But that program in general, it's made to be proactive, help with wellness, help reduce health insurance claims and costs, which is great. Health insurance has kind of had this trend where the deductibles keep going up, premiums keep going up, but the coverages are not. Tell me about it. My daughter had appendicitis last year.

03:56 And the appendix actually burst and got her into the hospital emergency room. We're happy to... Number one, I want to phrase this. I'm very happy we have the medical situations we do now. Sure. Because she was taken care of and she was back out and fine in two days. She was at her friend's at Sheetz eating a hot dog or something like that. They hang out at Sheetz all the time. By the way, that's a hangout place. Thomas, do you know that? When your kids get a little older, my daughter's 18 now, but they don't really have a hangout place for the kids that are too young to go to bars, right? So they hang out at the Sheetz on Friday and Saturday nights. Where oddly enough, you can get everything from a milkshake to a taco to a burger. She gets a lot. She's never had a hot dog there. She'd be mad at me if I said that. I was just exaggerating. She has smoothies. She gets a smoothie there. Smoothies. And so that's the hangout place. They got it all. But it ended up costing about $50,000.

04:41 Not out of pocket, but that's what it would have cost if we didn't have health insurance. But then we keep getting these bills like one doctor must have poked his head in and signed the little clipboard and here comes the bill. So we had a lot of bills coming in. So anytime we can reduce healthcare costs or improve health so we don't have healthcare costs, it makes a lot of sense. So this program encourages, I take it, this program encourages that. Absolutely. Yeah. ACA came into play in wellness plans and really expanding that to help employees actually take advantage of it. Yeah. And there's really a unique byproduct of the program that comes after all of this, which is those dollars when employees use them to buy benefits. Right. They remain, we call them tax efficient dollars. So they're not taxed on those dollars that become that hundred or so dollars that's increased. So the money that they free up, they don't get taxed on too. So it's a really, you know, it's always fun when you say, yeah, I got a hundred dollar

05:28 raise from my boss. And then I said, well, have you spent that hundred dollars? Well, it's only about 60 by the time it gets home. Yep. So in this case, it's real hundred. Yeah. So it is what it is. It is. Which is amazing sometimes. It is. And you see the trend, the trends, you know, that we see are, are not good. Employees are foregoing benefits. They're having, you know, to choose between putting Sally or Susie or Jimmy into baseball or gymnastics or get braces or do a little things like that. Absolutely. So this gives an opportunity to buy benefits for their family and themselves and not feel guilty that they're taking money away from their family and put food on the table or whatever they're concerned about. By the way, folks, we're talking to Chris Gattis, who's a benefit specialist right here in Raleigh, North Carolina. And if you're interested in finding out how to save taxes or save some taxes and help your employees out at the same time, Thomas will tell you how you can do that. Absolutely. It's very easy. Just call 800-661-7383.

06:16 800-661-7383. You can also text the special keyword tax to 600-700. That's tax to 600-700. Now, what kind of fees are involved in this, Chris? Yeah, that's really another cool thing about the program. That's why I really call it triple win because it's net of fees. So there are fees that come out, but it's out of that savings. So the $100 and the $500, and I'm using averages there, obviously that changes, but our net of those fees, so the fees that are internal to the program, depending upon what there's different programs, you know, the employer groups have the option to kind of choose what's best for their employees in that case. So that's really the nice thing. There's no additional fees on top of it. Nothing's coming out of their paycheck. They're still walking home with the same paycheck. So what's the minimum number of employees a company should have or could have to have this benefit them? Yeah, five employees. We want to see five or more employees there. And in this case, actually, the owner is not eligible because they're ultimately benefiting

07:06 anyway on the back end. Right. So it's really one of those tax kind of loopholes almost that benefits employees and employers. We're used to seeing this for the rich and all that stuff. We hear about all these things that the rich do to avoid paying taxes. So here's an option for everybody. The evil rich people paying about 98% of all taxes. Exactly. And not paying their fair share. Yes, sir. You hear that all the time, right? Uh-huh, all the time. And nothing makes me madder because I pay a lot in taxes and I hear about not paying my fair share. No one's ever said that to me, but I hear people on radio or TV, oh, the rich people aren't paying their fair share. Well, how much are you paying? Right. The guy who's saying we're not paying the fair share. Yeah. Well, I don't pay. Well, then, can't say it. If I was Dan Bongino and had a podcast, I could say what I want to say. Yeah, yeah. I get it. But I'm not. I'm on the radio. Yeah. So it's a friendly program.

07:53 It sounds like. Yeah. When did you start working with this program? And have you seen? Give me an example of how it's really benefited somebody. Yeah. Well, we use it with our own employees. So in our company. How many employees do you have? We got a little over 20. I think 23 employees. Okay, good. Good size. Yeah. And so we put this program into place. And I can tell you one of our employees, we use this example in our slide deck. And he put it into place. We pay. You have to have medical insurance as a part of this. So that's an important aspect. So the company has to offer medical insurance. Yes. Or MEC equivalent. Okay. Effective coverage. Yep. But our employee in particular had no previous deductions, joined the team. And he was able to buy eight new benefits, short-term disability, long-term disability, life insurance, cancer, critical illness, gap plan. I like to talk about the gap plan, too, because that's a really big benefit.

08:39 So he bought eight new benefits. And in the end, his pay went up $4. So he got a lot of new benefits, and he got $4 more. Yeah. I mean, he's mid-20s, so he was a little cheaper on some of the benefits. But still, it afforded him the opportunity to buy benefits without any reduction in net pay. Let's talk about the gap plan. This is the one I think is really interesting. One, we get the most excitement over, because usually when we're talking to a company, we're talking to HR, we're talking to decision makers, but maybe not the owner that cares about the bottom line. They don't necessarily profit from that. And so when you put benefits into place, they're used to having that medical. We talked about the problem with increasing deductibles, right? We've seen that happen. Employers have had to do that to kind of keep the premiums somewhat level over the years. It's a give and take. Absolutely. And unfortunately, right? Unfortunately. And so the employees are struggling there. You're like one of these balloons you see, the hot air balloons.

09:26 You have to keep throwing sandbags over, except the sandbags are the important aspects of your company. Just to stay afloat. Right. And then we don't want to do that. So there's ways where you can keep the sandbags and keep afloat at the same time. Absolutely. Because we've seen things like HSAs come into play with these high deductible plans. Correct. Having to pay full amount going in. So yeah, with the gap plan, it's really nice because similar to most people have this on their car when they buy a new car. If you have a $5,000 deductible, you can reduce that to $100,000, $500,000. There's a number of different options there. Where if I've got four kids, I've had similar incidents. Nothing is serious, luckily, but we've had our breaks and falls and things. Thomas has four kids, too. Oh, yeah. That's sad. You've got something to look forward to, Thomas. Knock on wood. Yeah. And so walking into an emergency room, it's a couple grand out of pocket. Yeah. And as we know, I mean, we read all the stories.

10:12 Most Americans don't have that sitting around just waiting for it. You need an emergency account, and most people don't have that yet. Yeah. So this is a way to fill the gap in, I guess, right? Yeah, absolutely. Gap insurance that instead of that $5,000, it might be $500,000. It might be $100. It might be $0, depending on what the company chooses to do. And that's one that we see everyone kind of get excited about, and that's a missing benefit. I think it's a nice benefit to add because it's not super cheap, usually $50, $60 an employee. But here we pay for it out of that net savings, and it's not something to come out of their pocket. So it's a really nice benefit to have just in case. It's a great benefit as an employer to offer your employees because it's something they probably aren't getting anywhere else. Right. And in this case, the employer kind of looks like a hero, too, in that they're putting this into place, giving their employees this ability to have these programs to choose from them, not reduce their net pay. So in today's climate, it acts as a retention tool as well for employers.

10:59 So, yeah, it's a really unique program. Is there a maximum number of employees you can have to qualify for this plan? No. Bring them all. Okay. Yeah, that's good. So the more, the merrier. Yeah. The minimum is five, and the maximum is whatever. Yep. Yep, absolutely. It makes a lot of sense. What's the biggest company you've set up on this? Man, thousands. We're working on a franchise right now that will be probably over 500 franchises coming in. So, yeah, you start adding all those employees. Do you guys help with the enrollment to make sure it's seamless for the company owner? Yeah, absolutely. That's the biggest piece to this is education. We make sure we educate the employees because there's a couple components. Dealing with taxes always, you want to make sure everyone's educated. Absolutely. So that's a big part of it. So, yeah, enrollment. We work with enrollment teams, firms, technology. That all backs that up. Well, I wish we had more time, but we're coming up against a hard break. But, Thomas, tell folks if you're a business owner and you've got five or more employees, you really need to hear about this because it's a net out of cost of zero for you,

11:46 and it really maximizes benefits for your employees. Thomas, tell folks I think you can get more information on this. All you have to do is call 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. You can also text that special keyword, TAX, to 600-700. That's TAX to 600-700. Coach P Radio. Information provided is for illustrative purposes only and does not constitute investment, tax, or legal advice. Information has been obtained from sources that are deemed to be reliable, but their accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed. Neither Peter J. Deruta or his guests are liable for the usage of information discussed. Always consult with a qualified investment, legal, or tax professional before taking any action. Annuity guarantees are based solely on the financial strength and claims paying ability of the issuing company.

12:36 Individuals should thoroughly review the contract for specific details of the product features and costs. Income payments and withdrawals from deferred annuities are generally taxable as ordinary income in the year they are taken.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Welcome into the Financial Safari. Consumer Advocate Thomas Lipscomb in studio alongside best-selling author Coach Pete D’Arruda. Coach, got a couple of special guests in the house don't we? Got a couple of retirement masters out here. We got Mr. Ray Lucia who's a retired financial consultant and with retired master. Ray welcome in. Well thanks to you I am now in your beautiful studios and it is pretty darn nice. Yeah and we

00:46 have Mady Amini who's with he's CEO of United Legacy. Welcome in. He does a lot of real estate. He does capital markets and alternative investments. Thank you Coach. Yeah. Pleasure being here. Good to see you guys. Absolutely. Thank you for having us. Both of these guys, Thomas, from San Diego area in California. So really nice area. I visit them every now and then and I really enjoy myself when I'm there. It's nice to be here with you. I knew you back when you had hair. Where'd it go? We had the great hair migration. It moved from the top to the sides now. I've got a beard instead of a head hair. So it's a fast-moving money world so I thought I'd have you guys on today just to go over some things. I mean there's so many different places people turn for their advice and they put their money in places they shouldn't many times. Ray we've seen over the years so many

01:32 mistakes people make with money. No question as you know I've retired several years now. Right. But I still stay pretty close to the industry. I do some mentoring as you well know and some training and so forth. And what I've found most often is advisors getting it wrong and it's frustrating and a little bit depressing. But for the most part they have good intention, Coach. Yep. But unfortunately they haven't kept pace with the times. We see that right there today especially when the interest rate environment is going crazy. A lot of advisors are still giving advice based on interest rates being under one. Well you know the bond market was pretty crazy itself last year. And anybody that was involved in bonds and there's trillions of dollars out there. And they're

02:21 looking for alternatives but don't know where to turn. There's a lot of financial contamination as far as the information out there too. You hear something and then now all that becomes you hear it from a couple people and it becomes fact in your mind. But it could be two people saying the wrong thing and they heard it from the wrong place. So how do you really know fact from fiction these days? Well that's a really good point. I don't want to be sacrilegious here but those of us and I've been in the business and was in the business for 40 years plus. And a successful radio show too. Don't give yourself, don't short sell yourself. Well yeah don't short, don't short side me. It was radio and television. That's right. Just like you. You're my idol now. I'm like you with hair. Well your hair is perfectly combed by the way. Yeah I gotta work hard. So is yours. I see one of them.

03:09 Comb my beard here. No no but my point is that we've been taught in this industry and you go back a long ways too. We've been taught that modern portfolio theory is the way to go. You know you draw a big pie chart and you got small cap, large cap, domestic, international, all that stuff. Right. And then you rebalance the portfolios every year and you do a target date fund. And based on like now the last few decades of research most of that is really not cool anymore. It's just not the right thing to do because by the time you pay for the advisory fee, by the time you pay for the management fees, you could have just bought a simple index fund and done better than most money managers. Now what about a money manager who's charging a fee and they put you an index fund? Well I mean

03:57 does that make sense? Talk about sacrilegious and I used to discuss this all the time on my show and I've certainly advised many and I've written about it too. You and I have co-authored some things together in the past and I've written about the fact that an advisor that does that is just a lazy advisor because a client could do the same thing themselves. But there are ways and there are several different ways I can go through a couple if you want. Sure. That individuals can in fact beat the market by themselves. But as you also know I've written a whole booklet on the value a financial advisor brings to the table. And with not only there's a Vanguard study which is interesting because they invented the index fund. But they even wrote I think it was back in 2000 when they first came out

04:48 with their advisor alpha thing. I think that's what they call it now. That said an advisor that does their clients right by you know behavioral coaching and all the different criteria can add three percent net of fees to the ultimate return to their clients. And so I used to when I advised and did my consulting with advisors I would say you know what don't spend so much time talking about how you're going to pick better stocks because you're not. Right. I mean there are a few really good stock pickers. I know a couple you know a couple. But where you're going to make your money for the client where they're going to make their money is in the way you handle their portfolio. The way they handle your behavior.

05:36 The way they handle timing out what you do with your stocks. Your bonds. Your safe money. Your risky money. Yeah and getting into risk. Now you you've we were talking about this earlier. A lot of people think risk equals volatility. That's that's not true is it? No it's it's not true but that's the whole concept of modern portfolio theory. The way it was sold. Harry Markowitz by the way I had him on my show. He was he died six or eight months ago. Many years ago. I had lunch with he and his wife. Fantastic guy. But you know he was an institutional guy. And and what he did is he created this thing called asset allocation. Go figure. And that was back in 1952. I think that was like three years before Steve Jobs was born. So so the fact is nowadays you got AI you got all kinds of technology. Right. You don't need

06:25 to to manage portfolios for its volatility. You manage it for its risk. And the fact is when you start taking income from a portfolio that's where volatility becomes risk because risk is defined as loss of principle. Volatility is a temporary situation where share prices go down over a 10 15 20 30 year period. Stocks go up in general and they're not risky. They're actually safer than bonds. And a friend of mine and yours Dr. Wade Fowle has talked about this when he wrote that article. I don't know when it was a few years back. But he said why bonds don't belong in your portfolio. And what he's alluding to is the fact that if you can hold on to your stocks long term enough

07:16 and you have other assets from which to draw your income then stocks are less risky than bonds. By the way Peter Lynch also said something similar to that in his book beating the street. I remember reading that back in 1994. That tells you how old I am. Yeah Peter Lynch. Great guy. He's found a fidelity. Yeah very very smart man. Thomas let's make sure people have a way to contact us. If you're wondering about the volatility in your portfolio. If you want to make sure you have a total plan put together for retirement. This is your chance to get Coach Pete's power plan right now which is 22 step total retirement plan all mapped out for you in writing to help you diagram where you are right now. But more importantly where you could be by making the right choices. Analyze what you have right now. Make sure you don't have too many what we call financial termites. Too much risk fees and commission in

08:04 that portfolio. And you really need that financial fill-up strategy. That check delivered every single year for the rest of your life. Thomas tell people how they can do that. All right folks that number 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. You can also text keyword plan to 600-700. Plan to 600-700. There's just a lot of confusion out there in the money world Ray. A lot of people don't know if they're doing the right thing and they don't know if they're getting the right information from the right person to do the right thing. Yeah unfortunately there's a lot of misinformation and you know fortunately there are shows like this as well where you can get the right scoop and hopefully help people retire in comfort and safety. Thomas I gave Ray an advanced copy of my new book The Book on Retirement. Ah very nice. And about 300 pages. Ray read it. Ray what do you think about it? I read it

08:52 page for page. Page for page. And I thought it was excellent. I think everybody should get a copy of it whether he gives it to you for free or you buy it. I'm sure he wants you to buy it. I'm getting mine for free. I thought it was excellent. Not only did you entertain me but it's really good solid information that's spoken in a language that most of us can understand. Yeah well that's what I try and we don't want to talk down to folks we want to make sure everyone understands and remember being in class and if you didn't understand what the teacher was talking about right away you never caught up during that that period that the class period because you were still trying to figure out what the teacher was talking about to begin with. So we never wanted to leave people behind. Maybe very important to make sure that people are totally educated. Educated the right way for the

09:39 right reasons isn't it? Absolutely. Yeah. When we talk about the mortgage world you and I were talking about the mortgage world before. What's your opinion on what's going on in the mortgage world these days? Well you know a couple years ago I was telling everyone that rates were going to go up to eight percent and I think a couple weeks ago we saw the 10-year treasury break the mark of five and interest rates did get to eight percent. Right. And there is a lot of misinformation from real estate agents and mortgage brokers or mortgage banks because all they want you to do is buy a property and at an eight percent interest rate it might not be the best time to buy a property. Yeah. And so you know right now mortgage rates are high. Yeah well I mean it's and they could go higher right? I mean nobody really knows. Now your crystal ball did you bring it with you because you predicted

10:24 eight percent? What did you say a couple years ago you said that? We believe that you know the you know the 10-year treasury is going to go above five percent again and rates will get to about eight and a half. We see it slowing down I would say in the third quarter of 2024. Is that a reason why somebody should not buy a property right now? It depends on what type of property you're going to buy and where are you going to buy that property? Let's say it's a primary residence. Primary residence at you know rates over eight percent. If you look across the United States of America and look at the median income it doesn't support eight percent interest rates. Okay okay. And I would say that you know the majority of the people in America today have a five percent interest rate or better so you're not going to see them selling their home to go buy at the peak of the market at a higher rate. It's going to make

11:10 people a little less portable. Correct. When you don't want to leave that interest rate that you got like I'm at 299. I'd be crazy to sell my house now and try to go get an eight percent rate. Well you're going to see the government agencies you know do what's called an assumable loan. So I do see us launching that pretty soon where you're going to take over someone's loan. That's the only way it's going to work. Then you wish you could get a time machine and go get a lot of loans at 2.9 or two and a half and it'd make your property very easy to sell if you could sell that interest rate along with it. That's why you want the best education. You know I was telling a lot of folks when rates were at four percent I was able to get 10 million dollars on a 20 million dollar house for them and they said well 4.90 is a high rate and those individuals in Palo Alto. Hello you should have done it because now

11:57 you could invest that money and buy more properties. Yeah I mean it's it's just a confusing world. I think the main thing is to be informed make sure the education you're getting is from the right place and you're not getting led down a rabbit hole of wrong information. So verify like Ronald Reagan would always say trust but verify. So folks here's what I recommend. Let's let's clear our desks off. Let's make sure that you get that clear understanding of where you are right now but more importantly where you could be with the proper financial and income plan put the put in place as we call it the financial fill-up strategy which has that growth protection income component. Grow your money protect that growth and get income for life when you need it and for the next 10 of you who have at least 200,000 dedicated to retirement this offer is for you and our strategies do work best for those of you with over a million dollar safe retirement. Thomas tell people how they can qualify for Coach Pete's power

12:45 plan. It is very easy all you have to do is call 800-661-7383 800-661-7383 you can also text keyword plan to 600-700 that is plan to 600-700.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Hi, this is Coach Pete, and if you've got questions on how to properly structure your assets and build retirement income, you're in the right place. Welcome to the Financial Safari. Broadcasting from coast to coast, it's the Financial Safari with your host, Coach Pete DeRuta. Coach Pete and his guests are some of the nation's top financial professionals. They make it their mission to guide investors through the treacherous jungle of the financial world, showing them how to grow, keep, and leave their money for their loved ones. Coach Pete is a frequent contributor to Fox Business Network, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and many other news outlets. They come to Coach Pete for their answers, and now so can you. So stick around and find out how to make it through the jungle of the financial world on

00:48 the Financial Safari. Welcome back into the Financial Safari. consumer advocate Thomas Lipscomb here in studio alongside Coach Pete D’Arruda having a great conversation. Coach, you have a special guest on the line for us. Who do we have? Oh, one of my best buddies ever. It's Mr. Tom Hegna. He's joining us from Scottsdale, Arizona. And Tom, it's been a little while since we've been on together. And in the meantime, you've written a new book. I mean, of course, my favorite book you've written is called Don't Worry, Retire Happy, Seven Steps to Retirement Security. Let's talk about that just for a minute. How have people across the world accepted this book? Well, Don't Worry, Retire Happy. You know, that was the TV special that played on PBS and 80 Million Homes in the U.S. and

01:34 Canada. That book is really the math and science behind a successful retirement. So it's been received very well. It's got all the research of the top PhDs in the world. And so instead of using people's opinions, what I did was I used the facts and the research and the math and the science to show people how to retire the optimal way. And I told you, it was when I was talking to you about that book years ago, I remember telling Thomas in my studio, I said, you know, what Tom Hegna does is he puts math over markets and science over speculation. And that's what a lot of people are forgetting, Tom. When we're talking about getting to retirement, that's only half the battle. That's right. Because, you know, it's like when you climb a mountain, there are more deaths on the way down from the mountain than on the way up from the mountain. It's the same in retirement.

02:19 There's more tragedies once people get to retirement and run out of money or have an unplanned long term care event or something than the problems that they have saving and investing. Yeah, I remember watching your special on PBS and I mean, millions of people saw that. And I think a lot of people took some of the concepts you were mentioning and applied them. And and now they're going to have a happier retirement because some of the money they have now is isolated from market events. Yeah. And I mean, you know, everybody thinks retirement's about having this big pile of money. It's not really true. It's about having increasing income. And I would add increasing tax free income if you can. And then managing risk. You know, what happens if the market crashes? What happens if you live a long time? What happens if inflation continues? What happens when they raise your taxes? And notice I didn't say if what's going to happen when they raise your taxes.

03:07 And and so that's what a good retirement plan. It anticipates all those negative possible events and then protects the wealth from those events. It's a whole lot better to withstand a negative event in the market when all your money isn't exposed to the market. Correct or not? Incorrect. That is correct. Yeah. I mean, and when I know it sounds simplistic, but Tom, over my 31 years in the financial arena, I've seen way too many people with all their money exposed to some kind of risk, whether it be interest rate risk or market risk or we talk about, well, interest rate risk is owning real estate. I mean, if interest rates keep going up, the market of the pool of people for you to sell your house to is shrinking because rates are high and it costs thousands of dollars more a year to own the same house you could have owned two or three years ago.

03:53 Plus, look at all the banks that failed earlier this year. And it wasn't because they held bad investments. They held the safest investment in the world, U.S. government bonds. The problem is they bought the bonds when they were 1% and then when interest rates went to 5%, those bonds had gone down 80% in value and they're the world's safest investment, but they were down 80% and those banks failed. You know, we all know, and in the financial world we know this, when interest rates go up, bond prices go down. So let me ask you this, Tom, what were the people in the banks thinking when they were piling money into bonds at 1%? Well, they shouldn't have been, you know, because the risk was, and I mean, the Federal Reserve said we're raising interest rates, so I'm going to raise them a lot. So it's not like, oh, surprise, surprise. I don't understand why they subjected themselves to that interest rate risk.

04:40 Now, let's be clear. If they hold those bonds through maturity, they get all the money back. But the problem is in between now and maturity, those bonds can go down like they did, you know, 70%, 80%, and then if people walk in the bank and say, hey, I want my money, they didn't have the money to give them their money back. Yeah. Let's say you needed the money now. You don't have 10, 20 years to wait for maturity. No. You know, that's the problem. And we talk about that kind of risk. That's a big risk that people forget a lot of times. But then the market risk, but I mean, the real estate risk, inflation, what about inflation? I mean, we keep hearing it's pretty funny when they come out with the monthly numbers and they say, hey, it's a, we're only, inflation's only at 3% this month. Well, that's 3% higher than it was last month. We need negative inflation to get back to where we used to be. Right. And look at gas prices up 40, 50%, you know, food prices up 20, 30%.

05:27 At least. I mean, everything has got up. It's, it's, I just laughed the other day. I went to Starbucks. I got a large iced tea, black iced tea, $4.49. And I just laughed. All it is, is water in the teabag. Wow. There's two cents worth of stuff in there and $4.49. It's crazy. You could go to Walmart, get a hundred pack of Tetley or Lipton tea for about $4. And you could have made, uh, how many gallons of tea? Yeah. It's crazy. We're paying for convenience these days, but we're overpaying for things we shouldn't be overpaying for. And inflation is a silent killer, just like high blood pressure. That's right. I factor that in because I had a little high blood pressure, but I'm back under control with a little medication. I'm happy about that. There you go. Yeah. Everybody hears about my health issues here. We could tie it into the market and the heartbeat is a good thing to keep low too. So that's why we, we want a proper balance in the financial world.

06:15 But my heartbeat would increase Thomas, it would, Tom and Thomas, both of you guys, my heartbeat would increase if I became a millionaire and you wrote a book, Tom, since we've talked to asked it's Tom Hageness, who wants to be a millionaire. And that's what we have you on today. Want to talk a little bit about this book. What inspired you to write it? Well, here's the deal. I've spent my whole time writing books for baby boomers. I've written five books on retirement. This was the first time I did one for generation XYZ and millennials. You know, I have four kids ranging from age 21 to age 39. And these are the things that I've taught my kids on how to build wealth. And all four of my kids are, are very successful so far, you know, and doing great things. So I said, I want to build, I want to write a book for younger people because I believe

07:01 almost all Americans can become millionaires if they want to be. And that's what I put in this book. I'm generation X. So I appreciate you calling me a young person. 1966. So I'm almost a baby boomer. And there you go. Here's what they say about Jen. It's fun to look at what they say about our groups, right? So they say generation X are skeptical, but big believers when they find something that is, that is backed up by science and math. And so I think that's why I like you so much, Tom, because, because you back everything you say up with science and math, no guesses, no gimmicks, no theosaurus words that no one understands, no re-imagining. It's just the facts. Sort of like they used to say on Dragnet. That's why I like Dragnet back in the day. Yeah. Let's talk about good. I like to keep things simple because I think simple, you know, is effective. And when it's complicated, it gets confusing and people just lose interest.

07:49 Yeah. Lose interest or trust. I mean, if you don't, if you can't understand something, the trust level is not there too. So understanding things very important. Let's talk about the first chapter, help people become millionaires. What, what, what's this chapter about? Well, what's, what's interesting, um, coaches, you know, when I was an advisor 30 years ago, the ETFs didn't even exist. I couldn't illustrate mutual funds. I couldn't illustrate stocks and bonds. There was one product at the time I could illustrate and that was life insurance. And so what, what, what I would do is if I went to one of my kids' ball games or I went to a, you know, a party and somebody said, so what do you do? I didn't say, well, I'm a life insurance agent or I'm a financial advisor. What I said is I help people become millionaires. You tell me how many million you want and I'll show you what you need to do to get there. And people would be interested in that. They say, well, all right, well, show me what I'd have to do to be a millionaire.

08:36 And then I would run a life insurance illustration and solve for a million dollars cash value at their age 65. Now, I don't think everybody should put all their money in life insurance, but it was the only product I got to illustrate. And I use an example in the book, a 25 year old female, if she puts away $7,700 a year at age 65, she's going to have a million dollars in her life insurance policy. So that was step one. But then I'd take them over to a time value of money calculator. And I'd say, look, if you could get 6% a year, you'd only have to put away about 500 bucks a month away and you'll be a millionaire at 65. If you could get 9%, you'd have to put away about $250 a month. If you could get 12%, you only have to put away a hundred bucks a month. Well, all of a sudden people can see that it's possible for them to have a million dollars.

09:23 See, most people think, oh, that's pie in the sky. I could never do it. And they'll never do it because they don't think it's possible. But when they can see it, then they can believe it. And that's when they can achieve it. Zig Ziglar said all that kind of stuff. So you got to see it and believe it to achieve it. It's the same with financial stuff. And then I was no longer considered a salesperson. I was on their wealth building team. I was part of their team and I was going to help them become wealthy. And that's how I started. Well, you know, when you look at a million dollars, it's still a good deal. If you win a million dollars, like in the lottery or Survivor, Survivor gives a million dollars away to the winner. But they've been giving a million dollars away for the last 20 years to the winner. Don't you think the people who won right at the beginning, that prize was more valuable. That million dollars was worth a whole lot more 20 years ago than it is today, isn't

10:10 it? Yeah. And I get a lot of people say, Tom, a million dollars isn't enough for a millennial. And I say, OK, I understand that. I might even agree with that. But I will tell you this. The first million is the hardest. And you know that as well, Pete. The first million is the hardest. And after the first million, the second, third and fourth can come easier and quicker. Anyone who says a million isn't much, I mean, I'd rather have a million than not have a million, right? It's a building block. It's building. And a million can last a long time if it's used properly. Yes. I mean, we've built plans with a million dollars for lifetime income that people have increasing income. They never worry again. And the problem is a lot of times we've met these same people. They were working and they were still working and they didn't think they would be able to retire with the income they wanted in the Wall Street model. But taking it and putting it in the safe money model with a lifetime income, the growth protection income type accounts, now the riddle is solved.

10:57 And so it's not just about what kind of money you have. It's where you have it. That's right. And so you're talking about that too. And it's also not trying to get intimidated because when we have no money or not much money, when you have somebody saying, well, all you have to do is start saving this amount of money. And by you're 25 now, and at 65, you're going to be a millionaire. It's still hard to, number one, it's hard to trust anybody. Number two, it's hard to believe you really can be a millionaire, but it's all about time, value, money, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you talked about it hard. Things are hard. It's hard to say. In my conclusion, here's what I say. I say marriage is hard. Divorce is hard. Choose your hard. Obesity is hard. Being physically fit is hard. Choose your hard. Being in debt is hard. Being financially disciplined is hard.

11:44 Choose your hard. And so we all have to choose our hard. Yeah. I mean, that's a good way to look at it, too, because nothing's easy. And actually, if it is easy, you're not going to appreciate it anyway. I mean, you look at some people that inherited a lot of money and they blow it within the first couple of years. Lottery winner is a good example of that. Some people win the lottery and then years later, they're poorer than they are. Then at that time, they're poorer in the future than they were before they won the lottery. And I also put in the book that there was a study on Canadian lottery winners. The neighbors of Canadian lottery winners went bankrupt at a much higher rate than normal people. And so what happened is the lottery winner moves in and they start buying new cars and going on trips. And then, you know, you have to buy that new car and go on that trip. And people go bankrupt when they live next door to a lottery winner. We call that keeping up with the Joneses.

12:31 That's right. The funny thing is I had a neighbor say their name was Joneses. They were the Jones family. They've moved now, so I've stopped spending money. Just joking. So, folks, we're talking to Tom Hegna. And he's the author of several books. He also had a PBS special, Don't Worry, Retire Happy. My favorite book that he's ever written is Don't Worry, Retire Happy. Available anywhere fine books are sold. But also, he's got a brand new book called Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? And when we come back after the break, we're going to delve into this and find out the simple tools and techniques that get you where you want to be. And speaking of getting you where you want to be, if you'd like Coach Pete's Power Plan, which is a 22-step total retirement plan, the next 10 of you who call, we'll give it to you at no cost or obligation if you call right now. 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. You can also connect with the team here at Capital Financial by texting keyword PLAN to

13:19 600-700. PLAN to 600-700. Coach Pete Radio. Information provided is for illustrative purposes only and does not constitute investment, tax, or legal advice. Information has been obtained from sources that are deemed to be reliable, but their accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed. Neither Peter J. Deruta or his guests are liable for the usage of information discussed. Always consult with a qualified investment, legal, or tax professional before taking any action. Annuity guarantees are based solely on the financial strength and claims paying ability of the issuing company. Individuals should thoroughly review the contract for specific details of the product features and costs. Income payments and withdrawals from deferred annuities are generally taxable as ordinary income in the year they are taken. Income payments and withdrawals from deferred annuities are generally taxable as ordinary income

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week, I talk to very interesting people. And the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me, that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned, folks, and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Listen. And welcome back into the Financial Safari. Consumer Advocate Thomas Lipscomb here once again, alongside America's Wealth, Financial, and Income Coach, bestselling author, Coach Pete D’Arruda, as well on the line, I was going to say in studio with us, as well on the line is Mr. Phil Graham. Phil, you're so inspiring. It feels like you're sitting right here with us. And I've been to the studio multiple times. Yes, you have. Yes. Where are you joining us from? I'm visually picturing myself there right now.

00:46 Where are you at right now? I am sitting at my desk in Lake Norman. Let's talk to somebody if they're asking themselves this question, maybe they've asked some friends, how much risk can I afford? So, Phil, let's say somebody's 55 years old right now, and they're asking themselves, how much risk can they afford? What kind of answer would you give them? Coach, I remember one time I asked a lady, she was in her 80s, she was retired, and she had a bunch of money in the market. And I was like, Mrs. Jones, if you doubled your money tomorrow, would you change your lifestyle? She was like, well, no, Phil, I've lived within my means, and I'm happy. Maybe I'd take an extra cruise or do something special with the grandkids, but no, I wouldn't change my life. And I remember going, well, Mrs. Jones, if you lost half your money tomorrow,

01:33 would you change your lifestyle? Oh, by all means, Phil, I would definitely change because I'd be scared to death. That's thought-provoking when you think about it. Then why is your money set up like you're trying and hoping and praying to double it, but putting it completely at risk? When you're telling me you already have enough, we need to be more concerned about not losing it, but still getting a competitive rate of return. Correct. Well, then the next question is, what types of risk are there? When we talk about risk, it's not just stock market risk, is it? There's inflation risk, which was kind of off everybody's radar for the last 10 years, and it came back with a vengeance, thanks, Biden.

02:20 And there's tax risk. I can guarantee you, well, we already know taxes are going to go up next year. Looking forward to that. They're going to have to continue to go up, because who's going to pay for this billions and billions of spending that we're doing? Every time you give money away, when you hear the government doing it, there's no such thing as government. It's us, the people. Without us, the government has zero. Zero dollars. And I love asking people, who's going to pay it? And people a lot of times will go, oh, the Americans. I'm like, ah, no, wrong answer. We're the Americans. The right answer is taxpayers. Yeah, well, that's right. Only 50% of Americans approximately actually pay income tax. Yeah. But yet everyone can vote, and they can vote for politicians who say they'll raise taxes. Yeah, because they don't care.

03:06 They want the free stuff. Well, they love it, because if I'm not paying taxes, I'm going to vote for the guy who says he's going to give me more stuff, because it doesn't matter to me. You're going to take the money from the guys paying taxes. So we got- Doesn't make any sense. We got market volatility. We got inflation. We have taxes. Those are- We have healthcare expenses are going up and up and up, partly because we're living longer, which is a good thing, but it causes a lot in healthcare. Luckily, down here in the South, we pay much less. Coach, you and I have some friends up in the Northeast. They're paying over $200,000 a year today for nursing home care. Wow. Well, that'll burn through a million dollars really quick at $200,000 a year. Well, nursing home, big thing too. Now, the traditional long-term care policies is not the only way to make sure you're covered for nursing homes, correct?

03:53 You know, there's a lot of new options, like the traditional monthly or annual payment where you buy long-term care. Yep. Those have kind of gone away. The insurance companies had to keep raising rates, and it just became unattractive. Didn't make any sense to have a policy like that if you really didn't know what you had. If they could keep raising the fees or the cost for it, and also lowering your benefits as a trade-off for lowering your premiums, that wasn't a real policy in my opinion. I've never offered one because I didn't like the fine print. You know, I've done a lot of work in the last few years with what we call asset-based long-term care where- Me too. You know, for example, if you had $200,000 that we allocated to this account, it's still going to earn interest. But if you needed that money for long-term care, they might give you a 5X or a 2X, depending on your age when you bought it.

04:42 You get a multiplier where you're leveraging that, and all the benefits are tax-free because it's for long-term care. So it's a way that you're kind of self-insuring, but you're getting a multiple on your dollars, specifically for long-term care. It's something we look at and need to address because I can tell you, you don't want Medicaid to be the answer. If you have money, becoming a ward of the state and being stuck in a Medicaid bed when you have money is not what you want to try to figure out. You want to kind of plan ahead for this potential expense in the future. Yeah, you don't want to become a ward of the state, they call that there. Also, life insurance, some of the new life insurance policies will enable you to use the death benefit while you're still living to pay for your long-term care.

05:31 That makes a whole lot of sense. Tax-free too, by the way. You know, life insurance is such a really unique tool that sometimes people turn their nose up because they're, you know, maybe from the, you know, the old policies from the 80s or variable life or something, they just have a bad taste. But what's very interesting is a lot of the banks, I'm not talking about bank employees, I'm talking about the banks themselves, heavily put money into life insurance policies. It's called a BOLI, a bank-owned life insurance. For that leverage, the wealthiest families in America use life insurance, not necessarily for the death benefit, which is just an added benefit, but for the ability to take withdrawals potentially tax-free.

06:20 We all think about Roth IRAs, but there's limitations and all these different things, but some cash value life insurance policies can come out tax-free. And then you add what, Coach, what you're talking about on there, the ability to access the death benefit while you're still alive. Beautiful. For either, you know, critical illness or long-term care, home health care, it's an amazing tool that for some people could be a possible solution to solve multiple problems. Well, it's spectacular because if you pass away, there's a big death benefit. If you don't pass away, you can use the death benefit to pay for what you want. But even after the, like, let's say you're only a couple years in, you have probably paid any money in there, and now you're taking hundreds of thousands of dollars out a year of money you never put in to begin with out of the death benefit to pay for your long-term care, and you do it all tax-free.

07:12 I mean, it's a bonus plan. If one of the plans, Coach, has return of premium, meaning you can get your money back, so it's like the only three things that could possibly happen, you're covered. If you change your mind, you get your money back. If you die, your family gets the tax-free death benefit. If you go, if you need home health care, assistance living in a nursing home, you get access to the death benefit for that. So literally, like the three things that can happen to you in your lifetime, there's a 100% chance one of those three things could happen. The tool works for that. We don't want the death to happen ever, but it happens. So we want to make sure we're compensated and our family doesn't have to change zip codes because a lot of people who don't have life insurance or don't have money put aside, and they're the breadwinner of the family. When they pass away, the bank doesn't care. I mean, they need that payment or they're kicking you out of the house. The tax man doesn't care either, by the way.

07:57 They need the payment or they're auctioning your house. And by the way, you never – and we're talking about risks, the types of risks to begin this segment, and that's where we still are in this conversation. One of the risks that people never talk about is real estate. Is real estate guaranteed to go up? Man, I just watched a video the other day, Coach, on these Airbnbs and VRBOs that so many people bought the last couple years because they wanted passive income. Right. And literally this summer, they've gone from 80% occupancy to zero. Wow. And they're sitting on these half million, million dollar mortgages that they bought at the top of the market. I think there's going to be a flood of houses coming back on the market that's going to drop prices, even with interest rates being high. And if we see interest rates tick back down, I think we're going to see prices drop again.

08:45 Yeah. Well, the taxes are – It's not permanent. That's true. You owe tax on the real estate every single year. So even if you pay your house down to zero and you say, I'm fine, you still are not what we call tax-free. So you can't get on the TV or the radio and scream, I'm tax-free because you're never tax-free if you own real estate because they're going to tax you. And then we talked about it. The commissioners, county commissioners, and the city commissioners get together every year and decide how much is going to increase or keep the same your real estate taxes. We've had three tax increases on our property here in the last five years for a total of over 30%. See, they only tell you 10% of the time. And guess what? We don't have that many new people moving to town. So it's not like the cost of the city is going up. Well, you see what they spend to build a new school these days. I think my school probably cost $100,000 total.

09:31 It was a cinder block building back then. And now they're building – they built one down the road here in Wake County for $98 million the other day. And they probably already have trailers outside because it's not big enough. You know, back in the day, we had like one or two of those carts they would wheel through to school. It had the projector on there. Yeah, the AV cart. When that came into the classroom, you knew you were going to have a good day. Or substitute teacher. Either one was good. But nowadays, every single room has built-in everything, built-in TV, not even VCRs anymore, built-in streaming, all this kind of stuff. So that's fine. I'm glad the kids are getting that. But who's giving it to them is anyone who owns any property. If you own a car or a house or a boat or anything like that. Even if you don't have kids or grandkids in the area. They don't care about that. I mean, you're going to get taxed. So you need to make sure your money is in the most tax-efficient manner, the places it can be, and try to reduce taxes.

10:17 But what I'm just saying, when people think that real estate has no risk, it can go down in value. And also, you owe tax on that real estate every single year. And what we're seeing, unfortunately, is that tax increases with a double whammy. Because the value is going up with the real estate, and the tax rate goes up at the same time. So not only is it – it's fun to look at your value go up until you realize you've got to pay taxes on that new value. And also, they realize the county commissioners just met, and they increased the tax rate. So that's a double whammy, and no one's happy with that. But again, nothing wrong with real estate. It doesn't go away. But not all your money should be there. And real estate's not going to give you a lifetime income. Well, and Coach, I think the key point takeaway is it's not risk-free. Right. There is risk involved. And you may love it, and it may be a tangible asset, and those are all great things. But it's not risk-free. Just know the risk of what you're in, and also know the risk of not having a true plan.

11:05 And that's why we talk over and over again about the power of having a Coach Pete's power plan, which is what we call the total retirement plan. 22 steps behind the scenes, encompassing everything from Social Security, long-term care, taxes, taxation, real estate, all the things you have, and we categorize things for you to make it easy to understand where you are right now. Then we figure out with you and your family, or you, if you don't like your family to know, if you're going in the right direction or not. Some guys don't want their family to know anything. Right. So that's okay. One guy said, Coach, the reason I fly first class all the time is because if I don't, my daughters and sons will when I pass away. So you need to make sure that the number one person or persons you and your spouse are taken care of. But then you also need to make sure that if something goes wrong with your lives, or if you're not here anymore, your next of kin is also taken care of. So we do all that in the Coach Pete's power plan. And we've also got a goodie bag of all the things we've talked about today,

11:53 a grab bag of three books, a box set, and the fee and risk worksheet, and also the fee worksheet. We're going to give all that and a plan, a golden ticket for your very own total retirement plan for the next 10 of you who call right now with at least $200,000 dedicated to retirement. We've seen others charge over $1,000 for this, but as long as you have at least $200,000 dedicated to retirement, this offers for you. And our strategies work very, very well for those of you with over a million dollars dedicated to retirement. Thomas, tell them how to do that. Sure. Just call 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. Or text keyword PLAN to 600-700. PLAN to 600-700. 200-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800-800

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week, I talk to very interesting people. And the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me, that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned, folks, and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Listen. Welcome back into the Financial Safari. Consumer advocate Thomas Lipscomb here in studio alongside bestselling author, Coach Pete D’Arruda. Also on the line, we have Phil Graham, special guest. For 25 years, he's been working with folks around the country, helping them develop proper retirement plans for today's retirees. Phil, earlier you mentioned the acronym HIT, things that can affect our retirement planning. And you mentioned healthcare, income, and taxes.

00:46 And I started thinking a little bit about vehicles, about how you can have these little things like a spoiler that can help the vehicle's efficiency, even though it may not be necessarily the engine or a big piece of the vehicle that one would typically think about. You look at the electric cars today, they're covering all of their wheels up with the slick wheel covers to reduce that air resistance. Something though that I wanted to kind of twist this around and just say, what else do we need to be looking at? What are some other smaller pieces to the puzzle that people may be ignoring, but shouldn't be? I mean, I feel like so many people are looking for the big fix, like the one thing that's just going to change retirement. That's right. And for me, again, 25 years, we've helped protect over $22 billion over that time. It's looking for a lot of little adjustments we can make that add up to big success

01:36 in retirement. And so, you know, taxes is a big thing. Now, on the surface, taxes is like, well, I hate paying taxes. I mean, your justice learned hand said, it's not your patriotic duty to pay the maximum amount of taxes. You should only pay the minimum required by law. But not having a plan means you're paying the maximum. So you're paying the maximum. Well, here's where taxes really get important. We talk about IRA money and 401k money, which is fully taxable. Well, that can affect your Medicare Part B premiums. Because guess what? Uncle Sam goes, oh, you got more taxable income. We're going to charge you more. Your taxable income can affect the tax rate on your social security.

02:28 What? You mean, because I take more money out to live, you're going to whack my social security with more tax? Hey, wasn't social security a tax to begin with? So you're taxing a tax. Exactly. And so when we're doing our planning, we talk about having a tax strategy. And tax strategy is called planning ahead. It's not just filing your taxes April 15th and paying the bill and going, oh man, I wish I had some more deductions. It's having a true strategy on where we're strategically going to pull income from and win in order to pay the least amount of taxes. Because not only will that put more money net spendable dollars in your pocket, it can reduce your Medicare Part B premiums.

03:17 It can increase the amount of social security you get because it's being taxed less. And it never reduced your spendable income. We just strategically took it from the right accounts in the right years from the right places as part of our strategy, which is different for every person. Yeah. It's a lot different. Those little reductions or eliminations of taxes can make mean big dollars in your pocket. Well, it's a lot different than just picking out a financial product. That's not what financial planning is. I mean, a lot of people are under the misconception that it's all we do here. We just get a little grab bag out and pull a financial product out. This is a good fit. No, we need to see what's going on, what you need to do, what you want to do all the way through retirement. Then go find the strategies, not products, strategies that fit you and your family.

04:05 Then after the strategies have been double checked and they work for what we're trying to do for you and your family, then and only then do we go out and find the products that match the strategies. And that's very important. It's not find a person who meets as a product. That's what Wall Street is. Find a person, sell them stocks, bonds, mutual funds. No, this is find the strategies for the right person and then make sure they agree with that strategy. Then you find the products that exist because there's a lot of financial products. Most of them aren't the right fit. Well, Coach, what I've always been impressed about your team is that they really make sure that the clients understand the strategy and the plan. They're not talking over people's heads speaking in Latin. They're really making sure that, hey, are we all on the same page? Do you understand what the strategy is, why this works? And that's why it has so much success because

04:56 everybody's bought in. Everybody understands this is what we're doing. This is where we're going and why. And that gets me excited. Well, you know, Phil, I have the opportunity of being able to work here at Capital Financial, and I love seeing couples who walk in the building. You know, they may look a little nervous that, you know, you've got, especially for the first meeting, you might have your file folder with things inside of it. And I love watching oftentimes those same couples walking out with a big smile on their face, walking with confidence, their shoulders a little bit further back in the air. And Coach, I know this is something you want to provide for folks. So folks out there listening, if you have questions about what we're talking about and you want to take advantage of one of those complimentary consultations, 800-661-7383 is the number to call. 800-661-7383. You can also text keyword plan to 600-700. Once again, we're here with bestselling author, Coach Pete D’Arruda,

05:45 as well as Phil Graham. I'm going to bring us back into the conversation with a quote from Will Rogers. Be thankful we're not getting all the government that we're paying for. We're paying way too much. I like it when they don't get, when they're not in DC, they're all on vacation. That's better for us. We have a vacation too. Didn't Will Rogers have one of my other favorite quotes? I'm more concerned about the return of my money than the return on my money. There you go. Which is similar to what Warren Buffett says. He says, the number two rules of investing is number one, don't lose money. Number two, see number one. So here's one thing. Thomas, you mentioned that too. A lot of people have their information, their financial information scattered all over the living room or it's in the dining room, or maybe it's in an office in a file cabinet. In a shoebox. A shoebox. Maybe you haven't opened the envelopes. We have people come in with all sorts of different ways they've kept track or not kept track of their money. What we recommend is they

06:31 dump it all out in our eight foot conference table. Then we help you divide it in different sections. Then we'll use one of our financial organizers that we let you leave with. It's got 25 different sections in it where we can help you categorize where your money is right now. And it makes it a whole lot easier than when you get the new statements to open up the organizer at that right place and put the new statement in. A whole lot easier than having it scattered, all scattered, smothered and covered. Sort of like Waffle House to tell you. Let's unscatter your brain. Let's unscatter your financial situation. Let's get you a clear plan, concise plan, and let's make sure it has retirement autopilot so you'll never have confusion when it comes time to getting income in retirement you can't outlive. Thomas, tell people how they can do that. Yeah. Again, 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. Or text keyword plan to 600-700.

07:18 Phil, a question for you. Let's say I'm a retiree. I'm getting ready to retire. I'm about one or two years away from that. And I ask my question to myself and my family, how do I live for 30 years on the money I've put aside? What does somebody do next? I mean, right now you're sitting there looking at your 401k statement. Maybe you put some money in the Exxon stock, let's say, or maybe you've got a Schwab account that you self-managed some money, but totally you've got about a million dollars. What do you do next to make sure you can live 30 years on that or longer on that million dollars? I mean, I think you need to start putting together a plan. I mean, I don't think this is a DIY type scenario. You don't want to bet your livelihood on doing it yourself. And my grandmother used to say, you know, they'd say spit in one hand and wish in the

08:03 other and see which one fills up first. You don't want to be wishing on your retirement. You want to have a plan. And I would want to know that at least some, if not all of my income is guaranteed in retirement, even if I live to be 120. To me, that would be my number one thing I would want to get figured out. And I beg people, don't retire and then show up at the office and go, hey guys, I just retired at 60 and they didn't have enough money. Because again, it comes back to math. We can do a lot of really amazing things, but it's still math. And that becomes part of the plan. So they need to have a plan, coach. Math over markets, man. You got to have math on your side. Markets are up and down, but math is always on your side. And math doesn't lie. You can't argue with math. Math

08:51 works. Despite what you see on social media, when somebody posts a math problem there and half the people get it wrong, and then they swear they got it right because they forgot PEMDAS. That's right. Right there. Hey, all right. So what if you live too long? I mean, that's a question people have on their mind. Now, if you have an income plan that's guaranteed to pay you for the rest of your life, that means the rest of your life, doesn't it? We're so used to these asterisks in contracts these days. Oh, well, that meant the rest of the life for your money, not your life or that kind of thing. It is really the rest of your life and your spouse's life. There are special vehicles out there that will continue to give a paycheck until there's nobody left to give the paycheck to. Is that correct? It's a hundred percent correct. And again, every plan we do is different for each family, for each person, each couple. So we may not have all the income coming from that one spot, but

09:39 I want a foundation to know that I have that paycheck coming in even when I'm not working. Yeah. Well, that's important. I mean, because we have no idea what's going to happen in the market tomorrow, much less a week or a month or a year from now or 10 years from now. I mean, it might be something new that we don't know about and it might destroy what you have. So nobody wants to have all their money at risk because if risk happens, we're in a whole lot of trouble. Yeah. My job has always been, if you get to retirement, retirement and you're not already rich and I know that's subjective, but my job has always been to make sure people don't become poor in retirement. That you don't have to be the greeter at Walmart unless you want to be the greeter at Walmart. And it all goes back to the age old problem or battle between risk and safety. And so when people hear safety, they think the money's going to not do

10:29 anything, but there are some safe accounts that actually have decent returns. The main thing about a decent return is you never have to give it back if it's in a safe place. You could be in the market and have a crappy return one year. Matter of fact, you could be down 5%. You say, don't worry, next year we'll recover. And then the next year you lose 20%. Well, now you're down a lot. And then the year after that, you lose another 20%. So in total, you're almost down 50%. It would take a hundred percent gain in the market to get back ahead of the market. And that's something people forget. Math. Everybody's least favorite four-letter word. Math over markets. And so, you know, we're really passionate about making sure everyone gets the plan they can be confident in. And we can give them a true independent analysis of their financial institutions and their financial products and strategies. And it's good to have it from someone who's totally independent. We're not beholden to any company or strategy. So we'll look at what you

11:16 have, what you want to have happen. Most of the people, I'll tell you, Phil, most of the people we talk to, they want some safety. They want to know with certainty what their income's going to be. So they get growth, protection, and lifetime income, GPI account. GPI stands for growth, protection, and lifetime income. And it really puts them in control of their own retirement. I'm just amazed how many times when people see that they actually can get a retirement they'd be happy with without putting excess money at risk, it really, you can see the light bulbs go off in people's heads saying, well, gosh, why haven't I been told about this before? And we all, we don't know why, because many times whoever's been giving them advice is motivated and compensated by keeping them at risk. So let's get the safe plan. Matter of fact, you're more at risk with a risk plan than you ever would be of not getting income than you would be in a safe plan, because we have surety and

12:02 simplicity with the safe plan. So Thomas, tell folks how they can get their very own Coach Pete's power plan today. It'll put you in control. It'll take the worry out of living in retirement. You can actually take that deep breath, that sigh, and go on vacation and not worry about what's happening in the market. I agree. Easy first step, 800-661-7383, 800-661-7383. You can also text keyword plan to 600-700. Find out how much risk you're taking. If there are any red flags or potential problems for you, get that second opinion. The number again, 800-661-7383, 800-661-7383.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Hi, this is Coach Pete, and if you've got questions on how to properly structure your assets and build retirement income, you're in the right place. Welcome to the Financial Safari. Broadcasting from coast to coast, it's the Financial Safari with your host, Coach Pete D’Arruda. Coach Pete and his guests are some of the nation's top financial professionals. They make it their mission to guide investors through the treacherous jungle of the financial world, showing them how to grow, keep, and leave their money for their loved ones. Coach Pete is a frequent contributor to Fox Business Network, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and many other news outlets. They come to Coach Pete for their answers, and now so can you. So stick around and find out

00:45 how to make it through the jungle of the financial world on the Financial Safari. Well, folks, welcome back into the Financial Safari. Fascinating conversation already here with Mr. Michael Wall from Wall Private Wealth. Michael, this is a tremendous strategy on how to save on taxes, but I think it's important that everybody realizes that this has to be done in 2022. So get on it right away. Again, the number is 800-661-7383, 800-661-7383, or text the word plan, P-O-A-N, to 600-700. That's plan to 600-700. Now, Mike, last week we talked about reducing taxes. We talked about a very special strategy. Now, before we get into this, I want to, there's somebody else on the

01:32 radio who's teasing people with this strategy, but never gives details. We're giving details because you are the one who developed this strategy, so the guy on the radio locally is basically copying you. But he doesn't do it the right way, I don't think. So we'll get it right from the horse's mouth. Okay, there we go. So how you doing, Michael? You good? I'm wonderful. Now, let's summarize what we talked about last time about how to reduce taxation, do it legally, ethically, morally. There's nothing wrong in the tax code. There's nothing wrong with reducing taxes that are allowed to reduce. If it's in the tax code, it's been used by others, and we're specifically going to talk about 170-H in the IRS code. That's what we talked about when we last visited here on the last segment of when we tied you on. But let's talk about, let's summarize what the 170-H is. Let's summarize who might qualify for this, how to go through it, and how to reduce

02:21 those taxes, because that's on everyone's mind these days. It is, Coach. And so, first off, thanks for having me on. Love connecting with you. And we've been working together on different things for, gosh, 15-plus years. Been great friendship along the way in the business and evaluating, teaching other people in the industry. We both had an opportunity to do that. It's a blessing. But yeah, when you talk about the idea of reducing taxes, it's on everybody's mind, especially the high-income earners. So when you talk about who qualifies, this is really where we kind of compartmentalize our tax-saving strategy, whether we need to save taxes on future money, which is our retirement investments, there's strategy around that, whether we need to save money in taxes on our estate planning as we transition. There's some federal rules changing in the code for 2025, so we need to prepare well for that. That's legacy in estate planning. And now, really,

03:09 what we're talking about, Coach, is the idea of reducing taxes in 2022. Yes, there's still time this year to save money in taxes in 2022. And so who this is going to qualify or connect really with is people that are high-income earners. It doesn't matter if you're a W-2 income or a 1099 income. You have your own company. You get K-1s. It doesn't really matter how it flows through. Really, we're going to see the most benefit. If you're in a place where you're making $700, $1 million, $2 million, $3 million or more, we have a lot of families that we serve that are making $3, $5, $10 million a year down here in Palm Beach or more. We just had a conversation last week with somebody making about $100 million a year. They paid $40 million last year in taxes. Wow. Their CPA, they're in Orlando, actually, that was referred to us. Whether we'll help them or not

03:55 is still that to be seen. We're having this conversation. But the bottom line is, a lot of people don't know what they want because they don't know what's available. So Section 170H is part of the IRS code that specifically gets into the conservation easement savings. Now, this is a congressional law that was passed and it's been around since 1980. It's been codified and ratified, but it's been on the system and on the books since the 80s. I got to tell you, Coach, I got a lot of connections, not only in this space, but also we have a great friend that's, I won't mention his name. He's a Trump-appointed federal tax court judge that lives in D.C. that we've been having some conversations with as well about this space. The key when you look at these structures and deals, they're conservation easements, but when you look at them, you must understand that there's good and bad of everything. So just because somebody's offering a deal

04:44 doesn't mean you should be involved. Just because it's a tax savings play doesn't mean you should get involved. You need to make sure that you look at the underwriting. The CEO of the deal that we have done consulting on is actually a 23-year veteran of the FBI. He was part of the counterterrorism division. He got into this space and it's been very, very well vetted and researched. So let me give you the 30,000-foot view, Coach, if I may, on this deal. Essentially, you've heard of the whole story, save the birds and the bees, right? Save the ground, save the ground. And that's really where this came from. The federal government realized that they did not do a good job of preserving ground. They were about $28 billion behind in taking care of the underbrush and all of the things that's necessary to preserve ground well, right, for sustainability. And so they offshooted this to

05:33 the private sector, essentially saying that if you want to preserve property, we will reward you, Section 170H of the IRS Code, by giving you a tax benefit to do it. Now, obviously, the deals that are created, there's all kinds of different deals where you might have a deal where it's involved in minerals. You might have a deal where it's involved in solar. There's a variety of different ways that these deals are structured, and that's where the research really has to come in. But that's the genesis of all of this. Now, the other thing that I will say when you look at these deals, Coach, is you got to know it's very simple actually to file because it just flows through as a Form 8283 non-cash charitable deduction, which basically means it's similar to just like if you give money

06:20 to your church or give money to an organization or a nonprofit or a charity. It just flows through as a Form 8283 non-cash charitable deduction. The only limitation really that's been set with a lot of these, this happened in the Bush administration in the early 2000s. And basically, the limitations that were set coaches, you can only reduce your income, unfortunately, you can only reduce your income by half. Now, what that means is if your income is $2 million, you can use this strategy to reduce your income by half. And that's it. Now, if you're in a place where you end up investing and it reduces your income by more than half, well, you can't use that additional monies this year. It just carries forward for 15 years as an ordinary income loss. So it's not like it's a lost entity.

07:10 And the general roll of thumb on the deal that we've seen that's worked really, really well, it's got Lloyd's of London Insurance backing up the investor capital, et cetera, et cetera, is it's about a five to one multiple, Coach. And, you know, we've talked about this for a long time off air. What that five to one multiple means is for every dollar that you put in, you're going to get $5 of ordinary income deduction. So simple math. If you reduce your income by a million dollars and your total tax on that income is 40 percent, let's just say, that's a $400,000 tax bill that you're going to give to the government if you do nothing. If you're involved in this deal, which are obviously for accredited investors only, meaning they have to make a certain amount of money or have a certain amount of money. Right. If you're involved in this deal, for every

07:56 $100,000 you put in, you're going to get $500,000 of ordinary income deduction. So you put in $100,000, you're going to get a $500,000 deduction. You put in $200,000, you're going to get a million dollar deduction. So the simple math on that million is if you do nothing, if you're at 40 percent bracket all in, you're paying 40 percent, $400,000 of the government. Instead of doing that, we say, time out, keep more of what you made, your proponents, Coach, of you and your team helping families make lots of money. Well, let's make sure we keep it, too. So put $200,000 in a deal, you're going to literally, real savings is going to be $400,000, which means you basically doubled your money because you didn't give all that $400,000 to the government. You only put $200,000 in a deal and that's it. It's a beautiful thing. Okay. So you do that, you get a great tax write-off,

08:44 a great tax deduction. And then what happens to the money that you put in? What eventually happens to that money? So it's a great question. So really, you're investing initially in the strategy for the purposes of the tax benefits. That's your main reward. And that's your benefit that you're getting from the IRS. Well, you already, in effect, doubled your, well, you have five times your money as far as what you could write off. So you doubled your money as far as what you don't have to pay. So that's exactly. You still, the money's still there somewhere. It's invested in that, but it's probably being used to do what the government wanted to be done with that money, correct? Yeah. So the land is actually now in conservation that's been purchased. We're using what's called best use value, which is where we get the valuation. There's two approved valuations from the government, which is comps. You know, you see a comparables. If somebody buys a house

09:31 and the house down the street is worth X, Y, Z, you get comparables or you get best use, which is why we look at say, what if we invested in build a solar farm? And that's what some of the deals out there are that we've seen that are quality. But at the end of the day, the better deals, the better conservation easement deals, Coach, they're going to put some of the monies, which checks a box to be a separate business activity for the IRS conservation structure. They're going to put some of the monies into an investment structure, which is going to yield some revenue back to the investor. It's not going to be a lot. You're not going to be like, oh, this is amazing. But about 15%, let's just say somebody put $200,000 into the deal to get a million dollar deduction and roughly $400,000 of actual tax savings. Well, that $200,000, about 10 to 15%

10:19 of the monies, Coach, is going to go into a separate structure that's going to kick anywhere between 5% to 7% a year on that $200,000 back. And then once the ground is sold, after it's satisfied all the conservatory mechanisms and requirements, in about four, five, six years-ish, they're roughly going to get some more monies back as well. So you're going to get over the course of a five or six year period, Coach, as you know, anywhere between 30, 20 to 30, roughly all in back percent of what you put in. So if you put in $200,000, you should expect to see somewhere in the ballpark of $60,000 come back to you over the course collectively of about six years. So if you did $200,000, that would give you a million dollars you could write off on your taxes.

11:05 And it effectively really cost you about $130,000 to do that. Over a six-year period. Over a six-year period. That's not a bad deal for taxes. That's like putting a dollar over there and getting $3 back or $4, $5 back reduced on your taxes. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah, because essentially what you're doing, Coach, like you said, is you're putting $130,000 in and your real savings are roughly $400,000 or more than $400,000 if your tax bracket's over 40% all in. Yeah. So really, it's a win-win-win to me. It makes a lot of sense. This won't appeal to folks who don't have a tax problem. Folks, if you're tired of writing gigantic checks to the IRS, why not write a smaller check to the IRS by utilizing some of the tax saving strategies out

11:50 here? Tax reduction legally. Again, it's in the IRS code. I'm sure you have private letter rulings on this. You have all sorts of ammo to go against the government if the government ever came back and said this wasn't allowed. By the way, we're not tax attorneys. Mike's not a tax attorney, but we work with folks who understand the tax code. Absolutely. Yeah. And so the big thing with this, Coach, is really here's the key. The key, like anything else in life, due diligence, due diligence, due diligence. And so one of the reasons we've consulted on these over the years is because we have not only we're working with high-profile, high-income, high-income people, but we're also in a situation where we've done a lot of research on this. And I'm a big believer that unfortunately people, professionals have worked too hard for their wealth. Yeah. And

12:36 there's just a lot of CPAs or financial people that are just too scared to learn about anything because their fear of audits or whatever it may be. And at the end of the day, when you look at a lot of these things, if you do them correctly, you do your diligence right, you're in a place where you've covered a lot of your bases and you don't really need to worry the way a lot of folks worry about things. Use strategy that exists because you've done the research around it. Well, and then, folks, a number to call right now if you want to find out more, see how this applies for you. Find the information out. It can't hurt. 800-661-7383. That's 800-661-7383. Or text the word PLAN, P-L-A-N, to 600-700. That's PLAN to 600-700. Michael, I want to thank you for your time. We'll have you back on maybe in 2023 to go over some of the new tax savings items

13:22 that may exist. And to summarize, say, you know, what kind of year you had as far as people wanting to reduce taxes here in 2022. Yeah, love to. Happy to. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Thanks for having me, Coach. Oh, this is really great. Yeah, it's always good to have you. Michael Wall from Wall Private Wealth. And Michael, we'll visit you with you soon. Coach P Radio. Information provided is for illustrative purposes only and does not constitute investment, tax, or legal advice. Information has been obtained from sources that are deemed to be reliable, but their accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed. Neither Peter J. Deruta or his guests are liable for the usage of information discussed. Always consult with a qualified investment, legal, or tax professional before taking any action. Annuity guarantees are based solely on the

14:08 financial strength and claims paying ability of the issuing company. Individuals should thoroughly review the contract for specific details of the product features and costs. Income payments and withdrawals from deferred annuities are generally taxable as ordinary income in the year they are taken.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Folks, this is the time of the show where we go out across the world and find someone who I think is making a difference in the world. We've got a really good guest today. If you ever watched hockey back in the day, his name is Jeremy Roenick and he is joining us from San Diego, California. That's a really nice place. It's a lot warmer there than Chicago, I bet. Huh, Jeremy? It is. It's great to be with you. I really appreciate the time. And yeah, you know, after 20 years of getting my ass kicked in the National Hockey League, I needed a nice warm place that my body enjoyed waking up in the morning to.

00:50 So hence, hence my San Diego home. You were the eighth pick in the first round by Chicago Blackhawks back in the day. And then you, I always know you as a Chicago Blackhawk, but you also were on the Phoenix Coyotes twice, the Flyers, the Kings, and then the Sharks. That's a big career. I actually had arguably probably five of the best city stints in all of NHL hockey. Two major, major hockey markets and sporting markets like Chicago and Philly that have the best fans in the world. Then I got to live in Arizona where I could live a great, quiet, really enjoyable, sunny life, play golf in between hockey games and go to practice and flip flops and T-shirts. And then, you know, in San Jose, that was pretty much similar, but had a great fan base.

01:41 No one, you know, no one bothered you on the street. Media didn't yell at you when you lost the day before. And, you know, to live in Northern California is a real treat, you know, barring the politics and taxes. So, I've got in studio with me, I've got Morgan Patrick, too, and Morgan used to have a show called The Sports Pig. Morgan, did you ever talk about Jeremy before? Oh, are you kidding me? I mean, what a headache this guy was. Jeremy, I got a question for you. Since we're, you know, we've been in this market now for 25 years with hockey, and back when we, you know, first welcomed in the Whalers and they became the Hurricanes, it's a nontraditional market. You've played for two nontraditional market teams in San Jose and Arizona. I mean, so how was that?

02:26 And I guess just that transition, because it was really an education-type element to it when they first came to Carolina. I would imagine it was a little bit of an adjustment for you to play in those markets. It was an adjustment, but it was actually exciting because we got the chance to teach a nontraditional hockey market the love of the game. Sure. Right? Why hockey is so great. And I remember when Winnipeg moved down to Arizona and then I came to Arizona, there are so many people that were excited of the addition to the city of a sports team. I mean, Arizona and Phoenix is a huge sports city. I mean, with the Cardinals and the Suns and the Diamondbacks, we have all major sports here. But to have hockey really made it a major sports town.

03:14 And the people really took us in and made us their own. And it's a little bit harder to sell tickets because I think you have to get people there to show the product. Because I think, you know, you guys know going to a game is so much more enjoyable. You really get the feel, the energy, and the excitement in the building and the power of the players and the speed of the players better than you can really see it on television. So that was the hardest part is getting the tickets sold. Once we got them in, we sucked them in and made them, you know, crazy fans. The team has made some major, major mistakes and blunders over the last 20 years with management and positioning of buildings and, you know, just mistakes in the marketplace.

04:04 But the place has been awesome. And I just loved it. I loved going to help people understand why hockey is so great. And I was a huge, huge Hartford Whaler fan when I was a kid because I grew up in Massachusetts and Connecticut. I actually lived in Glastonbury. So I went through probably seven or eight records of Brass Bonanza after scoring a street hockey goal on my brother. You know, I'd score a goal on my brother and I'd run over to the record player and play Brass Bonanza and run all over the place. So, you know, when Hartford went to Carolina, I was really happy that that franchise was able to move on to a very good area and an area that has really, really supported the team very well.

04:50 And there's won a Stanley Cup, which is even more gratifying. Always good to have one of those. You know, remember Chuck Cate and the voice of the Whalers and the Hurricanes. He works for us in our network, too. So you probably remember Chuck. Oh, absolutely. I've listened to him many times. Yep. Absolutely. Good people. So, Jeremy, my next question. I mean, when you came into the league, obviously the league has changed so much. It has expanded. It's in different markets. And obviously, you know, having gone from where the league was and you played for Chicago, old school hockey, you've gone to new markets. But are you surprised at how this game has expanded and how large the league is now? And it is one of the big four sports now. No, it really is. And, you know, you can say what you want about Gary Bettman.

05:39 And, you know, the fans usually greet him with a barrage of boos when he comes onto the arena. But Gary Bettman has done more for the National Hockey League, I think, than probably most commissioners have done for sports. Back in 1992-93, when he came in as commissioner, our league was making about $750 million of revenue a year. You know, it's now over the $4.5 billion mark in 30 years. I mean, that's a pretty substantial growth in a game. And obviously, the players that have come along, the personalities, the talent of the players, the level of the product that the NHL has put on board. And I think people like a squeaky clean kind of image sport like hockey.

06:27 I mean, the players are really respectful. They're very nice. They give a lot to charity. There's no, you know, they're on the right side of the law and are fun people to talk to and listen to and interview. So, you know, you take all that, wrap it into one. I think the league has got a very good reputation. Well, tell us about, let's get away from hockey for a minute. Tell us about your new whiskey that you've done. Oh, I love it. Thank you for promoting that. You know, everybody through the pandemic was looking for something to do. And right in the beginning of the pandemic, I was involved in a different liquor company that kind of went sour. And I've always wanted to be part of a brand. And, you know, I'm a big whiskey drinker and a tequila guy.

07:13 And, you know, I love sharing a cocktail with my friends. It's probably one of my favorite pastimes. But I just wanted to get in something. And during the pandemic, I joined up with a couple of friends of mine. One of them is a food and taste connoisseur. He was part of the making of Hubba Bubba Gum, Beech Nut Baby food flavors. And he's just a cereal entrepreneur. And I asked him, hey, why don't we try to do whiskey, maybe a flavored whiskey? Like, everybody loves chocolate. Let's do a chocolate whiskey. So, hence the start of our trek. And it took him 18 months to create probably the greatest whiskey blend drinking experience anybody will ever have in a cocktail. And I say that not being because it's my product.

08:02 I'm pretty much reiterating what a lot of people have said to me in their experience of trying it. But I was talking with someone at the Southern Wine and Spirits organization. We're talking to them about helping us in the United States and being our distributor. And after he took the first sip, he's like, this is probably the best drinking experience I've ever had in a blend. And I was really happy to hear that. And so we came out and we wanted to do something that was fun. We wanted to bring something that brings both the female connoisseur and the male connoisseur. Because whiskey really hasn't been known to be the favorite of the female variety. And I wanted to bring the female into the room that could share a glass of whiskey with their significant other, with their husband, with their boyfriend, with a guy who just got off the golf course with a cigar.

08:59 And, you know, men like that aspect. And women go crazy over this chocolate whiskey. We also have a chocolate citrus with a little dash of orange in it. Kind of tastes like a old-fashioned right out of the bottle. Wow. And it really is something special. So we called it Whiskey in the Wild. We wanted to kind of pander to the outdoors life. We did something with the bottle that no company has ever done. And we created a bottle that has a flask actually built into the bottle. Nice. So that you can – and we put a spout, a nice little pouring spout on the top so you can fill the whiskey up and take it with you on a hike or a ski trip. Or if you're on a bike ride and you want to celebrate, you know, a climb to the top of the mountain and celebrate your hike, we call it the traveling spirit.

09:52 And we want you to take it with you everywhere. So it's a very unique kind of packaging that we've created. I think our bottle is going to win countless awards. Nice. And Whiskey in the Wild, whiskeyinthewild.co on Google, you can find it. And it's only available online right now in 41 states. I would believe North Carolina is part of our 41 states. And I highly recommend if you're a whiskey drinker or if you're not, give us a shot because we have turned more non-whiskey drinkers into whiskey lovers over the first three months of our launch. Well, I got to tell you, I love the bottle. I'm looking at it right now. I mean, that is sharp. Isn't that fun?

10:37 Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Good Google right there. It's cool. It's cool to get something with something, right? You know, flasks are cool. People like to have flask. It's a high-end flask. It's, you know, it's metal. It's a very solid feel. And it makes for awesome presents. So if you're someone getting married and you want something cool for your groomsmen, it is Thanksgiving's coming up. Christmas is coming up. It makes for an absolutely tremendous gift to send somebody. We're writing the $89 for a bottle. That is shipped with shipping. Obviously, in this day and age, with the delivery system around our country, packaging and sending is shipping is very expensive right now.

11:25 But $89 gets it right to your door. You buy two bottles. We pick up half the shipping. And you buy three bottles, and we pick up all the shipping, which is just a nice little benefit to buy more than one bottle. But it truly – I really appreciate you guys saying that you like the bottle because we're very, very proud of it. Nobody's ever done it before. That is really neat. We kind of changed the market. Yeah. Good idea. Now, speaking – we've got about a minute left, but speaking of getting something for spending something, there's been rumors there that you had a trip to Vegas where you lost a little money. Oh, I think I own two of the floors at Aria. Yeah. Yeah. That happens on a frequent basis.

12:11 But I've had some really good wins, and I've had some really terrible losses. There you go. That's what Vegas is all about, right? Yep. Yep. Yeah. Well, you were born in 1970. Morgan and I were born in 66. But you're retired, and we're still working, so we're not doing something right here. Well, I'm retired in a different sense, right? I'm retired from getting my butt kicked on the ice, but I am still in the trenches doing a lot of different things. And I don't think I'll ever stop working and making a buck because it just keeps my brain going. And I get to talk to fine gentlemen like you guys and your listeners and have some fun talking about all sorts of things. And it's hockey season starting tonight, so I'm really looking forward to the start of the season also. That's just a – I mean, it's just a great – it's a great life if you make it a great life.

12:56 And you've made yours a great life. Morgan, any final thoughts for Jeremy? Just a big treat, man. One of my favorites watching you play throughout your career and obviously loved seeing you when you came to town. But, yeah, we just wish you the best of luck. Great, great success on the whiskey. Can't wait to taste it. Well, I really appreciate you guys helping me get the word out. And you guys, you have my phone number if you ever want to chat, you know, Carolina Hockey. Just let me know. Cocains. Jeremy Roick, folks. All right, guys. Appreciate it. Take care. All right, let's open up these phone lines. That number, 800-661-7383, 800-661-7383. And we've got a great way to text us as well. Just text the word PLAN to 600-700, PLAN to 600-700.

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Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people, and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me, that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned, folks, and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Well, folks, welcome back into the Financial Safari. Now, this is the time of the show where I go out across the world and I talk to people who are making a difference, and this week is no exception. Matter of fact, this week I'm very excited to have Miss Van Euron. Now, if you've heard that name, maybe you have, maybe you haven't, but Van is the owner of the Angus Barn here in Raleigh. Van, welcome in. Thank you so much, Coach. It's such a pleasure. I've seen you a lot over the years in your restaurant. Well, and I appreciate that very much. You are a familiar face around there, and everybody there

00:50 loves you. I love everybody there, and so I love the food, too. The food is really good, and anyone who hadn't been to the Angus Barn needs to check it out, but Van, I go there all times of the year, all different days, and it's crowded all the time, so I think you're not a secret anymore. Well, I think you've discovered some of our little places that used to be a secret, too, like our meat locker and our fire pit and places like that. Now, the meat locker is inside-outside, so technically it's listed as outside, right? Yes, well, it's for smoking. Smoking cigars. When everybody, when they changed the smoking law in North Carolina, all my smokers were going, what are we going to do? And I was like, oh, don't worry, I got a place. Of course, I didn't have a place. I'm like, what am I going to do? So I took an old room that was a meat room and turned it into a cigar bar, but then, of course, everyone back there wants to order dinner, and so, of course, we do full menu

01:39 back there, and now it's ended up where you can go as fancy as the wine cellar or as relaxed as the meat locker. Me and Marty Hensley used to go to the meat locker all the time. We still do once in a while, but we went there one time four days out of the five in a week. That's way too much. I said, Marty, we have a problem here. That's awesome. Hey, you don't even have to go there and order any food. You can just go there and bring your own cigar and sit there and enjoy it. It's great to see, I mean, see everybody who knows anybody's around the Angus Barn. I mean, that's when I remember when I was in college, the rumor was that political deals would happen. People would fly into the airport, which is right there. They'd meet at Angus Barn for their meeting, then they'd go back to the airport, fly away. So it's more of a destination type place, and it takes years to develop that kind of camaraderie with the public, I think.

02:24 Right, right, and it just takes a lot of employees and people that I work with that really care and that know how to treat people right, because you can have the greatest building in the world, but if you don't treat people right, you have nothing really. You've had employees that have been with you for a long, long time. I've had so many in the 20-year club that we couldn't fit them all into one room for the party. So I'm very blessed with the employees. Now, one of the things people may not realize, you have something called the wine cellar downstairs, and you've got two private dining rooms down there. Some, one fits almost 40 people, correct? Right. Yeah. We built those rooms because we won an award that put us on the map internationally, where there's only 86 restaurants in the world that actually have it. It's called the Wine Spectator Grand Award. And then everyone was coming in, they said, oh, we want to see your cellar,

03:11 because we've heard you won this great award, and we just had a basement full of boxes. And so we said, oh, I think we need to build a cellar that matches the award that we won. So that's how that came about. Wow. I didn't realize that. Now, the wine cellar down there is one of the largest, I know, in the state, but in the southeast? It is the second largest in the country. Burns is first, and it is the only time in my life that I am okay with being second. Because I've been to Burns. I love Burns. I love their wine cellar, but I just don't want their inventory. Oh, man. I went to Burns one time with Todd Schnitt, who's a radio show host. Right. That's where he's located. Had me to Burns. I hadn't heard of it. And when he took me down that wine cellar, that's the largest wine cellar I've ever seen. It goes on and on and on. I can only imagine what the inventory cost is. On and on.

03:56 What do you think their insurance is? For all that wine? I don't know. Now, tell me, you've done a lot of work with charity over the years. Yes. And you've championed that a lot. I went to a Boy Scout event one time over in the Pavilion. Yes. And unfortunately, I went that day because I won a lot of things at the auction. Right. And so I ended up bringing a lot of stuff. So I helped the Boy Scouts out a lot more than I even planned to. That was great. But tell me about the vision that you had to add on. Because, I mean, you've always been full in the restaurant. Then you added to the Pavilion. And for years, we've gone there for Thanksgiving dinners. It's been the greatest thing ever. Right. Well, we had that land down there. My father actually had it zoned to be a little boutique hotel. Because at that time, there was really no hotels in the area. So we really had been getting so many requests for large groups.

04:44 I'm talking groups of like over 200. Which the only room we had in the Angus Barn was the upstairs dining room that could seat maybe 180. And we could only book that maybe on Sunday night. So we realized what people really needed was a space to have events. Yep. So then we had to go through the rezoning process, which that took forever to get it rezoned. And then we decided to use a lot of my dad's old, like just stuff, building materials, trusses, 10 old stones that he had collected to do all the Daryl's restaurants. Ah, I remember the Daryl's. Those were his. And so he had warehouses full of just stuff that was going to be used to build the next Daryl. So we used most of that stuff in building the pavilion.

05:33 We wanted it to be a space where people could enjoy huge groups of whatever kind, corporate, weddings, you know, rehearsal, dinners, you know, picnics, company groups of all kinds. And so we've we really didn't know what we were doing because when we first did it, because we're used to serving meals, you know, individual meals. We're not used to serving 400 people at one time. That's a lot of that takes a talent, too. Yeah. It has to be hot. You don't want to store it like in warming ovens. You want it to be fresh off the grill. So, you know, people know they know the difference in that. And so we it took us a while to really get that concept down and figure it out. But and we learn every day and we learn every time we do. Yeah. And I've gone to group events at your place and everything comes out like you were individually ordering it.

06:21 But most people, when they think of a group event, they think of the cold, soggy buns and the maybe the chicken. It's not really tender. You know, the rubber chicken that's coldish, warmish kind of thing. You did a real good job. Actually prep everything upstairs in the regular Angus Barn. But we we grill it off, cook everything off down at the pavilion. And that's what makes it so good before it comes right before it comes to the table. Now, tell me about growing up in the restaurant family because your dad had Daryl's. Right. And so let's talk about Daryl's. Daryl's when I used to go to I used to go to the one in Durham because I went to school in Chapel Hill. So the one right down Chapel Hill Boulevard in between Chapel Hill and Durham. I go there all the time. My buddy Skip Dyer. I don't know if you have that name. He was a manager of Daryl's. I didn't know him back then, but I wish I did. I wish I would have. I got some free food, but I didn't know him then. But the whole restaurant was designed like an amusement park to me.

07:08 Like I used to sit in the Ferris wheelchair. Right. Did your dad do that for you? Did he build it like an amusement park? No, he did it because he loved to collect old things. OK. He had this huge collection of old things. In fact, the Ferris wheelchair that you talked about, we've turned that into a table that you can sit in in our saloon. And the next time you come in, I'm going to show you that chair. I want to see that. It is a very cool little table. But he had all of these things that he just collected because he just he loved collecting stuff like that. Sometimes he would go to junkyard sales and just say, I'll take everything you've got. What will it take for me to just take everything off your hands? So he had it in warehouses and he went to this. He went to a pizza inn on Hillsborough Street, which was actually the first Darrell's. It was owned by a guy named Darrell Davis.

07:55 All the students of NC State would just call it. Let's go to Darrell's place. So he was sitting in there and he said, you know, this building could really hold about twice as many people. If we just put a level here and put this here and did this here. So he met with the owner, Darrell. And they said, OK, he said, OK, well, let's do this together. So then it was no longer our pizza inn. Now it became Darrell's. And they named it after him thinking there'd never be more than one. And when it was so successful, then they built more. And I remember that Darrell's. That was a fun Darrell's to go to. I knew a lot of people at State back in the day. So that's where we'd always go over. Next time you come to the barn, I'm going to walk you around and show you all the things from Darrell's that are in the Angus Barn. That'd be neat to see. Yeah. Now, let's talk about you do a lot of great work with charity and you have something called the Walk for Hope.

08:41 And it's coming up right shortly here, October 9th. Right. Right. Tell me about that. Well, it started because my brother suffers from a series of mental illnesses, schizophrenia, bipolar, obsessive compulsive, just all kinds of things. But when he was first not even diagnosed, when all of this first started happening, nobody knew one thing. Every single hospital that my parents would take him to all over the country would say, we don't know anything about mental illness. We know more about tooth decay. We know more about everything. We just don't know mental illness. We don't have any. No money's been invested in studying, researching these and what causes it and what can prevent this.

09:29 Right. So my father, after finally, you know, he was a make things happen kind of guy. And he wasn't used to somebody saying, we can't fix this. And so my father, in his incredible way, he just said, well, you know what? If my son has to be this sick, then I am going to do something where I can make a difference for other families maybe in the future where they wouldn't have to go through what this has been. So he and my mother started the Foundation of Hope. Okay. Then when my father passed away, all of the employees of the Angus Barn who adored him, they started the Walk for Hope to raise money for the cause that he loved the most, which was research and treatment for mental illness.

10:15 Wow. That's pretty neat. So it was started by the employees of the Angus Barn. That's really neat. That tells you a lot about the ownership if the employees do something like that. Yes. And we never dreamed there'd even be another walk. We just thought that would be the walk. And it was so popular and people had such a good time. So then it grew. And now we're on our 34th, coming up our 34th annual walk. Now, for the last two years, we haven't been able to have it. We have had a drive-through. So we are so excited to be able to have the walk again. But it used to be a 10K. That 10K people would come back from, they would be like exhausted because you've got to go up that huge hill on Highway 70. Enter in through Olmstead Park, go around. So we changed to a 5K. You still go through Olmstead Park. It's a beautiful walk.

11:00 But we also turned it into a festival so that people that didn't feel like walking could just come and just have an incredible day. There's stuff to do all over the place. And we have the Embers. Yeah, the Embers. I remember them from college. I don't know if it's the same guys. I think the band stayed alive, though. Well, one of them, the drummer, is still the same. Wow. But a lot of them have just evolved into the group. But it's the Embers. Do you remember the Beach Music Festival? Oh, yes. I remember seeing them down there. They would come to Chapel Hill a lot. They would come to my apartment complex. Yes. I mean, they're still really great. Wow. It's pretty neat. So how can people find out about the Walk for Hope? So all you have to do is go online to walkforhope.com or you can just call 919-781-WALK. Or, I mean, you can just Google it.

11:48 You can sign up. The sign-up process is so easy online. And you pay just one amount just to get in for everything that you do the whole day. But the purpose is that you try to get people to sponsor you to raise money for the cost. Yeah. We did that back in school. I remember that. People would sign up per mile. Right. They would give a certain amount of money and I would punish them because I'd stay out there because I knew I had people pay and provide. Right. And you can also get teams together and come as a team. And it's just the day is really just from start to finish one of the most fun days. And you have shuttle buses too, don't you? Yes. People don't park at the Angus Barn. You've got signs telling them where to park and you have buses running every five minutes

12:33 or so you said. Because that's one thing people hate when they go to events is these shuttle buses may become once every half hour or 45 minutes. Now, that's a huge. Inconsistency. People don't like that. That's a huge ordeal for us. But see, there's 3,000 people that come to this. That's a lot of people. So, and we're expecting more this year. So, we can't really park on site. So, we have a place really not far from the barn. But we do have these great shuttle buses where you have a hospitality host on the bus. Like you're arriving at Disney and they're telling you what you're getting ready to see. That's neat. And so, the minute you enter, there's music and just all kinds of fun things going on. We have a run, a 5K run that kicks off at 9. Then the walk kicks off at 10. And then the food is, you know, I could be arrested if I didn't serve decent food at the

13:20 Walk for Hope because it's the Angus Barn. So, we do burgers and barbecue. Those turkey wings are really good, by the way. Yes, yes. Those turkey wings are filled up with one of those things. For the turkey lounge, right? Yeah, that's right. I love those things. All right. So, then the website is walkforhope.com. Yes. That's Sunday, October 9th. Yes. Her name is Van Ewer. She's the owner of Angus Barn. And Van, thanks for having us. Thank you. Thanks for having the time to share with us today. Thank you so much for helping to promote this cause. It means so much to me and my family. Walkforhope.com, folks. Yes. All right. So, that phone number to call, 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. Or just text the word PLAN to 600-700. That's PLAN to 600-700. That's PLAN to 300-600.

14:05 That's PLAN to 300-600. That's PLAN to 300-600. That's PLAN to 300-600. That's PLAN to 300-600. That's PLAN to 300-600. That's PLAN to 300-600. That's PLAN to 300-600. That's PLAN to 300-600. That's PLAN to 300-600. That's PLAN to 300-600. That's PLAN to 300-600. That's PLAN to 300-600. That's PLAN to 300-600. That's PLAN to 300-600-600. That's PLAN to 300-600-600. I am too.

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00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Well folks this is the time of the show where we go out across the world and we find someone who's making a difference in the world and today is no exception. Matter of fact we've got a repeat visitor every time he comes on we have so many requests to have him on again so guess what we're going to do? We're going to have him on again. His name is Mr. Jim Stovall and he's enjoyed success as an author, athlete, investment broker, and entrepreneur while dealing with the challenge of blindness. During his remarkable life Jim has been a national champion weightlifter,

00:49 Olympic weightlifter, as well as the author of more than 30 books. In addition to his personal achievements Jim was honored at the 2000 year 2000 International Humanitarian of the Year joining Jimmy Carter, Nancy Reagan, and Mother Teresa as a recipient of this prestigious award. And so Jim writes a lot of books and we we love having him on and well let's without further ado welcome in Jim. Hey it is always good to be back with you. Now this book we're talking about today we can talk about anything you want too by the way but the book that that you sent me a couple weeks ago is called Passport to Success and you wrote this with a guy named Dr. Greg Reed. Now tell us what inspired you to write this book. Well Greg has always been wanting to do something together and you know I kind of came up with the idea for what's going to happen to the characters in this

01:38 and his team did a lot of the details and descriptions so it was fun. I've never really collaborated on fiction before. You know it's always kind of a one-man band but this was fun because this is a story about a guy that wakes up one morning and loses the love of his life his home and his job all in one day. Guy's having a bad day. That's a bad day. And he decides that he is going to travel around the world because he's received this diagnosis that he may end up losing his sight in a year and it's you know and he wants to see the world while he can because he may not be able to in the future. So he travels around the world trying to find some wisdom and keys to success and answers to all of his problems and he finds that

02:31 no matter where he goes he takes his problems with him. And but the fun thing about working with Greg and his his team was I write very good dialogue very good plot and those are my things that's why I think eight of my books have been turned into movies now. I think it's what I do well but you know the descriptions the settings all the things not my strongest thing and but Greg and his team brought all that in. So when we go to the Himalayas when we go to the Dominican Republic when we go to Europe and go up and down the Rhine River you know I think readers will get really get a feel for that in a way it's almost like a travelogue and a personal development book all in one. Now this is fiction. It is indeed.

03:18 But it sounds a little bit non-fictionist doesn't it? You know Shakespeare may have said it best there's only seven stories in the whole world and people just keep telling them different ways and then I always tell writers if you if you want to do something that really matters write what you know. And so me putting a blind guy in there or a guy that's facing that as a possibility in his life you know really fit and then it's just been a fun collaboration and the initial responses have been really good. Well the parallels I mean when you weren't born blind like when people see blind people they don't know how the people became blind. Some people were born blind other people it happens during life and that happened to you correct?

04:04 Yeah I was I went through my whole childhood and then to young adulthood you know my only goal in life was to be an all-American football player and go into the NFL and during a routine physical to go play another season of football I was diagnosed with a condition that would cause me to lose my sight and a little quick research told me uh there's not any blind guys in the NFL. If you've been watching any of these preseason games you might question a little of that I don't know. Besides the refs yeah. Exactly. So uh you know I I I got to finish my athletic career in my 20s as a weightlifter and there's something I could do even as my sight was diminishing and then at age 29 I did indeed lose the rest of my sight and uh and that's been 35 years ago so I've been

04:54 totally blind for 35 years. Wow you've really embraced it though and you've done some fantastic things since then haven't you? Well I've been blessed you know and I don't think my problems are any more than yours or anybody listening to us whether it's me being blind or someone else going through a divorce or loss of a job or a bankruptcy or illness of a child or whatever it is you know we're all only as big as the smallest thing it takes to divert us from where we want to be. So uh you know I go days at a time and don't even think about the fact I'm blind. I've kind of created a world and a team around me and I I go do what I want to do all day every day and I feel like I'm the luckiest guy around. I honestly don't know anybody I would trade places with. That's fantastic to hear. I mean you I mean you've done a fantastic job. I mean think about it. Well you were humans and we are by nature

05:43 we we always stumble but we the good ones of us get back up and we learn from we learn what made us stumble. We try to we try to have fun with every day and we try to make sure to embrace life because the alternative is not and it's not too good. Absolutely I mean you know you got to play the hand you're dealt and and I am a huge fan of the work of Napoleon Hill and he said every adversity is endowed with the seed of a greater good and you know if you really believe that and you start looking for the good in everything and you realize that problems are are not really problems they are opportunities. Opportunities come to us disguised as problems and and if you look beyond the initial pain and frustration of it you can find some amazing things. Folks we're talking to best-selling author

06:32 Jim Stovall. He's also been producer of several movies you may have seen. Jim what are your two favorite movies that you've made in in your lifetime? Probably The Ultimate Gift to my first one with James Garner and Brian Dennehy and that was a movie trilogy we went on and in the second one added Peter Fonda and the third one Raquel Welch and then The Lamp with Louis Gossett Jr. That was one of my favorites. Some big names right there you know Rockford Files is what I think about when I think about Jim James Garner I mean he was Rockford and a lot of our younger guys won't won't even know what I'm talking about now. Thomas doesn't know. No that's okay but no he was and you know really really an amazing amazing guy and he actually made his very last movie with us and I was really grateful to him

07:19 and just a tremendous human being. Yeah well I mean that's a and Louis Gossett Jr. I mean really Thomas do you know that name? No Thomas says no. No no. Jim we're getting old when when people in their 30s don't remember who we're talking about. Well you know he's an academy award winner so you need to go look up officer and a gentleman and you'll have an amazing experience with Mr. Gossett. Now Thomas have you heard that title? I certainly have heard that title yes. Well you know Jim we are all creatures of habits and and not just humans when we look I have three miniature Datsuns back in the day the little hot dog dogs and and in our backyard there was a path now we had a big backyard but there was a path and it might not have been the best path but it was a path that the first dog that I had Penny made and so when we get we added Chelsea which is the dog under Penny and then

08:06 Allie they all followed Penny's path and so it would get worn down you could never grow grass there and then when it snowed we didn't get much snow in North Carolina but we did they would make a path in the snow and guess where the path was? Same place. Exact same place it was crazy like that so in in as humans we all fall into these patterns too some good and some bad what advice would you give to someone to if they're trying to break a bad pattern or a bad habit? Well the worst statement you can make about anything is this is the way we've always done it. I'm reminded of this young girl and she was getting married and she was asking her mother how do you bake a ham? I want to bake a ham for my new husband and she said well first you cut the end off the ham and then you put it in the pan and put it in the oven. She said why do you cut the end off the ham? I don't know my that's what my

08:52 mother told me so they called her mom and say why did you cut that? She said I don't know it's what grandma told me so they get great grandma over at the home and say why'd you cut the end off the ham and she said my pan was too small I don't know why you guys do it and you know in the reality is you know sometimes we just do stuff because that's what we've always done and you know every once in a while it's amazing to just stop and look around and get a new perspective and you know I do a lot of consulting for major corporations here and oftentimes it's in an industry I know nothing about and those seem to be the situations where I bring the most value. I'll just tell their people okay let's walk around here tell me what this is and what do you do here and then we'll stop and I'll

09:37 say why do you do it that way? Why don't you do this instead of that? And many times they have a good answer why they do it that way but every once in a while they say I don't know why we do it that way and wow what what would happen if we did it differently and you know that's what the you know I have a school of entrepreneurship at our local university and one of the things I always tell the kids is the greatest way to succeed very few people invent something you know Thomas Edison invents the light bulb and you know the rest of us we innovate and we improve we look at what is this doing and how can we do it better and that's true in our lives and then there's things around us. Do you remember the old commercials for BASF we don't make this but we make it better they used to say? Absolutely yeah absolutely and that's that's really what it comes down to is just you know making a better mousetrap.

10:26 So one three-letter word can change your life and you have to in order to understand this three-letter word you have to think like a five-year-old because I remember when my daughter was five years old I would ask her to do something and she would launch that three-letter word on me. It would it would be why and and because daddy said so didn't work most of the time she wanted to really know why and so it in the financial world we see this of the parallels tremendously here people do things and when you ask them why many times I just get a blank stare they don't really know why maybe because their broker told them but just because your broker is telling you to do something doesn't mean it's the best thing for you many times. No and I always tell people don't invest in anything you don't understand and don't take advice from anybody that doesn't have what you want and if you can do those things you are you're way ahead of the crowd and you know I wrote a book called the millionaire map on how to prosper in this life and and you know and I said that I don't take advice from anybody doesn't have what you want.

11:22 When I came home I told my wife we got to do something really difficult right now and I had Merrill Lynch and Bank of America do an audited financial just on my you know cash value of my equities and the stocks and bonds and the things I have they're not not my businesses or royalties or anything and you know to show that it was it was an eight-figure number and we started with absolutely nothing and I felt my readers deserved to know that and we actually printed it in the book with the the Merrill Lynch and Bank of America phone number and call them because you know there's a whole lot of people out there taking advice on how to invest with people that don't have any money and they don't know how to invest and it's a really scary thing you know and you know I think you don't take advice from anybody that doesn't have what you want and make sure you understand it.

12:14 If they can't explain it to you in a way you understand it they're not a good broker. You know being an advisor is not a matter of taking complex things and just handling them. It's a matter of taking these complex things and making them simple enough so that the average guy can can prosper and succeed with his portfolio. Yeah that's a really good point there. I mean it's there's so many people especially nowadays with with all the new financial instruments to invest in like Bitcoin and this cryptocurrencies. Real quick 30 seconds what's your opinion on cryptocurrencies these days? I think eventually we will deal with blockchain and that will be it is the wave of the future but which horse to bet on right now and how to get into it. No I don't I'm not comfortable with it. I know we'll end up there someday but you know if you can best bet on the overall technology I think there might be something there.

13:06 But picking winners and losers at this point could be really expensive. Yeah it's like going to a horse race and not knowing any of the horses trying to throw money around. And unfortunately that's that's the whole financial world if you don't have the right plan. Folks again the name of the book is The Passport to Success and his name was Jim Stovall. You can get the book anywhere books are sold. Jim really appreciate your time today. Hey I look forward to our next occasion. Yes sir. And that number is 800-661-7383. You can also text the word plan to 600-700. This is a great opportunity to reach out get your own questions answered. Again that number 800-661-7383. 800-661-7383. Or text that keyword plan to 600-700. That's plan to 600-700.

14:01 That's for you. That's for you. That's for you. That's for you.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Well folks this is the time of the show where we go out across the world and find someone who's made a difference in my life and someone I've looked up to for a long time because I used to see him on TV. I followed him on LinkedIn. Him and I have had a couple of conversations about where we went to college before on LinkedIn because I'm a Carolina guy and he's an NC State guy but he's also a former congressman. He was on the Ways and Means Committee and his name is J.D. Hayworth. You may have seen him on TV on Hannity on Geraldo all over Fox Business

00:49 and Fox News. Really good guy. J.D. is joining us from somewhere in Arizona. J.D. welcome in. Well thanks Coach Pete. Yes greetings from Scottsdale Arizona. It likes to think of itself as the west most western town and critics call it the west most midwestern town but here I am representing the southeast and the great southwest and it's so good to be with you today. Thanks for the invitation. Yes sir. Well you've got a Super Bowl coming in this year to your area don't you? Yes that means a whole lot of Eddie money a whole lot of Johnny paycheck Johnny cash and but you know what's interesting when you do the comparative studies and we're don't get me wrong always happy to have the Super Bowl in but you take a look at the sport that is so closely identified with where you and I

01:36 grew up in the southeast when we have our big NASCAR races out here the the multiplying effect on our economy. I the big secret is it comes pretty close to the Super Bowl. Wow. So it's been remarkable and please don't let the guys in Rockingham know I'm the guy who stole the race to bring it out here to PIR. There's a story behind that but I don't want guys throwing rocks at you or me so we'll stick to the issues today. Well one of my best memories I was 10 years old I grew up in Scotland County which is only about 20 minutes from the rock this the speedway there and dad used to take us here they had two races a year he'd take us to the first one we'd sit in the infield and eat chicken I used to love to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken as a 10 year old and every now and then you see some cars go by that was my enjoyment. Oh you bet what a great place and I remember going down to Rockingham on the JLC

02:28 Webb Fur Affair that took you there into Richmond County so yeah lots of great memories of that area and of well NC State and of back home in High Point so it's just great to be with you today. You know High Point back in the day when you were there I mean it was the furniture capital of the world still doing it. Yeah and High Point remains so you know when you stop and think and I don't know if we've really given High Point the credit think about when this happened maybe about a half century to 60 years after after the Civil War and the city fathers of High Point said there needs to be a place for furniture exposition and thus the Southern Furniture Exposition was born. Now the sad fact is that a lot of the manufacturing has left High Point but when the furniture shows come to town you have everybody from all

03:20 over the world continuing to come to High Point North Carolina and I don't know if we really reflected on what that has meant both to that area and to the entire state and now as we take a look at our economy sadly so much of the manufacturing pulling out of the United States and heading for places like China and that would include the furniture industry. Well you know when I think of High Point I think of furniture and also think of High Point University and Nito Cubane who's done a great job of turning that the school around and they're they're on the front of any kids recommendations. You went to Carolina you went to Carolina I went to state but we can say great things about HPU and I can remember Nito this shows you how life changes coach Pete I were first member I first remember Nito as one of my

04:08 counselors up at Camp Cheerio which back then was run by the High Point YMCA and up in I guess the Roaring Gap area in the western part of the state yeah but Nito and the folks at HPU have done a remarkable job. He had me come up to speak about 12 years ago there on campus to one of his business schools and we also incorporated media in there because we do we do a lot of media here for our for our company and and he was just an outstanding guy and right then I said gosh if this would if I would have known about him when I was looking for colleges I would have tried to go to High Point because he teaches all his students how to make money after they get out of college which is a novel concept these days especially after this student loan forgiveness act that was just passed. Oh wow that's exactly the case and they do prepare young people for a business environment for a career

04:58 and that's so important and as you mentioned this this really is a nice segue into political policy and economic policy. Only two things we really need to know the late great Milton Friedman pointed this out if you want less of something tax it and conversely if you want more of something subsidize it and so this this uh move by uh by uh Mr. Biden to uh forgive student debt loan uh in addition to being kind of a crass political move before the midterms it is going to create problems I just and this is not partisan this comes from somebody at Harvard who advised the Obama White House Jason Furman on uh Twitter

05:44 pouring roughly half trillion dollars of gasoline on the inflationary fire that's already burning is reckless. Yeah it makes no sense. No it's just it's bad news but the good news is there are people like Coach Pete and those of us who listen closely to try to avoid uh the shoals I guess the outer banks of economic policy in these troubling times. Well a lot of people don't realize when you hear about uh you know and one other thing a tangent off of that is the president and this is on all the talk shows anyways we're not going to waste a lot of time here but does he really have authority to do what the house is supposed to do to begin with? That's quite true and that'll end up in court uh it depends on the Supreme Court's on recess until the first Monday in October it is conceivable they could convene

06:32 an emergency session to take this up but don't bet on it. So it's it's funny the money doesn't just come from a money tree so if I'm going to give you if I'm going to forgive ten thousand dollars of debt for you I'm going to reach over to Thomas my producer I'm going to take ten thousand out of his back pocket and give it to you because there's no money for coming from I mean there's no magic money it comes from one person to go to another. That's exactly right this is a classic transfer of wealth from people who aren't wealthy. That single mom who's working hard whose kids it's going to be tough for them to go to college she's paying now for the loans of others who have gotten an education and who may or may not have put that put that education to work. Hey we have a couple more minutes here and I wanted to touch on some fun things now let's talk about your what got you to

07:20 Well two two words Lou Holtz. Lou Holtz recruited me and uh the joke is he said oh no we're going to sign that kid from high point I got to take that job with the New York Jets but uh no it was it was a great experience at state uh had some health problems that sidelined me in football so the joke is I was recruited as right tackle but ended up left out however I got to be student body president my senior year I started in radio back at high point at age 14 so I would also do work with sports information and what was then called the Wolfpack Sports Network and no less a Carolina grad than Woody Durham gave me my break in television back when channel 28 was the NBC affiliate back circa 1979

08:05 80 so I started in television back there and had the good help of uh the voice of the Tar Heels Woody Durham in doing so and then from uh Raleigh Durham to Greenville Spartanburg Asheville to Cincinnati and then in 1987 to Phoenix where uh after seven years on the air I answered the call to run and was elected to the Congress of the United States and it's been incredible the only downside is I don't get back to North Carolina as often as I would like well next time you do you make sure to let us know ahead of time we'll have you right in the studio and that'd be good it's good to see you in person well coach Pete I look forward to that and since you're a tax expert we'll figure out a way that I can expense that so I can I can we'll say this is an official interview with my business

08:52 your business and figure out a way to get me back in studio sometime soon well I can sure benefit from a guy who used to be on the house ways and means committee myself I can probably learn a lot from you I know I could and you also one final thing I want to make sure people know this you were uh you had something to do with HR 743 that's a social security protection act of 2004 yeah we we just wanted to make sure because demographically and truth be told you and I are heading in this direction pretty quickly it's kind of a shock but back when we were working that 20 years ago it almost seemed like something far away well we understand it I'm sure you tell those who hear words retirement ain't that far away social security is an important uh important resource but woe to anyone who tries

09:39 to depend solely on social security primarily because of of what we're seeing now the demographic bulge uh the baby boom is going kaboom demographically in terms of those of us moving into our 60s and eventually into our so-called retirement years the good news is a lot of us don't want to retire the realistic news is that it is tough for uh today's workforce to support social security recipients of tomorrow so we tried to find rational reasonable ways to augment social security to make sure it's there for Americans but uh you know our kids instinctively coach Pete take a look at this the polling question was

10:25 asked gosh 20 years ago what is more likely they asked this of kids uh uh from I guess uh 16 to 24 what's more likely uh finding extraterrestrial life or you getting social security benefits when you reach your 60s and I don't need to joke about it the truth was the kids said oh we're going to come in contact with extraterrestrial life social security won't be there for us well I hope that's not the case but we need to make it to help people understand they need to supplement things they need to plan for the future because relying on government ain't the way to go well speaking of ufos you watch the news lately they're trying to make contact there we go anyway are you kidding me as a graduate of

11:11 you i'm seeing what tucker is talking about with all the with all the cattle uh uh carvings up uh cattle mutilations you know that's kind of scary stuff so uh and even my old uh a couple of my old constituents in snowflake arizona those were the guys who back in the 80s claimed to have been abducted now i didn't exactly ask for their endorsement but hey i would have been happy to have a vote for me they were entitled to secret ballots but we have some of my friends out here in arizona who say they have taken a trip from arizona to uh those ethereal realms aboard those ships but that's a whole nother topic coach pete for another visit well really appreciate your time today jd

11:57 hey coach look forward to getting back together with you and uh you know it's just wise to think about the future because it gets here quicker than we know absolutely folks his name is jd hayworth and the name of the book whatever it takes i would recommend uh it's still in print uh out there jd you can get it on amazon i'm sure it sure is yep available wherever fine books are sold and that's why bezos is making a ton with amazon.com hey will you take care of my friend you too coach pete let's talk again soon yes sir 800-661-7383 you can also text the word plan to 600-700 this is a great opportunity to reach out get your own questions answered again that number 800-661-7383 800-661-7383 or

12:44 text that keyword plan to 600-700 that's plan to 600-700 you

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00:00 ...2-6, looking for a contestant to play the OG Mixtape. Get those Dave Matthews Band tickets for tonight. Coach Pete, Coach Pete Taruta joining us now on the Eastern Automotive Group Hotline, Capital Financial Advisory Group. You know what he's about, right? But what you might not know in retirement and everything else, but what you might not know is that he was an executive producer on this Dick Vitale documentary that ESPN debuted digitally. I know it's going to be on ESPN this weekend after he won the Perseverance Award. Coach Pete, how are you, man? I'm doing great. How are you guys? We're good. We're good. So how did you get involved with this Dick Vitale documentary? Well, I've done a lot of work for the V Foundation, helping them raise money for cancer research for Jim Valvano's V Foundation, and I met Nick Valvano, and through him I met Dick Vitale.

00:49 And, gosh, you've met him before probably. You can't be in the same room with him and not get excited. Right. Yeah, he does have this unbelievable energy. So when you started to get involved with this, is it more about telling the story of why he's so committed to these causes? You know, children's cancer is his big thing, but he also has been a huge part of the V Foundation. Well, it's just like no one had really told his story. We all know him, and you like him or hate him. He's enthusiastic. I mean, sometimes it seems like he's shared against your team. Sometimes you don't feel like he's even talking about the game when you're watching the game. But he's just an outstanding guy. He's all heart, and he's all about helping kids. And that's the part of the V Foundation he does a lot of work with is for the children's research, cancer research. So the movie, though, every single person we got in touch with, every single famous person you've heard of,

01:39 they were actually calling us one to be on the movie. We didn't have to beg anybody to be on the movie. We've got Stephen A. Smith, Stuart Van Peldt. You name it, people are on there. Charles Barkley, Magic Johnson, Coach K was very generous with his time. Coach Pete Serrita joining us here on the History Automotive Report Line. That's Joe Ovis. I'm Joe Jillo. Coach Pete, you just mentioned whether you hate him, right, or you're watching the game and you think he's not cheering for your team. You're allowed to say who your team is, right, Coach Pete? Maybe one of those times you didn't think he was quite in it for the Tar Heels, right? Yeah. So I'm doing a radio interview right now. I just pulled in a good sell here. All right. Yeah, thanks, man. Cop coming up here in Faison, North Carolina. I'm on the way down to Wellington. You know the best friend is a friend with a boat, right?

02:25 Oh, yeah. That's so is me. Wait, wait, wait. Smart man, Coach Pete. Hey, look, that is my MO. Like, I'm never going to own a boat, but I've got friends with a boat. That's the move. Well, the cops are good here in Faison. Oh, wait. Did you literally just get pulled over? No, I'm in a parking lot in a shopping center. It looks like I got a business here in Faison, North Carolina. I just found I was coming down 40. I wanted to find a good sell. Oh, okay. You've listened to interviews before where the guy's sell disappears. Yes. I don't want to have to drive around. Yeah, I appreciate that. You get it. You get radio. I mean, you've got your whole network. I am a Carolina fan. Joe, I'm a Carolina fan. I went to Carolina, so, of course, I'm a Carolina fan, but I have a lot of friends that went to Duke, and I had a lot of friends that went to State. I mean, I don't hate anybody except when we're playing basketball. No, no, no, not hate. You know what I meant. Like, with Dickie Vee, it could be sometimes with Duke, you're going, man, he loves Duke.

03:13 That's all he loves. Because when really, to your point, when you spend a little bit of time with him, you understand how people really embrace his energy and his enthusiasm for college basketball. And this is more about his life as well, too, not just his fight and his recent fight against cancer and also all of his collective efforts to fight and raise money for cancer. Yeah, we had the premiere, the private premiere was last week. Private screening. Dick was supposed to show up, but, of course, he had the throat problem where he wasn't allowed to talk for two weeks. That didn't work too well. His wife said within 15 minutes he was talking, so it's been about a month. So we were amazed to see him the other night on ESPN, or, sorry, on ABC with that long speech he did, and his voice sounded fine. So I'm glad to see he recovered his voice. Yeah, no, that's going to say, that's one of those things that seems to come and go in

04:00 this situation. So it was good that he was able to, like, power through and make that happen. Coach Pete, hey, appreciate catching up. Awesome being a part of this Dick Vitale movie that's going to be on ESPN this weekend. I know it debuted digitally. We'll talk to you later. It's 4 p.m. Saturday, ESPN. Awesome. Coach Pete, thanks, man. Drive safe. Enjoy the boat. That's not yours. Happy weekend. Take care. It's the OG alongside Joe Giglio. I'm Joe Ovi. That is the move, man. I'm telling you right now. Thank you.

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00:00 Well, as we said to you at the top of the hour, you've heard the name because he's on our air and he's on with commercials and his show and everything. And you know him as Coach Pete D’Arruda, but I want to talk to him now as just good guy, Pete Deruta, because he is one of the people behind an incredible documentary that's going to air after the ESPYs on ESPN. Pete, thanks so much for joining us today to talk about this. Thanks for having me, Steve. So tell us more about this documentary. If I say the name, everyone's going to know exactly what it's about. It's called Dickie V. Yeah, Dick Vitale, buddy of mine. I've known him for years. Had him on my show before. I've given to his V Foundation. He does a lot of work with the V Foundation for Cancer Research.

00:47 He concentrates on the children's portion because there's no worse cancer than a child having cancer. So we're trying to battle cancer. We're trying to get as much money rounded up. Dick raises over like $5 or $6 million a year right now, which is crazy, crazy numbers. Talked to Mark Cuban, and Mark Cuban gave him $500,000 to the cancer research. And Mark said he is so infectious. He just wants you to help when you hear him. It's crazy, Dick Vitale. And when we talk about college basketball, and you like him or hate him, you know, I'm a Carolina fan, and sometimes it felt like he was rooting against me or Carolina when they were playing Duke. And I've talked to some Duke fans, and they felt the same way about Carolina. They felt he was rooting for Carolina. So he's just a great infectious guy, and he makes college basketball fun to watch. He is very enthusiastic.

01:33 He's like that one guy who's on our air who's really enthusiastic about investing your money. I can't remember his name. I don't know. So tell me about how you got involved in this project with this documentary called Dickie V. There's an Emmy Award winning director. His name is Nick Nanton. He has like 23 Emmys for 23 different movies. And I've been associated with Nick for a couple years. We won an Emmy together for the movie on Rudy. If you've ever seen the movie, Rudy, we did the 25-year anniversary called Rudy the Walk-On. And we went to Notre Dame with Rudy and walked the campus and went to all the places you see on the movie and got Rudy's opinion and real thoughts about what happened in the movie. And even met some of the people that were still alive from the movie that were still on campus. So it was a great movie. It's on Amazon Prime.

02:19 I think it's free, which is good. And then I won an Emmy myself on the last blockbuster. And I'm in the movie. I'm in the last scene of the last blockbuster, which is free on Netflix. You can see that. But this movie right here is going to be – let me read a couple names for you. Coach K. Have you ever heard of Coach K? Oh, yeah. Coach K. Chris Berman from ESPN. Scott Van Pelt. Magic Johnson. Jay Billis. The name goes – Stephen A. Smith. The name goes on. People were lining up to be in this movie. Matter of fact, we had to cut the filming short when ESPN announced or told us that they wanted to have the movie launch on the 20th right after the ESPYs this week. And then it's going to be available. And it's on ESPN Plus, though, so I don't have ESPN Plus. Some people do. That costs a little extra money. But on Saturday at 4 p.m., it's going to be available on ESPN for free.

03:08 It's an 80-minute motion picture. And it's rated PG. Really good movie. And, again, it's called Dickie V. And it's an aspiring movie. We had the private screening last week in Chicago. Dickie couldn't make it because he just had throat surgery a couple weeks ago. And his doctor told him he wasn't allowed to talk for two weeks. Oh, my goodness. That's an awful thing. Jeez. But his wife, Lorraine, says he can't stop talking for five minutes. So that was like four weeks ago when the doctor told him he couldn't talk for two weeks, but he kept talking. So he still can't talk. Like, his voice still isn't back. So we're going to have him on again on our show eventually. And, again, we're on 3 p.m. on Saturday. So you can listen to our show, The Financial Safari, right there on WPTF at 3. And right after the show's over, go turn the TV on at 4 and watch ESPN and watch Dickie V.

03:53 You know, Pete, I think it's neat the number of people and families that join together at a time like this. There's a big story on ABC 11 on their website about members of Stuart Scott's family that are working so hard to raise awareness. And you start looking at members of Dickie V's family, everyone who's involved with the Jim Valvano golf tournament and everything that they do. People come together. They put aside politics. They put aside viruses and everything. They come together when it's for a great cause. We could get politics out of things.

04:38 It'd be a lot friendlier world, wouldn't it? Oh, boy. That's true. I talk about that all the time. Let's just be human beings. Jeez. Let me tell you this one thing, too. Before people think I'm pumping this up too much, I'm in a non-revenue position for this movie. Matter of fact, I've donated money to the movie to make sure it's a success. Yes. And we want to get the word out for cancer research. And Dickie V's done a great job over the years. And we want to continue to carry that torch for him. One of the things that I want to do, and I've been talking about it in my mind, but it seems like every day there's a news story I need to cover or some things that we need to get taken care of. There's an awful lot of public service announcements that are going on TV now about an incredible place in Memphis, Tennessee called St. Jude Children's Hospital.

05:25 And they do such incredible work. Yeah, St. Jude's a good place. I'm sorry. But they just do incredible work. And people see the commercials and the great work that they're doing down there. I want to get them on the air. Maybe even do on a holiday sometime, do a whole hour about some of the research that they're doing down there and all the great, great work. So anyway, the show is called Dickie V, and it will air after the ESPYs on ESPN. The first time is when? Coming up Thursday, did you say? Well, it's on ESPN Plus Thursday night, but that costs extra money. That's like a service. That's one of those streaming things. But if you want to watch it free, like most people, ESPN, 4 o'clock Saturday, 4 p.m. Saturday,

06:12 great time to watch it. And I just think it's a really, really good event for everyone. And here, when we had our private screening, Steve, this is a good factoid for you. Not one person left that movie theater without having cried three times. Oh, yeah. I'm sure it's not a comedy, you know. It's something that's going to touch everyone's heart. But it's a great movie, and it's not a sad movie. It's an uplifting movie, but we have to realize things aren't always perfect, and the secret to life is overcoming the things that aren't perfect and making sure you enjoy your life. Coach Pete, thank you so much. I appreciate you being on and letting us know about it, and I know a lot of folks are going to be watching. Thanks again. Thank you, Steve. Take care, everybody. WPTF News Time 318 on the Triangle's Afternoon News. I hope everyone can watch it for sure.

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00:00 It's the Adam Gold Show. What? I'm Adam Gold. Sucking up to the host to get you far, Graham. Graham is on the ones and twos today. Coming up on Thursday, following the ESPYs, if you are a subscriber to ESPN Plus, you can check out the Dick Vitale ESPN Films. And we have the executive producer who's going to join us in a second. Here's a little, here is the official trailer for the Dickie V. Doc. Check this out. What a big time move. Super scimilating.

00:46 Why the hell were you concerned about college basketball? Because Dickie V. made you concerned. The 80s and the 90s, Dickie V was everywhere. I've never seen anything like it. It's just, it's a firestorm coming at you. People don't realize Dick was a coach. He won back-to-back championships. High school coach for Rutgers. And then became an NBA coach. And got fired. It's really an amazing story. I was a boy of all the dreams. He's overcome a lot of adversity in his life. You know, from losing his eye. I'll be scared as I've ever been in my life. Look at the mirror. Look at my eye. Just hated it.

01:31 Now with this fight against cancer. I'm in the last chapter, man. I'm in the last chapter. Does that work? This is doing something wrong. All right. So you want to check that out either Thursday on ESPN Plus after the ESPYs or Saturday at 4 o'clock on ESPN. Pete DeRuda is the executive producer of the Dickie V documentary. And he joins us on the Adam Gold Show. So full disclosure, those people who listen in Raleigh or listen to the Best Of podcast will know that I do commercials for Pete. We call him Coach, so I'll just call him Pete. This had to be an absolute blast. You've been working on this for a long time. This has been going on for two years, Adam.

02:16 We're very happy to be releasing it right when Dick Vitale gets that award on Thursday night. That's right. He gets the Jimmy V award for perseverance. And I actually texted with Dickie earlier today. I don't know why I just called him Dickie. I texted with Dick Vitale earlier today. And he thought I was inviting him on the show. I was just saying hi because it made me think of him. And he said, I'm saving my voice for the ESPYs. And he should because I know, like, we've talked to Dick a lot. And he makes himself very available. So explain your involvement in this, why you wanted to do it, and how he was to deal with. Well, we had a private screening in Chicago last week. And Dick Vitale could not make it. He had throat surgery just a few weeks ago.

03:03 And then the doctor told him he could not talk for two weeks. I don't think his wife, Lorraine, said he can't stop talking for five minutes. So we didn't want to get him around the big crowd in Chicago. But the reason I did it, I've had him on my show before. He does tremendous research for children's cancer research and the V Foundation. And everyone knows, you know, who doesn't know the V Foundation? Jim Valvano. And so he likes to concentrate on children's cancer research. And if you've ever had a friend or a family member who's had cancer when they're young, it's not fair. So we're trying to fight that. And then this idea came along with Nick Nanton, who's the director of the movie. Good buddy of mine. He's won over 20 Emmys in his lifetime. And I've piggybacked with him as an executive producer and won three, one for Rudy, the walk-on about the movie Rudy. So if you haven't seen that, it's free online on Amazon, I think, or Netflix.

03:51 They go back and forth. But that's a great movie, too. But this one, I mean, we had people lining up. People that you see on TV, superstars like LeBron James, Shaquille O'Neal, which we couldn't get in in time because ESPN rushed the deadline. But we've got, like, Stephen A. Smith, anyone you've ever seen on TV, Coach K was very generous with his time. He was good buddies with Jim Valvano as well. But it's just been a great movie. Nobody left that movie cinema without a tear in their eye. Some people admitted crying more than once. I'll admit I cried three times. And I was behind the scenes watching the movie being made. Here's the thing about Vital. And I know it was alluded to, like, he was a very successful high school coach. And I think he went to the University of Detroit, had a great year, had a great run there, and then got the job with the Pistons and didn't make it out of season one.

04:44 And at that point becomes he gets an offer from ESPN to be a college basketball analyst. And he took it. He didn't know what to do. And I don't think he intended to keep that job forever. But I think you could make an argument that he is as responsible as Magic and Larry for the ascension of college basketball to what it is today. I agree. Well, think about back then. We were just getting, I mean, back in the day, if you wanted to watch a basketball game, you had to turn the TV, the three channels you had around and see if one was on, one for the week. And then ESPN started showing them all the time. And then this guy, this Dick Vitale guy, I mean, I tuned in sometime just to see what he was going to say. Yeah, yeah.

05:30 I mean, you know, exciting. He's got a thousand books. I think he writes all his books with the same guy, Dick Weiss. This is another guy I know. He's a longtime college basketball writer in New York and Philadelphia. But he's with the sayings and the showmanship. But he really was a salesman. And, like, I'm not comparing him to Tiger Woods. But in this regard, I think it's fair. Because Tiger made the sport of golf, A, incredibly, more popular than it's ever been. And also, he made it more money than it had ever been made. And Vitale's personality put college basketball on everybody's television.

06:21 It just, like, I'm not saying that Coach K should give him a cut, because he probably has. Probably made a bunch of donations to the V Foundation. I know he has. And he's done a lot of work for that. But, you know, like, there's a part of everybody's salary that is probably owed to Vitale. Well, I was talking to Mark Cuban. And Mark Cuban gave half a million to the V Foundation because of Dick Vitale. He said he was so infectious. And then Mark started researching. And he said, I can't give enough to this foundation now. Yeah. I mean, Vitale has done so much. And you talk about childhood cancer. And he's got the V Gala every year at his house. And they raise tons and tons of money. And then when he got his diagnosis, he has come through. He has made it public.

07:07 I don't know how many people would essentially live this publicly like he has. But I just wonder what sort of an impact that has had on everybody else that he has decided to essentially share this with everybody else. Yeah. There was a time where you couldn't say college basketball without saying Dick Vitale. I don't know that that's still not the case, to be honest. Still today. Yeah. It's been fun. It's been a really fun project. And I'm really excited to get it out. And I think everyone listening will benefit by watching the movie. Oh, I don't think there's any question about that. The one thing that I don't know if within the movie there are long snippets. But I used to watch the speeches he made at camps to kids. And he would go on for a long time.

07:52 And he gets – I mean, it is an athletic event when Dick Vitale got worked up in these speeches. So I don't know how much of these speeches are contained in the documentary. But I'm sure if there isn't, you can find them online. And they are inspiring, inspirational messages that he gives to kids who are really very impressionable. And there's a lot of different things in the world today than there were maybe 25 years ago. We'll let you go. Pete DeRuda, executive producer of the Dickie V ESPN 30 for 30, which drops on ESPN Plus Thursday night after the ESPYs. And then Saturday at 4 o'clock on ESPN. Thank you for your time, sir.

08:38 I'll talk to you soon. I'll see you soon. Take care, Adam. You got it. Pete DeRuda, executive producer of the Dick Vitale documentary.

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00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Well folks this is the time of the show where we go out across the world and find someone who I think is making a difference in the world and especially in the financial world and this week is a fantastic guest. I've had both of his most recent movies in my collection and we're going to be airing the most recent movie at a few movie cinemas and we've also got some DVDs that we can give out as well after this interview as well as some special codes you can use on the internet

00:45 to watch the movie at no cost. But his name is Doug Orchard and he's joining us from Florida and the two movies I'm talking about one is 2018 and we if you've been listening to the show at all in the past you heard us talk about it the power of zero the tax train is coming. We'll talk about that at a different interview and I'm more than happy to touch on it today too but we want to talk about the most important one the most recent movie called the Baby Boomer Dilemma an expose of America's retirement experiment. Now Doug welcome in. Hey thank you so much for having me. Now your movies are awesome and I want to ask you first what inspired you to start doing these movies? Well actually it was David Walker back in 2004 I happened to be driving across the Mojave Desert

01:32 and the only radio station I can get in was Las Vegas University at the time on AM radio and he was being interviewed there and it appears nobody was listening to him and he was complaining that the president wasn't listening to him and how dire our future was because the national debt the projections of where we were heading and this was four years off of when the projections were showing that we were never going to have a national debt that we were moving to a point we're going to have no debt well and in four years it just got I mean just went out of control so fast and so and I I just I became super interested and I began doing documentaries in 2009 and you know that's all I do since and and so I had some some individuals come up to me saying you know you need to make a film about retirement income income income income

02:22 and they explained the problem with it in relation to that debt and I and the consequence of what we're facing and and so this is really overall it's been a half a decade in the making it takes a long time to make a movie like this yeah it does but because you have an all-star cast in this movie about and people in the financial industry will probably know a lot of these folks but even people outside of the financial arena have probably heard some of the some of the names there like of course if you're listening at all and you follow politics you'd probably know David Walker because he was the comptroller general of the U.S. he resigned during the Bush administration because he said he got tired of signing checks that were going to bounce because he was in charge of signing all the government's checks in a in theory I know there's a rubber stamp there he got tired of having his name associated with us getting ourselves in trouble as far as spending wise

03:07 wasn't he right he was and he became frustrated because you know he served under both political you know parties presidents yeah no dog and and he he at that moment was an independent type and he just felt like no one was listening and so that's when he he resigned and started this national tour he created a great movie about the national debt it it um was actually nominated for an academy award you thought that everything would be changing and uh and of course nothing happened and um it's been interesting talking to him through the years and listening to the tone of his voice and we got him in rare form in this film I think we got him in a frustrated moment it's quite interesting to listen to and he just opens up

03:53 and tells things how they really are which and and again this film isn't really it doesn't really make any points about political party the government anything like that everyone should know that this film is about okay given what's going on what do we do about it as baby boomers what do we do about how do we protect ourselves um given this and it's a dilemma I mean the film is aptly named it's a dilemma you know there's no easy road but there are better choices than others yeah so when we talk about the dilemma and a lot of folks are listening say well my retirement's fine I've got my money in a 401k and and my company says as long as I put money in I'll have a retirement income but they don't really understand what the 401k really is 401k is more of a lump sum vehicle correct right it is and at first we had the founder the person who created the 401k in the film um Ted Benna yeah and we had we had really the

04:44 world's experts on every single line that you can come up with and the world's experts for social security for pensions for the people who do um the biggest exposés on those the the people who created these all all who administer over them every every aspect of it and study them um in the movie but 401ks it's about aggregating money for you know for growing it but when it comes to and what do you even mean because 401k is really not even a good word um but usually what people think of is they're thinking it's growing in some type of mutual fund right right um and so if we're going to use that vernacular for a moment then that's there's one everything we understand is it's about growing it

05:30 but not distributing it and all the rules change the moment you start taking money out every law you think you understand it no longer applies and that film that's what that's one of the messages of the movie it shows it very clearly well back in 2008 we had dr david babble from the wharton school on on our show because he had been writing a lot of articles about the the dilemma about income and retirement and uh and looking at the vehicles that existed that were known to man that would give you a lifetime income and he was doing all sorts of research papers on it from the wharton school and i said doc what why are you spending so much time on this he said coach i'm going to retire soon i want to make sure i get the right vehicles myself unfortunately dr david babble has passed away but you have him uh you have him in the movie as well yeah i got him the last recording of him um and this film

06:17 meant an awful lot for him he he lined up some of the key people of this of this movie he was a great guy we got a lot of great responsible we had him on the show i think we had him on for a return visit too after he retired and he was happy because he didn't have all his money exposed to risk well the other thing about dr david babble that's interesting is he was the world's authority on inflation so he did his dissertation on inflation when he got his phd in economics from university of california berkeley um and then he was the person who brazil when they were in trouble tapped and went down and helped them uh get that thing under control and and so when he looked at his own personal question what do i do personally what do i do he had written incredible articles and strategies about you know here's how you

07:04 optimize money in retirement and all that but when he got down to it he was like you know this is too complex to actually do in retirement he wanted something simpler and he wanted something that was effective hedge against inflation and and so that's what he reveals in the film it's super interesting what he does it's simple folks we're talking to doug orchard he's director filmmaker researcher for the baby boomer dilemma also the power of zero the tax train is coming when we talk about inflation uh gosh if dr babble was alive today he'd be all over the place on the news wouldn't he he would be um and the thing the thing that's interesting is a year ago when i was filming him was it just a year ago no it was a year year and a half quarter quarter ago in march 2001 he saw the inflation coming 2021 2021 to that what i will there we go thank you a good time machine

07:55 yeah yeah so he knew he knew it was happening well i mean he he was showing me all these charts like he saw this was coming um and he would be all over the news um but the issue is it isn't you know what do we do now and all that we have inflation it's here it is here yeah and um i i think that when we get to just looking at our personal bank accounts it's frustrating right and when you look at nine percent per month you know this is this is insane it is how do you guard against that and it's so when i look at what did he do and then he was telling me what here's what i do and here's why and here's what will work i i thought this has to be he changed my mind on an approach and that this that approach gets

08:41 a lot of time in this movie okay yeah and also in the movie you discuss the mismanagement of state and local pensions that's something that's very worrisome because a lot of folks listening probably have state or local pensions this is probably the biggest expose in an actual movie this is a pg mpa rated film and 99 of documentaries are not rated because they're really infomercials so this the mpa they have a group that that gives the rating and they have a part of it that screens is this art is this objective or is this you know a corp or an infomercial for something and and it can't get through that if it's really an infomercial so so they take it and look at it that way when we look at what's going on right now um it's important that we truly get the right

09:32 picture as as consumers and um who's really telling us the story and and that's what we try to do we try to tell an objective an objective story it's going to look a little different from any narrative you get from anyone else um but this is what happens when you have a crowdfunded film and i don't sell anything i just make movies yeah well i mean it's a great movie and i've watched it three or four times we have we have my whole staff is watching i make them watch it too because this is relevant this is a movie that is addressing every single person that's listening is going to be affected good or bad by the decisions they make financially and speaking that another area you touch in is the role of low cost fixed annuities in retirement can you touch on that yeah well that's what dr david babble is

10:19 using and this is of course is something people don't understand and something i was very very against going into the film and it was amazing what happened i mean i got a 180 experience because it it comes down to it all comes down to income and if you have all your money at risk what happens when you have a 30 correction in the market and you're within that five five years of retirement or in that first 10 years of retirement you cannot recover from it it's impossible mathematically and and i had that experience you know i actually lost 90 of my portfolio in um in the year 2000 um back when i was just turning 30 years old and um in my 401k and it never in there i never made up for it i mean i never made

11:08 up for what was there it's really a i really wish that we'd stop saying you have time to make up for it when you're younger because that's also not true um what we can do is have things at risk and know that that's at risk and we have things that are guaranteed and know that that part's guaranteed and we have to make a decision do we want to have a certain percentage of our retirement in a guaranteed fashion and what's that lifestyle look like and the rest could be you know up for risk or you know are we okay with making guaranteed the poverty line and we at least have that and then the rest could be at risk there's a decision to make but to have all of it at risk nobody nobody i haven't found anyone who suggested that that makes sense nobody says that in this film yeah well dr craig israel

11:54 from stanford university came up with the core and explore as far as retirement income the some of the money or the money you want to have for income you want to be guaranteed to have for income needs to be in the core that is not exposed to risk but also grows locks a gain in and it gives you a monthly or yearly income for the rest of your life and then once you establish that income which you know ahead of time then you can take the leftover money the money you don't need as much now i don't want to lose any money but but you don't if you lost that money in the explorer account not the core account you'd be okay but as long as the core is protected then you can take more risk with the leftover money what do you think about that well i think that when you talk about core we're including social security and pensions both public and state and this film absolutely exposes that those publicly stated numbers of what your benefit is it's mathematically impossible right now for them to

12:44 deliver those numbers to you so that's why we talk about not depending on the group accounts and having individual accounts so yes and so that's where you're saying okay well i need to supplement my core what i thought was core but if we're gonna get a 30 haircut for example in social security then then how how are you gonna make up for that what's your new core that's where the annuity fits in to supplement that same with a pension you know my dad has calpers so i wanted to inform my 86 year old father that his calpers number is seriously at risk because they've been they've been planning on growing at eight percent a year seven and a half percent a year right that's impossible that's an impossible they've never done that before they've only done what the treasury rates ever done since 1980 in any 10 year trance that's all they've ever done look what the treasury rate is right now it's not seven and a half percent has been a long

13:32 time by the way yeah so and and with that they're still underfunded at a seven percent which they never will hit you know nobody's hitting that number so so we have we have some real ethical problems and by those who are ministering our core social security public and private pensions serious particularly the public ones that's where the problem is is the publicly ones i don't know how they're getting away with it but this film demonstrates where we where we really are at and this is the the glasses you need to wear to see things clearly yeah and then you can go meet with your your advisor and and you can dictate hey here is what i need now you know you can have that intelligent discussion um after this film it's it's meant to just open your eyes it's not financial

14:21 advice by itself but it does open your eyes on what the conditions are well being informed is the most important thing then you can approach retirement with confidence knowing you've made the best decision because you had all the different places like explained to you instead of just whatever your broker's pushing and so very important to see this movie folks if you'd like a special code to watch the movie doug's been generous enough to share some with us their individual codes you can watch the movie one time and we're also going to show the movie next month in three movie cinemas around so give a call right now or text us movie m-o-v-i-e to 600-700 to get on that list again movie to 600-700 doug we really appreciate your time and and let's schedule another time to have you come and talk about the power of zero sometime that sounds great that sounds great thank you so much folks again his name is doug orchard and the name of the movie is the baby boomer dilemma an expose of america's retirement

15:11 experiment 888-623-8858 or text 401k to 600-700 you're going to get that comprehensive retirement review plus all the extras that coach just talked about you'll see where you are today but more importantly you'll walk out the door with a roadmap that can help get you to where you need to be when it comes to retirement 888-623-8858 888-623-8858 or just text 401k to 600-700 you

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00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Well folks this is the time of the show where we go out across the world and find someone who's making a difference, someone who I've seen succeed and I don't think there's a better success story than this one. We've got Chris Gronkowski on with us. You may recognize that last name. His brother kind of has done some things with the football back in the day and still maybe going forward we'll see that maybe we'll never see Rob Gronkowski out there but Chris is a success himself. You may have seen him. He had three years in the NFL as a fullback which is a

00:48 hard position to play folks. That means you take on the biggest linebacker you can find and have a collision on almost every play but Chris has been on Shark Tank back in I think 2017. I saw him on there and he struck a deal with a couple guys. We'll find out who when we talk to Chris. Chris welcome in. Hey thanks for having me. So tell us about your life. I mean what inspired you to get into football and then what inspired you to get into your new career here? Yeah for sure. So yeah it's kind of funny. Everyone thinks we're this big football family. We grew up playing a lot of hockey actually. Born in Buffalo, New York. A lot of hockey. A lot of baseball and actually didn't step on the football field until high school. Wow. That's really when it started but the older brother Danny, my second oldest, he was a beast. He was 6'6", 235 in high school. He looked like a man out

01:36 there playing with little kids and you know when you look like that you're pretty much forced to play football. So that got him out on the field. He started balling out. He ended up being the starting quarterback. Once you see your older brother doing it, it just becomes contagious and you want to do it too. So I jumped on board. I started training. I started playing football as well my freshman year and then you know all the other brothers just followed at that point. So Rob, what number is Rob? He is the fourth out of five. Okay so I'm the oldest of three and so my younger brother started beating me in basketball and I put basketball away after that. So it's because the little brothers get picked on by the big brothers a lot. So we roughed him up but he got better and so that's what happens. You steel sharpening steel we call it. That's right man. That's why Rob got

02:23 so good. I just kept showing him what was up. So somebody went to the University of Arizona. Did you go there or did I know Rob went there? Yeah so Rob and I both went there. I ended up going to the University of Maryland first and transferring over to Arizona and Rob and I played together for my last two seasons there. And you know we actually both left. Went to the draft at the same time. I was a redshirt senior. He was a true junior. So we entered into the NFL together. Well that's pretty neat too when you think about it. Yeah. And so you were you ended up playing for but did you go to Buffalo? No so little youngest brother Glenn ended up in Buffalo first season. I went to the Cowboys out of college and played there for a year. Went to the Colts, played there

03:09 for a year and then got traded to the Broncos for a year. So I used to do a show with Terrell Davis in the Denver area. So Terrell's very popular out there. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I missed him by a few years. He's a really cool guy. I mean there's a lot of cool guys in the NFL and he's got he's got like a lot of the guys that retire get in really good shape when they retire and then other guys go the other way. Terrell Davis has stayed in really good shape and I don't know I think you have too. I saw you in Shark Tank. You look like you're in pretty good shape too. Yeah it's hard for me to stop. You know you're doing it your whole life. For me it was I was trying to just keep weight just by doing everything I can eating everything I possibly could. So I was big man. I was I was 30 pounds heavier than I am now and the cool part is is you pretty much did a bulk your whole life. Like man people people bulk and then they cut. Well I bulked you know for the first 26 years of my life

03:58 to be able to play fullback. So there was a lot of muscle underneath all that extra weight I was carrying and when I dropped the 30 pounds I was shredded at that point. You know you could you see the muscle and that was when everyone started saying like why why aren't you playing football and people just don't realize it's it's not about what you look like. You know it's how you perform on the field and you can't perform looking like a bodybuilder. You know that's that's not football. You know football is more about functionality. It's actually probably beneficial to have a little extra body fat to kind of protect yourself cushion yourself a little bit. And yeah I mean it's not a bodybuilding competition. It's not who looks the best performs the best. It's you know who performs the best on the field. It's a long season too just like life is long. And so like when you when a lot

04:43 of the NFL guys in particular the careers are pretty short. The lifespan in NFL we we're so used to seeing maybe Tom Brady but Tom Brady is a is not normal. It's not at all. You shouldn't go 25 years in NFL. So you have to plan ahead and you've done a good job of transitioning from from that NFL. I think you've taken that that same kind of mentality though working all the time and key and bettering yourself and and you developed a new career and I want to talk about that. Yeah for sure. Yeah I was done playing. You got to stay busy. I think that's one of the hardest things that you transition out. You're so used to this scheduled lifestyle. You have practice in the morning. You show up you have an itinerary. You know you go through it the entire day and you know you leave exhausted and you get ready for the next day. Once that's over there's no one there telling you what to do anymore and a lot of guys fall off. A lot of guys don't know what to do. A lot of guys have enough money too to kind of

05:31 cruise and don't realize that you know you kind of miss that competition and accomplishing things every day and working as a team. So it becomes a challenge once guys leave. But I tried to stay as busy as I possibly could so that wouldn't happen to me. Went right into a business with my wife when I was done playing. She started a Netsy shop when I was in my third season. Three teams, three cities, three jobs later she's like I am not looking for another job. I'm gonna do something online. It just took off. So I joined her. I did that for about five years and then the opportunity came knocking. You know I wanted to get back into sports and fitness. That's who I was. That's what I was always doing. That's what I was talking about. That's what I grew up doing. So I thought of the idea for a shaker bottle. I was here in Dallas super hot out. Had a plastic bottle just sweating

06:17 everywhere. I took a sip. It smelled awful. I tasted awful and I'm like man there's got to be something better out there. So I went home that day. Tried to look for something. There's just nothing out there. Created a bottle for myself really at that point and realized really quickly that a lot of other people were looking for something similar. Yeah well I mean it's it's important when you when you make the protein drinks especially if you don't get it stirred up right. I mean it's all globbed up and it looks nasty and it tastes nasty. So you want to be able to drink it as fast as possible. Yeah and if it's warm it's even worse. Yeah so that was that was really the goal was make the best shaker bottle that I could and it wasn't just for the gym. I really I was a simple guy like I wanted one cup I could use all day every day. I'll bring it to work. I'll go home. I'll bring it to the gym. I'll use it at the house. I'll use it by the pool. Bring it on the airplane. I just give me

07:03 one cup. I'm cool. So that was kind of the goal with it was you know just give me one I can use for everything including the gym and including blending and mixing powders. Yeah well I've tried that I've played that game before and I've got one of yours I've got one of your shaker bottles here they sent us man it's pretty cool looking I'm going to give it I'm going to give it a run this afternoon and by the way folks Chris Gronkowski we're talking in former NFL player and owner of the company Ice Shaker. Chris we saw you on Shark Tank let's talk about that how fun was that to get ready for. So yeah Shark Tank Shark Tank it's it's it's the real deal uh it's kind of like getting ready for the big game you know you've got you got to prepare for it uh you've got to have that confidence going into it and um you know you get nervous for it as well just like just like a big game uh you're going to go out there and those first couple seconds you know before that big hit before that

07:50 first play starts you're kind of sitting there like oh man you get a little shaky and that's how Shark Tank was but uh once you start going once you get that pitch down once you get uh things in motion it just becomes like a game man you start flowing the confidence is there because you prepared and uh you know we're lucky enough to get offers from all five sharks and walk out with a deal. Yeah you had the uh the show A-Rod was on there uh taking I think uh in somebody's place that day and and you had Barbara Corcoran on we've had her on the show she was entertaining too but yeah you got everybody gave you offers which is unusual many times and then you had guys wanting to partner up so what finally happened? Yes we ended up closing with Mark Cuban and Alex Rodriguez so it was kind of like the trifecta we had the NFL down we had the MLB we had NBA all in there so two guys that were into sports and it was a great fit. Now before you guys came on Shark Tank you had

08:41 some sales but not many sales right? Yeah we had um we were about six months in uh we had about $80,000 in sales so nothing crazy a lot of it was just generated uh through doing shows right and uh just just online sales. So after the Shark Tank appearance what happened? So yeah it took off the Shark Tank effect is the real deal uh we went to we did about three million in sales over the next 12 months after after airing on Shark Tank. It's amazing numbers and so again I see it it's all over Amazon I guess you guys are at GNC any other places? Yeah for sure so uh GNC Vitamin Shop, Lifetime Fitness is a big customer of ours we're starting to work with Do It Best, the hardware store uh we're in Walmart as well uh so yeah it's it's all over the place. Tell me it's a quality it's a quality shaker bottle I mean it's

09:29 it's important to have a one you really rely on and can trust and this looks like one that I that I would definitely keep in my gym bag. Yeah absolutely I mean it's it's going to be the best shaker bottle you're going to have uh and then it's going to really function as really everything else that you need as well yeah if you need a water bottle it's there you know if you need to mix up some margaritas you can do that with it too it'll mix that up it will act as a an agitator but also as a strainer for your drinks as well uh you could put hot drinks in it we don't recommend you shake them but you know I like to take the lid off it's got a wide mouth on it you could easily fill coffee it actually will stay hot for too long where you're going to end up putting ice in it just to be able to drink it uh but yeah man really you can really not not just for the gym but it's not just a shaker bottle it really can be used for everything. Yeah it's a neat bottle again the name is

10:16 Chris Gronkowski folks and hey Chris a side note for you I was at your brother's and you might have been there too that night over at the palms in uh Vegas the palm hotel his retirement party about three years ago that didn't work. I was there somewhere. That was a fun time but uh see retirement parties all aren't always about retirement sometimes it was a fun time fun time. Yeah that was we're gonna have to have another one. Hey do this for us when when you guys hit 10 million in sales I want to hear from you again. I like it. I like that too man it's a good job. Is that in one year or is that what is? When you get 10 10 yeah in 12 months 10 million. That's okay. That's a good goal. I'd like to call you in a few few weeks. Well cool brother we'll take care and then folks again the the company's name is ice shaker and you can find it most anywhere quality items are sold. Chris thanks for your time.

11:04 Thank you so much for having me. Folks we'll be right back after this.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Well folks this is the time of the show where we go out across the world and find someone who's making a difference and is interesting to me and if you've ever looked at the financial world if you've looked at these things called mutual funds for years people didn't know which ones to get and if they were getting ripped off quite frankly and then a guy named John Bogle came along and founded Vanguard and it's been an interesting study and people getting educated in

00:46 the money world and not overpaying and making sure they do get educated more than they used to and we've got a great guest today. His name is Eric Balchunas and he's joining us from right outside of Philadelphia. He's a senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence where he leads ETF and passive fund research. He and his team write several notes a week for Bloomberg Terminal which total over a million reads per year. Eric's also co-host of the weekly Bloomberg TV show called ETF IQ. He's got a new book out called The Bogle Effect. I'm going to talk about John Bogle a little bit and I want to welcome you in. Eric welcome in. Hey it's great to be here. Thank you for that nice introduction. Well you've got a long bio so I have to pick and choose what to talk about but The Bogle Effect here the book takes readers through the financial areas such as active management ETFs and advisory

01:33 world quantitative investing something called ESG which a lot of people are going to hear more and more about that coming up behavioral finance and even trading platforms to show how they and the investors they serve are being reshaped and reformed in that book. Now what what inspired you to to write the book I know you've talked to when John was alive I know you spent a lot of time talking to him. Yeah I had sat down with him for three different interviews for over an hour in the five years before he passed away and then we exchanged emails he was on my ETF show a couple times and I had all this audio on a dictaphone and I a couple years before he passed away and the pandemic hit and I'm sort of had a little more time and I thought you know let me get this out out there because I think what he did is really interesting it's almost a business story that it's not just like a Jeff Bezos

02:23 or Steve Jobs it's actually I think another level given that he really didn't get rich himself I think those other stories are usually that somebody becoming a billionaire this guy made everyone else rich and I find that story really interesting when it completely has is now dictating the whole industry basically they alone taken about a billion a day which is really an absurd amount of money they take in a billion a day for 10 years and then other people have now copied their sort of low cost index funds whether it's BlackRock or Fidelity and that's the funds they get assets in now so in a way Vanguard and Bogle the man have had I in my opinion the biggest effect in asset management if not all of Wall Street as you know compared to anybody else and really I think all of what Bogle did really comes

03:11 down to one phrase I think his life's work could really be defined by addition by subtraction he removed management fees trading biases all the friction that just gets in the way of you and your money which once it starts compounding is glorious yeah that's a good point you know the investment world is very confusing for a lot of folks too and then it's more of the investainment when you watch some of these shows that are on like 24 7 is you can get financial information I think people get more enticed to do more things they shouldn't do because they get impatient and you know the word the phrase dollar cost averaging means a lot instead of trying to buy and sell a lot of times always buy and add to something if you believe in it I think that's one of the main things that the John was featuring is is the consistency and persistent and saving like that and and not trying to like find the

04:00 horse that's going to win the race but bet on all the horses so and and and put the money in every single month the system systematic investing is something that every American should be doing yeah I think most people who have invested I think you know when you're talking about this entertainment aspect of it I think young people drive that a lot I think when you look at Robin Hood yeah I remember I'm a Gen Xer in the 90s we were all thought we were geniuses because we bought Microsoft and Cisco and it went up a lot but then you know a correction hits and you realize this is harder than it looks and so most people who are young I think go through that process I think it's generational but there's a line in in war games uh that movie from the 80s where the the computer deduces that the only winning move is to not play and I think that's what most people uh subscribe to

04:49 after they try this on their own it doesn't work out and then also maybe they get older they have more responsibilities they have a family a mortgage they can't mess around with money as much yeah and that's where I think Vanguard is really really fits that time in your life when you're finally done with the gambling aspect and you want to just save and grow your wealth and so I think you're right that Vanguard is sort of at odds with that sort of culture but I will say um and I funny Bogle wrote a piece for the New York Times in 1999 right before the internet bubble burst and because that's when day trading was crazy then too right um and he basically said that people who day trade only get about 60 percent of the actual market returns and and you know he didn't like active mutual funds but he

05:39 said at least they get 75 percent of market returns but an index fund gets you 99 percent of the market returns and so as much as he would slam active managers he thought doing it yourself was was even worse if your goal is to grow wealth that that's also part of the book because I was like listen this guy came out with an idea called the index fund and he wouldn't pay brokers so a he he had an idea that sounded average it's like I don't why don't it be average and he was doing it outside of the entire system of incentives but he was able to break through and I look at all the creative ways he was to do it one of those ways is showing the growth of ten thousand dollars and I think this is what is interesting in the story of Vanguard is it took a long time because of this this guy operated outside of a system and so the company didn't even get to 10 percent market share in the fund business

06:27 um not until 25 years after it started so this was a long process of him trying to explain to people that buying and holding an index fund is an average if you wait long enough you end up at the top of the heap you have to change the way you're viewing investing and that's hard he had to change hearts and minds in and do it without uh being inside the system and it's a good business story in there too it's interesting and I think a lot of uh the crypto and defy world I I'm trying to explain to them that actually if you're in that world and you like crypto and all this and the defy thing um this book should appeal to you because this guy was like og defy um just in a different way but there's a lot of the same spirit and ethos here between bogel and what young people are seeking out with crypto and decentralized finance folks we're talking to eric baltunas a senior etf analyst at bloomberg

07:16 intelligence and author of the new book the bogel effect uh you brought crypto up I wanted to mention that when you said your generation x most of the folks I know who are generation x are dabbling or heard about the crypto what do you feel about crypto yeah so um crypto is interesting I still don't quite get it um but it's resilient its resiliency has made me respect it and there's really smart people in the industry and I wouldn't bet against some of them so that's where I sort of give it my respect that said I still don't totally think it's going to overtake currency I I uh is it the new gold I mean you could debate all this I do think though that crypto is being helped by the bogel effect and I'll explain why you talk about gen x or even boomers who are dabbling in crypto I think what you have now is that in the 90s you'd have these active mutual funds and you'd you'd have one that was

08:02 five stars and then it wouldn't perform well so you'd sell it and buy the next five star one and you would just churn these active funds and it just made investing hard finally people find something to hold on to an index fund so they have that in their core the problem with an index fund for many people is it is boring yeah it's really efficient and it's really it can create uh it's the best way to create wealth but it's boring as hell so I think we have a chapter in the book called the fall and rise of active that legacy active that's just sort of you know close to the benchmark and picking a couple stocks here and there that's probably getting replaced by vanguard in the core of the portfolio but where active is now finding a home is in things like crypto or high active share active like cathy wood and arc or thematic investing um nfts those are not only um you know fun and ways to

08:52 distract yourself so you don't touch the other part which has to grow it takes you know 30 40 years but those things have nothing to do with the index so they complement so we have this sort of visual of you've got this boring vanilla core which is great and good for you but then you go and you search for some hot sauce uh to put on dabble I think is the right word so I actually think crypto is being helped by the fact that vanguard has taken over the core portfolios because it's allowed people to have a little more patience with those volatile areas of their portfolio which are in smaller slices uh you're not as bummed when crypto goes down 30 40 percent because hey it's three percent of my portfolio and I really have 80 percent of it in this uh you know s p 500 index fund uh it calms you down a lot

09:38 where anyone gets in trouble when they put too much money on the risk side and they don't have their safe side established and you see that then they get then they make irrational decisions and they get trapped in the wrong places because all their money's in the wrong place and unfortunately i've seen people who take way too much risk with money they're going to need for retirement and nothing wrong with risk but making sure you know what the what the risk is and and they have an exit strategy to that risk too so one final we got about a minute here left i wanted to ask you a question here and i think it's a good one what's your biggest concern of the markets right now yeah i think my biggest concern you know short term is just that the 60 and the 40 you know the 60 40 portfolio they've both been going up for like 15 years usually stocks go up bonds don't but they've both been going up because it's low rates so i would say you know that's my biggest worry should people look to something

10:24 that's like alternative um but i don't know i also think that in the end uh stocks are a really good place to be because people get up every day and create value at these corporations that's something bogel preached and tried to sell people on was that you get a cash flow and you get um uh dividends and you get earnings growth when you buy stocks so i think it's a good long-run investment it's just you know what should you do you know to maybe uh protect yourself a little if the 60 and the 40 goes down for a while but the 40 part the bonds probably where i'm worried the most because obviously if the fed rates rate raises rates and they go up in a long cycle a lot of the bonds that are out there right now are just work less yeah and so that's going to be an interesting thing to watch and that's probably something that concerns me a little bit thoughts on inflation yeah i mean i look um i was a baby in the 70s but uh it was a big deal back in the day and um it's scary where it hits home is like

11:15 oh i i went to my review and i got a four percent raise yay well inflation seven then that's where it hits home people like yeah you're right man um i'm actually starting to slide backwards so even if i'm even if i'm ahead i gotta subtract seven percent from everything now and that's scary yeah and i think that's this is something that's going to be probably a big issue for a while i hope it's just supply chain i hope it's just pandemic supply chain and that's sort of what we're seeing and it's not as bad as we think but um yeah it's it's scary uh i would say that's up on my worries too that's part of why the fed is really committed this time to raising rates you know in the past they've always folded like a lawn chair yeah but now i think they're going to see it through because inflation is worse than say the market's uh you know having a spasm well yeah good points and uh and i think uh

12:02 how many pages is your new book how many pages of the boga effect uh about 340. wow that's down for 500 so edited it down and also interviewed 50 people including warren buffett and michael lewis and and i have their quotes in there it's sort of written like a semi-documentary and so i think i think it i try to make look mutual funds are as interesting as c-span to most people so i tried to really really bring it and include a lot of voices and make it as entertaining as possible well folks his name is eric baltunas and the name of the book is the bogle effect eric we hope to have you on again in the future i would love that thanks for uh having me on today yes sir and folks we'll be right back

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Folks this is the time of the show where we go out across the world and find someone who is making a difference in the world specifically the financial world and got a really good guest today. Her book came across my desk the other day. She's in our radio network as well. Her name is Kelly Slott and she's in Southern Cal and the name of the book it's The Great Retirement Mystery. Kelly welcome in. Thank you for having me. It's going to be fun to talk about this today. Well this is an interesting book and in the book I mean I mean what first of all I want

00:48 to ask you what inspired you to write the book? Well you know my job is to help people. That's how I look at it. So I thought you know I'd like to get a book out there that really kind of covers the strategy that I use and to help people come understand financial markets because a lot of people really frankly that come to me don't understand the markets much. So I wanted to take my years of knowledge in the financial field and put it in a book form that's easy to read and really can help people with their financial portfolios and creating exactly what they're looking for. That's what inspired me. Yeah. Bill you're right this book is very easy to read and I'm sure everyone listening has run across some of those financial books in the past where it looks good when you're buying it ordering it when you get it home. It's hundreds of pages of unexplainable or

01:33 understandable print where you really after you get done reading you don't even know what you read. But your book takes people from point A to Z and walks people right through that planning for retirement process. Matter of fact what I really love about your book is you have the six biggest retirement blunders and I always say that smart people learn from their mistakes but geniuses can learn from other people's mistakes and that's what you're doing here in this book is you're educating folks on how to avoid some of those pitfalls and nobody wants to be the dummy in the room. So you can help everyone not be that person and let's go through I want to go through all six of these retirement blunders. We'll start in any order you want. What's the biggest retirement blunder you see Kelly? Well one of the biggest ones is listening to the wrong sources. So when people hear from their

02:19 neighbor the person that works across the desk from them at work a friend and they say oh well my friend says this that and the other and that's what I should invest in and I always say well do they know your full financial picture? Do they know what your risk tolerance is? This is really important and most time friends, family they don't know that. So that's why I say one of the biggest blunders is really listening to the wrong source and but really know what your risk tolerance is, know what your time frame is. Those are all important things that I ask people when I would they come and sit with me for the first time. So I think that's really one of the biggest blunders I see. You know where I hear a lot of folks where they ask what their neighbor's doing or the person next to next office over is when they're trying to get their allocations right for the 401k. Do you hear about that too?

03:07 Well absolutely. 401k allocations is interesting because there's usually 10-15 different mutual funds to choose from and they all have different aspects to them. So yeah it's important to know what your time frame is, your risk tolerance is based on those kind of choices. Yeah because I mean if your neighbor's doing one thing doesn't mean it's the best thing for you and I see that's way too much and people use hearsay a lot of times well so and so said this and so therefore I'm going to take what so and so said and apply it to my plan and not listen to you Mr. Fiduciary or Mrs. Fiduciary. Right. Yeah exactly. Actually I just had a call yesterday from a radio show caller and she said well you know I had an advisor that my brother's using and I told the advisor just do whatever my brother's doing. So she gave me a list of all the recommendations and I said based on what you

03:54 told me your risk tolerance this this is not what you should be doing. So anyway it was interesting. I hear that a lot you know we have a family advisor and he's worked my with my parents or my grandparents for years therefore we're going to use that same person. Well how do you even know if it's good or not? I mean just because your parents maybe your parents or grandparents don't know that they haven't been getting the best service or the best plan put together but they don't know any better because that's all they see. Right exactly you've really got to consider your source and your time frame your risk tolerance really personal to you that's why I create specific plans for people absolutely. Good all right well that was that's a big one you trusted the wrong people but looking at the book here here here's another blunder not having a plan and sticking to it so this it's basically a double blunder number one not having a plan and number two if you did have a plan not sticking to it. Yeah so again it kind of goes into the first one there as listening to the

04:44 wrong sources because a lot of times people do things off the cuff oh I have a plan and then they hear something oh let's go do this so that changes the plan well stick with your plan I mean and that's that's true in that case but it's also true with markets because markets change and so people go oh I want to I want to go buy xyz because now that's the next biggest thing it's like well no that's not your plan you've got to stick with your plan certainly adjustments could be made but it's important to stick with the plan that we create for you unless something changes you inherit money you win the lottery and a lot of different things can change but sticking with the plan is important. Yeah very very much is and then here's another one of your blunders here making decisions emotionally how many people have ruined a plan by making emotional decisions and having to affect

05:29 their investments in the wrong way or their retirement plan the wrong way. Yeah it's so true I mean look at the cryptocurrency phase that people are into some people have made money with that certainly but that's an emotional decision oh it's the next biggest thing but is that really right for you and is that right for your risk tolerance so yeah emotional decisions are not wise and I really try and talk people through what might be going on that way something that's fancy that might come their way so yeah be careful of that. Well two big emotions that people use at the wrong time fear and greed so when the market's going down people get afraid and they sell at a low or on the other side the market's going up like crazy doesn't matter if it's real estate stocks bonds crypto you name it the market's going up like crazy you get what my daughter calls FOMO fear of missing out and so you jump in and greed

06:19 is the name of that emotion and so you buy at a high and then you have that other emotion when it's at a low and you sell and it's the exact opposite of what Warren Buffett says the success in investment world he says buy low and sell high and number two is repeat that. Repeat repeat absolutely. Used to laugh about the back of a bottle of shampoo it said wash rinse repeat. Good marketing. Repeat until you run out of shampoo and you're done for the day. All right so trying to time the market's another blunder what do you feel about that that emotional aspect? Yeah so it kind of goes with emotion too you've got to make sure that your plan is in place right so trying to time the market you're never going to get out at the exact right time you're never going to get in at the exact right time if I always

07:07 tell my clients if it's a good time to sell sell if it's a good time to buy buy we don't try and time that because I really my many years in the business I'm sure you've seen this too coaches I don't see people get that exactly right you just can't so that's why we have plans that's why we create plans for people is so we don't have to try and figure all of that stuff out because it's you know I we're not trading the market all day all you know and all the risks inherent in that so let's make sure we're doing it right for you. And folks we're talking to Kelly Slott she's from Southern California and the name of her book is The Great Retirement Mystery we're talking about some of the six blunders that exist in your plan and you know emotions really take charge and a lot of people subject themselves to undo emotions by listening to folks on TV screaming about buy buy buy sell sell sell don't buy don't buy

07:56 so don't don't let that be the final deciding factor is what you see or read or whatever on TV especially because TV is there for a reason to sell advertisements that's why soap opera is a good example now how about taking advice from the wrong sources is that a big blunder it's a big blunder because again every source that you listen to and it could be the Wall Street Journal it could be the TV station or radio station they're touting whatever they're touting right and it may not be appropriate for you so you've got to make sure that you're listening to someone that's on your side that's got your best interest at heart and going to do the right thing for you so that's one of the biggest blunders I see with people is listening to those sources that maybe not maybe they don't have their

08:42 best interest at heart. Yeah you also talk about lack of understanding of social security and medicare we see this all the time as well and it's not just the fact that anyone go down and claim social security or buy a medicare supplement but are they doing the right one for themselves and many people have cost themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past by selecting the wrong social security claiming option or strategy and many don't realize that there are some good options for you out there that could make you a whole lot more money. Yeah that's right you can take social security at 62 it's the earliest you can take it but really do you need it then because that's the lowest dollar amount you'll ever get so if you wait every year that you wait you're going to get eight percent more per year so full retirement age for most folks is around 66 you can take it at

09:29 70 that's the most dollar amount you'll get so I always tell people go to ssa.gov socialsecurity.gov and look at the amounts you would get at each of those ages and I usually have people print those out for me and bring them in because then we can decide when do you need the money how much do you need it's important to look at that because like you say coach you can lose thousands of dollars hundreds of thousands of dollars if you don't take it at the right time so important to look at that right time or the right option many time and many people who have been married before for at least 10 years can be entitled to their spouse's benefit without the spouse knowing and without it affecting the spouse in a negative way despite what some people would like to have happen so yeah that's very true I always tell people too um the higher earning spouse if you can take it at age 70 that's much

10:17 better right because if then they pass away then the remaining spouse gets their benefit which is really nice yep yeah it's good when you say and and we've heard this over and over again a lot of people have said well I can't believe it's true almost but when you look at eight percent per year you're costing yourself if you take this social security at 62 as opposed to waiting to 70 and the difference between 62 and 70 is eight years so if you use the rule of 72 you take that eight the the basically the interest will look at it or whatever you're not getting eight into 72 goes nine times so you almost would have doubled your money because if you didn't the interest into the number 72 tells you how many years it'll take for the money to double it'd be nine years for a double but you're going to hold it for eight years you almost get double the income in social security by waiting wow from 62 to 70 makes a whole lot of sense doesn't it kelly yeah sure does yeah that's why

11:06 i tell people really let's look at that let's let's not let that get away from you so bring go to social security.gov print out that print sheet for yourself so you can see it they used to send you in the mail i don't know how long it's been it seems like just yesterday but it's been years and years since they sent that one to you remember the one used to get in the mail and surprisingly i got one a couple of months ago dave got one huh all right now one final thing in the book we had about a one minute here we have to show uh this segment here with you but uh it is bonus blunder set it and forget it explain that ah yes well see this is why i do portfolio reviews periodically with my clients because i want to make sure that what we have set up for you is still appropriate for you so you don't just set it and then walk away and never look at it again i have a lot of people unfortunately come to

11:54 me and their advisors don't ever call them and look at okay this is what we have maybe we're overweighted in something i mean look at the last 12 year bull market run a lot of people have high amounts in the stock market these days and maybe they're not so comfortable with that anymore so we take some profits off the table do some alternative types of investments for them so don't set it and forget it you've got to look at it that's my job to make sure we're looking at it making sure that it's still what you want it to be year over year over year so by all means uh do portfolio reviews with your advisor if you're not because you've got to make sure your allocations are where they need to be it is funny anytime i hear set it and forget it i get hungry and it's because of that rotisserie chicken ad that used to be on tv all the time folks the name of the book the great retirement mystery

12:44 and how to avoid the six biggest blunders we just went over some of them but the book is a lot more advanced and really it's a lot more advanced to meet with a planner but this is a good introductory level to some of the mistakes people are making the books available anywhere books are sold and her name is kelly slot kelly thanks for your time today coach p i really appreciate it and we'll be right back after this you

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Well folks this is the time of the show where we go out across the nation and talk to someone who's making a difference or a good author and we've talked to a lot of good authors and a lot of the authors are telling you their story and you know I've written books and I'm telling you the financial story but we like to go out and talk to folks that have written books that really have to do with life, life in general and today's no exception. Today we're going to go out right outside of Washington DC and talk to an author and motivational speaker and keynote speaker

00:50 his name is Alan Stein Jr. He's a keynote speaker, author and coach. You like Thomas? He's a coach like Coach Pete, right? Love it. He teaches proven strategies to improve organizational performance in sports and business and I'd like to add in life because sports and business is life and Alan's programs empower effective leadership, increase team cohesion and develop winning mindsets and habits which we like to talk about in the financial world. Welcome in Alan. Well thank you so much Coach Pete. It's great to connect with you. Yeah now let's let's go through tell us about yourself. I mean what got you to where you are today? What what what did what did you want to be when you were growing up and how did that work out? Well I've been involved in the game of basketball for the vast majority of my life and have seen the game from every perspective. You know the first third of my life

01:35 I spent as a player. The next third of my life I spent as a basketball performance coach and now what's kind of neat is I'm spending this next third as the proud parent of three children that all play youth basketball. So basketball has kind of been the the red thread throughout everything I've done in my life and I'm very thankful for everything the game has afforded me. Yeah so you've talked to a lot of famous people through life. Can you tell folks that are listening are famous people any different than regular people? No as far as being human beings the humanity is definitely the same but I will say that the vast majority and I'll actually reframe it you know the famous people that I've had a chance to work with and be around have been famous in the game of basketball. So instead of famous I'll actually call them high performers because they're very elite at what they do and while they are the

02:22 humanity is the same for every person walking the earth high performers definitely do things differently than your quote-unquote average Joe if you will. Yeah and and that's that's a big thing because we're all given basically the same talents it's up to us to magnify the talents find out the one we really like to do I've really seen in my life when when you're when you're around people who are enjoying what they're doing for a living they don't feel like they're working. Oh absolutely and you can put me in that category I've been incredibly thankful and immensely grateful that my entire career you know 15 years as a basketball performance coach and the last five as a corporate keynote speaker I absolutely love what I do it's what I'm passionate about I feel it's my calling and you know just the opportunity to serve others is really something that fills my bucket so you can definitely put me in that camp

03:11 of people that feel really grateful to do what I do for a living. Now I've got a copy of like the printout I went to your website by the way and tell the folks your website's address. You can go to alansteinjr.com and then I have a supplemental site at strongerteam.com which is where you can get info on both of my books. So yeah I was on I was on your website saw the book raise your game you have a preview on it so I printed that out and it's fascinating you have the the forward in this book is by Jay Billis and just a just a little note Jay is has participated in my group we're doing a movie on Dick Vitale that's going to be coming out hopefully on a major TV network that Dick Vitale is familiar with that should be coming out sometime this year and Jay was one of the best interviews we had for that movie about Dick Vitale tell me about Jay Billis. I mean Jay has been first of all

04:00 he's been a friend and a mentor of me personally for the past decade but as someone that has had a massive impact on my perspective and and my life and someone I'll be forever indebted to Jay has taught me countless lessons that I've then turned around and applied as a parent to my own children and have even applied you know from stage when I'm speaking to corporate audiences. Yeah and again I'm a UNC guy and I can put up with Jay as a Duke guy. We talked about that before the before we started taping here it's uh it's it's it's it's great to read a book that I know you have a lot I wrote just the first chapter here it looks like you have a whole lot of passion in what you're writing about and and anyone who's out there now and who's ever read a book which hopefully everybody's read a book but you can tell when you read certain books

04:48 that the author really cared about the subject they were writing and that's where I see when you raise your game book. Well I appreciate that and you know if you don't mind I've got a quick story I'd love to tell that actually ties uh this is kind of kismet now this ties Jay Billis to ESPN and to Dick Vitale all of which you've mentioned so far in our brief conversation but I think this this will really paint a picture of the type of guy that that Jay Billis is uh back in 1998 Jay got a call that would actually change his career forever um at that time he had pretty much done you know local mid-major level games but this call he got from ESPN uh asked him to be the sideline reporter for the biggest rivalry in all of basketball uh Jay's alma mater Duke against your beloved UNC Tar Hills yeah

05:36 who at the time Duke was ranked number one and and UNC was ranked number two respectively and the game was going to be called by Mr. College Basketball himself Dick Vitale wow and Jay was thrilled at the opportunity so a week before the tip-off uh the ESPN producers held a meeting to game plan and to strategize and it just so happens that Dickie V was out of town for a speaking engagement and while Jay was not required to attend he decided to go anyway and he figured he might as well you know demonstrate to the ESPN brass how seriously he was taking the job and the producers announced that Vitale recommended that the broadcast heavily feature UNC guard Shaman Williams who Dickie V had been adamant about was the game's player to watch so the lead producer asked Jay if he agreed and I think 99 out of 100

06:23 people in this situation would just smile and nod their head I mean why would you contradict the most recognizable face in college basketball on your first day on the job but Jay but Jay did just that and Jay said respectfully I see things differently I believe UNC forward Antoine Jamieson is the player we should focus on he's the most efficient and effective player in all of college basketball and as the rookie in the room on the first question he was asked you know Jay decided to go against the grain and offer insight that directly contradicted his Hall of Fame colleague Dickie V and Jay then made a really bold claim you know taken back by surprise the producer asked for a deeper clarification and Jay explained that Jamieson puts up incredible stats despite the fact that he only has the ball in his

07:11 hands for very little time he said Jay said I bet you Jamieson doesn't have the ball in his hands for a full minute the entire game now if this claim is true this would be extremely rare I mean how how could you know a college basketball game is 40 minutes long and what player worth watching would only touch the ball for less than a minute but the producers were so impressed with Jay's confidence and they decided to run with it in fact they actually assigned an intern to take a stopwatch and chart how long Jamieson had the ball in his hands well in the game to to coach Pete's I'm sure grin UNC decimated Duke 97 to 73 and Jamieson ended up with a career high of 35 points and 11 rebounds so he was obviously the right player to watch but you know how long he had the ball in his hands probably about 59 seconds 53 seconds

08:01 Jameson was absolutely the most efficient and effective player in all of college basketball but the cool part and the reason I love that story is you know Antoine Jameson wasn't the only one who made the most of that game you know Jay Billis did too you know Jay seized an opportunity with ESPN and he cemented a really important lesson that I've carried with me ever since and that's don't be afraid to show up and don't be afraid to speak up and that's that's one of many lessons that that Jay has has taught me over the years and folks we're talking to Mr. Allen Stein and he's the author of the book Raise Your Game and you've got a quote on the in the book from Kevin Durant too who's a pretty famous basketball player in his own right yeah I had a chance to work with Kevin when he was in high school I was his performance coach when he was here at Montrose Christian in a suburb of Washington DC

08:49 so I had a chance to start working with Kevin before he became arguably one of the greatest scorers the game has ever seen he's got a quick shot too you know the thing about Antoine Jameson is is I remember he would he would he basically showed up out of nowhere nobody even expected him to be a good player I mean he was not a highly rated recruit I didn't think coming into Carolina of course we didn't have the internet like we do today but he had the fastest shot he would touch the ball and get an offensive rebound and the ball would be maybe in his on his fingertips for half a second to be back in the goal so that's how fast when you said he scored 30 some points in 53 seconds that that's why it makes sense but Kevin Durant has a real quick shot as well from outside yeah and one thing that makes both of those guys extraordinary is they have very high basketball IQs and they're very decisive

09:36 you know they're not they're not ball hungry they know that as soon as they get it they need to either make a move or make a pass and they're incredibly efficient players remember uh Kevin Durant was coming down I think it was came down to UNC in Texas and he ended up going to Texas so you should have uh maybe I wish I would have known you more than I could have talked you into talking him into coming to UNC he was one of the like he was a one and I think he was a one and done at Texas wasn't he I mean a lot of these back then that was not really not many guys did that yeah he was a one and done and and he's one of the rare few that that was actually the right decision because he made an impact on the NBA the moment he stepped foot in the league all right that's a good point here so making snap decisions or doing things in haste many times it doesn't work out in your favor and so I think we can tie the sports world into the financial world because when you see the best

10:25 coaches and the best players like look at Larry Bird back in the day he wasn't the fastest guy he sure wasn't the uh the highest jumper but just like Wayne Gretzky who also wasn't the fastest skater they both had that intelligence level and they knew how to they knew they needed to improve and they did improve and so in the financial world a lot of people listening to the show probably saying what does sports have to do with the financial world many people listening right now know their portfolio isn't like it should be but don't know what to do or haven't taken the steps to make it better would you agree that preparation is a is a big key and success in the future oh absolutely for high performers in any area of life it doesn't matter if it's basketball or business uh you want to make preparation your separation because it's something that that you have control over and you know whether in the financial world or the sports world you know you need to be very deliberate with what you do

11:12 and you have to have very high discernment with the actions that you take so nothing is haphazard yeah makes a whole lot of sense now uh we got about a less than a minute here but I mean what would you tell folks if they were if they had uh just enough money to buy one of your two books here that we talked about which one would you recommend well I would say go ahead and invest in the new one which will be available April 12th it's available for pre-order now and it is a follow-up to raise your game and this one is called sustain your game high performance keys to manage stress avoid stagnation and beat burnout and the reason I say start with the new book is I think coming on the heels of a two-year global pandemic where stress stagnation and burnout have been at record-breaking highs this would be a great book for folks to dive into you can search for it on Amazon or you can just go to sustain your game book

11:57 dot com folks his name is Alan Stein Jr again the book that we've been talking about the most though is raise your game it's available everywhere books are sold Alan we hope to have you on in the future again I would love that thank you so much coach Pete yeah thank you and folks we'll be right back after this

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Hey welcome back into Financial Safari. Consumer advocate Dave Perkins here of course with America's Wealth Coach and best-selling author Coach Pete D’Arruda and we're going to talk about another book here. Christina Pien Kepperling is the CEO of Powerful Legacy Insurance and Financial Services. She is over 15 years in Central Kentucky with two offices in Lexington and Louisville and the author of the book The Retirement Train and Coach I know you've

00:48 got that book there but I love the whole concept of the book because it starts the train starts in Kidville and goes into Grown-Up Town and then Destination Retirement. Offices in Louisville and Lexington. That's sort of like having an office at Carolina and one at Duke. Right. Good point. Yeah I have to make sure what color I'm wearing that day. Yes you do. There's a gang colors I want to start. So The Retirement Train what a great title Christina. What inspired you to write a book first of all? Back in 2016 I was on an Alaskan cruise and went on one of those little excursions in Juneau Alaska and took a train ride and I was just sitting there they were kind of like these old church pews you know really uncomfortable under the bum and just sitting there on this train ride and I had been told when I bought my ticket buy this type of seat. Well when I was on the train there

01:36 was a couple that was beside me on the opposite side and all they were seeing was a just a rock wall they weren't seeing the beautiful view that I was seeing and the lady was kind of you know snickering at her husband a little bit. I wish we could have done things different and there's a lot that we could have done different in our life and it kind of got me thinking about what mistakes have I made and what can I do to make that better? What mistakes are my retirees making and what can I do to make that better? Hence the retirement train. So from chapter one just Kidville what can you be doing to save for college and how should you teach your children about money? How much does it cost? And then chapter two of course is going to be your 20s. So it kind of instead of a chapter it's actually a stop and each stop has a quote. I really love that. And then at the end of each chapter we kind of give you some just snapshots

02:22 or some talking points to make sure and give you these statistics that I know you are just dying to hear. So she was letting her husband have it. We call that North Carolina blessing him out. Yeah that's right and bless his heart. Yes bless his heart. He was getting it. I know he was red-faced. He was pretty mad. Well the retirement world's really complicated. It really is and but it really comes down to it's not that complicated. I think I think with all the millions of dollars spent every single day in advertising to try to get for like financial institutions try to bring your money to them they try to make it seem like they have a better light bulb but there's only one light bulb here and it really comes down to one thing making sure that you are comfortable in your retirement and your retirement is what you want to do in retirement not what somebody else is doing and unfortunately Christina you've probably seen this

03:07 when I say retirement's about what you want to do when the husband and wife get to retirement many times they don't want to do the same thing do they? They do not. I have actually seen people argue across my conference room table on multiple occasions because while you're working and while you're you know just getting your regular paycheck and a lot of times I see couples that have separate bank accounts well then when it comes time to talk about all of the savings it's combined what kind of a lifestyle do we have they don't agree on their spending habits or their savings habits and for that matter they don't agree on the income and holy cow it makes for an interesting meeting but you're right it's your retirement when we're talking to people we're talking about them individually I've never seen a couple or an individual alike that has come through the doors of one of my firms and their situation has been the same as another. Yeah and that's right and so

03:55 why why why do some financial firms treat everyone the same then? I have no idea I don't think that there there is any type of a cookie cutter retirement strategy except when you're cutting cookies I mean that's about it it just doesn't even exist and you know as much as I would really love to say that every retirement is going to be sweet it's not going to and sometimes you've not done the right things sometimes you've not made the right decisions and we have to make some alternative decisions and some alternative changes and maybe a little bit of an alternative route to get to your retirement and that's okay too when you're coming in and seeing us we're going to make sure that you're on track which is part of the retirement train and the on-track retirement system so it is exciting. You know you say there's there's a couple national firms when when when folks walk in after hearing us on the radio or seeing us or

04:40 someone tell them to come see us that kind of thing when they tell us before we even pull out statements when they tell us who they're with currently if it's certain brokerage places or national firms you see advertised we tell them before they show us what they have what they're going to have if we feel like a magician almost you know here's what here's what you have in your hand and and and most of the times unfortunately it's right because that's the cookie cutter method and that doesn't really apply or shouldn't apply to you listening I mean everyone out there has their own situation so I've I've often argued and the people that have listened to the show over the years know it that there's a saying called that there's no two snowflakes look the same and I say well how does everyone how do you really know that though because no one's actually looked at every snowflake they melt too fast so of course they don't look the same there's nobody to verify trust the science trust us on it right so you've got a chapter in your

05:30 book called exploring the pinnacles what is that about yes so first off I used to live in Berea Kentucky so obviously it's stop three so we're talking about when you're at the pinnacles and this is a beautiful landmark by the way if you ever have the opportunity to visit there if you're one of those people that likes to hike I don't really like hiking but I did enjoy the view once I got up there and I've not done it again since but what does this really look like and in the middle of your life this is when if you've not talked to somebody about retirement or you've made a couple of mistakes in your 30s and 40s if you've not made any mistakes financially you're probably not living I know all of us have kind of shook our head we bought too much car on a payment or maybe we rented an apartment we couldn't afford or maybe we bought a house and we really couldn't afford it or we bought in the wrong place and couldn't get out of it we're paying too much interest all of these

06:18 mistakes that we've made and then what does it look like on your everyday habitual behavior you know for example if you have an employer plan and you are not participating in 401k contributions and receiving that match you're making a huge mistake so in those pinnacles of your career which is normally going to be your 30s 40s and even on into your 50s you want to make sure that you have all of those tax advantages contributing to your retirement saving for retirement making good sound financial decisions having excellent credit saving money every which way that you can that's what it's really about christina i love the fact that you also give them because i know that your main thrust and goal is to get people to retirement properly especially in the financial red zone to make sure that they get on track and stay on track but you do also offer advice to younger people we both have young adult

07:05 children who could start saving now in just even little ways could make a big difference in their retirement you address that in the book it can't and when we're talking about in your savings remember folks when you hit the age of 50 you have what's called catch-up contributions and in stop five which is called the oasis around the bend it says the small quote which is sharon stone one of my favorites it's not like 50 is the new 30 it's like 50 is the new chapter well let's break that down for just a second and why did i pick that and how does that look well because maybe you've made some mistakes you didn't save enough in your 30s and 40s and so there's a possibility that you're not going to be able to retire when and how you're not discussing how you want to retire then you're missing part of that retirement puzzle as well so there are just so many things to discuss and in the overall retirement

07:54 train one of my favorite pieces about it and the reason why it was written this way is because it's so easy to understand there are a lot of really silly stories in there i'm getting so many people that are happy with the information because they'll say i actually learned this in your book and i'm applying it to my life if that's not the ultimate compliment when you've authored something i don't know what is we're talking with christina peen kepperling who is the author of the book the retirement train and also ceo of kentucky-based powerful legacy insurance and financial services who is all about well her book is aptly named the retirement train it does go through stages of life but the important thing is that christina you get people on track for retirement we do get people on track for retirement and you know it's funny when we're talking about being on track every person's

08:40 track is different every destination every stop is going to be completely different and one of the things about destination retirement which is the sixth stop this is when we're talking about getting there and how it works i do want to read just a smidge right at the very beginning of it one of my really good friends and i'm on her board for a non-profit organization she said that life seems to be broken down in three stages one falls between zero and 30 during this stage you have the energy and the time but just not the money stage two is between 30 and 60 and when you're starting to just have the money you just don't have the time and it's so silly because then in the third stage this is the 60s to the end of your life this is the period when you've got the money you've got the time but you just don't have the energy anymore oh life is so unfair it really happens like that and

09:29 folks this is like this is i love this book by the way it's called the retirement train i call it the financial whistle stop tour hey i love it and step number or stop number five is the oasis around the bend what is that for the folks listening well if you're getting close to retirement you know in your 50s you're getting close to that oasis you're going to be start taking some moves around here and the marshmallow theory i'm not going to tell you what that is i'm just going to give you the name of it the marshmallow theory is at the beginning of that chapter i want you to read about this it's so fun now we do have three financial phases and i do share out in the community in our seminars about these three phases and you can have so many different professionals that state this different ways but let's talk about growing protecting and spending i do love talking about spending money i am a really excellent consumer so i'm just going to say right there my husband will agree all day long but

10:18 i'm also excellent at saving so in that beginning of the financial phases that contribution folks this will be your 20s all the way up through possibly your 60s even 70s because people are living longer you're contributing into your retirement savings there it is then we start to get in that financial red zone that everybody talks about what is that it sounds really exciting it is this is when we should start dialing down risk a little bit jumping into some conservation maybe start making a few changes in the way that we're thinking about that distribution phase so this will be your 60s 70s 80s the rest of your life the number one fear that i hear from retirees and pre-retirees is running out of money in retirement so if you're worried about running out of money in retirement if you're worried about taxes volatility in the market all of these important things i want you to come and get a copy of this book

11:08 so first off it is available on amazon it's 1995 which is so fun and exciting just jump on there and grab a copy of the book i know you're going to enjoy it second you can also drop us a note on yourpowerfullegacy.com and just enter in your name your email address and let us know would like the retirement train and we'll give you a call let you know lexington or louisville office whichever one you'd like to come and get that from we do have the payments available and for some of you our current clients you know that it was actually given to you so you've received a great value and we know how much you've loved it and enjoyed it and passed it on to several other people so let's get this book out there and get that information out there well you know it's very very important that people get the the right plan for the right time of their life and and and what got you there is not going to keep

11:55 you there a lot of times so again there's when when the train stops a lot of people get on a lot of people get off and some people switch trains and many of you listening right now may be on the wrong train and might not realize it and so if your advisor if your advisor specializes in risk all the time and has never talked about retirement income matter of fact guaranteed lifetime income we call it a financial fill-up you might not be with the right advisor for the next train ride of your life which is all the way into the sunset so to find out if you are on the right train give us a call right now dave tell them how they can do that 800-661-7383 you can call or you can text plan to 600-700 so call 800-661-7383 or text keyword plan to 600-700 and again the book was the retirement

12:44 train christina we really appreciate you having having you on today thank you so much for having me it's always a pleasure my sweet friend and i look forward to seeing you soon yes ma'am and folks we'll be right back after this

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Well, folks, this is the time of the show where we go out across the world and find someone who's made a difference. I love to talk to authors. And I sure like to talk to authors who've come back on the show because they have a reason to, because we got such a great response when we were on before, have people asking about them, emailing in, asking how they can get the book. His name is Andrew Hollum. And the name of the book we talked about a couple of weeks ago was Millionaire Teacher, The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School. Got such great response on that. I look around on Amazon and I found another book that he'd written and we've got that. It's called Balance, How to Invest and Spend for Happiness, Health and Wealth. And again, we're going to welcome Andrew in. Andrew, welcome back in. Coach Pete and Thomas, thank you very much. Now, you wrote the, I don't know which, you've got another book too.

00:49 Was it The Millionaire Expat? Like that's talking about not being in America and moving money around, I guess, from country to country. But what inspired you to write the new book here, Balance, How to Invest and Spend for Happiness, Health and Wealth? Oh, yeah, that one, it was, I think it was trying to look at the concept of money and our relationship with money from a holistic sense. Like I start by asking the question, why? Like, why do you do anything? Like, why do you invest money? Why do you want to go to the bathroom? Why do you want to run a marathon or get a degree? When you continue to ask people why, you know, first of all, you'll just get a variety of different answers. But if you keep digging with why, eventually they'll come up with some derivative of life satisfaction.

01:34 They'll tell you they want to feel happy, safe or secure. So that, life satisfaction, is what success is all about. But that's it, full stop. So success equals life satisfaction. And what I wanted to do with the book Balance was break this down to see what components help us enhance our life satisfaction and get the most we can out of life. And I narrowed it down to something like a four-legged table. And so one of the legs is the money leg. Like, yeah, we need to have a certain amount of money to feed ourselves, to have health care, to have shelter, a little bit of money left over for retirement savings and spending on experiences and giving. And so there's the money leg and there's the relationship leg, which is another really, really important one.

02:23 Probably the most important one. When we look at, you know, Harvard's study of adult development, and we looked at what was it's an eight-decade-long study to determine what was the single most important variable for a happy life, it was relationships. So the third leg of the table was health. We have one vessel. So, you know, we want to not abuse it. And then the fourth leg of the table is a sense of purpose. So we need to have that thing that gets us up in the morning. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Now, you were a high school teacher when you started, I guess, your career, right? And so what did you teach? I taught high school English. And then after I wrote Millionaire Teacher, they asked me to also teach personal finance. Oh.

03:09 I think Andrew would have been a fun teacher to have. He would have been a fun teacher. Absolutely. Get back to teaching. We just might. We loved it. We did. We did enjoy it. Thomas, you were over there. It looked like you had a question. I was. It's just a very interesting. I love the four pillars that you have going on. But I wanted to dig deep. We talked a little bit about cars a few weeks ago. And you discussed that in your book as well. But you also discussed the slippery upgrade slope. And I'm in my mid-30s right now. And I'm seeing, you know, the new iPhone coming out every year. And, oh, but Verizon's going to give me this. And AT&T, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Is that kind of what you're talking about here? Things like that? Yeah. It's, you know, something called hedonic adaptability. And essentially what that means is, you know, when we pine for something, like a material

03:55 acquisition most specifically, and then we purchase it, it's kind of like a sugar rush. But when, you know, Coach Pete, you were talking about buyer's remorse. So what, you know, what typically happens, you know, beyond that point too, is just that whatever it is that we bought, it just becomes another thing. Like that phone, just because another thing. So Thomas, the phone that you currently have at one point, you pined after it. Like you wanted it. Sure. Like you went for it. I'm like, I want this one. This is going to be awesome. Sexy. The current phone you have is just another phone, right? It is. Absolutely. You don't tap dance because you've got this special phone. You get, we get used to whatever it is that we own. And so this slippery upgrade slope, it's fascinating on a behavioral level because we get on a treadmill

04:42 of consumption thinking that these things are actually going to make us happier. When in reality, behavioral research and, you know, our own anecdotal evidence, when we actually look at ourselves, honestly, we don't typically need behavioral research to tell us this. Like Thomas, you don't need behavioral research to tell you that the current phone that you have now doesn't absolutely excite you. Sure. But at one point, you know, before you bought it, it did. It did. It did. Tim Cook convinced me. Well, I think that's a tough thing, though, because what you're talking about is basically people are wasting dollars and just letting dollars fly out the window because they assume they're going to achieve some level of satisfaction by buying this object or this car or try to keep up with, you know, Bobby and Billy over there.

05:28 And at the end of the day, they're just hurting themselves and not getting what they want. There's a net loss through this whole process, especially when you're borrowing money to buy it because research on life satisfaction suggests that when we have debts on a subconscious or a conscious level, debts actually drag us down. And so, you know, we buy something to make us feel good. We think it's going to enhance our life satisfaction. We get buyer's remorse. It doesn't affect even if you don't get buyer's remorse. It doesn't typically end up affecting your life satisfaction because of hedonic adaptability. We get used to it. And if we're stuck with a debt bill as a result of that, it's just a lose-lose scenario. Yeah. The feeling you had, the excitement and the satisfaction feeling you had when you bought

06:14 something is almost doubled on the negative side when you realize what you did. Yeah, exactly. When you look at the TV show South Park, there's an episode where the kids all roll into a bank and they're trying to put money to save it somewhere. And basically the banker loses it all and says this, we don't want that to happen with our retirement money. And so if we have a retirement plan established and we know what our income is going to be with certainty in the future and we have extra money left over, then we can spend with more satisfaction knowing that we're not going to depend on that money or wish we had that money in the future. Yeah. You know, one of the things I brought up in the book Balance is I said, imagine like you're hanging out with some friends around a campfire. So I call this the campfire litmus test. So like Pete and Thomas, when you guys get together 10 years from now, you guys are not

07:03 going to talk about the stuff that you bought. In fact, even, hey, let's not even take you guys. Let's take three or four of the most materialistic people you know, put them into a 10 years from now, get them to talk and enjoy each other's company around a campfire. Now they're divorced. Even those people are not, they're not going to fight each other. I want that. They're not going to talk about the stuff that they bought back in 2022. No, you're right. They're not. They're going to talk about the experiences they had, the people that they met. They're going to talk about the things that they did. These are things that create memories. And so, you know, when we, when we do choose to spend money, what's kind of cool is when we're doing it for life satisfaction, if you can spend money on an experience, especially when that experience brings people together, this is a win-win because you create a memory and

07:51 relationships are really where it's at. You know what I laugh at? I laugh at the, like the ads that would say something like, you know, be the envy of your neighbors, like buy this and be the envy. Envy is not a good thing. Like if you're, if you're envied by your neighbors, you're not loved by your neighbors, right? There's a great movie called envy, by the way, with Ben Stiller in it. If you haven't seen that, it's on Netflix or somewhere like that. It's funny. And it is, it's exactly what you're talking about, Andrew. It doesn't make you feel better. Envy. Yeah. Look up. I watch it about every time I've run into it. So I've probably seen it like 10 times. I'm one of those kinds of guys. I'm not really paying attention, but I'm watching it. I'm laughing. If I'm laughing, I'm having a good time. So speaking of which, again, folks talking to Andrew Hollum, the author of several books, the book we're talking about today is balance, how to invest and spend for happiness,

08:36 health and wealth in your book that we're just mentioning. Chapter six really has my attention. And I think people will get a kick out of this. The title is bathrooms and the markets daily routines that help you make money. Now, what does that mean? Well, I wanted to use the bathroom. Every morning starts out the same, right? And we're all human. I got no idea what you're talking about. The idea here is that we all contribute to corporate business earnings with everything we do. And so there are certain people who might say, well, I don't really. I don't spend a lot of money. No, no. We all contribute to corporate earnings with everything. And when we contribute to corporate earnings and over time, corporations earn more money.

09:26 They're able to then pay more dividends to shareholders. Share prices increase. And so that's what we get when we get the stock market rising. So I create an example of this guy, John. Perfect, right? He goes to the bathroom. And everything he does, basically, he's in there in the bathroom and he's doing his business and he wipes. Okay, just a simple act of wiping your butt contributes to hundreds of different companies, most of which will trade on the stock exchange. Wow. So it's not only the company that makes the toilet paper, right? It's every company that transported that toilet paper. There are companies that produce the packaging for that toilet paper.

10:13 There are the companies that ship that toilet paper. There are the companies that, I mean, it comes from trees. So ultimately, there are the companies that, the forestry companies, the railroad companies, the fellers and the skitters when we're taking down these trees. And then all of the companies that service those companies. So the simple act of wiping your butt, literally, it ends up, I mean, you literally are contributing to hundreds of different businesses. Well, then the reality shows kick in where they show the guys on the mountain cutting the trees down to bring them up the mountain to turn them into toilet paper. That's it. Yeah, that would not be a great reality show. Well, what about the plumbing industry? Because then you use some of the wipes you're not supposed to use or you're not supposed to flush them. And now they have to call the plumber. Septic pump. And we haven't mentioned all the social media ads that I saw while sitting down doing my

11:03 business. Oh. You got it. You got it. Yeah. That's it. Everybody contributes to this economy. And if you can own a piece of it, and that's the whole point here, when you're investing your money and you're owning a piece of it, yes, what we do know is that stock markets have good years and they have bad years. But over lengthy periods of time, corporate earnings rise because we continue to add money to these businesses on a using type of level. So we use their services. We purchase their products and that pads their financial bottom lines, which ultimately leads to long term higher stock appreciation and higher dividends over time that we get to reinvest and hopefully build our wealth to the point where we can become financially

11:50 dependent. And then you build your happiness and your health and your wealth. And folks, again, his name is Andrew Hollum and the name of the book is Balance, How to Invest and Spend for Happiness, Health and Wealth. Andrew, thanks for your time today. Hope to have you on again in the future. Andrew Hollum and I would love to come back, guys. Thank you very much. Yes, sir. And folks, we'll be right back after this.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Welcome back into the Financial Safari. Coach Pete D’Arruda, best-selling author here. We're in the middle of an interview with the author of Millionaire Teacher, The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School. That is Andrew Hollum. Welcome back in, guys. I'm excited to continue this interview here. That's Thomas Lipscomb over there. He said, yes, Coach Pete, but I'm Coach Pete over here. Thomas is over there on the other side of the glass. Hey, Andrew, this book is fascinating. And you know, I've got, Thomas will tell you, Thomas, how many bookshelves do I have upstairs? A few, a few. A few tens of tens? It's not a hundred, but a few tens. It's a bit like a library. I've got so many books in the financial world, and this has been one of the most fascinating ones. And how do I do it? Well, I go to Amazon, and I just buy books all the time, and I see it every now and then. I find an author who really knows what he's talking about and presents

00:46 it in a way where you can know what he's talking about. Andrew is on with us again. He is the author of Millionaire Teacher, The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School. Andrew, they never taught us anything about wealth in school, did they? No. And that's the crazy thing, because, you know, so many people think, well, you've got to learn that from your parents. But if they didn't learn it from school, they didn't learn it from somewhere. It's like everybody's just kind of dancing around in the snow naked and pretending that they know what they're doing. Well, you know, most of the people I talk to that are talking about the financial world say they really have no clue. I talked to one guy years ago. He said he basically takes his wallet, and he throws it into the distance, and he goes try to find it. That's how he when he spends money on marketing. He tries to see if he doesn't know if it's going to be good or not. So that's the equivalent of taking your wallet, throwing it way into the distance and seeing if

01:33 you can go find it, throw it again. But we have a spend first philosophy in this country, especially, and it can be attributed to our love affair with the TV set, because any show you watch on TV or even listen on the radio has to be sponsored by someone. And there was a term back in the day, and I didn't know what it meant until I got older. Mom used to watch something called soap operas. You know why they call them soap operas? They were designed by the laundry industry to try to find a way to present their product to a very captive audience, usually of women at home, housewives. And the best way to do that was to design a drama that went on for years and really never happened. Like, you can join a soap opera that you haven't seen in three or four years. You can watch it again,

02:21 and it's probably only moved one or two weeks in that soap opera world. But they had to find a way to get a captive audience to sell stuff to, and the TV set was the best way to do it. So any show you see has these things called commercials. Or if you pay extra for the stations that don't have commercials, you still have product placement in there. So if you're watching a movie and someone's drinking a Coke, that magic can of Coke didn't end up on there by accident, by the way. Coke paid the sponsor or the people of the movie, so sponsor fee to make sure they have it on there. So what we have to do, Andrew, is realize, number one, is realize we're always being marketed to, especially on TV, don't we? Oh, absolutely. And on the internet. Yeah, internet. Oh, yeah. Well, that's the new TV. That's a whole level of pointed marketing. Yeah, because they know a lot more about you on the internet, so they can target the ads right to you

03:10 that can entice you even more because they have psychologists on staff and all this kind of stuff. So the magic of the money world, mom always told me this when I was little. She said, you've got, when I had my paper route, so I'd come home and I was a rich dude, I had like $30 from a week of paper routing. That's profit. And she said, little Pete, the magic now is you've got this money in your pocket, everybody else wants to take the money out of your pocket. And so that's what happens. And we get enticed by the ads or the lifestyles that are rich and famous, those kind of things. They have a show on MTV called MTV Crips, I think it's called, where they feature different houses of the celebrities you see and how much money they spent. And it looks like they glorify spending money. And Andrew, you would probably argue that's not the best strategy, is it? No, I know. And it's so interesting how many of those people actually don't have money. So,

03:59 you know, we hear stories all the time about actors making, Johnny Depp was a prime example. He's probably one of the latest high profile examples where, you know, how much money did that guy make during the Pirates of the Caribbean? It's a funny thing. I mean, I don't go around sort of looking for these stories, but somebody sent me an article written by the India Times, of all things, like some newspaper in India. And it's online. And they said, hey, you're mentioned in this India Times article with Johnny Depp. Like, why would I be mentioned with Johnny Depp? And what the journalist was saying was saying, okay, here's an example of a guy who didn't earn a lot of money. You know, he's a school teacher, but he didn't do dumb things with his money. He didn't spend extravagantly. He invested it intelligently. And over time, you know, he

04:49 allowed compound interest to do its work. And he ended up, you know, a millionaire. And then we have, on the other end, we have this guy, Johnny Depp, who's made an absolute fortune. And the juxtaposition was really, really interesting. And my wife's always had this massive crush on Johnny Depp. And so I took this article to her and I said, her name is Pelley. I said, hey, Pelley, India Times says I'm way cooler than Johnny Depp. Well, you know, it's funny when you see some of these Hollywood celebrities without their makeup on, you don't even realize who they are. No, you don't. And for any of our listeners who may not know, Depp ended up losing $650 million due to the mismanagement that we're discussing here. And if I'm saying this right, another $100 million, he still owes in back taxes to the IRS.

05:34 See, that's a problem. You make a lot of money, you spend a lot of money, you forget that your best friend wants some of that money, too. Your best friend is Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam. And Uncle Cooper, if you're in North Carolina. So that's the governor, that's the state taxes. So we need to know that when we make money, we need to put at least 30% or more aside for taxes, because that's not our money. And that's, it goes out a lot quicker than it comes in, doesn't it, Andrew? Yeah, it does. And you know what gets me thinking, guys, too, about this is the, you know, I think about those who say, geez, you know, I wish I was, I grew up in a family where we had more money and maybe parents could help me out a little bit more with things like down payment on a house or with a car. But the reality is there's this, there's this sweet spot where adversity is actually a really good thing. Like some degree of financial adversity, not enough to crush you. But you know,

06:23 we need to be able to build our own personal financial muscles. And a guy like Johnny Depp or a sports athlete, like the money gets thrown at them so easily. They do what they love. Yep. And then they get paid millions of dollars for it. So it's just like kind of money falling out of the clouds. They don't have a real sense of how to manage it. They are basically financially illiterate. Like, let's just say it how it is. It's, you know, it sounds kind of hardcore, but to say that somebody like Johnny Depp is financially illiterate, might be an awesome guy, but that's the reality. And so, you know, you, you build financial literacy and I think you can build a lot of pride just by it's, you know, as a Spanish say, poco a poco, right? Just bit by bit, doing small things well over time. It's kind of like a baseball game where you just continue to

07:09 hit singles. It's really hard to beat a team that just continues to hit singles in every baseball game. Yeah. It's Thomas, you notice how that Andrew tried to drop in a little bragging there. He knows Spanish now because he's traveling all around. Folks, we are talking to the author of The Millionaire Teacher, The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School. His name is Andrew Holland. Andrew, there's, and this book is packed. It really is packed. Each chapter has a lot of sub chapters that we could do a whole show on each sub chapter, but I want to skip over to rule nine, your chapter nine, basically rule nine, avoid seduction. Now, what are you talking about there? Oh, it's the stuff that get rich quick promises. And, you know, every generation ends up, ends up succumbing to this in one way, shape or form. And once that momentum starts to roll,

07:59 it, it starts to look like more and more, there are more and more ways to make really fast, easy money. And I think that's probably what you guys were alluding to. And we've got that probably now more than we've ever had since perhaps the late 1990s when anything that was, you know, listed as a dot com, any kind of company that was related to the internet was rising to the stock was rising like crazy, despite the fact that in most cases, these businesses earned very little, if any money. And, you know, we're in another era like that, aren't we? I mean, you've got the same kind of thing. A lot of these meme stocks and you've got, you know, last I checked, do you guys, do you guys know how many cryptocurrencies there are? There's a ton. Make a guess. Make a guess. Oh God, there's, there's thousands of new ones every day. I mean, what's, let's say,

08:48 let's say a million. I don't know. That's probably too much. You're right. There are, there are thousands of them. I believe now there, there are more cryptocurrencies than there are stocks on the New York Stock Exchange. Wow. Okay. I've got a Carl Sagan moment. There are millions and millions of cryptos. Well, we just had to do it. I think it's something like 6,000 or something silly. Yeah. It's a tremendous. And of course, like you say, every day, somebody is creating a new one all over the place. And yeah. Yeah. Is there such a thing? Is there such a thing as get rich quick? I mean, it happens. Somebody wins a lottery and sure. Yeah. But that's get lucky quick. Yeah. And I think all of this is, is, is a lot of get lucky quick. Yeah. And so the problem with the whole get lucky quick story is that, you know, for, for every,

09:35 for every one that you hear, there were a thousand that ended up catastrophically failing. And rather than trying to get tempted to build wealth really, really quickly is to try to put a peer reviewed economic science in your favor, you know, build a low cost diversified investment portfolio, continue to add money every month, allow compound interest and dollar cost averaging to do their thing. That's what most normal people kind of have to do. I mean, we have salaries that most people don't have gargantuan salaries. So we save a portion of that, but if we just able, if we're able to ignore

10:20 stock market forecasts, ignore the economy, just build a fully diversified investment portfolio, it's low cost, keep adding money to it. If we do that, we are going to outperform the vast majority of professional investors over our lifetime. And that's a, that's an irrefutable premise. When, and when people hear diversified, a lot of times they think just stocks, bonds, mutual funds, but I think we should go one step further, diversify amongst risk and safety. So now you have some safe assets and some risk assets altogether. That gives you more peace of mind when we're in a bad market economy, knowing that some of your portfolio is not tied to the market. You know what I'm saying? So that's why the diversification is very important, not just to fall for stocks, bonds, mutual funds, which are all risk. And so when the market goes down, you lose a lot of money there. If interest rates start going up, your bond prices go down. So we have to be

11:08 very careful what's going on here. Hey, got, got about 30 seconds here on this segment, but can you tell folks in your research, what's the worst scam you've ever seen? Ponzi's Ponzi's. I still get, I still get people telling me about some wonderful investment opportunity where somebody is promising them 30% a year. They'll send me the prospectus. They'll tell me it's a really nice guy. He used to work for JP Morgan Chase. He's amazing. He's so bright. He's brilliant. He has a Ferrari. Yeah. And we have two after I get done investing. I'll tell you guys, it's actually, it's actually, you guys know this. You guys know this. I mean, these things, you know, when you, when you get these things, they don't say Ponzi's. No, they don't. They say best investment ever. Best brochures. It's actually been hard a couple of times. It's been hard for me

11:54 to talk some friends out of a scheme that just screams Ponzi. It's actually hard for me to talk them out of it. And they've read my book, Millionaire Teacher. And they've, they've heard me talk and they've, they've seen, they've read my articles, but still it's a weird thing about human nature. There, there's a, there's a greed button. Fear, fear and greed, fear and greed. Yep. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, that's been a, it's been a fun interview. We'd love to have you back on in the future. Folks, again, his name was Andrew Holloman and the book is Millionaire Teacher. You can buy it anywhere books are sold. The subtitle, The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School. Cool. And folks, we'll be right back. Well, thanks, Andrew, by the way. And we'll be right back after this.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Well, folks, this is the time of the show where we go out across the world and find someone who's making a difference. And you guys know that I love to talk to authors since I'm one myself. And this week we have a very special author joining us from Panama. Yeah, the country of Panama. And his name is Andrew Hollum. And he's written the book, Millionaire Teacher, The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned in School. And we talked about this a month or so ago on our show when I found this book. And I liked it so much and my staff loved it so much that I wanted to have the real author of the book on to talk from his own words what each chapter means or some of the chapters. And matter of fact, I like the book so much I bought a copy for everyone in my company's organization. So I bought 20 copies and handed them out. And Thomas is nodding his head in there.

00:46 Thomas, have you started to look at the – I mean, you guys like the book. I have started going through it. It's great. There's so little information out there that's practical that anything that you can get your hands on is very valuable. This is like an owner's manual for the financial world, I think. So I've written some books too. I like this book along with my seven baby steps. I think these books are both really good. But without further ado, let's welcome Andrew in. Andrew, welcome in. Hey, thanks very much, guys. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm glad you guys at least aren't turned off by a middle schooler's sense of humor because that's basically all I've got. And that's about all I put into Millionaire Teacher. Well, if people listen to this show, they appreciate a middle school sense of humor because that's about what we do all the time. You even have the drum to go along with it. All right. So explain first why you're logging into the show from Panama today.

01:33 What's going on in Panama? Hey, it's warm for starters. So my wife and I have been globally nomadic for about eight years. And so I grew up in Canada and I was a public school teacher there. And I took a year off in 2002. And just to travel, I decided I'm going to travel the world. I was super naive, thinking I could see the world in a year. And the principal at the school that I was at in Canada ended up getting a job at a private international school based on a U.S. curriculum, mostly American students, servicing mostly American families in Singapore. And he said, you should apply for this job. So I took that job. It was fantastic. I taught high school English and then eventually I taught high school personal finance.

02:20 And we thought we'd take a year off in 2014. We figured let's take a year off, take a break, travel a little bit. And one year led to two, which has led to eight so far. And we're enjoying it. We're floating around all over the place. So Panama is where we currently are, but we don't tend to be in any one spot longer than typically a handful of months. So when you do that, do you find what, and I'm just using a term that I hear, Airbnb, do you find little houses to rent? Or how do you go about that when you're nomadic in retirement? Yeah, sometimes we do. Sometimes like right now we're staying at an Airbnb. Yep. And other times like we'll actually rent a place. Renting is far cheaper, of course. No middleman. Sometimes.

03:06 Yeah, exactly. And Panama's got, I mean, great value for your money. So right now we're on this. We've got this place on the 35th floor with this spectacular ocean view. And it's about a thousand. It would be, if we were not doing the Airbnb thing, it'd be about a thousand dollars a month. And it has, you know, like a swimming pool on the top floor and it has a gym. And it's got this great gazillion dollar view. Like it's the most spectacular view I think I've ever seen from a building. It's incredible. You're talking about a thousand dollars a month. I know a guy who rented a place in Malibu, Airbnb, it was a thousand dollars a night. It didn't have a pool. So what a deal. You know, one of the things that a lot of people have been trying to say, well, gosh, when I retire, I want my dollar to stretch further.

03:51 So let me go to different countries. We heard a lot of people running to Mexico years ago and Mexico still running to Mexico. The one complaint I hear is security. It's not the same safety feeling as we get in most neighborhoods here in America in Mexico. I don't know what Panama is like. And you have to know it's not going to be the same, but the food's going to be different too. But I guess you guys like that. You know, what's interesting is it's when you're looking at safety, it's generally regional. So, you know, the United States is based on homicide rates per 100,000. It's actually pretty low. And ironically, despite what we hear from the media, it's safer to live in the United States now than it was in the 1990s. Wow. And the 1970s. But we don't get that sense. Doesn't seem like that, does it? You know, with the media, with the number one rule of media, and I know a lot of people in media, is if it bleeds, it leads.

04:40 It leads. So they get you to listen and watch and they keep you there and they keep it filled with negative news and get you all depressed in a half hour. And they've sold you a whole bunch of stuff like soap. Yeah. I mean, if you walk up and down the streets, you walk up and down the American streets and you ask people like, tell me about like homicide rate, gun violence, gun violence compared to how it was in the 90s and say the 1970s, they'll tell you it's way worse. Yeah. But if you look at FBI crime statistics on homicides per 100,000, it's safer. It's basically safer than it's ever been. And so obviously there's still issues. We still need to sort things out. But likewise, you know, when you get a place like Mexico, homicide rates pretty high. But again, it's really regional. So you've got the port cities that are dangerous, the cities up by the U.S. border that are dangerous. Right. Anything where you've got, you know, drug movements back and forth.

05:27 Right, right. But there are pockets that are relatively safe. Having said that, Panama is another level. So Panama is far safer than Mexico. And with Panama, you can drink water out of the tap. It costs a little bit more to live in Panama or to be in Panama than it does to be in Mexico. But, you know, we're, you know, the more I travel, guys, the more I realize I don't know. And the more I realize, like, I have to keep learning. I'd never been here before. And I'm liking it. We're having a really good winter here in Panama. Well, what I say in the financial world, it's not the information that's out there. It's where you're getting the information. So if you're getting it from a biased source, guess what? It's going to be biased. So that's why we talk about in the financial world how important it is to deal with a fiduciary planning firm that has access to risk and safety.

06:12 So you put that proper plan together. Now, let's look at your rule number one in your book is spend like you want to grow rich. Now, what does that mean? Yeah, you know, many people think that wealthy people spend gobs of money. And that's, you know, that's what you'll see on television. And you might read that in a flashy magazine and such. But the truth is that wealthy people spend far less than we often think they do, especially when we're looking at depreciating assets like vehicles. It's really interesting looking at, I mean, Thomas Stanley wrote about this in The Millionaire Next Door when he first published that book in 1996. And he continued his research. And then in 2019, a few years after his death, he was unfortunately killed in an automobile accident.

07:02 He, his daughter, who he had been working on a new book with, ended up continuing the research and publishing a book called The Next Millionaire Next Door. And what that book showed was that the median price paid for a median price that a typical American millionaire paid for their latest car was $35,000. Now, what's so interesting is this. So my wife and I have a condominium and there are 40 units in this place. And of my neighbors, you know, 39 neighbors there. It's in Victoria, British Columbia. And if I go down into the parking area and I look around at the vehicles, I would say that probably the majority of those vehicles are worth more than $35,000.

07:50 But I'd be surprised if any of the people driving them are actually millionaires. Yeah. So that means they're spending all their money on depreciation, depreciating assets, which is not the proper recipe, is it? You know, it's not. And, you know, it becomes the norm because when you see other people doing it, like your neighbors are doing it, this just becomes what people do. And so you start thinking, because everyone else is doing it, it's got to be at least normal. If not healthy, it's normal. You don't even think of it as unhealthy. But, you know, we do. We have this, I think, an unhealthy, most of us culturally have an unhealthy relationship with, I think, our desire to acquire stuff, depreciating assets. And often we borrow money to get them. Well, I don't know if they have this bias yet. There's like familiarity biases, all the biases.

08:37 But what about the wealth bias? So you're biased because you want to look wealthy. That's what people buy. You know, when you, and I don't know if your parents ever told you this. My dad never told me anything to spank. But mom would say, well, like if I came home and I did something wrong in school. And I said, well, mom, everyone else was doing it. And she would say, if everyone else was jumping off a cliff, would you do it too? And I would say no. And so that's what happens here. You see everyone else blowing money and you decide, well, if they're doing it, I could do it too. But the smart people, the rich people, they're hiding in plain sight. And in your book, I learned a term. I'm honest. I didn't know this term. The Deca Millionaire. And Thomas knew that. When I asked the guys when we were doing the show and that no one had seen the book yet, I said, what's a Deca Millionaire? And Thomas knew it. And then one final point of that, and I want you to talk about this.

09:25 But in that Deca Millionaire chapter in the book, and again, it's chapter one, you talked about Warren Buffett in 2006 spent $55,000 on a Cadillac. The funny thing is, in 2005, I spent about that on the same Cadillac. I got a Cadillac SRX, which was the Hearst kind of one. It was a station wagon. I really loved that car. So I feel like Warren Buffett today. But Warren Buffett could buy million-dollar cars, and he's sitting there buying, and it's still a lot of money, but $55,000 Cadillac. Now explain the Deca Millionaire kind of philosophy and what gets people there and keeps them there. Well, it's really spending less on depreciating assets like cars and thinking more about spending like a millionaire. And millionaires actually don't typically dine out at really exclusive restaurants on a daily basis, for example.

10:18 Most millionaires don't own Rolex watches. Most millionaires don't go around buying extravagant jewelry or fancy brand-name purses. And that's a total irony. If we were to grab the people that end up buying really expensive jewelry, really expensive purses, and really expensive cars, and we would like to corral them all into a room. Like we took, I don't know, we found like a thousand of them. We went into an upscale parking lot. You found all these people that had these really high-end vehicles, and you jammed them all into a room, and you gave them truth serum. And you're actually to ask them, like, how much money do you actually have? You'd find that most of them had really high salaries. So, you know, they might be doctors and lawyers and people that end up earning a lot of income. But they're typically people that have low levels of wealth.

11:05 That doesn't mean that there aren't rich people who end up driving really expensive cars. There are. But most rich people don't. So it's a great way of reframing things. Because, you know, what you're not spending on an expensive vehicle, if you choose not to, you can put towards investing for your future. Yeah. You can put towards donating money to charitable causes. You can put towards potentially taking time off, a form of sabbatical to spend time with people you love and enjoy some really cool experiences. And generally speaking, you know, we don't get a lot of satisfaction. We think we do beforehand, but we don't get a lot of satisfaction from material acquisitions. Buyer's remorse. Remember that term? Exactly. That's what happens, too. You say, gosh, the little voice inside you said, I shouldn't have done that.

11:53 Even though it felt good for the first couple minutes or first couple days, Buyer's remorse kicks in and you realize you made a mistake. Hey, Andrew, this has been a fascinating interview. Do you have time? Can we hold you over one more segment to talk more about this same book here? I'd be thrilled to. Okay, folks. We'll be right back after this. You're right.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Listen. Well welcome back into the Financial Safari. Coach Pete here, very special guest Mr. Phil Graham over there. Phil we were talking before the show there's an acronym out there I want you to explain to people and we say it in a sentence. The sentence is don't let your retirement take a hit. H-I-T. What does that stand for? Well to me the three biggest risks to retirement and I'm probably going to add a fourth. Okay. But the H stands for health care.

00:46 Health care big one. Long-term care, home care, assisted living or. Is that getting more expensive cheaper? Or I just renewed my health insurance at the glorious healthcare.gov with a $17,000 deductible. But so that's a whole other conversation. And it costs you a lot more than it used to cost. It's ridiculous. So that's the H, health care. The I is for inflation. Inflation big one. That's a big one these days isn't it? We could talk for hours about that effect today. You know what we need to talk about sometime and that's that we don't have enough time on this show is the funny business the way the government can come up with the cost of inflation and make it seem not as bad as it is. Yeah let's go pull some things that don't matter into the equation there. If you're shopping at all for anything you've seen inflation and you're going to see more and more of it and it's not just getting

01:35 gas. Now gas has a that's a huge inflation there but it's food it's everything. Talk about that. So inflation's big. H-I-T. What's the T? And then the third taxes. Another fun one. And no I've lived by the rule for years that I can put more money in somebody's pocket by reducing or eliminating their taxes than by chasing a higher rate of return. Tax planning. Tax navigation strategy we call it. Helping you navigate the tax code to protect your behind from the tax man. Well the key word you just said coach is strategy. Strategy. Not tax planning. Not tax preparation. Strategy is the word that makes the difference. And then the fourth that I've added is market volatility. Okay. Sequence of returns. The timing of the market. When you put your money in versus when you take it out. Warren Buffett always

02:23 said buy when others sell and sell when others buy. But the main thing is buy low. Sell win. High. And during the journey up the mountain. The accumulation years. The rates of return in the order that they happen are irrelevant. And I think you're gonna have Tom Hegnaugh on. I know he talks a lot about sequence of returns. We've had Tom on a bunch of times. He has sequence of return. Very important. But when you're coming down the mountain and you're withdrawing money. Right. Negative returns early in retirement can be catastrophic and just completely implode. Which is why you hear me talk about guaranteed income. Very important. Paychecks during retirement. And it's a fill up we call it. Making sure you have streams of income that are never going to go away that can increase to combat inflation and are tax efficient.

03:09 So it covers all your hit strategy there. Right. Yeah. So the great news is there are tools that can help with health care costs. You know whether it's traditional long-term care or just other vehicles that have key components built in to assist with that. Inflation is how do we get a decent rate of return without the market volatility. You know I believe in that. Yep. And then taxes is working with someone that understands tax strategy and can help implement that plan. It's more than just waiting until April 14th and trying to manipulate the numbers on the tax return. It's a full-time job for a good planning team to make sure that they're keeping you on the right tax strategy every single year. Folks if you're interested in tax strategy all you have to do is text the word plan P-L-A-N to 600-700 by the way. 600-700 and the word plan and you'll be taken care of.

04:00 Now let's talk about this a little bit. Let's narrow. Let's isolate some of these and let's go through what the big problems are. Like when we're talking about inflation, what can someone do to combat inflation? I know we all sit around and complain about it, but what can we do to make sure that we can control inflation going forward or make sure it doesn't affect our family as bad as it affects others? I think obviously starting with living within your means to where you have more money than what you're spending, which that's difficult for a lot of people. But no one wants to be told to be on a budget. I know, but yeah. Here's what it is. And it's not as easy as it seems, but it's not impossible either. Make sure that you're getting a return that is equal to or greater than what the inflation rate is. Right. And then eliminating the volatility as well. So like how do we get a better than average chance

04:50 to get a better than average return without the downside risk? And I think that's going to be our best bet to outpace inflation is to get good market returns, index returns, but minimize or eliminate losing money in the down years. Unnecessary expenses, commissions and taxations. How's that? So we can eliminate those. And there are tools, coach, that there are tools that as planners we use that during the income phase have the ability to increase income based on inflation. So when we're putting together a plan, we're taking those into consideration and literally, that's why you and I love being independent is we can literally go research and find any financial tool available to man

05:35 and utilize it for the client. Being independent and being a fiduciary, they're two of the best words you can hear if you're working with an advisor. Make sure they're independent, which means folks, they have access to most anything out there based on what you need, not what they're being told to sell you, big thing. And just making sure you're on the right track. And then being, of course, independent, being a fiduciary, we have to put our clients' needs above ours at all times. Very important. It's funny you say that, coach. I'm not going to mention any names, but there are certain very large firms out there. If a client says they're with that firm, I don't even need to look at their statement. I can tell them the exact percentage that their assets are allocated. I know exactly what you're talking about. And there's other ones the same like that. And so here's a phrase I don't like, and I hear it on some commercials that says, when you do good,

06:23 we do good. But they forget when you do bad, they also do good. I want that job. It's like the weatherman. Yeah, but the most important ingredients, Ted, are very successful, I think. A successful long-term plan are the three main words. Growth, got to have your money grow. Right. But then you've got to protect that growth. Don't give it back the next year. What good is it to have great growth if you have a bigger loss next year? So lock the growth in so you can never lose that growth. And then when you decide, you can activate a lifetime income you never outlive. Now, how much peace of mind does that give somebody? Well, we've seen a lot of statistics that retirees with guaranteed income payments, whether it's a pension or what I call personal pension using a guaranteed income stream. Very important these days because companies have taken pensions away for the most part. So having your own personal pension or two or three will give you the satisfaction of enjoying retirement.

07:13 Well, not only do you enjoy retirement, it's proven that they live longer. Because they're not worried all the time. There's no scientific fact other than the statistic is they live longer if they have guaranteed income. Happy people always look happier. You can tell the person that's not happy, by the way, and you wonder why they're not happy. Many times it's probably because they didn't have the right plan put together and they don't know where the money's going to come from tomorrow. Most people don't want their retirement to be staring at the money channel, ticker symbol, wanting to know whether it's going up or down. They want to be enjoying themselves knowing that, hey, I got this paycheck coming in. It's been called the market. It's been called a roller coaster and it makes a lot of sense. Very highs and very lows. And then everything in between is the anticipation of what's going to happen next. And that's not good. Then you get post-traumatic stress syndrome sometimes by watching the market too much.

08:00 That's not a good retirement. Well, and think about today where the market is and the unknown of, I think everybody agrees that it's going to have to go back down sooner rather than later. But when? When? Nobody knows. And no one knows. We know the day after. By the way, I have a new crystal ball in my office. It still doesn't work. And then I just got the magic eight ball in. Yep. It actually has answers. How's it working? Neither one of them have been dead on. You ought to do a study, a comparison one year and every day. Just ask the magic eight ball and do your investments based on what it says. I like that. What does the eight ball say this week? Not good. So it's just, it's important though. And one of the most overlooked strategies though is having that lifetime income that's guaranteed. Right. That's that personal pension.

08:46 We all have 401ks or we have money put in IRAs that have a big lump sum, which is fun to look at until you start figuring out, well, gosh, I'm going to have to attack that lump sum and start taking money out of there to live on in retirement. And what if that money is still tied to the market and the market goes down when I'm taking money out? I'll never get that money back. And I might not be in a position where I'm going to get money for the rest of my life because I might outlive my money as opposed to the growth protection income kind of system where your money grows, it protects the growth. And then you have a guaranteed lifetime income based on that growth for life for you and your spouse if set up correctly. And then when you pass away, whenever that is, if there's still money there, Phil, it goes on to the next again. Back in the day, that money many times was lost. Right. And you didn't get it. Now you do if you set it up right. So many of you watching or listening may have a plan that isn't right for you today.

09:32 And if you haven't had your plan, your retirement plan analyzed, if you haven't even thought about retirement income, it's never too late. So what I'd say, again, all you have to do to get your very own plan that with no cost or obligation, text the word plan, P-L-A-N, to 600-700. That's plan, P-L-A-N, to 600-700. Make it easy. It's got to be easy. And then we analyze you and give your own strategy session based on where you are and where you want to be and your whole family situation. We could design a customized plan. Customized plans, Phil, I know you've talked to a lot of advisors over the years. Many of them don't customize plans. That's important. Well, Coach, I think you guys, your whole team is amazing at the customized plan. But what I take away every time I spend time in the office is that your team is one of the best or the best at taking what a lot of people look at as complex situations.

10:21 Try to make it simple. And simplify it because the most successful plans are ones that the people following the plan actually understand and agree with it. Yep. Because if they don't understand it, it's like looking at a map in a different language. Like it's like, I don't know where I'm going, but your team is amazing at making sure they understand it. And everyone watching, listening, needs to decide what they really want to do in retirement. Right. Because if you don't want to do much in retirement, then you really don't need much of a plan, but you still need that lifetime income. But if you want to travel the world or play golf or have the grandkids flown in, wouldn't it be great to know with certainty you have a plan that will guarantee that money coming in so you can do what you thought you're going to do? Well, you know, like you said earlier, pensions were the way everybody retired. Big companies in the government got together and said, let's put this back on.

11:08 Let's shift the burden back to the consumer. Back to the consumer. Yeah. And they gave you the 401k, but they didn't give you the income. That's why I say you don't really have a retirement plan until you have lifetime income. Correct. Is that a fair statement? It worked when it was a pension. Now that it's a personal pension. It's up to you. It can't be a personal pension without guaranteed income. Yeah. You have to have, well, yeah, you don't have a retirement plan unless you have lifetime income. Right. You can look at a lump sum all day long, but if the lump sum disappears when you needed the most, how safe was it? How good was it? And was it customized? Probably not. So here's what it is, folks. I mean, if you are one of the next 10 people call right now, we'll put together for you our 22-step total retirement plan. We'll also give you a three-book set, and I've got a couple box sets. You can pick which one you want. I have the 401k survival box set, and I have the seven financial blind spots box set. If you're nice, we'll give you both of them.

11:53 But I mean, it's DVDs, workbooks, guidebooks, everything you need to help you figure out what it really is that you desire in retirement. Then we'll put together, we'll search the world, basically, as being financial independent fiduciaries. We'll search the world, see if what you need is out there, and we'll design a plan that fits you the most. Thomas, tell them how they can do that.

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Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 each and every week I talked to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it so stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoyed this newest weekly segment on coach listens welcome back in folks to the financial safari got a special guest in studio today his name is Mr. Phil Graham I call him Dr. Phil he likes that Phil welcome in hey thanks coach tell people what you do in in the financial world well I've been in the industry for 23 years and I work with some of the top financial advisors in the country have literally participated in right at 24 billion dollars of protecting people's assets that's with a b with a b that's a big one

00:49 a lot and so now I focus on one very distinct issues that families have and that's creating liquidity at death right because what most people don't realize is that they've saved this money they've earmarked a piece of it for their family to use to cover all these expenses yep but the reality of it is it's just not available so when someone passes away it's never a fun time many times people have all their assets locked up you're saying right unless you have money hidden under the pillow if it's in the bank it's locked up until exactly so so why why is it locked up because that's something a lot of people don't realize a lot of people assume when when dad dies I can just go down the bank and get uh 20 or 25 thousand dollars out to pay for his funeral well let's let's talk about the tools that people have historically used or thought they were using

01:39 so okay life insurance comes to mind yep I'm a huge believer in life insurance it's an amazing asset protection tool it's a way to to pass wealth but it doesn't create liquidity because it requires a death certificate yep which can take weeks and then a claims process so it's not available immediately when when the family needs the money another solution people will bring to us is power of attorney right my son or daughter has financial power of attorney which I again think is a a very valuable tool but what most people don't realize coach is that when you pass away your power of attorney dies with you that's a lot of people don't realize that so say that again I mean what does that mean for the people listening that's bad when you pass away whoever your financial power of attorney

02:28 is right no longer has access to your money that's when you need it the most correct okay so then another option that people always tell us is they do set their accounts up with transfer on death or payable on death pod yep which on all your bank accounts investment accounts I highly recommend because it avoids probate great idea by the way yes I think you need that correct but it requires a death certificate in order to actually transfer that money yep so it's not available now one that comes up a lot as well as you know a revocable trust or a living trust it's like the same thing yep again great planning tool from an estate planning perspective has a lot of valuable uh you know things that it does

03:18 but in order to put your successor trustee in place after you die you have to have a death certificate and it's a process so a lot of people I think think that a death certificate is something you go down to the courthouse today and get one by tomorrow is that not true anymore pre-covid it was over two weeks two weeks yeah now right here certain states and this isn't published you know here where I live in North Carolina right it's not published online but like the Texas public health and human services website they've published online processing digital processing which is mostly fast 25 to 30 days wow Connecticut six to eight weeks we just saw a video from some advisor friends of ours that in Minnesota six to eight weeks but even if it was two to three weeks then you got to go through the paperwork and

04:07 then you got to process the claims coach it's at least 30 days before your family can access any money so if it's the case if you don't have the money needed for the funeral but but it has been put aside by the person who passed away you can't get into you can't get that money for six weeks you say maybe eight weeks maybe four weeks whatever two weeks the whole time you're waiting there's not gonna be a funeral because the funeral is not the funeral people aren't gonna do a funeral without the money in hand correct right they expect payment right when services are rendered so here's what happens and I always say people figure this out for generations right one of the beneficiaries is deemed more successful than the others by their siblings like in a family there's always a sometimes a successful child and maybe there's a black sheep

04:53 child and whether it's true or not that's the perception right yeah yeah they get stuck paying the bills okay they don't get reimbursed and now Thanksgiving is awkward well that's the number one cause of fights in families is what money it's always money in life in general money well and think about this wars were fought over money here's an extreme example the artist formerly known as Prince correct now whether you liked his music or not it's irrelevant but 400 million dollar estate coach do you know who paid for the musician Prince's funeral when he passed away I know that it wasn't a family member it was not a family member right because they couldn't get to any money right it wasn't the state of Minnesota because they don't want to get involved he had 400 million dollars locked up somewhere right

05:43 it was the family friend actor and comedian George Lopez pay for Prince gave Prince's family twenty thousand dollars to bury him because they couldn't get any money so it wasn't an immaculate funeral then for twenty thousand dollars you would think Prince would have had this amazing correct spectacle the money was locked away and this happens every day and you know people say well I have a will well your will typically says well I want my son to get fifty percent my daughter to get fifty percent right well if I put it on my Amex and my sister doesn't want to reimburse me I didn't get fifty fifty like mom intended yeah I got fifty fifty fifty minus you paid a hundred percent the hundred percent I paid at the funeral and so yep here's what we educate people on coach is that it doesn't have to be that way

06:33 because that causes stress arguments disagreements correct and with the beneficiary liquidity plan which is the tool that that we use what people love about it is they they're not buying more inheritance because I think initially they think well what am I buying yeah what is this going to cost me oh absolutely you already have money right we simply help you determine what's the minimum that your family's going to need to get through that first 30 45 60 days the minimum yeah we look at all your assets figure out where it makes sense to allocate it from it's not this funeral that's a good point so what if you're depending on that money that when dad passes away and you can't get any of it you needed to pay certain bills too not just funeral bills

07:19 travel expenses for family members right celebration of life property taxes you know the executor is responsible for all these expenses the tax bills keep coming even when someone passes away or what if you have rental properties or a small business or all these things like there needs to be more money than just your funeral or cremation yeah just to make it easy for your family and so we figure out what that minimum dollar amount is right and it's different for every family we look at the assets figure out where we want to allocate it from and I want people to visualize we simply move it from the left pocket to the right pocket so they're not making premium payments they're not buying you know if their family was going to get a half million they're not getting 500 000 50 000 they get the same dollar amount

08:07 whether you do a beneficiary liquidity plan or not right so let's say this let's say that dad has a has a thought about this and he said you know I don't want my family fighting over funeral expenses I want to make sure that they have expenses and money put aside to do things when I'm not here and I realize that if if I pass away this money I have in my checking account that I that I have earmarked for my funeral they're not going to be able to get a hold of right so what you're saying is just move it from the checking account to a special trust right that is payable as soon as you pass away without a death certificate correct yeah and so this isn't a loan this isn't like some kind of bridge but until you can get the money correct this is your money this is your money available based on how we structure it and the only

08:53 states that require a death certificate are Indiana Kentucky Louisiana and Massachusetts so most every state all we need is a signature from the funeral director which we're all going to end up in front of a funeral director yeah whether you're being cremated or buried they sign off saying that you passed away well they're looking right at you right yeah so they know yeah because people always ask me well Phil if you don't need a death certificate how do you know I died right right well we require a funeral director to sign off because we're all going to end up in front of a funeral director okay so let's say dad has 25 000 put aside for the funeral and it's in his checking account and he decides that he would want to do something like this he wants to make sure the money is immediately liquid when he passed away right what's the process and what's the cost for that well the good news is it's it takes less than 10 minutes

09:38 okay because it's already your money I think this is hard for people to really sink in because it's already your money we don't even need a signature well okay it can all be done over the phone again because it's still your money and it's just a matter of getting some basic information who the beneficiaries are and then figuring out where we're going to allocate the money from but your example we would simply just draft it out of that account into your beneficiary liquidity plan it's now protected it's set up ready to go we encourage people to let the kids know that this is put in place for them right because if they don't know you did it yeah then it's not it didn't right it didn't help so it's really important we include the kids once everything's in place we have our little green book of life that we give to our clients it's over 100 pages of interactive questions and

10:27 that way you just write they have it in there it's it's basically a a treasure map for your family showing you where we your dad or mom put everything so when you pass away there it they know where it is it's a treasure map and so we recommend people write that in there too like you said if people don't know it exists it doesn't exist all right so someone puts 25,000 in and then they pass away in a month does the family get 25,000 or they get less than that family will get 25,000 plus any interest that so it's a plus not a minus it's a plus not a minus okay that's pretty cool so so i mean it really we've looked at this as i have not seen a single drawback is there any mistakes or any anything that someone could do the wrong way to do this well what i always explain to people is that if anybody says well what's what's the catch yeah well it's irrevocable right once you do it it's done and that's one of the reasons why i talk about we only want to put the minimum in correct because once we

11:15 put it in you can't go get that money again until you die but if you have it earmarked for for your death anyway then this is going to not only is going to be what you had earmarked but it may be a little more not a little exactly makes a lot of sense i mean it takes a lot of worry out of out of what's going to happen next and it gives you peace of mind and it gives the family peace of mind knowing that everything's taken care of and there aren't going to be any family fights over who's paying for what because the money's already put aside right to pay for it and it was money they were going to inherit anyway yes so there they go they get a little sooner because they don't have to wait for the death certificate so there's only two types of people coach that don't need a beneficial equity plan okay people that have no money at all yep okay so their family's not going to get anything right and people that don't like their beneficiaries yeah but i mean if you die i mean what's going to happen if you don't like your your family and you pass away i guess then let them fight over it so

12:02 all right so if someone's interested in this all you have to do folks is thomas is going to give the number out in a minute thomas uh the number will come up if you're watching on tv this is tv and radio segment right now so if you're watching on tv you'll see the number on the screen and also the text code and thomas will give you the number right now you

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Well, folks, this is the time of the show where I like to go out around the world and find someone who is a difference maker, who has touched my life in different ways. And we've got a return visitor on my show. I saw him speak in front of one of my groups about 12 years ago. A group full of financial advisors were fascinated by his story. His name is Mr. Jim Stovall, and he's enjoyed success as an author, athlete, investment banker or broker and entrepreneur while dealing with the challenge of blindness. Yes, folks, during his remarkable life, Jim has been a national champion Olympic weightlifter as well as author of over 30 books. In addition to his personal accomplishments, Jim was honored as the 2000 International Humanitarium of the Year, amongst many other things. Let's welcome in Mr. Jim Stovall. Jim, welcome in.

00:45 It's great to be back with you, Coach Pete. Well, one of your books crossed my desk the other day, and it's called Dear Napoleon, The Living Legacy of Napoleon Hill and Think and Grow Rich Book. And that's over 100 years old now, isn't it? That original book, not your book. Yeah, yeah, it is. And, you know, Napoleon Hill was born in the 1800s, wrote this book in the early 1900s, and, you know, now is impacting people still in the new millennium. And his work is, that is the best-selling book in the field of success or personal development. And, you know, everyone listening to us now, if they haven't been impacted directly by that book, they have been impacted by somebody who was impacted by that book, I can assure you.

01:33 Yeah, well, it makes sense. I mean, this book is 74 chapters because you've interviewed or you've had people write a chapter in the book, each one, about how this, the original book, Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, has affected their lives. And I figured we would talk about a few of the success stories or a few of the chapters here. And then if the listener is interested, we'll show them how they can get a copy of that book on Amazon or anywhere books are sold. Yeah, it's great. You know, and I wanted to, I mean, I could sit around and give my opinion of the impact of his work, but it's a little like looking out the window. You can't see the wind. Nobody can see the wind, but you can see what it does. It moves the trees, the leaves, the things out there. And that's where I wanted people to see the impact of Napoleon Hill so they could kind of tap into that well.

02:21 Let's talk about the original book, Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. When did you first read it and what has it meant to you? I read the book. I was losing my sight and I was a college student and I realized I was not going to get a normal job. Nobody wanted to hire this Olympic weightlifting champion blind guy. So I decided I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I didn't know anything about it, but I thought if I owned a company, you know, they couldn't fire me. So I remember going to tell my father I'm not going to get a job, which really thrills parents when you're there in college. But he said, I don't know anything about that, but I'll introduce you to a guy. And he introduced me to a guy he knew that Mr. Lee Braxton had a third grade education, made $10 million during the Great Depression,

03:07 gave most of it away and lived the rest of his life off of his investments. And he worked for a dollar a year for various nonprofits and that was his life. And I met this man and he said, before we even start, he said, you've got to read this book. This book is the basis of all we're going to talk about. And I read it and came back and he asked me a question and he didn't like my answer. He said, go read it again. Well, it turns out Petey made me read this thing three times before he would even sit and talk to me. And that became the basis of our work. And then what was interesting is a number of years later, after I became successful, I wrote a book called The Millionaire Map. And the head of the Napoleon Hill Foundation called me and they said, did you realize that your mentor, Lee Braxton, was Napoleon Hill's best friend?

03:54 He gave the eulogy at Hill's funeral, of all things. And I had no idea of the relationship they have. But what makes this book unique, Think and Grow Rich, is the fact that it's not one man's theory. It's not anything. Napoleon Hill was a young newspaper reporter. He had reported on the Wright brothers flying their first flight and other things. And he was assigned to go interview Andrew Carnegie of U.S. Steel, probably the richest man of his era. And he asked him, how do you become rich? How do you become successful? And Carnegie said, no one has really quantified that. But if you'll dedicate the next 20 years of your life, you will be the one that reveals that. And Hill took the challenge. And Carnegie introduced Napoleon Hill to people like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison and Helen Keller and 500 of the most successful people of that era.

04:48 And out of those 500 interviews came the science of success and Think and Grow Rich. So it's not a theory. It's an actual, this is how people actually did this. And it's just a great tribute to him. And that's what I wanted to do in this book. And folks, we're talking to Jim Stovall. He's one of the authors of his book here. He's got a collection of people that wrote about their positive influence. By reading that book, Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, we're talking to Jim Stovall. Jim, is having money the ultimate, I guess, indicator of success? No. No. Living the life you want to live is the ultimate success. And that includes living your life, helping other people live their life, giving, creating, and, you know, fulfilling your destiny.

05:35 Now, money is a key component of that. You know, I mean, I don't think there is any success without the financial resources. It's like, you know, there is no success without oxygen. You know, you and I don't think about oxygen, but if you cut it off in the next 60 to 90 seconds, that's going to be really critical to us. Well, the same thing with money. You know, it's like if you and I were going to go on a vacation somewhere, the key to our vacation is not gasoline in the tank. But we're not going anywhere unless we have some. And that's what money is. Money is not the end. Money is the tool. It's a good point. I remember growing up, I used to visit my grandparents up in New England. I had no idea about money back then. I was like eight years old, seven years old. And the neighbors had some children about my and my brother's ages.

06:23 So when we got up there, we tried to hang with them. But every now and then, their parents would take them to this fancy amusement park. And I remember sulking and poking my whip out and telling my grandpa, wife wasn't fair. And he said, Peter, money isn't everything. And I still remember that. And because we had, and looking back at it now, my grandparents were poor. My grandfather was a carpenter. He built the house they lived in. And basically, he was the water commissioner of the town. And they didn't pay anything either. But he did it to support the community and make friends. But him and my grandmother had a very happy life. But they didn't have much money. And so looking back at it now, it really did prove that theory that money isn't everything. No, money isn't everything. But nothing will take the place of money and the things that money does. Yes. And oxygen isn't everything. But it's critical to us as we live and move and have our being and do the things we do.

07:13 And, you know, but I believe everybody, if there's a dream, a calling, a desire you have in your heart, the resources are there. I mean, the key to money is knowledge. It's information. That's why Napoleon Hill's book was Think and Grow Rich. You know, the whole thing is just getting the information and learning what you learn. Money is not a cause. It's a result. It's the result of learning things you learn. If you took all the money in the world and divided it up evenly, within a few years, it'd be back where it is today. Because rich people are not rich because they have money. They're rich because they have information. Yeah, right. I mean, that's a great point right there. I think it was the Vanderbilts who found, like, the Biltmore House and all that. There was a story about the original Vanderbilt guy was really rich.

08:02 I think it had something to do with the railroads. Yeah, Commodore Vanderbilt. Yeah. And he left money to his kids and grandkids when he passed away, and most of them blew it. A couple of his kids became successful, but most of them are in poverty. And so that just shows you how fast you can blow money if you don't do the right thing. And anybody who tells me that money isn't everything, I always say, well, I'd like to try that side with a bunch of money and see how I feel, see how happy it makes me. But it shouldn't be the ultimate goal, but it does help you reach all the goals you want to get to. Is that correct? Absolutely. And, folks, Jim knows a little bit about money, by the way. And if his name sounds familiar, if you've listened to the show at all over the last 17 years, I wrote a book five years ago now called Seven Baby Steps to a Ridiculously Reliable Retirement Income. And Jim wrote the foreword for this book, and I read it all the time.

08:48 And, Jim, you gave me a really good foreword there. I don't think I deserved all the good stuff he said. Oh, I believe you did. I didn't write it for any reason other than it was true. So we'll give a copy of that book away. My book, right after the segment, so you can read Jim's foreword. And then the book we're talking about right now, though, fascinating book, Dear Napoleon, available everywhere books are sold. Jim, the people that you interviewed for this book or that wrote chapters in here, are there any chapters that stick out in your head as fascinating? Well, you know, obviously, one of the blessings I got after I got connected with the Napoleon Hill Foundation and found out that my mentor had been best friends with Napoleon Hill, they sent me a huge file of letters that Napoleon Hill and Lee Braxton had sent back and forth in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.

09:35 And out of those letters, I took things that Lee Braxton had said to Napoleon Hill, and I crafted his letter for him. So his is the only letter that someone really didn't write to Napoleon Hill, and I crafted that for him. But there are some amazing people there. Mo Anderson, she is a billionaire and one of the forces behind Keller Williams Realty, the largest real estate company in the world. And then just so many other people that are in there from every walk of life. I mean, there are billionaires. There are athletes. There are great school teachers. There are just people sharing how this message helped them to become who they wanted to become. And, you know, when Hill wrote Think and Grow Rich, he said it's not just about money.

10:25 You can be rich in experience, rich in joy, rich in happiness, rich in your family. And so it's people who have achieved each of those things that I think is what makes these individuals powerful. Now, Thomas, how old are you, 35? 36 now. 36. I always mess that up. You were 29 when you started with me. It's true. It's true. Do you remember the book? Have you ever read the book Think and Grow Rich? And don't feel bad if you haven't. No, I haven't. No. It's over 100 years old. You had to blow the dust off it. No, just joking. It makes me want to read it after this conversation. It's a really good book. See, Jim, a lot of the folks here that are listening that are younger than you and I, and I'm 55. Jim, you're about my age, I think. You're not that much older than me. 63 this week. 63. Oh, happy birthday. Not belated, because it's right now. So happy birthday coming up. Right. Yeah. But a lot of folks in Thomas' age group have never heard of this book.

11:15 And then some have. And Thomas, maybe there's some... I mean, you're a successful guy. You could be more successful if you read the book. There you go. There you go. So anyway, the fascinating book, folks, the name of it is Dear Napoleon. And it's 74 chapters. Each chapter, a person writing a letter to Napoleon Hill telling him how much they benefited for and enjoyed the book. And there's some really good stories in here. And you can learn a lot from each one of these chapters, Jim. Yeah, absolutely. It's designed to give the message of the book. But more importantly, to have people, you know, really get curious enough to go to the well themselves. And because I can assure you, you have read Napoleon Hill's philosophy, even if you haven't read his book. Because everybody that does what I do, and I've written over 50 books now, everybody that does that, we all stand on the shoulders of Napoleon Hill.

12:04 And it's a magnificent piece of work. So I would recommend it to anyone. Well, folks, again, the name of the book, Dear Napoleon, get it anywhere books are sold. Now, Thomas, I want to do this. We mentioned Jim gave me the foreword in my book, The Seven Baby Steps. Let's give 20 of those away to the next 20 listeners who call in and want to copy this and also a golden ticket for your no-cost total retirement plan. Fantastic. Let's do this. 800-661-7383 is the number to call. 800-661-7383. You can also text keyword plan to 600-700. Keyword plan to 600-700. Jim, I really appreciate your time today, buddy. Hey, I appreciate you guys, and I look forward to our next time together. Thank you. And, folks, we'll be right back after this.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Listens. I'm talking with Taylor Holgate and Marsha Barnes. Taylor, you are Director of Federal Government Affairs Consumer Healthcare Products Association. Marsha, you are, I love the name of your company, The Finance Bar. That sounds fantastic. Welcome ladies. Thank you. So let's talk about. Thank you. Good to talk to you today. Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk about healthcare costs and it's certainly become top of mind, you know, amidst this pandemic for sure.

00:49 And it still continues to be a concern. What can we do about it? Taylor? Or Marsha, I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So seeing healthcare bills have been noted as one of the top 10 stressors by the National Endowment for Financial Education. And quite honestly, financial priorities have shifted for a lot of families right now. Some of their priorities only include purchasing necessary items and covering essential expenses, you know, such as paying for their mortgage or rent, utilities, and then food. And then minimum payments are being made on everything else. Any additional money is now being shifted to their savings in preparation for things that Americans are really concerned about right now, such as unexpected layoffs, furloughs, and potential medical expenses.

01:41 So with the FSA and HSA, they are aiming to not only provide convenient options, but also affordable spending options, which are very important for Americans during this season. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you mentioned FSA, you know, a health savings account, but also the HSA, the health savings account. And, you know, I work with a lot of advisors, financial advisors, so we talk a lot about retirement. And one of the things that has really sort of risen to the top is HSAs, the health savings account. And so, Taylor, what has been done recently that has improved them, if you will? So in March, Congress passed the CARES Act, which included a lot of things that you may have heard about, paycheck protection, the $1,200 direct payments to Americans.

02:28 But it also included a new HSA, FSA, over-the-counter benefits. So previously, you would have to go to a doctor and get a prescription in order to use your HSA or FSA money on an over-the-counter medicine. And during the pandemic, Congress said, you know, this doesn't make a lot of sense. Those products are available off the shelf. If you're buying them with, you know, a regular credit card, you don't need to go to a doctor. So why do you need to go to the doctor to use your FSA card? And they removed that burden so that people can more easily access OTC medicines in this time of need. It opens up a health care fund. You know, people are struggling with a lot of bills. As Marsha said, health care is one of them. Health care is always the top of concern. Now you have a new option to help you pay for your health care expenses.

03:16 So the Flex Spending and the HSA, both of them you can use to buy over-the-counter products, which, again, that's a big deal, isn't it? It is a big deal. And, you know, it's a huge consumer convenience factor, but it also helps people with their social distancing. You know, if you're not going to the doctor, that's one less stop you have to make along the way. I get it. So, Marsha, besides over-the-counter, is there anything else that's covered? Absolutely. Absolutely. So menstrual or feminine care products are now recognized as eligible expenses, which means that people can pay for things such as pads, tampons, cups, and any other menstrual care item. Women, on average, spend around $5,000 throughout their entire lifetime on feminine care products.

04:07 So being able to now utilize their FSA and HSA accounts to pay for these things is a huge benefit for them because, again, it just allows them to save more money and keep more money in their pockets. And so many consumers are very mindful of how they are combating their income between their spending right now. Absolutely. And so with an HSA, you know, I mean, the qualifier there is you have to have a high-deductible plan, but that HSA is something that you can take with you, and it doesn't expire. It doesn't go away. And you can actually, you know, put a lot of money in an HSA that can be pretty helpful, you know, as time goes on. And that's, you know, it's a really great feature of HSAs. It allows people to plan for longer-term expenses, which also means that in the shorter term, if they're feeling more of a pinch, they might have more money saved up that they can access.

05:01 And one of the things with an HSA, as I said, I work with a lot of financial advisors, so we're talking to a lot of pre-retirees and retirees, and we often talk about, you know, retiring a little bit early. And you've got to fill that gap with, you know, between when they retire, say, at 62 or 63 until 65 when Medicare kicks in. And, you know, lots of folks are really realizing, hey, I can build up that HSA. Absolutely. You know, one thing we all know is that as we all get older, we're more likely to encounter health care expenses and more health care problems. And HSAs are a great resource. More and more young people have HSAs. So it's a great time to think about what your benefits are and how you can best use them to build a stable financial future.

05:53 So, Marcia Taylor, what is the best way for us to find out more about this and get more information and just stay on top of it? So we have a website that consumers can visit. It's taxfreeotc.org. That will give everyone the information they need about this change that Congress made. And then, of course, if anyone has questions about what that means for them, what benefits they're eligible for through their employer, the best place to go is to your HR department or your health benefits provider. Sure. Taxfreeotc.org. Is that what you said? Taxfreeotc.org. That sounds great. Anything else you want to talk about that we haven't touched on? I'll just also add that FSA and HSA holders can also contact their plan administrator to confirm eligibility for over-the-counter medicines

06:47 and menstrual care products under their specific plan coverage. But as Taylor also mentioned, if they have any additional questions or want to do research, they can visit taxfreeotc.org. So, Marcia, I'm curious. Tell me a little bit about your company. I'm curious. Yeah. Yeah. So, the Finance Bar is a financial wellness company. We work with our clients, both B2B and B2C consumers, to really tackle their financial issues or working with their employees or clients on better ways to handle their finances. So, we not only have a mobile hub that we travel around to really educate students on the importance of financial wellness, but we also have individual clients that we help them to work through any financial challenges or any gaps that they may have.

07:37 Well, the education part is key, isn't it? I mean, especially from the financial standpoint, we seem to be sort of lacking in that area. So, it's great that there's a resource like you out there. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because financial wellness is everything. The more aware we are, the better that we can proceed with handling our finances. Oftentimes, we're aware of the income that we earn, but we're not often so much aware of how much money we're spending in specific areas. So, I'm glad that we had this conversation around the benefits now of FSA and HSA so consumers can identify how they can now keep more money in their pocket and utilize some of those benefits that they have from their employers. It's really an important topic. So, thank you for having us. Absolutely. So, Taylor, one quick question.

08:24 The Consumer Healthcare Products Association, where do you fit into the picture here? What is that and what do you do? So, we represent the non-prescription medicine industry. You know, the things that you can find on a drugstore shelf, pain relievers, antacids, probably a bunch of things that you have in your own medicine cabinet. And we're just trying to spread the word to Americans that they have this new benefit and that they should think about whether or not it makes sense for them to use it. You know, people usually only think about their insurance benefits kind of at the end of the year when they're making changes for the next year or if they're starting a new job. But this is kind of a mid-season change. And we know there's so many other things going on in the world right now. People might have missed that email from their insurance company about the change.

09:11 So, we're trying to spread the word so that people can make the most of the benefits that they have right now. Well, I will do my part if I can. Taylor and Marcia, thank you both. I really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Well folks welcome back into the show. This is the time of the show here on the Financial Safari where we go out around the world and find someone who I think is making a difference. Someone who might have some information you might be interested in and I'm really interested in this interview because I fly a lot. And we're going to go to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I don't have Michelle's last name Thomas. Sorry I should have been on that sheet. No this is Michelle's notes.

00:47 Michelle what's your last name? Schneider. Schneider that's correct yes sorry about that. So we can start right there okay. And we're going to talk to Michelle Schneider who is with she's director of training at market gauge dot com. She's in Santa Fe New Mexico again and I want to talk to Michelle about the Boeing disaster here. Michelle welcome in. Hi thank you very much great to be here. Yeah now let's talk about well tell tell the folks what your experience is and how you can be an expert on this topic. Well I've been a trader for most of my life starting on the Kamais exchange floor in New York. I was one of the few women members of many of the different exchanges and then moved upstairs as electronic trading became more popular.

01:33 And I've been with market gauge which is a financial publishing company for the last 12 years where basically I teach people how to invest. I give them trade recommendations. I've been a media expert. I authored a book plant your money tree which won all kinds of awards. So yeah I'm pretty good at talking about most stocks and I'm very interested obviously in what's going on with Boeing because you have a fundamental and a technical picture. Yeah now let's look at the with the problem there because it came out of it seemed to come out of nowhere. They were all happy about this new jet which was really just a redesign of an old jet and the software didn't communicate with the hardware basically. Is that what's happening? Yes and yes and and you know obviously the FAA has given them the go ahead. The guy who's the head of the FAA actually FAA came on and said that he trusts this new Max 100% would put his whole family on the plane.

02:25 But I've actually yeah right. But I've actually spoken to a friend of mine whose husband is a pilot who's flown these and he said that essentially they haven't really done anything different. And so he's very concerned about it. He feels the whole plane could actually fall apart in the middle. They haven't fixed those design problems that created some of the issues that killed those people. So it's really hard to say. I mean it's on both sides of the fence. You've got those who think that this will be a plane that's under more scrutiny than you can possibly imagine therefore making it safer. And then others who think that it's suspect especially those in the business pilots are saying they really don't necessarily think they'll get to fly it anyway till April. Well it's kind of scary when you think about it because they really haven't like you said they really haven't done too much to fix it. And it was a software issue but it was also a hardware issue trying to trying to make it more I guess fuel efficient.

03:14 They move the engine on the wing a little bit and interfere with the physics. And my dad's a physics professor and he said that that was the worst thing they could have done. And he's been teaching for 43 years and he's got his PhD so he kind of knows what he's talking about when it comes to physics. And he said Peter I don't think I would get on that plane if I were you. And I've flown it plenty of times. As a matter of fact I used to love the fact I go to I'm in Raleigh but we have a Vegas office and on Southwest they got a pretty high percentage of their fleet was the max flight with the max planes. And so when they grounded them I lost my nonstop flights from Raleigh to Vegas. So what used to take me four or five hours now takes me nine, ten, or eleven hours. But I'm still alive. Yeah. Thank goodness for that. Well and there's something else too. If you buy a ticket on any of the airlines that fly the Boeings when you purchase the ticket you'll be able to know whether or not you're getting on a max.

04:09 But once if you didn't pay attention to that or you forget or whatever happens or somebody else makes the reservation for you when you get on the plane in the pocket where it tells you about the airline it will not say that you are flying on a max. So I don't know I find that a little bit uncomfortable. Kind of deceiving. And another thing when you get on a plane you have no idea the repair record of that plane or the repair record of the pilot. So you don't really know who your pilot is. Exactly. Now I usually get on a plane and think you know I'm sure the pilot doesn't want to die any more than any of us do. But in this particular case I think it'll be really interesting. And like I said they're not really planning to get this into full gear probably until the spring so we may not necessarily know. What is also interesting is Boeing is not stopping there.

04:57 They're now working on building a deep space rocket. So that could be more interesting for the company going forward because as we know Virgin Galactic is involved now and SpaceX is involved. And it seems that NASA is also possibly backing this as well. So yeah. So you know it's kind of like the Tesla phenomenon in that Tesla is a car yes. But it represents a movement with also space involved because everybody backs behind Elon Musk. So I think it could wind up being something similar with Boeing. We'll see how that just came out today. So some modern day space-ly sprockets from the Jetsons here coming. Well they need something like that because their stock prices got hammered because of what happened.

05:43 Except for today the stock actually has been doing very very well. Of course it's doing very good today. That's that's there goes the there goes the old saying buy on the room or sell on the news because that's news and it should be selling going on. Exactly exactly. But nonetheless that's why I like charts because you can you can debate on any side of the fence on just about any company. Obviously the more controversial the more the debate. And this is where the charts really sort of help navigate for us. So with the Boeing stock even before the news came out about the FAA approval the stock had gapped higher which means that literally it was trading near the lows. And then boom it gapped up about $20 higher from that price. It hasn't looked back. Now it's consolidating between $200 and $223 a share.

06:34 So I'm looking at a midpoint there. $210 has been pivotal. And if it holds this $210 level which it looks like it's planning to do considering it's up about 3.7% today and clears the last three weeks high which has really been about $223. It does look like it can go up to $250 next and possibly even up to about $280. So that to me you know you got to separate. Are you going to get on the plane or are you going to buy the stock as an investment? Yeah. Yeah. And it's two different things a lot of times. I say sometimes instead of buying the expensive clothes go buy stock in the expensive clothes company. Then you could buy a lot more clothes down the road when you make a lot of money. That's what I tell my daughter. It doesn't work though. You still buy it. Well what you're really telling her is to use your consumer instinct which is a big investment strategy that I think works unbelievably well.

07:25 Well talk about let's go back though before today's news let's go back there but they lost about a thousand jet orders didn't they Boeing did about for the max over the last few months I guess or year. Yes they have. They've had a lot of problem with losing orders and a lot of those have not come back yet. So again this is a case actually where you say the rumor versus the news this is still anticipation that things will work out without the hard facts behind it at this point. Will people get on the plane? Will pilots be comfortable? Will it actually pass the safety records? Will different airlines start ordering it again? We don't know the answers to these questions yet. Heaven forbid something happens to another plane once they start flying again. Oh well then that's the end of that company. And we won't be talking about a $200 stock anymore. $90 stock or something or worse.

08:14 Well all right now explain a term this is an interesting term that I learned from the notes that I got before I talked to you. Explain to the listeners what whitetails mean for jets like Boeing. Yes. Oh my goodness gracious. You know what? At the top of my head I know that I know that. Well that's where they haven't labeled them yet so that that was a whitetail means. Oh right of course. Yes that's right. So there are all these planes sitting. I'm sorry. There are all these planes sitting around that have not. When they say whitetail it means that they haven't been assigned to an airline yet. So there are a lot hundreds of those whitetail planes sitting around. And as a result they have to be basically assigned. And that's another problem for the potential airline is where will they be assigned to. As we know American Airlines uses it.

08:59 Southwest as you mentioned before is a big carry of it. But yeah that's going to be something else to be looking at. Now what happens with like these airlines when they ground like a big workhorse in the fleet like that. They have to store them somewhere. Have they been storing them out in like Tucson at the Boneyard. Or were they storing all these jets they can't use right now? Yeah basically they're just trying to find spaces for them anywhere they can. They're parked all over the airports I've seen a lot of times. Like out on the field somewhere on a runway they're not using. But that can't be good for a plane to be sitting there all these months without being used. Because if you don't live in a house for a while things need to break in a house. You've seen that phenomenon before too. Well some of them are being stored in San Antonio. Some have been flown over to Victorville which is in the Mojave Desert.

09:46 So yeah they're trying to find places for them. They're saying right now that there's about 34 of them that are parked in California alone. That's a lot just parking there. Nothing happening too. Right. Well the airlines are scrambling too. So have you noticed some of the airlines go over to maybe looking at the Airbus now instead of the Boeing? I would think so. I would too. Because I kind of like the Airbus better than the Boeing Lakeway. It's a lot more comfortable of a plane. And you know they put a lot more thinking into the redesigning or the new designing of bigger and more fuel efficient jets. Right. Exactly. And yes. And actually it's interesting because the headquarters for the Airbus is in the Netherlands. So it's a European group.

10:33 I don't know what that necessarily means for the plane itself. But it's just an interesting little fact. A whole other topic for a whole other show is where the maintenance gets done in a lot of these planes is not in America. That's kind of worrisome sometimes. Yeah. We can name a few countries that we – Yeah. Right. Well, all right. So any final – we've got to wrap this up. But any final advice you give the listener just about investing in stocks or not – should they pay attention to the news or should they have – of course we always advise long-term plans. But what can someone do to minimize risk in their portfolio? Well, what's interesting about the news versus the charts – and that's really been a big – also debate through the years. Some people look at charts as sort of like looking at astrology and the stars where others live and die by the charts and don't care about the news.

11:22 And the best answer I can give to that is when I was trading on the commodities exchange, back in the day, there was no social media. I didn't have my iPhone sitting there in my hand. There wasn't a computer that I could run to and just look up information. We traded on pure price. And I think that the best advice I can give somebody is that you could be interested in a company. Let's say you are interested in Boeing or you're interested in any particular megatrend that's going on. Let's say it's Bitcoin or anything, Tesla or solar stocks. It's good to have an idea of what you like, but you have to look at the pure price and you have to be able to understand what they say. Look left to look right. Look where the price was. And then you can determine how much are you willing to risk and how far do you think it can go up or down.

12:10 Yeah. Yeah. And we don't like down, but maybe some people do. If you're shorting, you love down. There are perma bears out there. Harry Den thinks that we're going to a 40% correction by March or April. I bet him about 10 years ago and his prediction still isn't right. Well, you know, like a broken clock maybe one day. He did predict Dow 25,000 in one of his books, but that was when the Dow was maybe five or seven. So he got that, but of course you can throw enough darts. You'll hit enough boards sometimes. And there pose the point about the news. I mean, you listening to analysts, listening to news can make your head spin. So really you, as I said, price really pays and that's what you have to remember. Well, folks, her name is Michelle Schneider and Michelle, thanks for your time today. Thank you so much for having me, Pete.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:02 each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it so stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on coach lessons well folks welcome into the financial safari now we've got a very special guest today his name is dr. Phil Graham I call him dr. Phil Graham is Phil Graham folks otherwise known as Dr. Phil to Coach P right? Yes, thanks coach. I call you Dr. Phil. That's right. How you doing Phil? I'm doing fantastic. Thanks coach. It goes smoothly folks. He has an honorary doctorate from Coach P. That's right because he's an expert in my opinion on what to do next and that's why I wrote this book years ago called The Little

00:48 Green Book of Life and it's an interactive book. When I say interactive, a lot of people are confused by that and what I mean by that is there's a lot of different pages in here that ask you questions and you fill in the answers. Now, I don't like homework any more than you do, but here's the reason I designed this, is because I've run into, in my 28 and a half years in the financial arena, I have run into so many situations where people have passed away or become to the point where they don't have that mental capacity anymore to explain to you, as the children or grandchildren of your mom and dad, where everything they have put together in their life, where it is. And so, Phil, let me ask you a question. If you pass away, does the life insurance company make a big effort to try to find the beneficiaries of your life insurance policy and send them a check? Well, absolutely not, Coach.

01:35 They have no way of even knowing that you passed away. I know. So it's up to you as, well, if you're in charge, it's up to you to make sure your next of kin knows that they are beneficiaries of a life insurance policy or where your money is. If you have annuities or CDs or mutual funds or stocks or trust, if you have a living trust or irrevocable trust. they need to know about this because if you don't tell anybody they're not going to know you can even in this book this over 100 pages i guide you through how to write your own obituary and and you know it's no fun to talk about it but we're all going to pass away and phil you can tell a lot of times when you are reading obituaries and my grandparents that's the first page they would always go to you can tell who wrote or who basically knew who they were writing it for who was just doing the generic obituary writing right so it would be great to have some key bullet points

02:21 that you want to have mentioned in your obituary i know i don't like talking about dying but hey die the right way. Well the fact that people don't like to talk buying that about dying is all the more reason for the book because it's a guide to help start getting those thoughts out on paper. It's a guide to start help your beneficiaries know where the money is. What I like to say so that on one of the worst days of their life, the day you pass away, we want to alleviate as much of that burden as possible because it's probably the worst day for your family's life when you die and you add that that stress of not knowing what to do next yeah at least we can help eliminate or alleviate that one piece I call it the compounding effect in the wrong way okay so mom or dad passed away and you have

03:07 no idea where they left everything and you get over to the house and things are a mess and you open up a book and there's a $20 bill falls out my grandma used to do that she's put $20 bills in books they hide them because if somebody broke in the last place they probably look as a book except for the fact that I had this book safe growing up that I would hide stuff from my brothers because they were always stealing stuff. It looked like a book, but it was really a Howell safe, basically. Put stuff in there. But let's talk about just the overall things that are necessary to have when you pass away. One of the things I think everyone who is listening or watching this show needs to know is that life insurance is a valuable tool for the next of kin. And it can also be a valuable tool for you as you are living because life insurance policies have improved the last five years, something called a living benefit rider, where you can

03:56 take out some of your death benefit each year to pay for long-term care. How valuable is that? Well, that's been a huge evolution from a product standpoint to where now life insurance not only pays out when you die, but it can pay out when you need it for long-term care, and they make them where they can pay out income. So whether you die, you live, or you go into a long-term care facility, one policy can actually benefit you where it used to be if you didn't die. Yep. Well, I guess we're all going to die eventually, but that was the only time you got benefit. Life insurance, and I've said this before, and it really is, as long as you pay your premiums and don't lie on the application, it is the one investment vehicle. And it really is an investment because you're investing in yourself, but it's the one investment vehicle that is guaranteed to pay you a return. Especially if you have all those new bells and whistles on there.

04:41 And of course, we don't want to get our best bang for their buck. The best bang for your buck is the sooner you die, the more of value the life insurance policy was. So if I buy a policy today and a million dollar policy and pay the premium one year and then die the next year, a million dollars goes to my wife. It's amazing, isn't it? Here's what I like the most and why we call it a living benefit. If you are still living, though, and we're all living, but if you're living and become a health issue and you don't have a long-term care policy, now you don't become a burden on the family because you can take some of that death benefit out, tax-free, by the way, and use it to pay your long-term care stay costs. And that makes a lot of sense. And that is one of the greatest risks to someone's retirement or outliving their money. Well, it is. Is taxes, long-term care, and inflation. And those are two things that will just crush your retirement plan.

05:29 Inflation is a silent killer. Health expenses is the very vocal killer. And we hear about this all the time. Health expenses get out of control. But all right, so if someone's right now, they're hearing this about life insurance and say, I don't think my life insurance policy has this. What should they do? Well, I always recommend they review their policy with an expert. So someone from your office would be more than happy to do a full analysis. We're fiduciaries, so we'll have to tell you the good, the bad, the ugly. And if it's really good, we'll give you a sticker saying stay where you are. Right. But at least you have peace of mind knowing that you had an expert look it over. If you have a policy that's more than just a few years old, the policies have changed dramatically. Exactly. And I realize you may be a couple years older, but with life expectancy increasing,

06:16 just because you're older, some of these new policies might actually cost you less money for the same death benefit that you had from even five years ago. So you get more bang for your buck. Correct. Even though you're older, the policies have got more affordable now, which is amazing because we are living longer on the mortality tables. So the actuaries that design the product and they try to figure out how long everybody's going to live, they've repriced the new products to take into consideration people living into their 90s and close to 100 years old. Makes a lot of sense. Alright, so I tangent it off a little bit because life insurance is something no one wants to talk about but everybody needs. Correct. Really, and everyone needs more and everyone needs a newer policy that has that living benefit. We can actually take your death benefit portions of it and use to pay, folks pay attention to this, use it to pay your long-term care. Long-term care we never want to think about but like one in

07:03 three people are gonna have a long-term care stay or home health care needs at home. And so it's important that we can pay for those and don't become a burden on our family. Now there's one other thing. What is the, now again, the little green book of life we're talking about, which is a hundred and some pages of interactive participation from you, showing you all the things that you need your next of kin to know when you're not here anymore. So the best time to do that is while you're here. Absolutely, always. Fill it out, right? You know, I've given thousands of these away over the years and I bet maybe a hundred of them probably get filled out. So folks, take a little time. I know we're in a busy society these days, but it really is a treasure map for your next of kin, showing them where your bank accounts are, where maybe you have a CD, a life insurance policy, where things, maybe you buried some money in the backyard, they didn't know about it. So there's all sorts of things there that people don't think about until it's too late

07:51 many times. Think about it now. Again, the Little Green Book of Life, you can call anytime and get a copy of that, 800-661-7383 is the number that you call if you're listening to the radio. If you're listening or watching on TV, there'll be another number come up there. This is a simulcast show, radio and TV. It's amazing. We love doing this. But 800-661-7383 is a way for you to get a copy of that book. Now, what's the, and I know we talked about this before the show, what is the thing that people overlook though when it comes time to die? Or somebody passes away? I feel like it's number one, how long it takes to get a death certificate. Because all those things we talked about, so every account that you put in this book requires a death certificate in order for your family to start accessing money. And that is also true of revocable or living trust to execute your will,

08:39 to access money at the bank if it's set up as transfer on death or POD, which is pass on death, whether it's your investment accounts, annuities, they all require a death certificate. You have to prove that the person's not here anymore. And historically, it was at least 10 business days. But now, because of COVID, in a lot of states, it's 45 to 60 days. Wow, it takes a lot longer. And it's delaying it because the government's not working at all. So someone passed away, and now you don't have any money, and you can't get a hold of the money, and you have to wait for those deficit certificates, and it could be 45 or 60 days. So what is the solution for this? So we created something called a beneficiary liquidity plan, where we took two of the most basic financial planning tools that have been around forever, but we combined them together,

09:27 kind of like taking peanut butter and chocolate and making a Reese's peanut butter cup. I like that. I like that. So we combine them together, and what it does is it creates a vehicle that looks like a savings account at the bank, but it is with an insurance company. It's going to earn 1% interest, so it's not to get rich on, but the secret sauce for the family, and this goes right in line with the book, is that the proceeds are available in 24 to 48 hours without a death certificate. Wow, that's amazing. So you have access to liquidity, some money to do things. What we use it for is it's that money that when clients are going through the book, they're earmarking going, this is the money I want my family to use to cover my funeral expenses or my cremation, to cover their travel expenses, to cover celebration of life and all the other expenses when a loved one passes away.

10:17 Yes. But what most clients don't realize is that whatever they have in their head as their plan doesn't work. So they'll say things like, well, I have money at the bank. Little Johnny can go get that. Or I have life insurance. Little Johnny can use that. And it's just not the way it works. If you picture a padlock, a padlock appears at the bank door the minute you pass away until they can prove and your next to kin can prove that they have access to it and that you really did pass away. But this is a way to bypass that. And here's what people love the most. It doesn't cost anything to put a plan in place. So like I said, you already have money. You've already earmarked this is the money that's supposed to be used for these expenses. All we do is move it from your left pocket to your right pocket.

11:03 You're not leaving more money and you're not leaving less money. Your family's getting the same money. And the second part of that is we typically try to help determine what's the minimum the family's going to need. We're not trying to dump hundreds of thousands of dollars into a beneficiary liquidity plan. It's, okay, I think we're going to need this much for a funeral. We're going to need this much for travel. we're going to need this much for maybe my real estate holdings to... It's enough to get by. It's enough to get by. So it's not a burden to the family. So it's a preamble for life insurance, really. Like we had the preamble of the Constitution, very small port explaining what's going on, keeping you on track. And so this will do it as well. And folks, if you are interested, you have a special worksheet we can go through with folks. We have a survey that takes five minutes to complete

11:50 that goes right in line with your book. Let's get the survey done and see what kind of liquidity you may need in the future for your family and not leaving them a burden. And all you have to do, folks, to get this, and when you call, you're also going to get a copy of The Little Green Book of Life as well. The number is 800-661-7383, 800-661-7383.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. I've got a friend I've had her she's been a friend for like 10 years now or so and she maybe you've seen her Orange County Housewives it's uh well yeah about 10 years right her name is Vicki Gunvalson and if you've ever watched Orange County Housewives you've seen her on there but you won't see her anymore she has retired from that show and she's written a book and the book's title is Life After Work Gaining Financial Peace of Mind in Retirement.

00:47 Vicki you are too young to retire but I'm happy for you. Welcome in by the way. I'm not I'm not retired yet you can't kick me out of this uh crazy life that we're in with uh financial services but I did this because there are so many clients of mine that are trying to figure out what is their life going to be like after they stop working and I just felt it was a good time to get this launched thanks for having me on. Well you have a quote at the beginning of your book and it's a fascinating one because this this individual I thought about when we were building our studios about nine years ago I wanted to have Mr. Rogers neighborhood and we still are going to do that by the way but Fred Rogers and he wrote or you you quoted him often when you think you're at the end of something you're at the beginning of something else and that makes a lot of sense for this book. Yep as well as COVID right?

01:36 Oh yeah. I still love Mr. Rogers. We had to reinvent our businesses a little bit but I um first of all Pete I wanted to thank you for having me on I know you've got the successful radio show and for the listeners I just appreciate you taking the time to listen to us um but really um just excited about the new book and thought we'd talk about it. Well let's talk about I love to I'm the kind of guy and Thomas and everybody around here laughs at me because when I write books I usually come up with a title first and a book cover and then I write the book so. Oh that's good. How do you come up with the title Life After Work? You know what I was had all these crazy names in front of that I was going to put my name as part of it uh but I really just said what do my clients come to me for and when they sit down with me they say what is my life going to be like when I stop working and it just kind of fit it was in

02:27 a authentic moment I was writing down I was journaling and I just thought you know what life after work and that's what this book is about is what our life will be like after we stop working and for many of those of you that are having to retire or get forced out of work right now because of you know COVID um that's what they're facing is is what is life going to be like after work? Well yeah because life never well we don't want life to stop we want to enjoy life and actually we're working to make sure that in the future we can have fun where we don't have to worry about going to work. I love to have fun you know that yeah well look I have fun at work by the way but I mean a lot of people don't. I know now we're fortunate enough that we can meet some incredible people incredible clients and you and I did meet about 10 years or more um and we just had a great

03:15 relationship I've done a lot of videos at your incredible office there so you got an incredible staff um and so I just I just feel like we're really fortunate to be connected. Yeah well you're right and and what I like about the book it's it's not just for females but it's going to help a lot of females because a lot of females are looking for information and many times when I talk to couples it looks like the male has been the one who's been in charge of the finances but females are starting to wake up and Thomas my producer Thomas tell Vicki what the shirt that I'm wearing says right now. Yes you're wearing the women and money shirt. Yeah so because women it's important that women run about money as well. Absolutely absolutely. So you wrote about in chapter 10 of the book Female Forward Finances. What is that about? The female forward finances we have got to know as

04:01 females both of you are males I'm a female we've got to know what's going on in our finances or we're going to get caught off guard. There's an 85 to 90 percent chance we're going to die single. If you're married now that's the statistics that you're going to be alone sometime in your life. You came in this world alone you're possibly going to leave alone. Those of you that aren't married or divorced or widowed you've got to understand that this is a complicated time and maybe you've been safe and you've been saving and you've been working and now all of a sudden you're not in a good place right now because all of a sudden you've lost you've lost your job and that's what I think for women it's super important to know what we're doing. Very important and it's not as hard as I you know a lot of people just like me trying to learn a foreign language let's say French for instance I start trying to learn it or

04:48 well let's look at Chinese where they have their own symbols and I say I'm not going to learn that I'll just read what the fortune cookie says. But we lock up and we don't do things but this this book is is simple because it takes you step by step on how to learn the financial world and I love that. Yep and you know school didn't teach us sometimes it's the hard knocks of life that teaches us but you don't want to be taught by mistakes and I think that's where you and I both come from when we're doing our business is we want to avoid the pitfalls that could happen if people get a little bit too aggressive on their portfolios and then we see what happened earlier in 2020, 2008, 2000, 2002. I mean we can see that if you're too heavily you know invested in the market you could have some downturn which we

05:38 don't want to have to happen right? Yeah a long time ago someone said that smart people learn from their mistakes but geniuses well geniuses learn from other people's mistakes and that's that's the that's the the meat of the whole argument right there and folks by the way we are talking to Vicki Gunvalson and she has written a book called Life After Work Gaining Financial Peace of Mind in Retirement available everywhere books are sold. Vicki this is a tremendous book and I want to talk about a chapter here where you talk about federal fees friend or foe. Let's talk about the federal fees. Yes so those of you that may or may not know but in in 2026 we are looking at a tax increase and those people that have a 401k or haven't converted some or all of it over to a Roth we are going to be imposed much higher taxes so those federal taxes are not going to go away. Now you may be fortunate

06:29 enough to be in a non-state tax environment those of you in Florida I don't know North Carolina if you folks have state tax I believe you do. State tax yeah. Yeah so here in California where I live I mean we're taxed the minute we wake up it just doesn't go away so you know federal taxes federal fees all of those a lot of my clients are not prepared for they don't understand that that they've been kicking the can down the road for 20-30 years in their 401k that account has grown and now they expect to receive that money you know is not a high tax and it's going to be taxed it's going to get larger and larger and larger the longer the time goes on so we love doing Roth conversions we love looking alternatives through life insurance I mean you know what you and I have been trained I think we're the

07:16 best in the industry and so from that we just try to help our clients getting out of that tax environment got to get up got to get them in a in a better tax place. When you look at California's state income taxes that's higher than many people pay federal taxes in some states and that's crazy and I also have heard well there's been some rumors well yes rumors Vicki where they're going to get a even if you leave California they want to tax you for the next 10 years they've been proposing those bills that's coming so I know that's a lovely thing Pete isn't it so that's why I just bought a place in North Carolina I've got a place in Puerto Vallarta if that happens I'm out of here I'm literally out of here and so yeah it's really really disheartening our property taxes are lower here than a lot of states but we still have that huge huge you know state tax federal is the same no matter where you

08:06 go but these 401ks and IRAs you know that you're going to be taxed heavily. If they pass that'll be now I'll look at it as call I'll call it the Hotel California tax you can check in anytime you want but taxes will never leave check out anytime you want tax gonna come yeah leave your light on I might be knocking on your door someday so leave your light on as they say well no but you know these unpredictable taxes we we just have no control what you do have control is how you invest your money how you prepare for retirement and and the great thing about both of our firms in your firm especially as you create an opportunity for these people to see another side other than just you know put it in the market and walk away and hope it works. Well I'm a retirement income certified professional that's a designation by the American College very intense three courses about income and

08:54 retirement you write about income is the outcome in your book and that is vitally important explain that. Yep so the withdrawal rate a lot of advisors aren't talking about that withdrawal rate so let's say for instance you've got a hundred thousand dollars in your IRA account and your advisor you go to your advisor and say what can I withdraw from that account and never have that money be gone like it'll last for a lifetime so let's assume you live to age a hundred and he may or she may come back to you with a four percent withdrawal rate which is what was happening back in the day right Pete so we heard this four percent so that means you can withdraw four thousand dollars out of your car out of your account and you have a very probable opportunity for success right so when all this started coming about the

09:41 sequence rate of returns and the markets being so unstable we now are down to about a two and a half percent withdrawal rate so that same hundred thousand dollars safely saying you can take out twenty five hundred dollars a year and you have a probability of success now twenty five hundred dollars and a hundred thousand dollars may or may not be enough for you to live off of so we like looking at that withdrawal rate and we have vehicles that will give you a five or six percent withdrawal rate guaranteed for the rest of your life and even if you run out of money you will still get a paycheck so that's incredible and so we do that through insurance vehicles and we love those type of accounts it's like a pension you create a pension with your own account well it's important because you go from paychecks that you get when you're working and

10:30 tom hegda the famous author talks about going from paychecks to playchecks and playchecks is when your money that you put aside starts generating revenue so you can play in retirement you have to have those playchecks every single month for the rest of your life they can never go away and you are right some of the contracts out there are written a contract 100 guaranteed to give you that income for life even if your balance goes to zero how important is that well i love that i mean it's like social security one of the things when my mother was alive she always felt social security was going to be gone and i said mother you're 83 years old it's going to be okay but when i really gave her that reassurance that god forbid if social security stops and you lose your twenty five hundred dollars a month um we as five children will help you but now we've got another opportunity other than just social security to give

11:18 you that guaranteed paycheck every single month dropped into your checking account and you never have to worry about it going away it partners well with social security uh so those of you that are getting pensions don't you love your pension you pretty much can guess every single month that's going to drop in your account and pete you and i love to create pensions with people's money so i think that's the specialty that we have and a lot of advisors don't really understand it so we do vicky you know what i call those monthly or yearly checks that arrive to your house no matter what happens in the economy what's that financial fill-ups because every single year you're getting refilled and folks that's the beauty of having an author like vicky her book in your collection and folks again the name of the book was life after work gaining financial peace of mind in retirement again her name was vicky

12:06 gunvalson and vicky i write about similar things in my book the seven baby steps and folks uh for listening to this interview for the next 20 people call you're going to get that seven baby steps book at no cost or obligation if you call right now thomas give them that number out all right folks that number 800-661-7383 800-661-7383 or you can just text the word coach to 21000 coach to 21000 and special thanks to vicky and folks we'll be right back after this

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Well folks, this week we have a very special guest. If you've ever watched TV, any kind of basketball sports or especially college basketball, you've probably seen him. His name is Dick Vitale. We know him as Dickie V. Dickie V is joining us from Florida. Dickie V, welcome in. Well, it's been great being on with you. I'm just really looking forward to sharing a few moments with you and sharing a little bit of my desire to help kids battling cancer. You've done a great job with that, my friend, over the years. I've heard about your gala every single year for the V Foundation and this year is going to be a little bit different, isn't it? Yeah, we're going to have a virtual, Pete. Bottom line is there's no way in the world with the pandemic as it is that we can bring a crowd. We normally get 900 people and sell out every year. We've been selling out, raising some serious dollars. Last year we raised $4.3 million and this year my goal was $5 million.

00:47 And I'm not giving up on it because we have a virtual gala, September 4th, 7 p.m. Eastern Time. It's going to be a terrific night. We've got all the ESPN involved with it. It's going to be great. Kevin DeGandhi will be the emcee and we'll have all our honored guests part of it sharing their words of wisdom as to being recipients of various awards that we've given out. It'll be a great night and all I can simply say, Pete, if anybody wants to join me in my goal, I have a big goal right now of $5 million for kids battling cancer. They can donate you. Simply go to DickVital.com. That's DickVital.com. That's pretty easy, Dick. That's a good way to do it. Now, let's talk about the V Foundation in general, the cancer research. There's been some great work over the years, hasn't it?

01:32 Well, you know, Jimmy V's legacy to me will not be the fact that he cut the next day out of won the national championship, which is certainly a magical moment back in 1983. Little did we know at that time that would lead to over a quarter of a billion dollars. $250 million has been already raised and utilized in research through the V Foundation. So Jimmy's legacy to me is going on and on in terms of affecting so many lives. Think about all the people that have benefited from all the research grants that have been established under his name. And to me, that is what life is really about, when you can give to help others and your legacy goes on and on. And that's what Jimmy V's been all about.

02:18 I'm proud to be a member of the board of directors of the V Foundation because they do an amazing job. Yeah, I mean, I know Nick Valvano. He's a good buddy of mine. We've had him on the show before, and we've raised money for the V Foundation. Nowhere near what you do every year, though. I mean, it's fantastic what you've done. And you have a pretty good personal connection to a guy I went to college with. His name was Stuart Scott. You remember Stuart Scott? Well, I think I know Stuart. Stuart is a terrific guy. I love the car heels, man. Did he love the car heels? In fact, you know, I send a little prayer every morning about how I miss so much John Saunders, Stuart Scott, Jimmy V. They're all up there in Hoops Heaven, man. I'm sure they have a lot of conversations. And I hope and pray they know what we're doing for them in terms of raising money for people battling cancer.

03:06 Mine specifically is for kids. You know, we've seen you on TV over the years. Everyone probably listening has. And it's almost like you're a family member because you're not one of those broadcasters that sits in a glass booth and doesn't participate in the community. I've watched you before games. We've let the students pass you up and down the stands. Those are the bleachers. Those have always been fun to watch. Man, I miss those moments. The fans, the kids have treated me like royalty. They really have. I get goosebumps many times walking into the arena. They start chatting to the TV. And I'm like a little kid. My wife says, when are you going to start growing up? I said, growing up? Are you kidding me? I'm 81, but I act about 12. And I don't want that to stop. We've got Hall of Fame broadcaster folks. His name is Dick Vitale, otherwise known as Dickie V. We're talking about the V Foundation and the gala that's coming up.

03:52 And it's very important to raise money for cancer research. And, Dick, you've taken the forefront of doing this. And share with folks, again, how they can give some money to you to make sure this meets your goal this year. Well, just simply, they've got to go to DickVital.com, and they'll see all the information right there where they can donate. It's an incredible disease. I just recently talked to a mom. Her name is Kara. She lost her son, Will. I was a beautiful kid, 11 years old, Will D. Gregorio out of Franford, New Jersey. They're her only child. Heartbreaking talking to her. And at my gala, we're going to have the virtual one, September 4th. We're going to give a grant out in Will's name for a quarter of a million dollars in terms of battling the cancer he died of, which was bone cancer.

04:41 We're also going to give a grant that night to a Hall of Fame journalist, a tremendous writer. I'm sure you've heard of him. And everybody has read some of his great, great books. Mitch Albom. Mitch Albom bought her, basically, to brain cancer. So we're going to give a grant out in her name as well to battle brain cancer. I love doing this. I really do. I love giving back. People have been so good to me. I mean, come on. You know, Coach Pete, I'm in 14 Hall of Fames. I can't run. I can't jump. I can't shoot. So I want to give back to all the beautiful people that have helped me in my life. I grew up with a great mom and dad, uneducated, fifth-grade education, but they had a doctor to love. And they told me one thing, and I'll never forget it. I'll take it to my grave.

05:27 They used to always say, Richie, be good to people, and people will be good to you. And, man, people have been good to me. Well, you're a fantastic individual. You know, one of the things I've done in the past when I used to have Nick Valvano on, I would say anyone who wanted to come in and get their financial plan and retirement plan done, we would waive the fee that week. And if they wanted to donate at least $50 to the V Foundation. So I'm going to do that again this week. Folks, if you want to come in and make a check to at least $50 to the V Foundation or the gala for Diggy V, we will waive the fee. But not only that, I'll match what you give. And, Diggy V, this week right here, Thomas, you see me. I've got my checkbook. I'm going to write a check for $5,000 right now to your foundation, Diggy V. Oh, my God. But make sure. Oh, that's spelled. Coach P, that is phenomenal. Just make sure you do me one favor. It'll go with a general fund.

06:14 Make sure you put pediatrics on the bottom of the check. Or, you know, best of all, we get off the app and give you an address where to mail it. Because I want to guarantee that money goes for kids through the V Foundation. I agree. I mean, there's no worse thing than watching a child suffer through an illness or sickness, is there? Well, let me tell you this. You know, I've spoken all over this nation. I've been with the Washington Speakers room for like three decades. And they have booked me, you name it. But I spoke at a couple of funerals for kids. My kids, their family, people we got to know through my gal over the years. Oh, my God. It's the toughest, toughest speech I've ever had to give of my life. Speaking, you know, in a situation watching a mom and dad put their child to rest. Nothing is worse than that. Nothing. In fact, you know, as we're talking right now, as you and I are talking right now on the air,

07:03 every day, today and every day, 45 to 50 moms and dads are hearing four words that no mom and dad ever, ever wants to hear. Your child has cancer. Yeah, that's not everyone. I mean, no one wants to hear that. Thomas, we both have kids. We never want to hear that, do we? No, absolutely never. No, no. Not at all. Well, Dickie V, we can't stop it completely, but we can sure give it a battle, can't we? Well, absolutely. I'm not going to quit either to my last breath. In fact, I promised that to a youngster. My God, we got to know him so well. He was just a beautifully young guy, and he passed. I visited him at the hospital just, I guess, maybe a week or so before he passed. Just a great, great young guy, 16 years old, high school senior, and he just kept battling cancer for about, oh, my God.

07:55 He battled it for about six to seven years and never, ever, there was a smile on his face. The cancer would go away and come back and go away and come back, and finally, it really hit him. I'll never forget his words. He spoke, the day after my gala, we always have a party at my house for the biggest donors of the Bee Foundation board, celebrities, come to the gala. We have a casual event, and we bring in our all courageous team. Those are youngsters. Those are youngsters that we bring to the gala who are cancer survivors, and he was there at my party, and he asked me if he could say a few words to the crowd. I said, sure, and he told the crowd, please, I beg you, please listen to Coach V and donate. Don't let happen to other kids what's happened to me because I'm really now terminal, and oh, my God.

08:43 There wasn't a dry eye in the place, and when I went to visit him in the hospital, he was wired, hooked up with all these tubes, and everything, he could barely speak. And this guy was very eloquent, and he called me over by the bed, and I went by the bed, and he practically whispered and said, don't stop what you're doing, please. And I said, promise you, Tony, to my last breath, I promise you, to my last breath, I'm going to beg, and I'm going to plead for dollars. And that's what I'm doing right now. We just had one great gesture. We have a man named Mark Pentecost. He, about two weeks ago, told me he'd give me a million dollars for the kids if I could get a match. And through a friend of ours, you know him and I know him, Nick Naton, he put me in touch with Mark Cuban, and Mark Cuban gave us $500,000.

09:34 My, I couldn't believe it. And the next day, I was able to raise another $500,000 from some people I knew, and we got the million dollars. And now he's come back again, and that's what I'm doing right now. That's why it's important people donate. It's where the money will go, and your $5,000,000 as well. He came back and said, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I said, you got a million for me because you matched it. That's $2 million. And I'm going to give you another million if you can raise $2 million. And right now, I'm at about $1,200,000. I got $800,000 more to go, and I'm going to get it. By September 4th is my deadline. I got a month to go. So I thank you so much for your $5,000. And if anybody out there got a healthy child, and you got somebody that you're so blessed, think about how lucky you are.

10:19 One never knows when that disease will strike. And when it strikes, it is life-changing what it does to a family. Well, we're going to get there. Just like Jimmy V said, don't give up. Don't ever give up. We're going to get you there. And we're doing a documentary on you later on this year, and we're going to share this with the listeners. So I'm looking forward to filming you in person. Well, I appreciate that. I really do. Nick's quite a guy. Yep, yep. He's got great personality. I really dig up big time. Well, you know, this pandemic, though, is causing a nightmare in the world of sports, too. I hope we're going to have a college basketball season. But who knows? Because the priority has got to be the health and the safety of everybody. Right now, baseball, you've read what's happening down there with the Marlins. Yeah, it's crazy. Well, you know, and that's outside sport, too. So if we can't have the sports outside, we're sure not going to be able to have them inside,

11:05 are we? That's really... What about, you know, talk about social distancing. What about football? What about football? I mean, gee whiz, how's that going to go? I hope it goes. The one thing is the bubble really seems to be working. It's working, they say, up there in hockey in Canada. And it seems right now it's worked beautifully for the NBA. They say they've tested 337. Everybody came back negative. Nice. They're rolling on and moving. So that bubble idea seems like it's a positive. Yeah, well, we're learning a lot this year, aren't we? In my life, I've never seen anything like this, Coach. I've never seen anything like it. Me either. Well, folks, I mean, Dick, I'd love to talk to you even more. We'll talk later. We'll talk off the air. But, folks, I really want to encourage one more time to give to Dickie V for the V Foundation.

11:53 Dick, give your address, your website address out one more time. Yeah, it's all for kids battling cancer. And every dollar goes to research that you donate. Just go to dickvital.com. Very simple. Dickvital.com. And you'll see all the information. It says right there where to donate. And it goes through the V Foundation. Tax write-off, obviously. And it's just a great, great cause and a great charity. And one thing I'm proud, proud, Coach Pete, about is the fact that when I think of the V Foundation, it really makes me feel extremely proud is that we get the highest rating you can get from Navigator, which rates charities. Because every dollar we raise for research goes to research. It's not like a situation where, you know, people get paid salaries, relatives, et cetera, and then a portion goes.

12:40 This one, every dollar goes because we have an endowment of a large, large number, millions. And off that endowment, all the administrative costs are being paid. So I beg you when I plead for it, really, for all the kids I've gotten to know over the years battling a disease, for all the moms and dads that are driving their kids to chemo and radiation, I beg you from the bottom of my heart, please donate at dickvital.com for kids battling cancer through the V Foundation. We'd love to have you on the show, Dickie V. And folks, give to that charity. And we'll be right back after this. Thank you.

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Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 And we're back here. We've got a very special guest here along with Coach Pete. I'm Chuck Kaiton, and I'm happy to introduce to you a guy that I'm sure you've seen because he's done every sport. And I think he's the only sportscaster right now that's doing all four professional sports right now. Hockey, baseball, football, and basketball. But unfortunately, Coach. He's not doing any right now. He's not. That's right, because we're in a little bit of quarantine, and his name is Kenny Albert. And he is in that, what we would call the red zone of retirement. But we're not going to talk retirement yet as a young 50-year-old, 52-year-old young man. But here's a guy. Kenny is very well known for doing football on Fox, NBC Sports Network with the National Hockey League, and of course, Madison Square Garden Network, where he fills in doing some Knicks games, and he also does New York Rangers radio. So Kenny, good to have you with us.

00:49 Well, it's great to be with you guys. Always wonderful to hear Chuck's voice, and I hope you guys and your listening audience are all healthy and staying safe here in New Jersey. It's day 76 since I last worked. So, Kenny, let's move into what's going on right now. I mean, this is why, I mean, we've all taken for granted some of the things that we've seen in our lives, and now, folks are listening now, maybe the first time they've heard us in a while, because a lot of folks haven't even been in their car here for the last three months. And I just want to get to what you're hearing out there as far as what's going to happen next. Are we going to go back to regular sports as we've seen it, or what's your opinion on what's going on? And then let's tangent over to the financial world for the athletes. Are you talking to any athletes who are struggling and arena people who are struggling? What's going on right there in the economy? Well, Coach, it's certainly been a surreal time, a bizarre. The last game I worked was on March 11th, the Rangers-Avalanche game in Denver, and that was 76 days ago.

01:44 Not sure any of us thought the pause would go on for this long, but here we are in late May, and we're starting to see some sports come back. The golf match on Sunday involving Tiger Woods, Phil Nicholson, Tom Brady, and Peyton Manning. We've watched European soccer and Korean professional baseball, and now in certain states, they are allowing practice facilities for pro sports teams to reopen. And it'll be real interesting to hear what the plans are as far as the return of the National Hockey League. What will it look like right at the return? Who knows? Will it be empty buildings? Will it be broadcast done out of studios instead of in the arena? There's so much speculation and so many different rumors that we've all heard and read over the past month, month and a half.

02:32 So we'll see what happens. You know, as far as the arena workers, I know many teams have taken care of them. Teams and arenas have put plans in place, but that's the thing. It's not only the players and the coaches and to the next level, you know, the broadcasters and the team management staff. But you have the folks that sell the popcorn and work in the parking garages at the arenas. There are thousands and thousands of people who make their living by working at sporting events throughout the year. So tough times. Hopefully, hopefully all those folks are doing well. And again, we're keeping our fingers crossed that in the near future, everything's back to some semblance of normal. Well, our West Coast office is in Las Vegas, and I've seen firsthand million people laid off.

03:18 And that's crazy. But the casinos in Vegas is more than casinos, but the casinos in Vegas are hurting. And it's not just casinos. It's the people that work for the casinos that supply them. And same thing with athletic events. And then in Vegas, they've got that brand new football stadium they've been building, which is a monster for the Raiders. It's going to be a beautiful place. But, you know, I think a lot of folks who I've talked to are just ready to get back to normal a little bit. I know we have a virus out there, but we've had viruses since the caveman. And so we have to, you know, we have to be humans. We have to live. So we have to be careful, but we also have to get back to what we're doing. And there's a new normal. I've heard that phrase. I don't, I'm not a big fan of that phrase, but the new normal is sort of like when we saw the Tom Brady, like you said, Tom Brady versus Peyton Manning. That was an invented sports because people are, you know, we're watching reruns from 30 or 40 years ago.

04:07 And the Michael Jordan series became the most popular thing ever because that was the only sports people really had to talk about every day. Right. Yeah, that was great. No, you're right. There's so many phrases that we never really heard and used before, such as social distancing and new normal. And again, hopefully things, you know, get back to that new normal pretty soon. You know, we'll leave it up to the scientists and the doctors who are certainly at a much higher pay grade than I am. And it was a fascinating story in the New York Times yesterday about the influenza pandemic back in 1917, 18, 19, and how it affected the Stanley Cup series, which was actually tied, I think, at two. It was the best of five, if I'm not mistaken. Seattle and Montreal. And Joe Hall was the player of Montreal who wound up passing away. And when he became ill, they actually put a halt to the series and he died about a week or two later.

04:58 But it was fascinating to read that column in the New York Times and look at some of the pictures and really compare some of the similarities to what they were going through over 100 years ago, even in the sports world as we are today. You know, we look at and I think this was either last football season or the season before. I remember I'm a New England Patriot fan. And so I remember my Patriots were playing a team and that team had been struck by the regular flu. Or maybe it was this flu. Who knows? But it was a flu and they were bragging. The announcers were bragging about how some of the players on that team were playing through it. Right. And then the very next week, about half the Patriots had the flu now. So I don't think we're going to allow that anymore, are we? Well, again, those questions hopefully will be answered by the scientists and the doctors and the team medical staff and the trainers. But, you know, we've already seen documents published by Major League Baseball and by the NHL yesterday

05:46 talking about this new normal, what some of the procedures are going to be when sports do come back. It's crazy when you think about it because I remember back, you know, I missed a few days of school every semester growing up. And there was always this kid at the end of high school who would get the 100% attendance certificate. He never missed a day for the – or she never missed a day since kindergarten all the way to high school, even though they came to school sick. That's not going to be something to brag about anymore, I don't think. You know, it's funny you mention that, Coach. Well, Chuck, you're familiar with Tom Galitti who does a great job for NHL.com. He's a long-time beat writer for the New Jersey Devils. We actually went to middle school and high school together. And I was the sports editor of the student newspaper, and Tom started to write for me. So I take a small percentage of credit for his professional career.

06:32 He was the guy in high school who won that award. It was called the Iron Man Award. Oh, Doug Jarvis Award, yeah. During the three years of high school, it was Tom Galitti of NHL.com who never missed a day. That's amazing. Kenny Albert, our guest. And I'll tell you what, when it comes to planning, as Coach said before, though, when it comes to what these guys are doing financially, I don't think there's a lot of people who will feel sorry for professional athletes. But we're still talking about quite an impact. And all I want to know is, as we probably wrap it up here, is how are you going to do a football game when the National Football League season starts and sit there without anybody in the stands? You're going to have to really manufacture that wonderful enthusiasm that you have. Yeah, you know, as you know, Chuck, it's certainly more challenging to do broadcasts out of a studio. We've all done them throughout our careers.

07:18 And I think, you know, there's still some uncertainty, whether it's hockey or football, as to whether we're going to be at the stadium, at the arena right at the start, or if we're going to call games from the studio. The NASCAR race on Fox, the announcers and the producer were in Charlotte. And the race, I think, was in South Carolina. And they put the graphics in from Los Angeles. So, you know, my personal preference during normal times is to be at the game, at the arena, at the stadium. It's a lot easier for a play-by-play announcer when you're actually at the venue, in the building. But, you know, we'll see what happens as far as are we in a studio, at least at the beginning? Are we calling games from empty stadiums? There are travel concerns. And do the networks want people staying at a hotel for a long period of time?

08:03 So we'll see what happens. I think, I do think, you know, I'm optimistic that at some point, hopefully within the next six months, we're back to normal and fans are in the stadium and we're doing the games from the booth and everything's as it was prior to March 11th and March 12th, 2020. But as far as what happens right at the start when sports do come back, we'll have to wait and see. Well, Kenny, it's been a pleasure. I've been watching and listening to you for years, and it's amazing how you can do four sports like that. I mean, you really never have a break, do you? This might have been a good break for you. You know, there are certain times of the year that are a lot hectic, more hectic than others. And, you know, as long as I don't call a goal a touchdown during a hockey game, I think we'll check. We're going to get a lot of fun. I really enjoy the variety. And I'm real fortunate to have been involved in all four through the years.

08:49 That movie with Eddie Murphy in it, Coming to America, when he was sitting in the stands out, I think it was a basketball game, and he yelled touchdown when the girl next to him was doing stuff to him. It's funny. I was actually at that game. There you go. That was a St. John's Marist basketball game. That's amazing. And I was there. The game was at the Madison Square Garden. That's the game they used in the movie Coming to America. What a great movie. Still talking about it today. Tremendous. Well, I'll tell you. Kenny, thanks for your time. Kenny Albert, stay safe with you and your family. And for Coach Pete, I'm very honored to have had you on the program. And just be well, my friend, and we'll cross paths at some point. Thanks, Chuck. Thanks, Coach. And Chuck, once things are back to normal and you're up here in the Northeast, next time you're driving on the Palisades Parkway, I'm only five minutes away.

09:36 So make sure to give me a call. Absolutely. Take care, Kenny. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Again, folks, that was Kenny Albert, famous broadcaster. You may have heard his dad before, Marv Albert. But Kenny's been around. Chuck, he's 52. He's just young. Just a couple years younger than Coach Pete. And he's in that financial red zone. And I know that he's a guy, too, that I hope that retirement planning for him is going well. I'm sure it is. It's just a strange world, folks. It's important to get the right plan for the right place. And I really appreciate him taking time earlier this week to talk to us. Folks, we'll be right back after this. We'll be right back.

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Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 You're listening to the Financial Safari News Network. Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Listens. For the Financial Safari News Network, I'm Dave Perkins. Speaking with Dr. Rana Alfalacki, she is a women's empowerment expert, a strategic life coach and author of the book Women Who Want More. How to Create a Balanced and Fulfilled Life. Dr. Alfalacki, hello. Thanks for joining us. Hello. Thank you so much for asking. It's a pleasure. Your book is very interesting. The whole concept and I think it is it more about you trick your subconscious a little bit or get your subconscious in partnership with what you want?

00:54 Absolutely. That is so much of what it is. Yeah. In our conscious state, we put so many obstacles in our way that it doesn't allow us to truly engage with what we want. And when we don't engage with what we want, we don't actually emit that type of energy to get what we want. We don't allow it to happen. So, yeah, absolutely. You hit the nail on the head. So much of it is to do with our subconscious for sure. And if you look at successful people and you can define success by wealth or in many ways, it seems that they're able to do that. And I don't know if that is something that they were born with, the ability to just know what they want and know they can get it. No, no. Yeah, not at all. I mean, if you read about people's success stories, they say, you know, actually only 10 percent of it is probably due to talent and the rest of it is due to hard work.

01:44 So for people like that and an awful lot of the time when you look in their backgrounds, they've had tough lives and they've been through hardship. But through that, they've grown, they've learned lessons and they're not afraid to work hard. And when I say work hard, that doesn't just mean in the office or studying. It means working hard on themselves to break down the blocks that we were talking about and really push through with drive and determination for what they want. That's usually what makes them successful. Yeah. And in many ways, that's harder work than our occupation. And much harder, much harder. Yes. It truly is. Sometimes we're our own worst enemy. And the book is Women Who Want More. And you say that women have a sixth sense. So what is that sixth sense? You know, just just digressing from what you said, I've had an awful lot of men read the book and they've just said, you just need to change the cover and call it Men Who Want More.

02:37 This is a great message for us. It truly is. It really is. But the sixth sense, it's to do with intuition. A lot of people think of it often when they're younger, they have that sense of deja vu where they're somewhere and they feel. They've been there before and they have a strong feeling about something. So that is essentially what the sixth sense is. We talk about the sixth sense in women being more dominant. Now, that's not to say men don't have it. It's just literally the way we are wired and the way our biology works. So in women, we tend to be more balanced, actually, in our brain. Both sides of our brain are quite happy to work in conjunction with each other. And it's the right side of our brain that is more associated with creativity, but also perception, intuition.

03:22 I mean, this is why women are better at multitasking and men are better at map reading. Because they tend to work more with the left side of their brain. And often one side of their brain is much more dominant. And so with that, this is why they're much more logical thinking, whereas a woman can kind of stand back, get the big picture and be much more intuitive. Yeah, and because of actually really thousands of years of society's roles that men and women play, do you find that women have to have that ability to multitask because of that? I mean, because they still are innately the nurturer, too. Yes, exactly. So if we do go back, you know, and thinking about evolution and what typically the role of the woman was, was very much as the carer and needing to look after the children and needing to look after her family and needing to look after her spouse.

04:15 And therefore, she had to have her eyes on everything. And she had to foresee problems and foresee issues and think ahead. And then even in today's society, we're also more expressive. And we tend to talk more about our feelings from a much younger age. In the Western world, that's starting to shift. But so, you know, part of it is the biological aspect. And then the second part, of course, is how we're brought up. Whereas, of course, men, you know, if we go back to kind of caveman times, he would have been the provider. He had to go and hunt food. The hunter-gatherer. Absolutely. And provide for his family. But therefore, he was just given that one task and didn't need to do anything else. Right, right. Yeah. So I think we're asking enough, a lot of men, if we're expecting them to be able to do the whole thing. But we're asking a lot of men if we're looking at them for fulfillment.

05:02 Because actually, we need to look at ourselves for fulfillment. And a man can add a wonderful aspect and richness to our lives. But we have to remember that that is not the be-all and end-all in our lives. This is me saying as a woman. If I was talking to a man, I would say the same thing with regards to having a woman or a partner in their life. We have to start with ourselves. Dr. Rana Al-Falaki is author of the book, Women Who Want More? How to Create a Balanced and Fulfilled Life. Of course, it's available at Amazon.com. And you also get extra materials with that. It's all about exercises, Dr. Al-Falaki. And it's all inclusive, too. It's finding what you want. It's not exclusive to career or family. It's really your entire life, I'm assuming here. Absolutely. Yes, yes, exactly.

05:49 So there are things in there about feeling your purpose, your career, your lifestyle, how to feel better about your relationships, your social relationships, your intimate relationships, how to deal with your parents, your kids, and chapters about money and how to have fun and how to have the time. So it really encompasses that whole wheel of life of bringing it all together, which is where the balance aspect comes in as well. And since it does in women is in the title, is success in your view with women viewed differently? I mean, I know in many ways it is in the workplace, especially. How big of a barrier has that been to success for women? Again, it comes back to if we allow it, which we were talking about earlier. So there are, of course, there are typical barriers to success.

06:37 You know, as a woman, you know, we still have an issue to do with earning less money. And in fact, the statistics in the States are we earn 80 cents to every dollar that a man earns. So there is still a big imbalance there. And then, of course, there's the issues of racism and sexism in the office. But if we put that aspect aside, we've already touched on almost the double job role that a woman tends to have, in that she is the carer, which can be a full-time job, and at the same time wanting to hold down a full-time professional job. But then there's the aspect where us as women almost tend to be apologetic for ourselves. Yeah, I was going to ask, is there a guilt sometimes with women? Yes, exactly. So instead of standing in our own true abilities, we almost, we're trying to compete. We're trying to compete with men on a direct one-to-one level,

07:25 rather than recognizing where our strengths lie. You know, you were talking about intuition, and then we have our strength of multitasking. We have our strength of being able to express our feelings. We have our strength of being able to see the bigger picture, which are fantastic assets that we can hold forth in the workplace. But as women, sometimes you hear about women leaders and the need to almost compete with men, be like men, and be bossy. And there's a wonderful quote that I put in my book saying, a strong woman is a woman with a voice, but the ability to find that voice can sometimes take a lifetime. And that is often, as women, where we become problematic. We're afraid to use our voice. You know, yes, we may not get offered a seat at the table, but when we do, like we said, we don't use the voice.

08:12 We are apologetic in our language. We feel guilty. And yes, and we can feel guilty about not being with our families as well. So sometimes we are our own barriers to ourselves. And really, you can trace it back years and years and years to society's demands on men and women and the different demands. Do you see problems as complex and solutions as simple? I think problems can be simple, actually. When you really break them down, that the reason problems seem complex is because our emotions get involved. But actually, if you take the emotions out of it, if you actually peel back the layers to actually what the core of the problem is, it becomes quite simple. And once you've done that, the solution is even simpler. You just have to be willing to put it into action.

08:59 So it's all about peeling away the mask, which, of course, is what Core Energy Coaching does, which is what I do to make that problem simple. And then the solution is just glaring in front of you. That's a great thing to learn to achieve what you want in life. Do you have, does your book offer some simple exercises that things you could do daily? Very much so. And for me, that's probably that that's where I tend to come from as an incredibly busy woman. I speak to busy women and understand them. So everything I try to provide is from a practical point of view, because, you know, I've read so many books in the past and they come up with all these. Everything is fluffed up to start with. And I'm very much like, let's just cut to the chase and get to the point, please. And tell me what I've got to do, because I don't have time.

09:45 And therefore, I've written the book with that in mind. So the exercises, though, they're very, very practical, give huge insight. And yes, things that people can do daily. And I do really emphasize a lot in the book how to multitask and therefore adapt behavior changes into your daily life. And without because without the change in the action, it's all very well having the desire. But you have to action it to make for things to really change around you. And, you know, speaking of society, I myself have seen so many changes and progress, of course, in my life. And I'm thinking you talked about we've always heard about women's intuition and you describe it as a sixth sense that women have. And I'm sure there are edges women have and certainly in multitasking. And so as society's views are changing, that's going to really give women an edge.

10:34 And especially in the workplace in the years to come, I believe. Of course. Of course. I mean, if we look in Western society, we do. It's not as if we don't have women leaders. You know, in the UK, in the 80s, we had a female prime minister. You know, and in America, you know, you have women leaders. You know, they are CEOs. They are political figures. We are seeing it more and more. And then the lovely thing to witness is actually a lot of women leaders are not just talking to women. I think Brini Brown sums it up beautifully, actually, where she talks about why, as women, do we feel the need to look up to men to get the advice? Why can we not turn to another woman for advice? And that is the shift I think we are really starting to see in society today. And it's wonderful to see.

11:20 Really wonderful. The book is available at Amazon.com. Women Who Want More, How to Create a Balanced and Fulfilled Life, written by Dr. Rana Al-Falaki. What other materials come with the book? So at the end of each chapter, there's an opportunity with all kinds of exercises, which obviously you could do all of them or you could pick and choose. If you get the paper version, paperback or hardback, you may like to write in the book. I personally, I don't like to write in my book. So you can download the worksheets, which obviously give you a much bigger area or obviously then it's all on electronic format. And then there are also some audio exercises. So we talked about intuition. So there is a daily five-minute audio exercise that you can download from the website. And it's called Meet Your Higher Coach, which is this idea of tapping into ourselves, i.e. tapping into our intuition.

12:10 And that's a brilliant exercise to do on a daily basis, be it in the middle of the day, the first thing of the day, last thing at night. But a way of asking yourself what it is you need to know. There's also another audio one called The Abundance Tool. And again, it's about unblocking what's stopping you from getting money and being abundant. So again, that's another audio. And then there's a wonderful vision exercise in there that I call Knock Down the Fences so you can see. In other words, let's get rid of the blocks and see what it is we truly want in life. There's a written version for that, but then also there is an audio. So it just depends how you like to learn and how you tend to receive messages, how you process things. Is it through just reading, through writing things down, through listening? So I've tried to provide everything so that it can appeal to whatever your main learning sense is.

12:59 Maybe in your next book, you can teach men how to harness the power of and develop that women's intuition, that sixth sense that women have. Oh, absolutely. But to be honest, that audio exercise on the website of Meet Your Higher Coach, you know, there's nothing about it being specifically for women in that. And just by doing that for whoever you are and wherever you are on your journey in life will really help. Yeah, I think this book would be great for everybody. Dr. Rana El-Falaki. The book is Women Who Want More, How to Create a Balanced and Fulfilled Life. And thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.

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00:00 You're listening to the Financial Safari News Network. Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. For the Financial Safari News Network, I'm Dave Perkins. Talking with Pete Trabuco, Pete wears many hats. He is a top travel expert. He's a TV host, an author and an actor and a DJ. But we're going to talk to him concerning his amusement park expert hat today. And his book is a personal guide to the best thrill rides and amusement water parks.

00:46 Hello Pete. Hello, how are you doing? Hope you're having a great day. Having a great day and looking forward to the conversation here. I happen to love rides and I love amusement parks. And I know that you haven't always loved rides. You had to overcome a bit of a fear of rides, didn't you? Absolutely. And one of the things that I did for my first book, which is America's Top Roller Coasters in Amusement Parks, was to actually take notes I had done because I was afraid of roller coasters. My daughter was born and I wanted to not miss out on those experiences. So I actually started riding roller coasters. Even though I'm a pilot, I've done aerobatics, I've done some crazy stuff in my life. I had that childhood fear of roller coasters. So I wrote the first book as therapy to actually get past that fear. And it was a childhood fear that eventually, once I realized that, you know, coasters are safe

01:34 and some of the stuff I've been doing is a lot more crazier than the roller coasters, but the rush is still there. You know, the feeling of doing aerobatic maneuvers that you would normally do in an airplane, tied to the ground on a rail. Well, it became a lot easier and a lot more enjoyable. Well, and yes, you are a pilot. I guess it's a control thing then. You know, it boils down to when I was very young when I first went on the ride. It was in Coney Island. And basically, I just didn't like the feeling of it. And, you know, any fear that you have, whether it's roller coasters and fear of flying, fear of insects, fear of anything, if you don't confront it, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and to the point where you're just not even willing to try to overcome it. What I tell people, and obviously in chapters in my book, I go over the basic ideas or basic

02:20 concepts in order to overcome that fear. You've really got to head on and basically get over the fear that way. And you find out most of the time that there was nothing to be afraid of. So this was somewhat of therapy for you, but you became an amusement park expert in the process. How are you an expert in amusement parks? Well, you know, my full-time job, I travel. I'm in aviation. And basically, I was visiting a lot of different places all over the country. And basically, there's two things you can do when you're visiting aviation people or customers or clients or whatever. It's sit in a hotel, wait for the meeting and go. Or you can go out and do two things. And one of the things was I love ballparks and stadiums. So whenever I get a chance, I'll go to them. Or I will go to an amusement park and ride roller coasters with customers, clients, or just by

03:07 myself. And while I'm there, you know, write little notes about the different rides and what I experienced and so on. So that's pretty much how I got into it, other than the fact that after I overcame the fear, it became enjoyable. And again, I'm getting older. I don't really do any aerobatics anymore or crazy things in an airplane because, you know, you're older. But this is the same rush. It's not nearly as intense as, let's say, you know, doing a loop-de-loop or an animal man in an airplane, a souped-up aircraft. But the G-forces are there, both negative and positive. And it's definitely still a rush. Oh, they certainly are. And even more so with roller coasters. Now, your book, A Personal Guide to the Best Thrill Rides in Amusement Water Parks, is a must-read for any amusement park enthusiast because you offer some tips and reveal some secrets,

03:53 too. I happen to love rides and always have. Hate the lines. But in your book, you offer tips on how to avoid the lines. How do you do that besides pick a rainy day to go? Well, you got it right there with the rainy day. I mean, you can do a lot of things if you don't mind having a little rain in your face. But there's a lot of things you can do. The first thing you should do is never, and I mean never, go to an amusement park during midday. Midday is when everyone is there. It's hot. There's a lot of big lines. So what I always tell people is if you're going to go, go early morning or go late evening, because at that point, people have had it. They, you know, normally they want to go back to the hotel, maybe get something to eat, and they're not going to really stay at that location. So what I tell them is that's one of the major tips is go early morning or go late day.

04:41 Now, when the park opens, the first thing you should do, if you're not doing a fast pass, get to the rides you want to get early, immediately, as soon as you get there. You want to get to whatever location that you can get to. And of course, Disney's got a great program where you can actually fast pass everything on your cell phone. You can do it at home. You can do it whatever you need to do. And that makes it a heck of a lot easier to avoid those lines. And here's my biggest one. This is the one I kind of like the most is normally when you go on a ride, a thrill ride, or just any event that goes on at these amusement parks. If you go on the single line, which means just you, it's so much faster. For example, at the Harry Potter ride, if you're on that, it could be two, three hours before you get on the actual 3D ride.

05:27 But on a single line, 10 minutes. Now, it's certainly not cheap to get into these places, but you have some tips on discounts available. Yes, in order to save money, real simple. During the springtime, you're going to see in all convenience stores, you're going to see specials to all the amusement parks, all the local ones in your area. And there's about 2,000 amusement parks throughout North America. So you're going to see these are convenience stores and there's special gifts that are going on where they do the special. Besides, also, another way to save money is if like during the holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, when you're up in the northeast area or the northern portions, once you're do something like that, they give you a discount for the water parks as well as everything else that goes on. So let's say you pay $50 to go to a Christmas thing or whatever, and it's just a one-day

06:16 thing. For another $50, they will throw in. And again, this is just examples. It could be higher and lower depending on that. But for the same price that you paid or less, you can get a season pass, which normally would be in the hundreds of dollars to do that. So that's special as well. You can go online. Disney is always having great things as well as Universal and the Cedar Fair operations and Busch Gardens where you get airfare, hotel. There are meal plans that are absolutely amazing as long as you don't mind going to the places that are listed. You can save a lot of money. And here's one way you can save a lot of money. People don't know this too much, but any Disney park, and especially mostly all the parks around the country, if you ask for ice water, just ice water, they have to give it to you.

07:03 By law, they have to give it to you. So you could save a lot of money just by going over to a booth, not paying for the soda, not paying for whatever. Just go over, ask for ice water, and they will give it to you every single time. And that'll save you a lot of money in the long run. Oh, it certainly will over that $10 Coke. You know, we were talking about King's Dominion, and when I was there last, and I'm not afraid of roller coasters, but I don't like blacking out. And the Intimidator, I actually did black out, I guess, because of the G-force. Are you seeing more of that in roller coasters today than in the past? Well, the thing is, you know, when you have rides that go up to 5Gs, an Intimidator is one of the best out there. I mean, there's even bigger ones and faster ones, but the bottom line is Intimidator is great. What you need to do is this, number one, and these are the things, as a pilot, I learned

07:53 this. When you're doing high G maneuvers, you need to grunt, groan, or scream. Now, if you're not wearing a G-suit like a pilot that keeps the blood up into the upper extremities, you're going to experience what we call brownout or tunnel vision. And eventually, you might be able to black out. If you're not hydrated enough, water-wise, you can black out. So what I tell people is if you're going to ride, ride like Intimidator. You want to make sure, first of all, that you're definitely hydrated. But also, scream. Keep the blood up into your upper extremities. Do not close your eyes. Focus on a point, because that's what you do when you're flying aerobatics. You focus on a point, and at that point, you'll have fun. And where else can you actually scream your lungs off and not get arrested?

08:39 So it's a great way to do it. Well, for most people, that wouldn't be a problem, because most are screaming. What's your favorite roller coaster? Well, the ones that I'm riding at the time, basically. Intimidator is one of my favorites. Obviously, Volcano, even though it was a slower roller coaster, it was the first to use that limb launch or magnetic launch system. But right now, I would say that on the cover of my first book, America's Top Roller Coasters and Amusement Parks, you've got Millennium Force out of Cedar Point, Sandusky, Ohio, a 300-foot, 95-mile-an-hour marvel. While most rides are coming back into the train station, this one's only halfway. So that's probably one of my favorites. But there's so many good ones. I mean, right now, we've got some great ones.

09:26 Jersey Devil at Six Flags, Great Adventures coming out with a new ride. The Icebreaker at SeaWorld is going to be an amazing ride. Texas Stingray over at San Antonio. These are all great, fantastic rides that are just coming into being, and they're going to give these older rides a run for their money. I know Kingda Ka is super fast in the U.S., but I believe, and I may be wrong here, the fastest at this point is in the United Arab Emirates. Is that Formula Rosa? That's correct. Formula Rosa at Ferrari World in the Dubai area, and that goes from zero to 150 miles an hour in about two and a half to three seconds. So if you ever wanted to know what it's like to be on an aircraft carrier in an F-18 and get shot off the catapult, believe it or not, this is a morbid experience because, remember,

10:15 you don't have a canopy or glass blocking all the wind. So if you wanted an immediate facelift from the 5Gs, so 6Gs on takeoff, this is the way to go. And right now, Kingda Ka still is the tallest roller coaster at 455 feet, but it lost the speed record to that ride, Formula Russo. What is your favorite? We've talked about roller coasters. What's your favorite or most thrilling non-roller coaster ride? Well, you know, I love the old-style rides, basically. I would say my favorite non-... Well, again, you've got to put into many considerations here because my non-coaster, I would say, soaring is actually one of my favorites in that basically it is a simulation, but it's actually an amazing

11:02 experience. Obviously, Avatar now, which has another version at Animal Kingdom. These rides are so realistic. And as a pilot, I can tell you, it almost feels like you're actually hang gliding on soaring, so that's a great one. The Mummy, even though it is a semi-roller coaster over at Universal Studios, again, a lot of that is basically simulation. And one of the first ones to come out that's not a roller coaster that I had the most fun with and is probably one of the most popular rides is the old Superman ride over at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. So these are great rides. They're simulation rides, but at the same time, they are just absolutely amazing and ones I would recommend. Thrill rides seem so American.

11:50 Were they born in the U.S.? Well, the first roller coaster in the United States was in 1884. I was at Coney Island of all places, and it was a great ride. Marcus Thompson, J. Marcus Thompson was the person who did that. It only went about seven miles an hour, basically. So if you had a top hat on, you could probably just keep your top hat on and nothing would have happened. But you have to go way back for the first roller coasters, which were basically more like toboggans. You have to go back to Russia, in which that's where the rides actually originated. And they put them on mountain areas, and it was more like tobogganing. But at the same time, it did have a rail. So you'd have to say that they were the first to actually invent these type of roller coasters

12:41 that would go on a rail down a mountain, a snowy mountain in these cases. And that's pretty much where it would start. But Marcus Thompson would be the person who created it at Coney Island way back. And, again, it was 1884, if I believe. Talking with Pete Trebuco, whose book is a personal guide to the best thrill rides. And I know that you offer, well, reveal some secrets at amusement parks. And I know one that you touch on is the feral cats at Disneyland. Yeah, believe it or not. There are a lot of secrets out there that basically that they have. And one of them, we've all seen the football game over at MetLife Stadium with the Giants, where the cats come out of nowhere onto the field. And, yes, believe it or not, you'll find at Disney World and Disneyland that there are just many, many things.

13:33 In fact, every park will have stray cats, stray dogs, and other animals that basically are living there. Now, are they actually supposed to be there? Of course not. But do the people that work at these staff and the cast members see them? Of course they do. But the bottom line is they try not to have that because, again, sanitary reasons. You really don't want cats or animals in the same places as humans without being taken care of and so on down the line. Secret-wise, I don't know if you know this, but the Haunted Mansion, believe it or not, there's actually living remains of people at the Haunted Mansion. Oh, wow. What happens is a lot of people will actually throw the ashes down of their loved ones

14:23 when no one is looking at the park. And this has been done for many, many, many years. Now, the secret is basically there are cameras now, and you can no longer do that. And if they do that, believe it or not, they have to close the ride down and hazmat has to be called in in order to clean that up. But in the past, before the cameras were set up, and this is a secret that a lot of people don't know, people were doing that. And that means it actually could really be haunted. You never know. Yes, it could. Pete Trebuco, who's author of A Personal Guide to the Best Thrill Rides and Amusement Water Parks. Thanks for joining us, Pete. Thank you so much, and you have a great day.

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00:00 Something we often talk about on the shows is that because we're living longer, we're also working longer, and inevitably some of us will develop a serious or chronic illness. A new survey from Cancer and Careers, a national nonprofit that shows many employees have concerns about their ability to support a co-worker with a serious medical condition. Joining us today to discuss the results of the survey and to offer some tips and advice are Rebecca Nellis, Executive Director of Cancer and Careers, and Kathy Flora, Cancer Survivor and Nationally Certified Counselor. Rebecca, I'm going to start with you. Why is fostering that positive and supportive work environment for folks with a serious illness, why is that so important? Well, I think so many of us spend as much time, or it might feel like that, with our work community as we do in the rest of our lives with our community community.

00:48 And so most people are going to face a health crisis, either their own or a loved one at some point. And people are working longer than ever before because they can and they want to. Thank you, science and medicine and technology for such huge advances and improvements to our quality of life. And diagnoses are earlier, and illnesses are managed differently. And so the assumption that workplaces aren't going to face this crossroads of illness showing up is wrong now. It is highly likely that a company is going to have an employee who's facing something like this. And so we want to make sure it's working the best for all sides because a productive workforce is good for the company, but it's also good for the individual.

01:34 You don't want to lose a talented, skilled staff person when you don't have to, and you don't want to make assumptions about what they want or don't want out of their work life. And so bringing this dialogue to the fore and making sure that companies are thinking about it this way is really important. What was the survey? What was the premise of the survey, and what did you find out? So for the first time this year, Cancer and Careers actually surveyed coworkers of people who've been diagnosed with a serious medical condition. So not just getting the firsthand experience of someone who was diagnosed, but getting a sense of the experience and concerns of the people in the workplace surrounding that person. So all of these coworkers that were surveyed had worked with someone who was diagnosed with a serious medical condition,

02:20 and we learned some really interesting things. Eighty-eight percent of them had concerns about their ability to support their coworker, and those concerns were things like how much emotional support do I provide, if any? How should I respect privacy preferences? How do I manage those conversations? What kind of work-related support can I offer or should I offer? So really practical, tangible things about being someone's coworker. We also learned some interesting things about those coworkers' thoughts on their management and how prepared they were to deal with an issue like this in the workplace. And what we learned from that was that 59 percent were not confident in their company's leadership in terms of knowing how to support an employee with a serious medical condition.

03:08 And in fact, nearly one in five felt less loyal to their company after they witnessed how their coworker was treated. And managed. So there's some really interesting opportunity here for us to have a conversation about what support looks like and what that means not just to the individual but to the constellation around them in the workplace. That is so important. It's interesting, too. And, Kathy, what are some ways that we can do that? How can we show support? How can we deal with someone that was diagnosed with cancer? I mean, I had a situation like that where a woman came to work after she was gone for a couple of weeks and she had a hat on and I kind of knew, but I didn't know what to say. You know, and I have a lot of empathy for that.

03:55 Coworkers kind of struggle, don't they, between wanting to be supportive and not wanting to be intrusive. So you've got this dynamic going on. And, you know, for the person diagnosed with cancer, and I can speak from personal experience and also from the experience of the people that I work with through cancer and careers, work is a place where they can feel normal. So you don't want to overemphasize the cancer diagnosis with them. But at the same time, you need support from your coworkers and you need support from your employer, an employer who offers flexibility and accommodations during a treatment like mine did that allowed me to go to treatment in the morning and then come into work in the afternoon or allowed me to take my meetings via conference call or webinar rather than having to go in

04:41 and be around 10 or 12 people who might be coughing and have the flu. That allowed me to juggle my work life. But if you're a coworker who sees somebody like the woman who walked in the door, one of the things that you can do to break the ice is just to ask. Say, I see that something's different. I see that you've been out for a while. Do you mind me asking? What are you facing? Is there some way I can be helpful? If that individual wants to disclose their diagnosis to you, they will. They'll tell you what the boundaries are. And then respect those boundaries and respect that privacy. Don't assume that person is their diagnosis. Assume that they're going to be able to manage as best they can. And if there's a need for some assistance, offer it.

05:28 If there's something that you know that they do that you could pick up for them, offer to do so while at the same time respecting who they are and that they may want to try to do a lot of this by themselves. So ultimately, communication is the key, and education is also a key. Employer to supervisor to employees. So everybody knows what the way to the land is. Kathy, that's great advice. So, Rebecca, where can we find out more information about the survey and about maybe what to do and what not to do? I would start with the Cancer and Careers website, which is cancerandcareers.org. From there, a whole universe of content and programs and events are available for people, whether it's themselves, a co-worker, you're a manager, you're HR.

06:15 I would start with the website. Many thanks to Rebecca Nellis, Executive Director of Cancer and Careers, and Kathy Flora, Cancer Survivor and Nationally Certified Career Counselor. Again, to learn more about that survey, you can visit cancerandcareers.org.

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00:00 Well, folks, this is the time of the show where I go out around the world and find someone who's making a difference in the financial world or the world in general. And I would love to talk to authors because not only do I get to talk to them, but I usually get a book and the books are great. And this week's no exception. We're going to go down to Florida today. We're going to talk to Mr. David Scranton, and he's the author of the book, The Retirement Income Story, the story behind the launch of the Retirement Income Store. David, welcome in. Thanks for having me back, Pete. Yeah. Yeah. It's been, what has it been? Like two or three years, I think, since we had you on West. It's way too long. It's been a little while. I have been feeling the love from the coach. I'm glad to be back. Well, you know, we stopped interviewing people for a while. I don't know why. We started doing video interviews locally. And then I think we had a meeting the other day and I said, we need to start having our authors back on. I had Dr. Wade Fowl on, a really good author there,

00:48 who's a professor at the American College. So you're following him up. And I think this was the reason why, because you have a lot of the points that are similar to him. And one of the main points he had, and I think you have it as well in your book, is retirement is not about lump sum. It's about income, isn't it? That's right. That's right. And you see that when people have the ability to cash out their traditional pension plans. That is, if any of your listeners are still fortunate to have the old type of traditional pension plans available to them, and they're available to get a lump sum or they're available to get a guaranteed lifetime income. A lot of people take the guaranteed lifetime income. And once they do that, they can never change it again. And the reason they often do that is because they know when they take the lump sum that they typically can't get quite as much

01:34 income. So they're willing to sacrifice the entire lump sum, essentially get an annuity payment with a zero lump sum value because the income is that much higher. So I think intuitively people know it's really all about the income that the money can generate, not about the lump sum. The problem is it kind of flies in the face of what a lot of us have been taught in the 80s and 90s. And frankly, what a lot of advisors still preach, believe it or not. Yeah, but building, and I talk to retirees every day and they say, coach, what am I going to do with this lump sum of the 401k? I don't know what kind of income I'm going to take. And if I start taking money out of it, I don't have a real plan. I could run out of money. We don't want that to happen. That's right. And it's interesting. You know, there used to be this rule called a 4% rule, where if you use the withdrawal method and you withdrew 4% of your account balance per year,

02:21 based upon historical returns, there was a pretty high probability that you would not run out of money. Well, with the stock market having struggled in the early 2000s for a while, and with interest rates being suppressed, recent studies have shown that that number is closer to 2.7%. So that means, Pete, that if your listener does a great job and is diligent and saves a million dollars over the course of his or her lifetime, he can only, if he's using the withdrawal method, get $27,000 a year from that million dollar lump sum and have a high likelihood of not running out of money. But how high? 90%. So that means there's still a 10% chance that even taking that meager rate of withdrawal, that they could still run out of money. So imagine you and I are on an airplane

03:08 together, and the pilot comes on and says, hey, we shouldn't have any turbulence today. It should be a smooth flight. And by the way, there's only a 10% chance that we run out of fuel before we get to our destination. So buckle up and have a pleasant flight. You and I are going to be pushing each other out of the way like Archie Bunker and Meathead trying to get out the door before this guy takes off, right? I picture myself being that flight attendant guy that pulled the slide and went out with a six pack. I remember that. That's right. And I'd be right behind you. So that's the problem today is that a lot of people are still programmed to take a withdrawal. And yeah, 90% is a pretty good percentage, but not if the 10% failure rate means running out of money and all your life savings, but

03:58 still being retired. So I'm a big advocate of the income method, because when you invest for the income method, instead of crossing your fingers and toes, hoping to get growth or capital appreciation, you can get even in today's lower interest rate environment over 4% net of fees. So that's 50% more income, but not only is it 50% more income, but also now you're leaving your principal intact. You're not spending it down. So why is that important? Well, because some of your listeners may say, you know, I, I like to leave a legacy for my children and grandchildren. Others might find that over time, inflation is starting to put a stranglehold on their fixed income. And as they get in their 80s, they may want to start spending down principal to give themselves a little inflation hedge. We can't

04:44 spend down principal unless you've preserved it prior to that. And lastly, healthcare, you know, everybody knows long-term care insurance is really expensive. It's a great thing to have, but you have to buy it young or you can't afford it. And what good is your lump sum of money if you can't ultimately use it to stay in the comfort of your home? Yeah. And conversely, if you spent down your principal using the withdrawal method and you take sick, you may be forced by the state in which you live into a convalescent facility. Keeping that principal intact means now you can spend it down to stay home as long as the money allows. Again, the name of the book, The Retirement Income Story, and his name was David Scranton. Now, David, I assume this is all over Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and anywhere books are sold. It is, and apparently it's selling well. We just got a call at the end

05:31 of last week saying that Amazon was actually out of books. So we had to rattle the cage of the publisher. I guess that's a good problem to have. That's always a good problem to have. And my dad always said there's no such thing as a good problem, Peter, but there is in this case. Folks, again, David Scranton, and Dave, thanks for your time today. Thanks for having me back. Well, folks, that was a great interview with David Scranton, and the book really is a really good book. And unfortunately, when we talk to folks on the air, on authors on the air, we can never cover the whole book, but he is similar to what we do. And I've written eight books. So let me make this promise to you guys that are listening. If you listen to the interview, like the interview, my ideas are exactly like David's as far as retirement income planning, having that retirement TSA, total secure accounts for retirement. They give you that lifetime income. And if you're one of the next 10 people call, I'll give you three of the books that I've written. And I think you'll find them very valuable.

06:19 I'll also give you a box set on the 401k. We call it the 401k survival box set and a cliff note version of planning for your estate. It's called the little green book of life. And everybody loves this. It's a hundred pages and it's interactive showing you how to plan what will happen if you're not here anymore. So your next of kin isn't guessing. And that's the most important part, not guessing. So taking the guesswork out of retirement planning and taking the guesswork out of what happens next, not only in life, but afterlife. If you're one of the next 10 people call, all you have to do is call right now. Thomas will give you that number. Absolutely. Folks, that number to call 888-623-8858. We are in studio right now. Just leave your name, number. We will give you a call back just as soon as we're able. And when you do call in, if you are one of

07:06 the first 10 callers, you will receive a comprehensive retirement review showing you where you are now, but much more important than that, it's going to show you that roadmap to get you where you need to be. That number again, 888-623-8858. That's 888-623-8858. And for all our introverts like myself out there, you don't have to pick up the phone. All you need to do is text the word plan, P-L-A-N to 21,000. That's plan to 21,000. Folks, we'll be right back after this.

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00:00 When you think of people using dating apps like Match.com, you often think of somebody in their 20s or 30s getting out there to find the love of their life. Turns out one of the largest groups using dating apps today are over 50, many in their 60s. I can hear millennials everywhere going, Ooh, that's gross. Well, guess what? Grandpa and grandma are sexual beings too. In fact, the divorce rate for those over 50 has nearly doubled in the past 10 years, and that means there are plenty of seniors looking for love. Enter Jennifer Fitzpatrick. She's been empowering patients and their caregivers for more than 20 years with her business, Generations Healthcare. And in her book, Cruising Through Caregiving, Reducing the Stress of Caring for Your Loved One, is considered mandatory reading for anyone caring for an aging loved one.

00:46 I caught up with Jennifer recently and asked her about dating over 60. She says not only are they dating, they're very tech savvy when it comes to using the apps. Yeah, there's a lot of people in that age group that are online looking for love, looking for dates, A lot of people that are younger just assume that, well, if you're older, you just aren't interested in that anymore, and that's far from true. She says it's not just senior dating apps, but they're using the same ones as everyone else. Anybody is welcome on those apps. There's a lot of general apps. And you just put in, you know, your information, what you're looking for. But, yeah, I think we don't need to make it so there's, you know, we segment these older adults more and more than ever before. People are dating outside their age group.

01:31 For a long time, it was really accepted that older men could date younger women. In fact, I just heard that Dennis Quaid got engaged. He's 65, got engaged to a 26-year-old. But we also do have women who are dating younger. And so I don't think it's necessarily that older adults need to be on older person dating apps. Jennifer says it all comes down to confidence. The dating, I think, comes a lot easier, whether you're meeting somebody at a party or you're meeting somebody at work or you're meeting somebody at a bar versus you're meeting someone online. It all comes back to the confidence. Do you feel like you have something to offer? And I think a lot of times, especially for women in our society, as we age, I think a lot of women feel like, well, I'm not maybe as beautiful as I was when I was 25.

02:20 I'm 60 now. You are, you know, all of us have ways that we can make ourselves feel good. We can make ourselves as attractive as possible. But it really comes down to what are you looking for? And do you have the confidence to put yourself out there in order to meet somebody? She offers this when meeting someone new. What I would recommend to older persons looking for love is unless you think you're going to wind up on forensic files, if somebody asks you out for coffee, you know, go. You know, you never know what's going to happen. And it's, you know, meet in a public place if you don't know the person, if you're meeting on an app, even if it's not a love connection. There's so much data right now that supports that the more socially connected we are, the more mentally healthy we are, the more physically healthy we are.

03:10 And actually, there's some studies that actually say that we are less at risk for dementia. Jennifer says that it's not just about dating, especially when it comes to senior living communities. My book, Cruising Through Caregiving, I talk a lot about relationships in senior living. And one of the things we see so often is people fall in love in senior living, in nursing homes and in assisted living communities. And a lot of adult kids really struggle with that, even if their parent is widowed or divorced. They just can't imagine their parent or their grandparent being a sexual being. In her book, Cruising Through Caregiving, Jennifer points out that it's not always about sex, but often just a human connection. You know, it's not always like this full-blown serious relationship.

03:57 It might be that they enjoy going to a movie together or having lunch. Now, there certainly are a lot of people that are engaging in sex in senior living and in their older adult years. But sometimes it's really just about companionship. In addition to her book, Jennifer Fitzpatrick founded Generations Healthcare, a full-service healthcare education organization. Her mission, she says, is to help healthcare organizations and professionals grow while empowering patients and their caregivers. Jennifer says her book, Cruising Through Caregiving, can be a big help for anyone caring for an older loved one. If you have a loved one who is starting to need care, maybe they don't need assisted living, maybe you don't need to move in with them or they don't need you that much, start reading it because it'll help you to figure out a way to help that person with care while still having a life of your own.

04:48 So you remain healthy. Great advice. Many thanks to Jennifer Fitzpatrick for her time today and her book, Cruising Through Caregiving, Reducing the Stress of Caring for Your Loved One, is available everywhere. And you can get a free chapter by visiting cruisingthroughcaregiving.com. To learn more about Jennifer, visit generationshealth.com. That's generations with a J, health.com. Many thanks again to Jennifer Fitzpatrick.

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00:00 Whether it's market volatility or uncertainty about the future, a new survey finds that only 27 percent of people are very confident about a financially stable retirement. Dan Cady is chief financial planning strategist for TIAA. I had a chance to talk with Dan about the survey and what it really means for those in or near retirement. He says that retirement today is vastly different than it was even just a few years ago. People have really began to refocus on the concept of distribution, which at one time was mainly taken care of by our corporate pension plans, right? The check for life. And now people have to set up their own plan. Katie says retirement today is all about the income and maintaining lifestyle. That's the big thing that we see as a change over time is people really are thinking about income.

00:48 One of the things we saw about the survey, the TIAA 2019 survey that I thought was really interesting is that our third most cited boost to financial confidence was guaranteed income. Now the winner was savings, which makes sense, right? We all know you have to save, save regularly, pay off debts, which was the runner up number two. But the third one was high. And interestingly, that's expecting guaranteed income from a traditional pension plan. Now that could have even been higher, except most people don't have a pension plan anymore to expect from. Without pensions as a mainstay to retirement anymore, Katie says we need to create our own form of pension, something that may be easier said than done. The challenge being that the DB pension plan was simple

01:37 because you didn't really have to take action. And because it is kind of complex to go out there and say, I'm going to create my own self-pension and you could do it and I'll give you a couple of resources. But in fact, the House of Representatives passed the bipartisan SECURE Act, which is now encouraging 401ks and other workplace plans to offer, you know, an annuity option, an option where you could take some of the money and convert it into a stream of income that you could never outlive. Why? Because, you know, the government's concerned about people outliving their savings. The SECURE Act has not yet passed and is currently held up in the U.S. Senate. There are many layers of the SECURE Act. The 401k annuity is just one piece of a much larger bill. Many speculate that

02:22 the SECURE Act will be attached to an omnibus budget bill and the president will certainly sign it. Financial education is an area of the TIAA survey that Katie says surprised nearly everyone. 35 percent of the respondents said that mutual funds offer lifetime guaranteed income that could never run out. And of course, we know that that's not true. But 35 percent, so that's over a third, are thinking that their retirement plan, if they're in mutual funds, can never run out. And then 20 percent of the very popular target date funds, the people who had target date funds, think it offers, again, lifetime income, which, of course, it doesn't. Katie says getting people to understand that they may live a lot longer than they think and then plan accordingly. So how do we do that?

03:08 Get people to pick auto increase on their workplace plan. So say it goes up one percent a year, the savings ratio, much easier to get people to do that. The other part we found that really could help people is find out what those offerings are from your 401k. Does it offer a lifetime income option? At least find out if it does. And then finally, I think it can really help people if they sit back and think through longevity and say, wait a second, I could be alive a very long time. And therefore, you know, how am I going to offset that risk? Katie adds it's important to have that conversation sooner than later. Thanks again to Dan Katie, Chief Financial Planning Strategist for TIAA. To learn more and see the results of that survey, visit TIAA.org. I'm Steve Sedahl.

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00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Listens. You're listening to the Financial Safari News Network. I'm Steve Sedahl. It happens every year about this time. We begin the arduous task of preparing our income taxes. Joining me today is Dan Pilla, considered by many to be one of the country's premier experts in IRS procedures and general tax and financial problems, as well as resolution techniques.

00:45 Dan has authored 14 books on dealing with the IRS, including How to Get Tax Amnesty, now in its ninth edition. Dan, welcome. I was just reading that so far this year the number of tax refunds is down. And that does seem to contradict what we were told going in. Well, what we were told going in is that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was in fact a tax cut. And the folks on the other side of the aisle are complaining that it's nothing but tax cuts for the rich and that the typical American sees a tax increase. And, you know, that's just not true. The fact that refunds are down does not mean that you didn't get a tax cut. It means that the IRS took less of your money on the front end. And this is what people don't realize is that on January 1, 2018, a year ago, more than a year ago now, the IRS changed all the withholding tables to reflect the tax cuts.

01:39 So people had less money coming out of their paychecks in the first place because of the adjusted tables. So, you know, you don't get a refund because the government got religion and decided to give you free money. You get your refund because you paid too much to begin with. Well, people overpaid less this year because of the withholding table adjustments. And that is really the key to understanding how this works. I mean, so a lot of folks, most of us, me personally, I know I got a tax cut. Right. Yeah, no question about it. Eighty percent of the people out there are going to see a tax cut. There's just as many questions about it. All of the analyses, including my own, that were done, you know, after the bill was passed. I published mine in about March of last year, so about a year ago. All of the analyses show that, as I said, about 80 percent of all taxpayers out there, I'm talking about the bottom 80 percent of income earners, are going to see a tax cut.

02:31 The top 20 percent are going to see status quo or a tax increase, which I'm not in favor of, by the way. I don't think there should be any tax increases on anybody. Right. I think the tax cuts should have been across the board. But the fact is that's how the numbers shake down. And again, just like you just said, the fact that refunds are, well, people are still getting refunds, but they're not as much as they expected. I mean, you know what I think? I can't remember the figure for last year, but it seemed astronomical to me that that many people got that much money back that they didn't need to pay in in the first place. Oh, and this happens year after year. The average tax refund year after year is about $3,000. Now, this year it's down about 10 percent, so it's like $2,700, you know, $2,750, about the 9 to 10 percent reduction, which, as I said, people got in their paychecks to begin with.

03:20 But if we just, you know, just look, do the math simply here, $3,000 of average tax refund, about 75 to 80 percent of the people in America get a tax refund. And that's because they don't understand how to adjust their withholding in the first place, so they don't overpay their taxes. This is a mistake that people make year in and year out, is letting the government hold their money for over 12 months, not pay them a nickel's worth of interest on that money. And then every month that goes by, you continue to overpay. Well, I mean, it's on us, then, to make the W-4 form correct. I mean, for me, I have spent many years trying to do nothing more than break even at tax time.

04:07 And that's exactly what you should be doing. And people say, well, Dan, if I don't get a tax refund, I sure as heck don't want to owe the IRS a bunch of money either. Well, that's true. But those aren't the only two options. The third option is to spend a little time with your W-4 form, spend a little time reading the instructions, fill out the form properly so that you're as close as possible to break even. They don't owe you any money. You don't owe them any money. That means you had the use and enjoyment of that extra $3,000 every single month in your paycheck. Right. Well, again, you know, Dan, you make it sound so simple. And in reality, it is that simple. But it is simple. It's just not complicated at all to work your way through the W-4 form.

04:53 And in fact, in my writings, How to Win Your Tax Audit and other books that I've written, I talk about how to do this so that you don't end up overpaying your taxes. All right. Let's talk about that. You explain how to do that in your book called what? The book is called How to Win Your Tax Audit. How to Win Your Tax Audit. I talk about a great number of things. Yeah. And the fact that the book might be called How to Avoid Your Tax Audit because I talk very extensively about how to audit proof and penalty proof tax returns to begin with so you don't get sideways with the IRS. You said you've been working with or, well, you've been dealing with the IRS for people as a consultant and, you know, as someone who's knowledgeable for better than 40 years, you said. Yeah, that's exactly right.

05:39 What I do is my firm does not prepare tax returns. We do some tax return preparation, but that's not what we focus on. What we focus on is tax litigation, IRS problem solving. So people come to me when they've got problems with the IRS, such as, for example, an audit or an appeal. About 70 percent of the work that we do is collection defense. So folks that have wage levies, bank levies, property seizures, tax liens, folks that are fighting with the IRS over the payment of taxes. These are the people that I help and represent and counsel through the process of resolving their situation and getting the IRS off their back once and for all. So is that for just everybody or do you deal with businesses as well and, you know, maybe a closely held business, that kind of thing? Any small business and individual problems, we handle all of them.

06:28 So from a small business standpoint, I mean, I think the average small business owner, entrepreneur, they're concentrating so much on their business, so much on building their business that they don't realize they're overpaying their taxes. Well, yeah, that's exactly right. And, in fact, you know, they don't realize a great number of things when they're dealing with the IRS. You know, people are so focused on, just like you said, on building their business and, you know, providing the products and services to their customers that make customers' lives easier and make profit for business owners. You know, they're focused on that. Listen, most business owners don't want to be accountants. They don't want to be tax preparers. They want to be engineers or they want to be plumbers or they want to be doctors or whatever it is they want to be.

07:14 That's what they want to focus on. And yet this federal government has made everybody an accountant and everybody a tax collector. And people get, I'll tell you what, they get snowed under by this process. And here's one of the key problems in this function. The tax code has been changed more than 5,900 times just since 2001 alone. That doesn't even include the changes that were brought on by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017. 5,900 code section changes. It is impossible to keep up with this. And that's why people throw up their hands. And, Frank, that's why people get into so much trouble with the IRS because there is a myriad of hoops they have to jump through. I mean, this is rule after rule after rule that businesses have to comply with.

08:01 And it's impossible to keep up with this stuff. Sure. I think people are, I mean, this makes me grateful there are people like you who live and breathe the tax code so that people, somebody at least knows what to do and understands it and can make it work for us as opposed to against us. Well, this is why I spend so much time writing because it's just, you know, otherwise it's impossible to get this message out to folks. So people need to use the resources that are available to equip themselves to, you know, have some understanding of this stuff. And it's not good enough to just push it off onto an accountant, you know, and people tend to do that. They say, well, you know, I got my accountant to handle this stuff. Okay, that's fine. But you sign the tax return. You're obligated for what's in the return. And if there's a mistake in the tax return, guess what?

08:48 You still owe the tax. Right. Wow. So, Dan, where do we find your books? Yeah, the books are available on my website, which is TaxHelpOnline.com. That's all one word, no spaces of any kind. TaxHelpOnline.com. And if you order any book directly off my website, you get a free 15-minute consultation directly with me. Well, that's fantastic, Dan. That's really good. So, what's the big thing that's sticking out to you this year? Well, the big thing that sticks out for me is the number of people that have tax debts that they owe and can't pay. And this is, you know, this goes on every year, but it just seems to pick up steam. It seems to get worse and worse every year that folks that are getting ready to file their tax returns come April 15th and they don't have the money. These people need help with that situation.

09:35 They need to know what their alternatives are so they don't get behind the eight ball with the IRS because they've filed returns without paying the tax, or worse, didn't file the return at all because they were afraid they didn't have the money. Right. Well, exactly. And so, and again, that website is TaxHelpOnline.com? That's correct. TaxHelpOnline.com. Well, this time of year, I think it's something we can all use a little insight, a little help. And again, you and your team must do a whole lot of good for people out there that are faced with the IRS. I mean, it's very scary to have to stand up to them. Yeah, it is scary. It terrifies people, and particularly when you've got a problem with the IRS where you're already in the soup because of a delinquency, for example.

10:21 Fear immobilizes people. It's like getting stuck in a minefield. You know, when you're in the middle of a minefield and you don't have a, you know, you don't know where the mines are, you don't take any step at all. You don't go forward or backward. You don't want to go in any direction. And this is what is so difficult about getting out of the soup with the IRS because once you're stuck in that minefield, you don't want to do anything. And the problem then becomes that it just exacerbates the problem because you're not taking affirmative steps to fix it. Absolutely. TaxHelp Online is the website. TaxHelpOnline.com. And then can I get your phone number? Yeah, the phone number is 1-800-346-6829. That's 1-800-34-NO-TAX. 800-34-NO-TAX.

11:06 I like the sound of that. So, Dan, is there anything else you want to touch on that we haven't touched or talked about yet? Well, yeah. I would say that there's no such thing as a hopeless tax case. You know, I don't care what kind of problem you have with the IRS. I don't care how long you've had the problem. I don't care what you've tried to do to fix the problem that didn't work. I don't care who told you you can't fix the problem. There's no such thing as a hopeless tax case. We've been helping people for over 40 years. I've seen every kind of tax problem you can imagine. I've seen a few that you can't even imagine. And we help people resolve those situations. I don't care what your case is. We can get some kind of resolution. Dan Pilla has written 14 books on solving tax problems. To learn more, visit TaxHelpOnline.com. TaxHelpOnline.com.

11:53 I'm Steve Sedahl for the Financial Safari News Network.

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Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Well we have a very special guest here once again with Coach Pete. I'm Chuck Kaiton and we have ESPN's own Chris Berman, one of the original members. Well at least two weeks into the network back in 1979 my good friend Mr. Berman joined ESPN and I think really put the network on the map. And I'm sure you've got some great stories of those days. Welcome to the program. Hi Chuck, always a pleasure to hear your voice. Coach, nice to meet you over the airwave.

00:48 Chuck, I wasn't the first one but I guess I'm a member of, we'll put it in hockey terms which between you and me we always have to. I ask, I'm an original six team, right? You are, absolutely. In fact, you could probably answer the trivia question when ESPN went on the air which was about two weeks before I started with the Hartford Whalers back in 79. I believe, I'm trying to think, George Grand and who did the first show, do you remember? Well George Grand and Lee Leonard. Ah. The first sports center. Now, here's a trivia question you won't know the answer to. What was our first quote game? Well, it was a game. I mean it was a game. Oh, wait a minute now. It was a tennis match. Oh, this is big. Big.

01:33 Tennis? Billie Jean King? Ready? Go ahead. Want to take a gamble at it? Yeah, that was my guess. I mean I don't know if it was. I bet it's Australian rules football. I thought it was a tennis match. No tennis? You know, that was too good. Australian rules football came on a little later. That was good stuff. We had men's professional slow pitch softball. Oh, wait a minute. I don't remember that at all. And the teams were the Milwaukee Schlitz. That's a great name. Playing the Kentucky Bourbons. And we had one sponsor in those days. Budweiser. Right. I'd heard about that because Budweiser really made a smart investment early when Bill Rasmus had started, you know, was credited at least for starting after he got fired from the New

02:18 England Whalers. That's another story. When he began it and then got some finance, he got some advertising backing from Anheuser-Busch, right? Well, they made a five-year deal, which was, you know, a drop in the bucket for them. But it was for NCAA sports. Well, I don't want to say that because you wouldn't think beer in that. So I've misspoken there. But it was five years of stuff. Right. Now, we had some little advertisers put out that Budweiser's checks weren't going to bounce. So that was a big deal. That's true. I mean, any bit like that helped put us on the map. It was an interesting time, both for you starting where you were and me. You know, so how old were you when you started in 79? With the Whalers, 26 and a half.

03:06 So I was a little older than you. I was 24. Yeah, you were 24 and just... 24. I did the 2.30 show in the morning. Yeah, tell us about that. Which was 11.30. 11.30 out west. But you lived in Connecticut. So you're driving home at 3 in the morning and it's snowing in January. And you're wondering, you know, this career, I certainly hope it makes a left-hand turn at some point. You know? Yeah. But it did. And I'm still there. So, you know, I'm in the right place at the right time. I guess I was smart enough not to screw it up, Chuck. Well, folks, we are talking to Chris Berman from ESPN. Chris, I remember, you know, you guys basically revolutionized sports for us. Because my parents were from Boston. We moved to North Carolina. Used to sit in the driveway in a 1974 Ambassador Station wagon with my dad in the middle of the night

03:55 listening to the Red Sox games to try to find out the score. And if you didn't listen, you had to wait until two days later in the newspaper. Because the newspaper that came out the next day didn't have the scores. So ESPN has brought the sports world home to everybody, hasn't it? Well, certainly back in those days, it was, and I was doing the late show, those first four years, a lot of them with Tommy Meese. I remember Tommy. The late, great Tommy Meese. We were tomorrow's paper. Yep. You know, they were the finals. And then after a year or two, the late show was repeated in the morning. So you actually lived in the East, you know, maybe going to where it was, I'm from 6 to 7, 7 to 8, 8 to 9, 9 to 10. So you got the Dodgers and the Giants score, you know, which you never had.

04:43 Correct. That's for sure. Yep. You never had that until two days later. So we really, we were the first look at tomorrow's paper. In the day, that's what we thought it was. Chris Berman, six-time national sportscaster of the year and my good friend and a, probably the number one Hartford Whaler fan in the history of the game. Who remembers. Other than you. Well, I appreciate that. June 19th, 2006. No, no. You saw. No, no. No, no. I defer here. You're not getting away with it, Chuck. But I will buy you a dinner at Chuck's in the Civic Center, Chuck. All right. We'll have to turn the clock back. Chris Berman, so many thanks for joining us right here on the program. For Coach Pete, I'm Chuck Kaiton. Again, Chris Berman, ESPN.

05:29 What a guy.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Dee Carter is president of the Carter Financial Group and has been in the financial planning business for more than 40 years in and around Midland, Texas. He started in the entertainment business as an Elvis impersonator and in the book he tells how he went from being on stage with the likes of Roy Orbison to helping people get to and through retirement. We had a chance to talk to Dee about his new book, It's Now or Never, How to Enjoy Your Life

00:45 and Not Let Your Investments Own You. Now the book provides insights and direction to both prospective retirees and financial advisors. Dee Carter, you are a financial planner of some renown. I mean you've just got a brand new book out. You started your own firm. I don't even know where to begin other than I was intrigued with the book when I picked it up and I saw there's a picture of you as Elvis. I think I got to start there. You know nearly everybody does start there as a matter of fact. That's kind of a funny story about that. I was an Elvis impersonator for, that's what we used to call it. They're now called tribute artists which is just a fancy way of saying impersonator. But I did that for a number of years and successfully and enjoyed doing it. I don't do it any longer.

01:33 You get a little bit over that after a while. You get a little longer in the tooth to be able to pull that off. I can still hit the notes but I can't make the moves anymore. So now I've gone back into my business which I stayed in. I've been doing retirement planning and financial services work for over 40 years here in Midland. 42 years in Midland, Texas. And I love what I do. Most of my clients are in their 60s and 70s basically. They're getting ready to retire. Some of them have already retired. And really what brought the book about was three things. One, people coming to me and worrying constantly even after they had retired about their money and if they were going to outlive their money. That to me was a real big red flag. I thought, my goodness, why worry about it? If you do it right,

02:20 you don't have to worry about it. So that was number one. Number two, it was people that came to me and had no idea or concept of what financial or retirement planning was. They'd never been exposed to it. They'd never talked to an advisor. They really didn't even know the questions to ask. And they came to me because of my time here in Midland and people know me. I've been around for a good while and have a reputation here of being someone that can give you the straight answers. So that was number two. Number three, I was trained in this industry. I got my securities license back in 1974. And you know, they're still training these guys and gals the same way they trained me in 74. And guess what? We live in a new world. We have technology that we didn't even come close to having even, well, my goodness, even 10 years ago. And if you're not doing things differently today

03:08 than you did before, and you're being trained the same way, that's the old Einstein. You're doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again. That's the definition of insanity. And so I wrote the book not only for people that are looking for a retirement planner, but those who are actually doing what I do and saying, you know, guys, gals, there's a better way to do this. There's a way to solve these problems, to give your clients comfort in those three areas of retirement. And I call it the go-go period, the slow-go period, and the no-go period, frankly, in retirement. And especially in the go-go period, when people come out of retirement, they are out of their work and they go into retirement and they want to really go do the things that they want to do. They want to travel. They want to see the places they've never seen. They've got all these bucket list things they want to do. After a

03:55 while, that gets a little old and I realize they got to pull in their horns a little bit and they settle down and they start slowing down somewhat and staying closer to home. And then finally, they reach that point where they're just too tired to do it and they just don't want to do it anymore. They've done there. They've been there, done that, and got the t-shirt, so to speak. And now they're ready to the no-go period. So my job is to make sure that they're, number one, happy. In fact, the subtitle of the book is How to Enjoy Your Life and Not Let Your Investments Own You. And so many people have gotten to the point in their retirement planning that they really let their investments dictate to them what they can do and they're not happy with it. So my job in Midland, Texas and around the West Texas area, in fact, I've got clients all over the state of Texas and some outside

04:41 the state, is to really help them to enjoy their retirement in a way that is meaningful to them. By the way, you don't have to retire, but you do need to plan for it. And that's really what my theme has been for the last 20-some-odd years. One of the things I really enjoyed about the book, and I mean, I'll be honest with you, I have not read the whole thing. I just found out about it this morning. But what I've been doing for the last hour and a half is reading your book. And I love the style that you write and the message that you're trying to get across. It's so relatable. And I'm finding there's a lot of things in there that you kind of go, yeah, I get that. I understand that. And then the little wrap-up at the end of the chapter, the advice, the, you know... Yeah, the directives, right. The directives, yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, you could go through and just read those. If you

05:28 didn't read the rest of the book, you'd be missing a lot. But you could just read those directives and get a bit of an education. But, you know, that's really what it was all about. I tried to take my life story, because it's an autobiographical thing. I've done so many things in my life. Our marketing, yeah, our marketing director said, you really need to write a book. You've lived about four lifetimes in one life. But everything that I've done has led me to where I am. And it allows me to relate to the client better, because there's not too many things that they can bring up that I haven't experienced at one time or another. So I can give them these directives, like you pointed out. And I appreciate your observation about that, because that's exactly what I was trying to do. At the end of each chapter, I tried to say, hey, here's the things that I've learned over the years that you really need to do. Starting out

06:14 with just being, you know, being a budget. Make a budget. Max out your 401k. Automating your savings plans. Don't live within your means. Live beneath those means. I tried to make it common sense where anyone could look at it at any level of their life, wherever they may be in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and say, you know, we can get there. And here's the steps we've got to do to get there. So I really tried to make it as common as I possible. I'm just a plain guy. I'm from West Texas. We speak in one-syllable words mostly. And we try to make things pretty simple. And to me, that's what it's really all about. Well, the book, I mean, again, as you start to get into it, you realize, I like this guy. I like this story. And it is, like you say, it's very relatable.

07:00 And I sit there, I mean, you know, the time you spent in Los Angeles, the time that Roy Orbison got up on stage with you, how cool is that? That was a great experience. That was one of those things that you don't plan something like that. It just happens. And I was an 18-year-old kid at the time. I just played in my own little band and playing the street dance, as the story tells, in Kermit, Texas, of all places. But Roy just lived eight miles away in Wink, and he was there to see his mother. And he was in the audience, and I saw him, and I knew him, and I knew Jack, his bass player. And so I invited him up. Who would not invite him up if he wanted to come up and sing? Everybody knew him in Kermit anyway. And he came up and sang with us. And that's one of the highlights of the years that I go back in my entertainment career. And it was a lot of fun. Yeah, absolutely.

07:49 And one of the other things, so one of your directives, and I love this one, don't ask your risk tolerance. Ask, why do you want to risk what you've spent your life building? Great way to pose that. And again, a great description of what risk tolerance is, and how we have to adapt to it, and how we have to really get it, understand it. And it's very true. And in fact, I sometimes don't even use the term risk tolerance, because that sounds, it's kind of hard to relate that to people. Absolutely. What I say is, what is your threshold of pain? No, I like that. I like that a lot. How much can you do and not start hurting? And to me, a threshold of pain is more risk tolerance than anything else. I use the word risk tolerance in

08:35 the book, because it's recognizable. Right. But in my office, I will ask people, you know, what is your threshold of pain? And they look at me, and I say, I mean, how much can you do and how much can you lose before it really starts hurting? And they understand that. They really, they really understand what I'm trying to ask. And sometimes they don't even know how to ask the questions. In fact, I have some, some stuff in the book about if you don't know how to ask the questions, here's some questions you probably ought to ask your advisor as you get into this process, because most people don't, have never really sat down and talked to an advisor before. Right. So we try to do that for them as well. I like that. Well, Dee, once again, pleasure to meet you on the phone and I'm enjoying the book and I will recommend it to anyone and everyone. How's that? I appreciate that very much. Just go to amazon.com and get your copy and enjoy the book.

09:22 Thanks so much. And I'd love to hear from people that read it. I'd love to hear from them. We will send the messages along. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you, Dee. I appreciate it. Thanks again to Dee Carter, financial planner and author of the new book, It's Now or Never, How to Enjoy Your Life and Not Let Your Investments Own You. The book is available everywhere. You can follow Dee on social media. To connect and learn more, visit PeteOnDemand.com. I'm Steve Sedahl for the Financial Safari News Network.

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Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Well folks, very excited today to have in studio Super Bowl XXXII MVP and NFL Hall of Famer. Of course his name is Terrell Davis. He played with the Denver Broncos. He's from the University of Georgia originally. Go Dawgs! Welcome in the studio Terrell. Hey Coach Pete, thank you man. This is great to be here. This is a West Coast kid back down south. This is awesome.

00:45 Back in the East Coast. That's right. It's not often we interview people about every week, but it's not often we have people in studio. So I'm glad you got to come in here. I'm glad we got to see you in person too. Yeah, I am too man. You know, just enjoying the off season right now. The season's about to start, but yeah man, it's good to be here. Good to meet you. Good to meet you. I've heard that voice on the radio and it's quite sexy. Yeah. Does the face look like the voice? No. Different story. You know, we were talking before the show though, and it's how important. And with the correlations between football and people's financial picture. Yeah. And you said as a running back, your goal was to get four yards every time you carried the ball. Now explain that concept and let's tie that into the financial world. All right. So in football, there's the concept of the four yard run.

01:30 And to me, and I've been told it's the most powerful run in football. And let me tell you why. When I was in college, I used to try to break off the long runs, right? But long runs are unpredictable. Right. You can't repeat them. And there's no formula to make them happen. Yep. So my coach, when I got to the NFL, said, hey man, we're not trying to have the long runs. If you break a long run, that's great. But what we want is consistency. We want to be able to say, what is repeatable? Yep. And in football, the four yard run is the most repeatable play in all of sports. And the reason it's powerful is because if you get four yards on every carry, three carries, that's 12 yards, right? That's the first down. You got the ref running out saying first down. That is the first down. Marching down the field. In football, the name of the game is to move the chain.

02:17 Absolutely. So first downs leads to touchdowns. Touchdowns leads to scores. Scores leads to winning games. Winning games leads to winning championships. So we were always taught to focus on the four yard run. And the financial world is the same thing. You're not trying to look at the high returns. You want something that you can repeat, that's consistent, that you're not trying to swing out offenses, and there's no risk really involved. There's a lot of risk trying to break that 20 yard run. You see Barry Sanders, as great as he was, and he is, there's more risk to a 20 yard run because sometimes you have to lose yards to gain 20. I've seen guys loop around and then start dancing around, and they maybe get blindsided by somebody else, too. And that happens in retirement when people are swinging for the fences, like you said, and taking too much risk. That's it. It's going backwards. That's it.

03:02 My coach, he was risk adverse. He hated risk. He wanted four yards. He said, man, listen, I want my four yards. If you give me anything more than four, I'm fine with that. But I want my four yards. Now, who was your coach in college? Ray Goff was my head coach at the University of Georgia. Same philosophy there that you had? No, no. It was different because in college, I thought I really failed, man, because they were used to big runs. I played behind Garrison Hurst, and Garrison would make the 80 yard runs, 90 yard runs. I wasn't so much a guy who could break long runs. I was more of a chain mover. So when I left Georgia, I kind of felt like, man, I kind of failed. You know what I mean? Well, you were consistent and persistent, and you were reliable.

03:48 That's important. Not then. I guess they didn't see it that way because college football is a little different. They want more explosive plays. But what I was built for was the pro game. And when I got there and my coach said in the meeting, he said, hey, I just want four yards. I want you guys to just get four yards. And I'm thinking to myself, wow, that's it? Four yards? I said, I can get you four. So it made it where it registered in my head, and it was something I was pretty good at doing already. And so once I was able to get four yards, then sometimes I could take chances and break a longer run. But I always made sure in the back of my mind to get that four yards. Yeah, because, I mean, that's marching down the field. And when we compare that to retirement planning, it's marching down the field. And I see way too many people who are taking way too much risk to try to get that home run.

04:36 And they're losing yardage when they need it the most. When they're getting to that financial red zone, which is about five years outside of retirement, that's when they're taking way too much risk. And that's when they really need that four-yard run, isn't it? Yeah, well, I was kind of a victim of that myself where I was, as a young guy coming to the NFL, I had a chance to invest my money. And I did. And it was doing well. I had a pine arch advisor with Dane Rauscher. And things were going well. And he was giving me four yards. But I looked around. I was like, wow, four yards is great. But I see some chances for some 20-yard runs here. Let's take advantage of that. And so I ended up, I guess, being a little bit more risky with investing. And it cost me. I phoned with the ball a few times and lost a lot of money. And so kind of getting a little greedy and not sticking to the principles and things that would get you financial security.

05:27 It's something that you can go to sleep at night and wake up knowing that your money is sound, it's safe. And it may not be a lot back. But at least you're not losing your money and you're making a little bit. And so it's, again, consistent and persistent. We call that the sleep well at night account, swan account, right? See, that count right there. I should have had that a few years back. Yeah. But, you know, when we talk about it, I think that's why you're passionate about the financial world and making sure people don't make the mistakes is that you've seen it firsthand how something that looks enticing maybe isn't as enticing as it really looked. Yeah. And, you know, I came in as a rookie. There's a symposium that most rookies have in the national football. Like, you go to it and they have a lot of retired football players who have had bad experiences with financial advisors or investing or whatever it is. And you sit in this meeting and it's about a four-day symposium.

06:16 And I remember sitting there watching guys come in there talk about some of their bad dealings or experiences about money. Right. I remember sitting back there thinking, man, that dude's stupid. He's stupid, man. Like, man, it's never going to be me. I'm never – man, how do you lose that kind of money, man? Like, it's never going to be me. And fast forward about 2002, I get a phone call in the morning and I remember the phone call vividly. And my buddy called me. He was actually in there, Steve Atwater. And he says, hey, man, I got my money out of the account. I got a check back. And when I tried to deposit the check, it bounced. Oof. That's not good, huh? I mean, my whole stomach was just – I felt sick because I knew what was happening. And what was happening, I'll let everybody know, is that I invested money with an advisor down in Atlanta.

07:07 Myself, Steve Atwater, some other players. And the returns that he was showing, you know, they were great. You know, they were about 13% return a year. It was looking good. I had done everything I was supposed to do. I went through the NFL Players Association, did a background check on him, ran everything, did everything I thought I could have done to make sure that it was good. But there was one – it was something that didn't feel right about it. But even though I saw the stop sign, I kind of was like, you know what, maybe I'm just overreacting to it. Maybe I'm just overreacting. And I had just taken my money from Dane Rauscher, who was – the guy was giving me four yards, and it was sound. You know, I was getting yearly audits. Everything was great there. And then getting this phone call, I remember thinking, wow, how did I get myself in this situation?

07:54 It happens to a lot of people, though, and it wasn't just athletes here. It was doctors and lawyers. Everybody's investing in that. I saw that on American Greed, the episode there at CNBC. Yeah, unfortunately. I was on American Greed, yes, for the wrong reason. Yeah, but I mean, it could happen. And I think that's why you're passionate about people not falling for those dirty tricks and how important it is each year to get a forensic financial analysis done on your portfolio to make sure the money that they say is there is really there. And, in fact, check your advisor. That's important. Absolutely. And part of it, too, is that, you know, for me, I grew up kind of wanting to be in the financial services business. I got a degree from the University of Georgia in consumer economics. I've always had something pulling me towards that. Yep. And so I was always interested in doing it. I've always balanced my own checkbooks. I write my own – I do. I'm on QuickBooks.

08:40 I do all my stuff. My accountant – people say, why don't you get an accountant? I say, no, I enjoy doing it. Yeah, you see the money. You see the money. And I like to know where it is at all times and what's happening. And so I knew I had some passion for it, and that's why I kind of stuck around it and I stayed around it. But also, the second part of this is that I have a chance now that I'm retired, and even when I was playing, to affect people in a way that nobody has a way of doing it. In a positive way. In a positive way, yeah. And the reward for me is seeing somebody who smiles, who comes up to me and say, hey, man, you impacted my life. When you were playing for the Broncos, you guys won that Super Bowl. This is what happened to my life. You know, my dad was sick, and, man, he wanted to see you guys win, or my mom was doing this, or, you know, I was depressed.

09:27 And then when you guys won – and I don't know if you know how that feels. Coach, I know you do. But that feeling of being able to help somebody – Somebody you didn't even know. You don't even know. Yeah, it's fantastic. Right. Powerful. Right. And so that is what also drives me, is that I'm able to do something now that I'm able to affect somebody directly. And not just by playing on the football field, but someone can come up to me and say, hey, man, TD, I thank you, man. You've – you know, you were able to make sure my family financially, you know, made the right decisions and all that stuff. Yep. That's all. That's, to me, the entire equation. Well, when you're working on a book on that, it's going to be out probably next year. But I'm looking forward to reading that book as well. Are you going to write it? I'm going to help you with it. Okay, let's do it. Let's do it. Now, let me – we've got about a minute left, and I want to go through this because people hear you.

10:13 They've seen you. You're a Hall of Famer. You have the gold jacket, which I do too. I see that gold jacket. It doesn't have an NFL Hall of Fame patch on it. I can get it to you for $15. It's not that expensive, man. I got you, man. I like that. But, you know, so your career, people have followed it. And you were with John Elway, and you had glory right there. But let's go. I mean, you were a six-round draft pick. You were way down there, I mean, because you were getting those four yards, you weren't quite as flashy as some of those guys. But you've performed a lot better than anybody else in that draft. Think about that. Yeah, and I had to think about it like that. I just tried to take advantage of the opportunity. I really did. It's simple as that. I tried to focus on something as basic as just doing my job. Hard work. Work hard. Yep. Make sure that when the opportunity presents itself that you're ready. And I knew I could play. And I knew I was pretty good.

11:00 I didn't know how good I could be. I've always felt confident in my abilities. And it just became the perfect storm. I was drafted by the Broncos. They had a new head coach, Mike Shanahan. He was open to the idea of rookies competing. Right. Now, I could have gone somewhere that they already had a running back. And they weren't trapped on the bench, right? Yeah. Exactly. Sort of like with Tom Brady when he was a six-round pick, too, by the way, in New England. And it wasn't until Drew Bledsoe got hurt that he had his chance. Yeah. Sounds like a true Patriots fan sticking over there. Yes, it does. Yes, it does. I know. You know, we know that. Now, we're going to be talking to you a lot in the future, though. We're going to follow the progress of the book. We're also going to go over it. We're going to make sure people understand from a point of view that's understandable because a lot of advisors are talking over people's heads. We're going to bring it right down to the ground floor and make sure people get educated going forward.

11:47 I really appreciate your time today. Absolutely. Thank you, man, for having me. Folks, again, that was NFL Hall of Famer and Super Bowl MVP Terrell Davis. He's going to be a guest on the show coming up a lot of times in the future. Thanks for your time today, Terrell. No problem. Folks, we'll be right back after this. Thank you.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Listens. Well folks, very excited today to have in studio Super Bowl XXXII MVP and NFL Hall of Famer. Of course his name is Terrell Davis. He played with the Denver Broncos. He's from the University of Georgia originally. Go Dawgs! Welcome in the studio Terrell. Hey Coach Pete, thank you man. This is great to be here. This is a West Coast kid back down south. This is awesome.

00:45 Back in the East Coast. That's right. It's not often we interview people about every week, but it's not often we have people in studio. So I'm glad you got to come in here. I'm glad we got to see you in person too. Yeah, I am too man. You know, just enjoying the off season right now. The season's about to start, but yeah man, it's good to be here. Good to meet you. Good to meet you. I've heard that voice on the radio and it's quite sexy. Yeah. Does the face look like the voice? No. Different story. You know, we were talking before the show though, and it's how important. And with the correlations between football and people's financial picture. Yeah. And you said as a running back, your goal was to get four yards every time you carry the ball. Now explain that concept and let's tie that into the financial world. All right. So in football, there's the concept of the four yard run.

01:30 Right. And to me, and I've been told it's the most powerful run in football. And let me tell you why. When I was in college, I used to try to break off the long runs, right? But long runs are unpredictable. Right. You can't repeat them and there's no formula to make them happen. Yep. So my coach, when I got to the NFL, said, hey man, we're not trying to have the long runs. If you break a long run, that's great. But what we want is consistency. We want to be able to say what is repeatable. Yep. And in football, the four yard run is the most repeatable play in all sports. And the reason it's powerful is because if you get four yards on every carry, three carries, that's 12 yards, right? You've got the ref running out saying first down. That is a first down. Marching down the field. In football, the name of the game is to move the chain.

02:17 Absolutely. So first downs leads to touchdowns. Touchdowns leads to scores. Scores leads to winning games. Winning games leads to winning championships. So we were always taught to focus on the four yard run. And the financial word is the same thing. Yeah. You know, you're not trying to look at the high returns. You want something that you can repeat, that's consistent, that you're not trying to swing out offenses, and there's no risk really involved. There's a lot of risk trying to break that 20 yard run. You see Barry Sanders, as great as he was, and he is, there's more risk to a 20 yard run because you have to, sometimes you have to lose yards to gain 20. I've seen guys loop around and then start dancing around and they maybe get blindsided by somebody else too. And that happens in retirement when people are swinging for the fences, like you said, and taking too much risk. That's it. To go backwards. That's it. My coach, he was risk adverse. He hated risk. He wanted four yards. He said, man, listen, I want my four yards. If you give me anything more than four, I'm fine with that. But I want my four yards.

03:12 Now, who was your coach in college? Ray Goff was my head coach at the University of Georgia. Was it the same philosophy there that you had? No, no, there was, it was different because, you know, in college, I thought I really failed, man, because they were used to big runs. You know, I played behind Garrison Hurst and Garrison would make the 80 yard runs, 90 yard runs. I wasn't so much a guy who could break long runs. I was more of a chain mover. So when I left Georgia, I was, I kind of felt like, man, like I kind of failed. You know what I mean? Like I wasn't successful. Well, you were consistent and persistent and you were reliable. That's important. Well, not then it wasn't, I guess they didn't see it that way because, you know, college football is a little different. They want more explosive plays. Right. But what I was built for was the pro game. And when I got there and my coach said in the meeting, he said, hey, I just want four yards.

04:02 Uh, I want you guys to just get four yards. And I'm thinking to myself, wow, that's it? Four yards? I said, I can get you four. So it made it where it registered in my head and it was something that I was, I was pretty good at doing already. And so once I was able to get four yards, then sometimes I could take chances and break a longer run. But I always made sure in the back of my mind to get the four, get that four yards. Yeah. Now we're going to be talking to you a lot in the future, though. We're going to follow the progress of the book. We're also going to go over that is make sure people understand from a point of view that that's understandable because a lot of advisors are talking over people's heads. We're going to bring it right down to the, to the, to the ground floor and make sure people get educated going forward. I really appreciate your time. Absolutely. Thank you, man, for having me. Folks. Again, that was a NFL hall of famer and Superbowl MVP, Terrell Davis. He's going to be a guest on the show coming up a lot of times in the future. Thanks for your time today, Terrell. No problem. Folks. We'll be right back after this.

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00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Vistens. Well folks, today's guest is unusual because a lot of times we have to go out across the nation, reach out across the world and talk through the internet or through the microphone system to our guests. But today we have live in studio with us, Hall of Fame broadcaster Chuck Kaiton. If you ever watched hockey or if you ever listen to hockey on the radio, you've heard Chuck. Chuck, welcome in. Thank you, Coach Pete. It's my pleasure to be here today. Terrific to see you.

00:45 Well, time flies, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. I hadn't seen you in over a year at a local establishment. It was always great to see your smiling face. And I will never forget the first time I met you and you actually sent me a picture of this when I was wearing my Hartford Whalers jacket at the SAS tournament in the box above the 18th hole at Prestonwood Country Club. And I looked a lot younger. I've aged quite a bit. You haven't changed a bit. I grew a beard. That's right. Well, that's good. Oh, you're more distinguished. Yeah, my beard is about a year old now. So I said happy birthday to my beard on June 28th. Absolutely. And it looks terrific. Thanks, Chuck. You know, it's amazing when we talk about – I've always been – you've been my hero when we talk about it. When we're in this industry of broadcasting and we listen to other people on the radio,

01:32 there's certain people that go to the top of that. The cream rises to the top. And it's amazing how you've been able to – like when I'm listening to a hockey game, the puck goes all over the place. It goes fast. And you're talking – these names are 20 or 30 letters long and all of a sudden score. You're right. So can you – do you have any old line that you remember? Like let's do a Carolina Hurricanes one where they're going down, they score. Do you have one you want to just give us like a little bit of Chuck Kaiton? Okay. I've got – let's go back to the 06 Stanley Cup year. Good year. And I'll never forget it. And it's down to the last 35 seconds of the game. It's 2-1 for the Carolina Hurricanes over the Edmonton Oilers. And that puck is at center ice. It's dumped in by Chris Pronger into the Hurricanes zone.

02:18 Cam Ward stops it behind the net for Brett Hedekin. Hedekin maneuvers it up the middle to Rod Brindamore. Brindamore feeds Williams over the line. He's got the empty net. He shoots. He scores. He scores. It's Justin Williams who has won the Stanley Cup in all probability for the Carolina Hurricanes. And after 9,435 days of Stanley Cup hopes, your Carolina Hurricanes, nay, Hartford Whalers, have won the Stanley Cup. Well, the Hartford Whalers, huh? Remember that. Yeah. You're a New Englander at the beginning, right? Yeah. Big Bruins fan. You know – Oh, now you're killing me. I know. They hate it. They still hate each other. I know. Here's a little trivia for you, Chuck. Now, I couldn't listen to you that game because we were in Aruba, my wife and I.

03:03 We were in Aruba at that time, and we were in a sports bar watching an Aruba of all places, Thomas, a hockey game in June that Carolina Hurricanes win the Stanley Cup. I'm telling you. And that's a Dutch colony, right? A Dutch possession. They were watching a lot of soccer. Absolutely. Either that or drinking some Amstel or whatever. Or both. Oh, yeah. Well, that's something because I know I've heard it from a lot of people from afar. And you know what the nice thing is, Pete, about doing radio as far as the playoffs are concerned because in this day and age with NBC Sports Network, local television cannot do the Stanley Cup playoffs after the first round. It's exclusive to NBC Sports Network. It was exclusive to ABC before that and before that ESPN. And the last time local telecasters were able to do the finals was in 1994 when the New York Rangers won the Stanley Cup.

03:55 Been a long time. And my good colleagues at that time, Sam Rosen and John Davidson, were the last local broadcasters to be able to do a Stanley Cup final for their team. And they were the Ranger broadcasters that year. So at least on the radio side, you're able to do all four rounds of the playoffs. That's good. And that memory will always stick with me from 12 years ago. Now, John Davidson, is he on the national network now? Why have I heard that name before? Yeah, John Davidson was a broadcaster. After he left the Rangers, he ended up getting, while he was doing Ranger games, when he was in his broadcast career, he is now in hockey management. He is the president of the Columbus Blue Jackets and prior to that, the St. Louis Blues. So he's in hockey management now. But he was a goaltender for the New York Rangers and the St. Louis Blues in his day

04:40 and came close to winning a Stanley Cup in 79 but lost to the Montreal Canadiens when he was a member of the Rangers. But, yeah, he was a national broadcaster along with Mike Emmerich, of course, my great friend and a terrific person in Doc Emmerich. But over the last seven or eight years, Davidson has now become a hockey management person, again, starting with St. Louis and now with the Columbus Blue Jackets. Who's the guy on ESPN? Barry Milrose. He's always fun to watch. Yeah, Mr. Mullet. He does. He has a mullet. Yeah, he was actually here. The last time I saw Barry was in that 06 year when he was covering for ESPN because that's their only hockey presence today. They cover the playoffs. He does little bits on ESPN. That's about the only hockey presence they have now, at least with the NHL,

05:28 since they don't have the broadcast rights anymore. And, yeah, Barry is an interesting guy. He was a defenseman for the Winnipeg Jets and the Detroit Red Wings in his day. I'm old enough to remember him as a player. I guess I'm old enough to remember everybody as a player now. But he's a terrific guy. And what you see off the air is just what you see on the air. He's just a genuine person. And the zenith of his career, of course, was in 1993 when he coached the L.A. Kings and Wayne Gretzky, Stanley Cup Finals. And I don't know if he rang Marty McSnorley's neck or not for having an illegal stick, but they lost to Montreal Canadiens, a key game on an illegal stick. I remember that name. He was always in trouble for something. Yeah, he was. He was Wayne Gretzky's bodyguard. But that particular night, the series turned and the Canadians won the Cup. My good friend Kirk Muller was the captain.

06:14 The old Hurricane coach was the captain of the Canadians. They won the Stanley Cup 25 years ago, believe it or not. Time flies. Yeah. Now, Chuck, we were talking before you came on. This is my last thing to you, I'm going to say. But you have some grandkids. Yes. How many grandkids do you have? Five. We have one with four, one with one. Yeah. Yeah. So I've got my wife's book, A Day to Play. And it's all about, it's a cartoon book. But the kids like to have it read to them. The grandkids would. And then eventually they'll read it back to you. And it's all designed to make sure they save money. Aha. Cartoon book. And there's one for you. Oh, I appreciate that. And you know where this is going to go? In about a month or so, we're going to be visiting the son with four kids. Okay. And I have an 11, 10, 6, and 3-year-old. Got his hands full. And I will, yeah. I will read this to them. To the younger ones.

07:00 And, you know, I know I'll get great support from my son and my daughter-in-law because they have that same philosophy. Yes. Very important. And they are, you know, they're the type of parents today that may be an anomaly in this generation where no cell phones, no nothing, no television. Very good. They go out and play. So they will listen to this book. They read quite a bit. So I appreciate it. You learn a lot by reading. Thomas listens to books all the time. I do. I know. Yeah. And I've got another one for your other set of children with grandkids. Thank you. So, folks, his name was Chuck Kaiton, Hall of Fame broadcaster. Chuck, thanks for your time today. Thank you, Coach Pete. We'll be right back after this.

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00:00 Well, folks, it's not often where I get a chance to interview someone who I've known for a long time, who I respect, and who's written a really good book. And this is one of those exceptions where we've got a really good interview set up today with a guy named Kevin Frisbee. And Kevin is in Maine. He's all over Maine. He's a financial planner. He also does a radio show in Maine. Kevin, welcome in. Hey, Coach. I'm glad to be on your show today. Now, let's talk about your book, Every Dime, Every Day, a life-changing personal finance plan created to take you from where you are today to wherever it is you want to go. That's a great title. You know, I spent a lot of months, Coach, trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to put in the book. And it was a big project, not just in the book, but the title, what's going to be the best summary of the book. And I think we found a winner. Well, let's go into Every Dime, Every Day.

00:45 What does that mean to you? Well, I've got to tell you. So that comes from a financial seminar I attended here in Augusta, Maine, probably 23, 24 years ago. And the guy on stage says, if you really want to get control of your finances and have the discipline with your finances, you need to take a notebook around with you and write down every single dime, every single day that you spend. And I thought, that's kind of nifty. That sounds pretty easy and it's very difficult to do, I've got to tell you. But that's where the title comes from. That seminar that I attended back in the mid-'90s changed my life. And I started to do what he recommended to do. And from what my wife and I have been able to create in our own lifestyle, I had to write this in a book. And it really is the beginning of a tremendous story that we've been able to put together here. Now, in the book, you talk about setting goals. And when people hear that, their eyes glass over a lot of times, setting goals.

01:33 Everyone has goals. But then you go one step further. I think this is important. You'd call it the logbook. Yeah, the logbook's a big deal. So setting goals is important. I wrote a whole chapter on that. But then I give instructions on exactly what to do with the logbook. Meaning a logbook is you start to jot down, as I said, write down everything that you spend every single day. And everything from you go to the gas station, convenience stores, grocery stores, anything you might spend. You collect receipts and you lock it in a book. And at the end of the day, I ask people when I do financial seminars all over the state of Maine, how many people have ever owned or operated a business? And 20%, 30% of the hands go up. And the reality is, all the hands should be up in a room because everybody has a household. And if you look at your household like a business, and this logbook is designed to just kind of put everything in front of you, saying, all right, here's what we're spending.

02:19 Here's what we have for income. And if you have a profit or loss at the end of the month, that's what the logbook's designed to do. Yeah, and then also, when you can do that, then you can accomplish achieving the goals that you want because you know exactly what you're spending. And if you don't know what you're spending, you really don't know what you need to make, do you? That's the basis of everything that we do in our planning practice. As you know, we talk about this all the time. We help people with their retirement planning. And at the end of the day, a lot of people don't even know what they need for a monthly budget, what they need to spend or what they need to have for income. And so one of the tasks is go figure out what your budget looks like. And it's the same what I write in the book as far as figuring out what your budget looks like. And then you have the logbook to help kind of put that up in front of you. And then you can make some better decisions because now you have control over your money. They used to have a show called The X-Files. Do you remember The X-Files? Yeah, the sci-fi show.

03:05 Yeah, yeah. It's almost like it had that music playing in the background. And then it was a show called Unsolved Mysteries. And both of those shows together go into what your Chapter 8 is, finding the right financial professional. One of the biggest mysteries in the world is how do you find one? And more importantly, how do you know if the one you have now might not be the right one? Yeah, it's amazing. I wrote a whole chapter on this for this reason. One of the biggest complaints that people have is they come in and they might have an advisor they're working with right now, but the advisor is kind of somebody that doesn't... He or she skirts around the questions. They don't answer direct. And you and I, Coach, we work the same way with our clients. We're direct with people. We're upfront. We're transparent. And if you're not having that with an advisor, that's the biggest complaint I get is people don't get their answers that they go into the advisor to get.

03:51 And it seems sometimes like the advisor... I'm not saying this is the case, but it seems sometimes that the advisor is avoiding to answer these questions because they don't want them to know the truth about what they're paying for fees and what their portfolio looks like and how much risk they're taking, all those type of things. You know, many times people forget to ask the right questions, too, where they don't know the right questions to ask. That's the whole thing. You know what? It is all about asking the right questions. Or, again, they don't have the confidence of, you know, they don't want to sound like foolish if they're not asking the right question or asking it the right way. So I wrote the whole chapter, Chapter 8, Finding the Right Financial Professional, really giving a lot of a list of questions that people can go in and ask, you know, is your advisor a fiduciary, for example? I mean, that's as important as anything else to find out if your advisor is required to work in your best interest. That's not always the case, Coach, as you know.

04:37 Well, I hear, you know, and I hear all sorts of stories from across the world about that. And even locally, I hear radio shows from other advisors, and they make it a point to skirt the issue that they're really not a fiduciary. If they are making commissions from you out of your money, they're not a fiduciary. Exactly. And that's the point. Again, if you know what to ask and the pointed question is, hey, are you a fiduciary? If they're not a fiduciary, if they say, well, we have fiduciaries around here, that's probably not the right advisor for you. You need to start looking elsewhere. And even if they say they are, isn't it great to get it in writing? Well, you can look it up on FINRA. You can look it up and find out what they have for licenses. And the 65 Series 65 license is the fiduciary license. Correct. And I got to tell you, and you know this, but your audience doesn't know this probably, 80% of all people that they call themselves financial advisors all across the United States, 80% of them do not have a fiduciary license.

05:29 That's a fact. It's kind of scary, isn't it? It's scary because they're not mandated to work in your best interest as a client. So, again, you've got to have questions in your mind, in the back of your head, thinking, are they putting me into this product? Are they giving me this investment because of them or because of me? And the fiduciary license says they have to work in your best interest. So, you kind of take that off the table. And you would think automatically that they should be working in your best interest. But you and I have talked all the time. I've seen a lot of cases where that's just not the case. You've got a great chapter in here, Chapter 10, Turbocharge Your Savings. Now, who doesn't want to turbocharge your savings? I wrote that chapter because now that people have paid off their debt, we talk about eliminating debt and debt knockout, those type of things in the beginning of the book. Now that after people have eliminated the debts, now what do you do?

06:14 You take that extra money. And how do you turbocharge that? How do you grow that quickly? And doing it, I'm not talking pie in the sky quickly. I'm talking about really having a game plan in place. Now you've got the additional monies that you'll take from your budget. You've taken and eliminated debt. You've taken that money over now. And you really can put a game plan to turbocharge your savings. There's a lot of things, a lot of great ideas out there to really get a real jump on what you're making on your investments. Now, one of the things I always say, and this all goes back, I guess, to the fiduciary or somebody really not acting in your best interest if you're out there and you don't have this. But many people have financial plans. And their financial planner is telling them they have a retirement plan. But then when we analyze it, we see no lifetime income. And my opinion is, unless you have lifetime income built into your plan, you do not have a retirement plan.

07:01 This goes right into your Chapter 12, your risks to retirement. One of the risks is not having an income plan. Risk to retirement. You and I both know we do similar planning practice where we do what we call buckets of money strategies. So you have your investments. You have what I call risk money. You have your safe monies. That might be the six months in a savings account for living expenses. Then you have your safe money that should be set aside for your income plan. And again, most people don't understand it. When we break it up in a simple way and in an explanation for people, if you look at it really broken up in a simple bucket form, people have a better understanding. Say, all right, I should have a certain percentage of my monies here in a safe income plan. Because, again, the burden's on us now, Coach. As you know, we've got Social Security that is going to be there or not going to be there.

07:50 There's questions about that sometime in the future. Some people might have a pension. I mean, I've seen maybe only 5% to 6%, 7% of the people that come in anymore that have pensions. So that's become a thing of the past. So now the burden is on us, the consumer, to take our retirement monies and now put that income plan in place. And this is, I think, the biggest area where people fall down on is they don't strategize and take a chunk of that money and set it aside into that income plan. And the broker that they may be working with has them all in the risk, all in the market. They don't have the guaranteed plan in place, and I think it's a mistake. Yeah, that is scary when you think about it because it's great to look at a big balance when the market's going up. But what if you don't secure some of that money? Tie it down. You know, you've got a big boat. If you don't tie it to the dock and the storm comes, where's the boat? That's right. It's gone. Especially in today's world. Or dry docking.

08:35 Yeah. You know, dry docking for retirement. You need to get your money isolated from the forces of the market, the money you need to have for retirement. And that's a big mistake people have made over the last, I guess, couple decades. I've seen people get more excited about the market, take their retirement money, throw it into the market, which is great when it's going up. But I've seen way too many people on the other side after something bad happens. Yeah. And look at right now what's going on with the volatility in the markets and the world. You know what? If somebody's 60, 65, 70 years old and looking to retire, you tell me. I mean, you and I both have the same agreement. They shouldn't have all their money at risk in the market. I mean, there's great ways that they can take some of that money off the table and put it in a planning situation where they can guarantee some income. You don't want to have to worry about your income when the markets have the volatility. And that's what we're talking about basically today is minimizing the risk as you get older.

09:24 And doing it because you have to do it. But if your broker's not doing it with you, you have to find somebody or a fiduciary that's going to do it with you and for you. Folks, it's a great book. Every Dime, Every Day, the author, Kevin Frisbee. He's from Maine. You can find this book anywhere. Books are sold on Amazon. I've seen it on Amazon. It's 16 chapters. One final one, Kevin. Find your financial common sense. Now, we're talking about how many people have lost that compass. Yeah, I talk a lot about in that chapter about how long to finance a vehicle, how long to finance a home. You know, you never go beyond 15 years on a mortgage, for example. If you buy a vehicle and you can't pay it off in two years, you're buying something that's too expensive for you. There's a lot of common sense things that if people understood how much the mistakes they were costing them out of their pocket by making some just bad choices.

10:12 And we're lured in our world by all these choices to go spend money, you know, finance the furniture and finance, you know, the car for seven years. Those are all major mistakes. And I talk about it. Finding your financial common sense in one of the chapters. And by the way, Coach, I want to make a mention, people can find me all over the country on Amazon and in different platforms. We also have an audio book on my website, everydime.com. You can find the book and the audio book available right there if you want to go online and look us up. Well, Kevin, I appreciate your time today. Thanks, Coach. Appreciate having me on your show. And thanks to all your listeners. Again, folks, the title of the book, Every Dime, Every Day by Kevin Frisbee. We'll be back right after this.

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00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Well folks, it's Memorial Day weekend, which is a great holiday season. I like it especially because it's my birthday weekend, but it is Memorial Day weekend. We try to have a guest on who's relevant to Memorial Day and found a really great one. Back in World War II there was a flying organization known as the Flying Tigers. And there's a new book that just came out called The Untold Story of American Pilots Who Waged a Secret War Against Japan.

00:48 And the author's name is Samuel Kleiner. He's joining us from New York City. Samuel, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's a real pleasure to be able to talk about this book and my journey to write it. It's been the privilege of a lifetime for me to be able to tell the untold story of the flying tigers. People recognize, you know, when I started researching this before our interview, people recognize the planes. Because in the World War II books, a lot of times you see these tiger drawings or artwork on the planes. So they were tough looking planes. And let's go into that. I mean, what caused them to draw those tigers on the planes? Absolutely. And so listeners will definitely recognize the famous shark face P-40 with the nose art on it. And I might have seen the Flying Tigers movie with John Wayne that came out in 1942.

01:36 Or even a Baba Blacksheep that was an NBC show in the 70s that was about Pappy Boynton. One of the pilots made it. And it's just one of the most defining images of the war. And like so many things, the further you get into the research. And I've spent years talking with family members, putting together all different kinds of documents about the flying tigers that have never been seen before. The famous image of the shark face P-40 is something that's definitely recognizable to most Americans. But people don't really know the story behind those planes. And that's what this book is about, is talking about who are the pilots who made up the Flying Tigers and how did they end up there? And it actually was a secret mission authorized at the highest levels of the Roosevelt administration, where before Pearl Harbor, actually, Roosevelt authorized a group of these American pilots who left the armed services.

02:32 A lot of them under T-40, Curtis Wright made fighter planes, took over to China and helped the Chinese. And this was part of Roosevelt's strategy wherever he could to help the allies. He called America the arsenal of democracy, and he wanted to take what he called measures short of war. And so the book really picks up into the story of how Americans had been fighting in China, some even before Pearl Harbor. But then after Pearl Harbor, the Flying Tigers see their first battle. Just a couple weeks later, they score a major victory over Kunming, China. And even though Americans can't really point to Kunming on a map, it becomes this major rallying cry for the United States because we needed victory. So the image of the shark faced plane becomes one of the defining images of the war. Hollywood recognizes that there's a good story here, and they rush out the John Wayne movie.

03:21 And during America's darkest hours, these group of pilots really became a source of inspiration for the country. Yeah, and what I thought was fascinating, it was Americans all – it was an all-civilian volunteer air corp. And the Flying Tigers was the first to take flight to Imperial Japan after Pearl Harbor when basically everybody was wondering what the heck happened. These guys were already on their way over there. You know, what drives these young men to basically take up this adventure and to give up everything they know to go over to China? Most of these guys are children of the Great Depression, many of whom have scarcely traveled beyond the county or state they grew up in. And they're pilots in the Army or in the Navy or the Marine Corps, but they sign up for this great adventure. Just a couple weeks ago, I was down with the last surviving Flying Tiger in Georgia.

04:11 I was able to give him a copy of this book, and it just meant so much for me to be able to assure him that this story was finally being told and was going to be preserved for future generations. Yeah, you know, I used to watch a show on TV called Dog the Bounty Hunter, and he was a bounty hunter in Hawaii, and he'd go get what bounty hunters do. But the funny thing, the fascinating thing about the Flying Tigers is they were actually bounty hunters themselves. In some ways, you know, I hadn't thought of that term exactly, but yeah, these guys were, you know, a lot of them would admit that the money was one of the big draws for them. They were getting paid a lot more than they were making in the Army. And for a lot of these guys, it was a mix of the money and the adventure and the allure of getting combat because they were leaving while America was still at peace.

04:56 And you had pilots going to, you know, different parts of the world to, you know, join up with the fight. So in England, you have pilots going to form the Eagle Squadrons. And in China, it's these guys, the Flying Tigers, who originally called the American Volunteer Group to sign up for that. And a lot of what I've done over the past number of years is to assemble a huge amount of diaries and letters and this huge trove of combat reports, which had basically been collecting dust over the years and to find the families that had these. And in one of the diaries, this guy from Iowa, Bill Reed, who's a pilot, says, you know, as he's crossing over the Pacific, you know, this is the first time I've been on a body of water bigger than a lake back home. And for so many of these guys, this was just the adventure of a lifetime.

05:44 And this book is really about, you know, people know the image of the plane, but this is really telling the story of who are the pilots that flew them, who are the ground crews that supported them, and what was it like to really be there? And with Memorial Day coming up, I wanted to have a book that also did justice to the many of them that were lost. One of my favorite characters from the book was that pilot from Iowa named Bill Reed. And he came back from the Flying Tigers and had a huge homecoming parade in Iowa for him. But then he went back to the war and was later killed in China as a pilot. And so it just becomes very – I became very emotionally attached with some of these guys, and being able to convey their stories is very important to me. You know, it's funny – it was not funny, but it's fascinating when you look at it,

06:33 because you said he went back and fought again, but he probably wasn't a member of the Flying Tigers, because one of the facts of the Flying Tigers – well, they never lost a battle. I guess they lost in pilots, but they never lost in air battle. Well, yeah, they had a great record. They had a – you know, they were in a really tough situation. So a lot of their fighting was actually done in the British colony in Burma, where they were trying to help stem the tide of a Japanese invasion. And Burma was ultimately lost, so they kept getting pushed back. But they fought very valiantly, and they played a crucial role in the defense of southern China. And so a lot of their role was – you know, the Japanese, going back to 1937, had been bombing these Chinese cities like Kunming and Chongqing. And the Flying Tigers finally showed up and provided some resistance.

07:18 So in that first battle, December 20, 1941, there are accounts from Chinese civilians who talk about looking up and seeing these American planes and how amazing it was to them to see Japanese bombers being shot down with something they hadn't seen in years while the Japanese had been bombing them. And so it's – for the Chinese, this is a very emotional story. The Flying Tigers are really remembered as heroes there. When I talked to this last surviving Flying Tiger, Frank Lazansky, he goes back – he's been back to China a number of times, and he's basically treated like a celebrity there. People swarm him in the street. And I just thought that was interesting. You know, these guys are really well-remembered in China. We should also be sure to honor their legacy here. Well, it's a fascinating story, folks.

08:05 The name of the book, The Flying Tigers, The Untold Story of American Pilots Who Waged a Secret War Against Japan. Samuel Kleiner is the author. Samuel, one final thing. I found a real famous quote from Winston Churchill about the Flying Tigers, and he said, That's a tremendous comment, tremendous accolade from Winston Churchill. Yeah, they were kind of comparable to the pilots who were fighting in the Battle of Britain, because, you know, as Churchill talked about, you know, never is so much of an ode to so few. And these were, you know, just a few guys really fighting behind enemy lines, and I do think we owe them a lot. And the book is available wherever books are sold, including on Amazon,

08:53 and listeners can check out more, including some photographs that have never been seen before at flyingtigersbook.com, and thank you for your interest. Well, thanks for your time today, and happy Memorial Day weekend. Take care. Folks, we'll be right back after this.

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00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Vistens. Well folks, I'm very happy this week because we have a return visitor. He's been on the show several times in the past. It's my fault because I forgot to have him on but we have not had him on in a couple years. He actually wrote the foreword to my book, The Seven Baby Steps to Ridiculously Reliable Retirement Income. He's going to join us right now from Tulsa, Oklahoma. His name is Jim Stovall. Now he's been a national champion Olympic weightlifter.

00:46 He's also president of the Emmy Award winning Narrative Television Network and highly sought after author. Now you may have seen some of his books. You may have seen some of his movies. One of his books turned into a movie, The Ultimate Gift. Which Jim basically made a camo on and he appeared in the movie, which is always fun to watch the movie. Two new books are out right now on my radar screen. I wanted to talk about both of these. We'll cover, well I think we'll try to cover both of them. One is The Art of Optimism, Your Competitive Edge, as well as Wisdom for Winners. He's got a whole series. This is volume four. But without further ado, let's get him on. Jim Stovall. Jim, welcome in. Hey, it is great to be back with you. Yeah, I mean, we were talking about before you were on, time does fly, doesn't it? It does, man. It's just, you know, out doing our thing. And I know you've been doing yours and you look up and think, man, it's been a couple years since I've been on with you guys.

01:35 Well, I'm pretty sure you remember your first book. Now you've written 30 books. And they've been best. Actually, they told me I just finished the 42nd book. Now there are several in the pipeline that haven't come out yet. And then eight of them have been turned into movies now. So it's just a crazy thing to think about. And you have shared the stage before with some real famous people. Colin Powell, Zig Ziglar, Christopher Reeves, and Tony Robbins, just to name a few. I mean, Tony's a big dude. Tony is. Tony and I have been friends for a number, number of years. And he's just a great guy. We were inducted as 10 Outstanding Americans one year apart and met at that. And then have kind of just stayed in touch, worked together a number of times. And, you know, he's a great guy. You know, life is full of drawbacks and setbacks.

02:20 And that's what I love about your book, The Art of Optimism. And because it's important to, especially if you're in business for yourself or just life in general, to always try to remain competitive and have that competitive edge. You know, absolutely. And, you know, optimism, one of the things that made me excited about this book is when I read a study that optimism is a choice. You can change, you know. You know, we've always heard, you know, well, he's a natural optimist or she's pessimistic all the time. No, that's a choice we make. Being happy is a choice. Being optimistic is a choice. And a lot of amazing things happen to us when we just look for the best thing, when we just expect the best and look for it. Because, you know, we always find what we're looking for. You want to have a great day? You'll find one. You think it's going to be a lousy day today? And you'll find a reason it will be.

03:08 One time, I don't remember where it was now, years ago, though, and I met a young lady with her husband, and she didn't look that happy. And then she got up to go to the bathroom or something, and I said, is there something wrong with your wife tonight? And he said, oh, she's not happy unless she's sad. Well, there are people that, you know, they think it brings them empathy or attention or whatever. And they think people, you know, are attracted to it. Actually, it may bring you attention, but it's not the kind you want. So I guess she was real happy. Absolutely. Because she looked real sad. All right. So what fuels our optimism? You know, when you have someone who's optimistic, what keeps them going that way? Well, you know, there are a lot of things that will make us optimistic. First, it's just a matter of having a choice. I remember I was working at an event years ago with my late great friend and mentor, Zig Ziglar,

03:54 and I never saw Zig in a bad mood, and we were at one of those events where the lighting wasn't right, and they couldn't get the sound, and they're about to open the arena. Nothing's going right, and the stagehands are going crazy. And Zig came in in his normal way and said, man, it's a fantastic day today. And one of the stagehands was just so frustrated. He said, well, you're in a good mood, aren't you? And Zig stopped and stared at that kid and said, son, I decided many years ago to have a good day today, and this is the day. And, you know, he defined himself as an optimist. He said, I'd go after Moby Dick in a rowboat and take the tartar sauce with me. He just was, you know, he believed everything was possible. But if you believe it, it starts to become possible because our mind is the world's greatest invention, and it will bring us what we're looking for.

04:40 And if you're looking for an idea, a solution, a good day, it'll go find those things. If you're looking for something bad or reasons that won't work, or if you're looking for an excuse, your mind will give you what you're looking for. So, you know, and the research is just unbelievable, you know, how much happier and healthier you are and more profitable and you have more friends. And, you know, they said being a – there's a study in the book I cite – being a pessimist throughout your whole life is the health equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. And that is just a staggering thing. But, you know, your body picks up on these things. And, you know, your brain is this amazing pharmacy that's going all the time. And it can create what you need to feel good, to alleviate pain, to look for good things, to have energy.

05:31 The things you want are there just for being optimistic. It's an amazing gift. And some of the ways to turn it around is to decide to be, you know, what do you listen to, what do you read, and then the gratitude. If you can list ten things a day you're grateful for, it is impossible to have a bad attitude, be resentful, angry, or jealous while you're being grateful. It just pushes everything out of your mind. Do you remember Jim Valvano? Oh, very much so. I remember his speech. He was talking about be happy, to find one thing happy each day, cry each day, laugh each day, have a great day, and just appreciate life in general. That was one of the best speeches ever. It appears every year around the XP Awards. Yeah, he just truly was an amazing message and an amazing legacy that that speech is. And, you know, and more and more, I think it's just a fascinating thing to find that emotion in life every day.

06:24 Back in 1988, I graduated from college, and my first job was I traveled around the state closing mortgages. I was a notary, so I would witness all the signatures and all that. And I remember, you know, those are long days on the road, and that's about the time audiobooks I discovered. And I discovered the first audiobook I got was one of Zig Ziglar's, and it was amazing. I probably listened to it 50 times over the course of a couple years because he was always in a good mood. He got me in a good mood. Yeah, he was always in a good mood. You know, when you go around, you do the circuit and the arena events and the movies and things, you meet a lot of people, and a lot of them are like Zig. They're everything you hoped they would be, and a few of them you kind of wish you hadn't met because you kind of liked them through their books and things, but, you know, they need to read their own stuff sometimes.

07:09 But, you know, Zig was everything you would hope he would be and an awful lot more. Folks, we're talking a best-selling author and movie producer, Olympic powerlifting winner. I mean, he's got an accolade sheet that's a mile long. His name is Jim Stovall. Over 40 books that he's written. But, Jim, let's talk about in your book The Art of Optimism. There's one chapter in here I wanted to get to. It's Chapter 6, The Pessimism Prescription. Now, what's that? Well, if you want to be pessimistic, you can, and there's some things you can do to be a pessimist. You know, I always tell people somewhat jokingly, I mean, I don't want to trick you into being healthy and happy and successful and wealthy your whole life. If you want to be miserable, you can, and there's certain ways to do it. And the interesting thing about optimism versus pessimism, the scientists that did the research found if you're going to be optimistic,

07:56 you have to feed your optimism every day or it will wear down because, you know, we live in the world we live in, and there's a lot of negativity out there, and, you know, you have to really work to stay optimistic. But pessimism sticks with you. Yeah. You know, it just feeds on itself and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and that's where it goes. And, you know, if you don't take care of your health, your attitude, the input, the things that go into your mind and your body, you'll start feeling bad. And then, you know, the worse you feel, the worse your attitude gets, the more pessimistic you get, and it's just a downward spiral that continues forever. I mean, everyone's had a day where they just didn't feel right or things weren't going right. Now, I've had those days. I mean, who hasn't? And so what I try to do is think positive or think about good things that are coming up to try to erase the bad things that are happening right then.

08:43 Yeah, that's what I call it. I call that a parentheses in positivity. I mean, there are times it happens, and you've got to experience it. There's times where we lose a friend or a loved one, and you've got to experience that. You've got to go through that. You know, it's like Coach Valvano said, I mean, you've got to experience it. And, guys, I get it. I mean, bad things happen to good people. You know, you're listening to a blind guy right now. I've been totally blind for 30 years. I, you know, I write books I can't read that get turned into movies I can't see. I understand that, you know, everything's not great all the time. But for every person that's defeated by a circumstance, either a physical thing, a divorce, a bankruptcy, a layoff, whatever it be, for every person that goes through that and is defeated by it, I'll show you someone else went through the same thing and actually used it as a springboard to better things in their life.

09:37 And, you know, it's just a matter of, you know, how do we look at things? And I've just started researching a new book that will be out next year called Managing Randomness. And these things that happen to us, you know, we think it's our life's utter chaos until we get to a goal in our life. And we look back where we've been and we realize that that thing we thought was utter chaos has a divine quality to it, an order to it. And you realize as tough as that was, there's no other way I could have gotten here. And, you know, and things work out, you know, my late great mentor and dear friend, Coach John Wooden, always said things work out best for those that make the best out of the way things work out. Yeah. And, you know, and he said we try not to let the circumstances bother us.

10:23 You know, if you're playing a ball game, every once in a while somebody will get injured. Referees will make bad calls. There's nothing we can do about it. Crowds will be hostile. The bus will be late. All kinds of things are going to happen. And if we anticipate those, we're not negative. We're just preparing. But we still have every expectation we're going to win this game. Very, very important, too. I mean, the great coaches can overcome adversity. And the great people in life. You know, and part of it is you just realize this is going to happen. Yep. Yep. Well, over the last 10 years, folks, we've had Jim Stovall on four or five times. And every single time when we exit, like we are right now, I always love to say the pleasure has been on this side of the microphone, Jimmy. And I look forward to having you on. We're going to try to have you on every year from now on. How's that? I would love it. You guys are great. I appreciate you every time.

11:08 I do a lot of these shows. And you go a long way before you find somebody else with your kind of passion and excitement about what you do and the people you're serving out there. So anytime you want me, you call. Well, we appreciate you. Thank you, my friend. Folks, again, his name is Jim Stovall. Over 40 books. All you have to do is search his name on Amazon or anywhere books are sold. We've been talking today about Wisdom for Winners, Volume 4, as well as The Art of Optimism, Your Competitive Edge. Again, thanks to Jim Stovall. And folks, we'll be right back after this. We'll be right back.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 For the Financial Safari News Network, I'm Steve Sedahl. Today, we'll meet Bob Berg, co-author of the new book, The Go-Giver Influencer, a little story about a most persuasive idea. It's the third in a series of business parables, and some say it's the most important yet. A little about Bob Berg first. He's a former television personality turned top sales producer. He now speaks to corporations and other organizations on the principles embodied in the Go-Giver series. Bob, welcome. So how did the Go-Giver series come to be, and what is it about the Go-Giver Influencer that makes it so important? These days, you know, we are seeing, especially on the Internet, but there's also, whether it's a family get-together, a social event, whatever, we see that between family members and friends, employers, employees, politicians, political opponents,

00:46 and, you know, the millions of people on social media, today's discussions are really no longer discussions. They're really fueled up, hate-filled, vitriol-spilling diatribes and personal insults. Well, the result is that no minds are being chained, no one's being influenced, but rather people remain stuck in the echo chambers, if you will, of their already closely held beliefs. So friends are becoming enemies, discourse is shut down, understanding and acceptance not being reached, and people feel lousy about it, and that's really what we want to be able to now approach and kind of turn this around. It's being able to get the results you want when dealing with others, and this is, again, whether it's family members, friends, those you lead, those you work with, people in your social circles, what have you,

01:33 getting the results you want with everyone coming away a winner and feeling like a winner. So getting the results you want while making other people feel genuinely good about themselves, and the person who can do that, that's the person who's influential, and we have a lot of people saying that they're right away, they're giving this book to their kids and their grandkids, and, you know, because these are life skills. You know, talent is important. Talent is very important, but talent is the bottom, you know, talent is the baseline now for just getting into the game. It's those people who've mastered people's skills, but doing so in a way that's genuine and authentic and benevolent, not manipulative, but persuasive. That's the person who really is nine steps ahead of the game in a 10-step game. Well, and you've got the five secrets of the genuine influencer, and boy, they really ring true,

02:24 and I'm going to skip right to number five, let go of having to be right. And that is the thing that it just, you know, that's the frustrating part of it, is because if you have to be right, that means somebody has to be wrong, and guess what? They're not necessarily wrong. Well, exactly. And, you know, if you ever notice the political debates on social media, or, again, even in person, and someone says, people like you are the worst people on earth, you're heartless, and you don't care, and blah, blah, blah, you want to ruin this country. You know, the other person never responds by saying, oh, thank you so much for pointing out the error of my ways. I haven't thought about it like that, right? And so, no, what we've got to do is we've got to first, you know, we need to see this person as a person who has good intent, because they probably do.

03:10 The big difference is the way you would go about having something happen. And when we say let go of having to be right, that doesn't mean you don't desire to be right. It doesn't mean you don't do your best to be right. What it means is you allow yourself to go into learner's mode, as opposed to the people who, when you debate with them, you think to yourself, goodness, you know, it's like, don't even bother confusing them with the facts. Their mind is already made up. These are the people who have trouble with confirmation bias, right? They hear something that agrees with their already held beliefs. They believe it. If not, they ignore it. Well, that person cannot grow. But if you will let go of having to be right, you'll find that you're able to look at something from the other person's point of view. That does not mean you agree with it.

03:56 It just means you're able to see where they're coming from. And it puts you actually in a much stronger influential position. Hey, remember, tact should never be confused with compromise. You can always speak to someone with tact and with respect without compromising your values. And the neat thing about that is to the degree you do that, not only are you more influential with that person, but all the other people who are sort of watching, right? Right. They tend to take more to you as well. Bob, let's get to this list and talk about the five secrets of the genuine influencer or influence. One is master your emotions. Absolutely. Yeah, well, this is so tough because we're human beings, right? Yeah. And we're emotional creatures.

04:42 We'd like to think we're logical, but we're pretty emotionally driven. We make major decisions based on very limited or based on emotion. Then we back up those emotional decisions with logic. We rationalize, which simply means we tell ourselves rational lies in order to justify it. So what we need to do is, you know, it's not a matter of foregoing your emotions or denying them. There's no reason for that. Emotions are a great part of life. Just make sure you're the master of your emotions as opposed to they being the master of you or, as we like to say, by all means, take your emotions along for the ride, but make sure you are driving the car. See the types of situations that occur in your life, whether it's with people or circumstances that tend to just really get your emotional hot button. Right. And you it causes yourself to to become frustrated or impatient or angry.

05:33 Right. And you know how that feels when it happens. Well, now what I want you to do is I want you to picture the same situation. But now I want you to picture not being surprised by it. That's what usually happens. It takes us by surprise. But I want you to rehearse this a number of times. Rehearse this person or the situation or something similar. Um, and, and just kind of picture yourself handling it beautifully that it just, it doesn't bother you. You're able to listen to that person without interrupting. You're able to say the perfect thing. Again, don't worry about the words that comes later. Just get the feeling of this. And what I want you to do is practice it just like an astronaut before they go up into space, they would run hundreds of simulations. Right. So that by the time they get up there, if something actually happens, heaven forbid, well, they're

06:21 already been there. They've done that. They can, they can handle it because they've seen it tons of times. It's the same with this practice it in your mind again and again and again, and keep getting that good feeling of how you're handling it beautifully. Now, when it comes up, I want you to just do that very thing. And when you do feel good about it and understand two things. One is if you can do it right. One time you could do it right. Every time. Now, the second thing is you won't do it right. Every time because you're a human being and we all mess up from time to time. But I'll tell you this because I had to do this 25, 30 years ago when I was having a real issue with, with anger. And I've taught lots of people how to do this. And all of our lives have been changed dramatically because when you're not at the mercy of your

07:08 emotions, when you are the boss of yourself, first of all, you feel better about yourself. You're much more effective and you're much more influential. So step number two is step into the other person's shoes. You know, you try to do that or I try to do that. And again, that's not always easy either. And that's because most of us have different size feet. In other words, we come from different ways of seeing the world, different experiences, different belief systems. So we can't necessarily step into their shoes. So what we need to do to make up for that is we ask questions. We discover, hey, we do this in sales. What is selling? It's simply discovering what the other person wants, needs or desires and helping them to

07:55 get it. It's the same with influence. So ask questions, but don't just listen with your ears. OK, as one of the mentors in the story, because it's a parable, one of the mentors in the story tells his protege, don't just listen with your ears. That's the surface listening. Most of us do. That's listening in order to speak, in order to have a comeback. Right. No. Listen with your eyes. Listen with your posture. Listen, he said, with the back of your neck. In other words, put your entire being into listening. What happens is not only do you actually discover more about what drives that other person, which is so important, but they feel listened to and they become much more responsive to your idea. People want to feel understood. The only way you can understand another person, step into their shoes, is by asking questions

08:44 and listening. I think it's really just a matter of understanding that when you can move from an I focus or me focus to what we call an other focus, this is the way that you make yourself the most influential. Because remember, and Dale Carnegie said this in his classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. Ultimately, people do things for their reasons, not our reasons. So as mature human beings, we need to understand and tap into human nature in a very positive, benevolent way and understand that if we want to influence someone to do a certain thing, we need to give them a reason that works for them. The book is called The Go-Giver Influencer, a little story about a most persuasive idea, written by Bob Berg and John David Mann.

09:31 Thanks again to author Bob Berg for chatting with us today. To learn more and get two free chapters of the book, just visit thegogiver.com. That's thegogiver.com. I'm Steve Sedahl for the Financial Safari News Network.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Listen. Well folks this is the time of the show where I go out across the nation and I find someone who's making a difference or is on a topic that is very interesting that I think could be very interesting to our audience here. And we're going to go to Philadelphia and we're going to join Mr. Don Graves. He's a retirement income certified planner. He's got some other destinations too we're going to talk about. But he's one of the nation's leading educators on the HECM, Reverse Mortgages and Retirement Income Planning.

00:48 And you may have seen him quoted in Forbes and he's also been on PBS. Don, welcome in. Thank you coach. Glad to be here. Now let's talk about reverse mortgages because I've heard good, bad, ugly about those. I did research, extensive research on them about 10 years ago when I had a chapter in one of my books about reverse mortgages. And I went in totally negative and I left positive with people who really needed this fit here. So let's talk about what is a reverse mortgage and how can it benefit some of the folks that are listening right now. You know one of the things I used to say jokingly is someone says what is a reverse mortgage? I used to say well it's a way to ruin a good barbecue. Let someone bring it up around the table and you'll see why Aunt Janie went to jail. So if you're not careful you can really get hurt mentioning reverse mortgages.

01:35 But four words coach have helped a lot of people over these last few years. Four words. It's just a mortgage. It's just a mortgage. Most people know what a mortgage is. You want to get money for a home and you get a mortgage, you make a payment and pay it off and it's over. A reverse mortgage is just a mortgage in the sense that for those over the age of 62 and you need some money from your home, you don't want to move and sell it. You don't want to take out a traditional loan to make payments. You can do a reverse mortgage. Which is you get money from your home. You can choose to make a payment or not make a payment and use that money to supplement your retirement income. And when you're finished, when you move or permanently depart the home, whatever money you borrow plus the interest that accrues gets repaid. And 100% of all remaining equity passes on to you, your heirs or your estate.

02:20 So it's just a mortgage. Yeah, I say one of the big misconceptions about a reverse mortgage is once someone does it, they can get kicked out of their house. Is that true? Yes, it is true in the sense that there are four requirements for a reverse mortgage and they're pretty spooky to your listeners. So they may want to jot it down. You have to live in the house, number one. Take care of it, number two. Keep insurance enforced, number three. And pay your property taxes, number four. The articles that end up in the paper or the stories you hear is that you went over to Cousin Tracy's house and Uncle Bill was in the spare bedroom. He said, Uncle Bill, what are you doing here? And he says, well, I had a reverse mortgage and I lost my home. And that's true. So someone says, Don, is that true? I say, yeah, he did have a reverse mortgage and he did lose his home. Now, the question that's not asked, Coach, is did he pay his property taxes? And that's the story that ends up in the front of the newspaper but it's never told.

03:08 And so I don't know what happens in your part of the country, but here in greater Philadelphia, if you don't pay your property taxes, the sheriff comes knocking. That has nothing to do with the lender. So the number one reason in America that people have struggled with reverse mortgages had nothing to do with the program itself. It had to do with their ability to pay their property taxes. So they would have lost their house anyway by not paying the property tax even if they didn't have a reverse mortgage. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, that's important for people to realize. And you have to be 62 or older, correct? At least one spouse has to be age 62 or older. As of four years ago, you can have a wife that's age 18. So you can be 70 and your wife can be age 18 and get a reverse mortgage. That's some strong ginkgo biloka you're taking, but you can do it. That's a good one. Well, all right.

03:53 You know, that's one of the big misconceptions that people had is that you can get kicked out of your house. But, you know, here's one time where I think reverse mortgages really are a good fit. If you reach retirement and you have a lot of equity in your house, but you don't have enough income coming in for your retirement plan, sometimes a reverse mortgage is a good thing to pursue. Sure. Absolutely. The most common way to use the reverse mortgages is right now somewhere between 15% and 68% of people entering into retirement are going to be carrying a mortgage payment, mortgage, home equity, loan, home equity, line of credit, a payment into retirement. And they may have gotten that at 55, but at 65 and 70, they realize, wow, I really wish I didn't have to pay this $500, $800, $13, $1,700 a month mortgage payment. So the number one way reverse mortgages are being used is to eliminate an existing monthly mortgage payment.

04:44 And when that happens to your listeners, just think about what comes with not having a monthly mortgage payment. It's my favorite question to ask, Coach, which is, Bob, Patty, what would retirement be like if you didn't have to make a monthly mortgage payment? And typically what I hear before words is a sound. I don't know if you'll catch it on radio, but it goes like this. That's the sound of relief. And you just simply ask, what would you do with that extra $500, $800,000, $2,000 a month by not having a mortgage payment? That's a tremendous use. In addition to what you're saying, you came into retirement and you realize my budget allows me to spend this much a month, but I really, my lifestyle, I would like to spend this much. And there's a gap between your budget and your lifestyle. One of the ways a reverse mortgage can be used is to simply bridge the gap.

05:30 Is that an extra $200, $400, $600 a month? And you can bridge the gap that way. And there are certainly dozens of other ways to use it. I outline that in my book. But, yeah, absolutely. You know what it is, Coach? A reverse mortgage is not so much a product, but it is a tool. It is a strategy that's incorporated with your income, your investments, and your insurance and annuities. When you use reverse mortgages not in an isolated way, but in a coordinated and incorporated way, it dramatically can increase your retirement outcomes. And that's really, I'm an advocate for, don't use a reverse mortgage. It may not be the conclusion to the matter, but it should be included in the conversation. And if it is, there are some outcomes that can be achieved that may otherwise not have been available to the client.

06:20 Yeah, when you think about anything in this world, it could be a benefit to somebody, but it could be missold or misused by other people. Cruise control in a car, a good example. One of the things, I mean, you hear the stories about how it works, and it helps people, you know, it saves your foot from carpal tunnel syndrome, whatever. You don't have to keep pressing the gas or whatever. But where cruise control doesn't work is if you are sleepy and you put cruise control on, you could run into a tree at full speed. So, again, you hear the bad stories and the good stories, but I think reverse mortgages are a good thing to pursue if someone is in a situation where extra income is needed and they have equity in the house. Sure, absolutely. Lots of strategies. Gray divorce is on the rise. The fastest group of people in America segment are seniors who are divorced, and gray divorce, silver divorce.

07:06 And one of the ways, one of the first things that gets divided is the housing asset. When you now incorporate housing wealth or reverse mortgages into that conversation, it allows the ability to take a situation that could be detrimental and make it better for both parties and spouses. And so reverse mortgage, I had a person who had $5 million in the bank, Coach, as an investment advisor called me. He had a $4.5 million home on the shore down in New Jersey and said, Don, we're looking for a reverse mortgage. Now, people would say, well, Don, why would someone with $5 million in assets under management and a $4.5 million home need a reverse mortgage? Well, because he had $2.5 million in mortgage-related debt on his property. He's paying $26,500 a month, principal and interest, to service that debt.

07:53 And so that's $300,000 a year. And this person said, Don, if I could get a jumbo reverse mortgage, I could eliminate that debt. That gives me $300,000, and you could put another $200,000 in my pocket. Well, I suggest that they don't do it. I said, I got a better strategy for you. Why don't you consider selling your home, paying it off? You're still going to have $2 million left over. You may not get a house on the shore, but you'll get something on the bay, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so the point I make when I tell that story is that it may not have been the right option for them, and I didn't think it was, but I thought it was the right conversation to have because creating cash flow in retirement is very important. And so there are five things, Coach, that a reverse mortgage does real quickly and that most people, when they say, Well, I don't know about reverse mortgage.

08:39 I don't know if I'll ever need it. And I said, That's true. You may not. And I said, But if there was a resource that allowed you to increase cash flow, reduce risks, preserve assets, improve liquidity, or even add new dollars back into your retirement, would you want your advisor to tell you about it? Now, 100% of the people I've asked that question to say, Yes, I'd want to know about that. I said, That's great because that's exactly what the newly restructured reverse mortgage does. Increases cash flow, reduce retirement risks, preserve assets, improve, enhance liquidity, and even add new dollars back into retirement savings. Those are five strategic things that every retiree needs to have a cursory knowledge of in their advisor in order to plan for a sustainable retirement. Fantastic points. Thomas, I see my producer in there. Thomas is nodding, too.

09:25 What's the name of your book, Don? My book is called Housing Wealth. It's simply Housing Wealth and Advisor's Guide. Don's also an instructor for the Retirement Income Certified Professional course. Don, you were the most enjoyable one for me to watch on our online series. I'm glad, Coach. I appreciate it. Because you can put Coach Pete to sleep really quick, but you did not. So I really appreciate that. Thank you, Coach. The Retirement Income Certified Professional, RICP, is a really good designation. It's sweeping the nation right now, isn't it? Absolutely. It's the fastest-growing designation in America, having surpassed the Certified Financial Planner designation. Anyone involved in retirement income planning as a profession, I really believe this is a worthwhile pursuit. Yeah. I actually learned a lot in the three courses, and I didn't like the three proctored exams, but I passed them all.

10:12 Yeah. Yeah, me neither. Me neither. All right. Well, hey, yeah, your book's fantastic. You've been a great guest. We'd love to have you on again in the future. Folks, his name was Don Graves. He's in Philadelphia. Look his book up on Amazon. Don, thanks for your time today. Thanks, Coach. And folks, we'll be right back after this.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Well, folks, this is the time of the show where I go out across the nation and find someone who's been on my radar screen, making a difference or whatever. And this week is a great time for me because I remember back in the late 70s, early 80s, this new channel came on TV. It was called MTV and MTV had music videos and music videos really helped you understand it to actually see the music that you're listening to and see behind the scenes a little bit. And we've got a great guest on today. He's had 24 songs in the top 100 over his lifetime. His name is Mr. Eddie Money. Eddie, welcome in. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Great honor. You got a lot of great fans out there. You had a great book and continued success. I've heard a lot of great things about the show. Well, I appreciate it, Eddie. You've got a brand new reality show coming out, don't you?

00:47 Well, yeah, it's called Real Money. And what happened is we did this thing. You don't want to pass up on Oprah. And Oprah wanted to do a segment called Where Are They Now? And in the middle of the show, they had the cameras on. And my daughter was fighting with my son. And I went up to my son's room. And he had a bottle of vodka hidden underneath this mattress. And me being an ex-alcoholic and alcoholism runs on my family, I had a fit. So I started screaming at the kid. They had it all on camera. And all of a sudden saying, this is great TV. I'm like, what are you talking about? But then we got picked up by this kid, Mark Cuban, that runs the Dallas Mavericks. And he's a real nice guy. I mean, this guy owns a professional basketball team. But he's got a couple of kids. You'd like the guy. He's really, really pretty cool. And he said to me, you know, they put a mic on me.

01:33 And I got these crazy kids in the house. And we did the whole thing. As a matter of fact, I just did an interview with Dan Rathers. It's called The Big Interview with Dan Rathers. You can probably go to AXIS TV and get a check-in out. I thought it came out pretty good. And this new reality show is going to be Eastern time. It's 9.30 Eastern on AXIS TV starting this Sunday, which is pretty neat. And you guys have 10 episodes filmed. Well, you know what? My wife gets mad at me because she calls me a fat hazman, which I really hate. You know how women are they? They can really hit below the belt. Yes. But people said to me, what's the show about? I said, it's about a dysfunctional rock star with two chins bitching about his five kids. Well, you know, your voice still sounds the same. I mean, I can hear Thomas. You can hear his voice, right?

02:18 Absolutely. That's Eddie Money right there. My favorite song was Shaken back in the day and Two Tickets to Paradise. Shaken, stop running. Yeah. The new TV show should be a lot of fun. You've got to kick it out of the kids. Now, you started singing, I guess, when you were little. When did you start singing to begin with? I was singing right when the Beatles came out, 1963, 64. I found that the best way to date a cheerleader, if you were too skinny to play football, is be in the rock band in high school. Whoever's in the rock band in high school, you know. But did somebody come to you and say, hey, if you put your song to a video, we can get you more records sold? Yeah, that's very true. I think Bill Graham was my manager. He was the rock and she could snow. He's in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was my manager. And he said to me, you know what? I think this video concept for rock and roll was really going to be big.

03:05 And so we made a couple of videos and he was right. I was then I was the king of video to me and Louis Lewis. We'd like nobody else was making videos. And we came out. We made videos early. I mean, but now when I look at some of the old videos, I look like a singing. I look like a singing shoe salesman. But now I'm in North Malibu with California, paying a lot of taxes and, you know, doing a TV show. And I got my son's name. My son's name is Deadz Money, D-E-Z-M-O-N-E-Y. And I'm really what I'm trying to do is he's got my other son on drums and he's got Jessica doing all the harmonies. I'm trying to break him into the business to see where he get a career going for himself. And the only way you give it now, they don't even have CD players or cars anymore. Nope. Everything is about the music business. It's like, I don't know, iTunes and emails and all this other stuff.

03:53 It's not when they say video killed the radio star. That's true. But you know what? The Internet, the Internet killed the recording star. Can you think about how many records Taylor Swift would have actually sold if people weren't downloading his songs? It's incredible. Or Imagine Dragons or any of those bands. It's incredible. But you know, I think music's in a pretty good place right now, so I can't complain. Now, before you came on, before we went live here, you were talking about taxes and how taxes are eating your life. I mean, it is crazy these days how much we pay in taxes, isn't it? I'm paying like 57% in taxes, but then again, I do live in the greatest country in the world. Correct. And I do love this country. So to me, I mean, it's the haves and the have-nots. If I have, you might as well give it to the have-nots. What are you going to do? But you know, I mean, I should have married a blind woman.

04:39 My wife spent so much money. I think she's got a bigger shoe collection than Oprah Winfrey, for Christ's sake. You know, I tell you, women are really into jewelry and they're really into shoes. What are you going to do? Well, you know, one of the things we talk about on the show is have some fun with some money. We call it fun money, but also put money aside and try to pay as less taxes as possible and build that retirement account out. Because, you know, when you reach retirement age, you want to be sure you have an income that you're not going to outlive. I don't think I'm ever going to retire. I can't even get the kids to move out of the house. I can't get the kids. I mean, I would love to have the empty nest, sell this house, get a condo with just me and my wife, but I just don't see that happening. I don't know what's going on with these kids. They never leave. Now, what's the ages on your kids right now? I got a 31 year old. He can like bench press 350 pounds.

05:25 Wow. He's in there. He's trying to get he's got a sports medicine junkie. Then I got my daughter who sings with me. Then I got my other son, Joe, went to Berkeley School of Music in Berkeley. But he stopped playing guitar and he's into dubstep music, whatever the hell that is. Then I got Des. Des has got his own band. And then I got Julian on drums. And of course, I got my wife. And then I got my son's I got my son's girlfriend from Turkey. She doesn't want to go back to Turkey. So she's living at the house. I mean, it's great. And then I got eight dogs on top of all that. Can you believe in him out of my mind? Folks, we are talking to Eddie Money, famous rock star, has 24 of his hits in the top 100 all time, which is amazing. And now, Eddie, we're talking about your new reality show, Real Money, and it premieres and it's on Sunday at 930 Eastern on AXS TV.

06:14 But how fun has it been to work? Or has it been challenging to have all those cameras in front of you all the time? Well, I thought, you know, they took us go kart racing and make sure the kids all cut me off and make me cut crap, you know. And then we did one set, but they knew that I hated horseback riding. So they took me down to stables in the biggest fort, this big, big chestnut mare. He was like, really, I'm kind of a mean horse. And I went over to the horse and the cows were on me and I fed him an apple and I said, boy, you look really bummed out. Why the long face? And like my other son, he's coming down the stairs, picking up all these guitars that I'm saying to him, why do you have a wool hat on? It's 92 degrees out. You know, these kids, you know, it's crazy. But it's been a fun run.

07:00 And I do something for the kids. And my wife looks really pretty on TV. So we'll see what happens. Well, I love to watch reality shows. And I know that a lot of them are staged a little bit. And that's what they do. They try to find out what you don't want to do. And that's what you're going to do. But I tell you the truth, they didn't really stage this. And I have to, well, I'm on the phone since I do go to church on Sunday. I have to apologize about my New York language. I got a little out of hand. And I thought Mark Cuban was going to beat it. I thought Mark Cuban was going to beat it, but he didn't. But thank God I wasn't cursing that much. But these kids, they really get on my nerves. I turn into my father, for Christ's sake. You know, I got a little bit of Irish temper. And I just want to apologize to all my fans out there that I'm really not trailer trash.

07:48 You know, I might look like it at times, but I'm not, you know. Well, I have a quarter Irish in me. And we have a segment on our show every now and then when I'm mad. We call it Coach Goes McEnroe. And so we, and I go off for a while. You remember John McEnroe, don't you? He used to stay at my house. Oh, yeah? Very close when he was on top. Yeah, he was a good guy. Really cool guy. Really cool guy. Hey, before I let you go, I want to ask you a personal question here about your songs. If you had to put a number one label in your all-time favorite song of any songs you've ever sang, which one would it be? I'd have to say it's probably Two Tickets to Paradise. Yeah. Not that I quit drinking. It should be like Two Tickets to Betty Ford. I got this couple of mine, this couple of mine, these friends of mine, and they worked for the greatest show on earth.

08:33 They worked for the circus. And they wanted to adopt a child. They went down to the adoption agency. The adoption agency said to me, we don't think that the circus is very conducive for raising children. And they said, we really begged a different. They came with really good mathematics because you'd be adding up all the tickets. Everybody in the circus is from all over the world. They wouldn't have any trouble with geography. We got a doctor on call 24 hours a day. They said, well, maybe you're right. Would you like a boy or a girl? They said, it doesn't make any difference as long as they can fit in the cannon. Oh, you've got a great sense of humor, my friend. I got to say, it's a good show. It's been a pleasure having you on. And we're going to be watching that show. And I hope that maybe at the end of the season, you want to come back on and talk about it.

09:19 I'd love to have you on again. And thanks so much for having me on the show. You too, buddy. We'll talk to you soon, Eddie. All the best. Okay, buddy. Take care of yourself. Folks, that was Eddie Money from his new reality show, Real Money. You can watch it every Sunday at 930 on AXS TV. And we'll be right back after this.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Wissens. For the Financial Safari News Network, I'm Steve Sedahl. Today we're going to look at an innovative approach to long-term care. It's often one of the most overlooked parts of anyone's retirement plan yet. According to a recent Morningstar report, just over 52 percent of people turning 65 will have a long-term care need during their lifetimes. Paying for long-term care can be difficult at best and most long-term care insurance is cost prohibitive. But what if there was a better

00:49 way? Let's meet George Graziani, Senior VP and Head of Senior Immediate Needs and an actuary at Swiss Re. He was instrumental in developing the Reliable Living Plan, a truly non-traditional long-term care plan. The product is called the Reliable Living Plan and what we've done is we've created something very special to help families pay for senior care. And by that I mean assisted living, memory care, even care that they receive at home. And yes, the product is a long-term care insurance product, but it is a completely new and innovative way to approach long-term care because it's for people

01:37 who need care now. They buy the product when they actually need it, when they're 65 years of age or older and have a chronic illness. So in other words, there are two out of six activities of daily living that they are unable to perform or they have cognitive impairment, memory issues. Sure. Now, traditional long-term care is something that is, you purchase way ahead of time, the premiums seem to always be going up. And this is something that's so innovative and it makes it a lot easier for anybody to get this, especially, I mean, again, if you're over 65, who thought you could get any kind of care at that point from a long-term standpoint?

02:25 Oh, that's absolutely right, Steve. And that's part of, you know, what made us, you know, so excited and makes us so excited about this product because most people, I mean, to be honest, traditional long-term care insurance has been a really tough product for everybody. It's a very difficult product for insurance companies to price. Customers who bought traditional long-term care insurance also had a tough time because, as you say, they buy something and because the company's had such a tough time pricing it, they ended up having to increase the premiums for people. Absolutely. We tried to do something completely different. Probably the most innovative part of our product

03:11 is that it's really simple to understand. That is key. And now, George, tell me, you actually developed this or were part of the team developing this and you went about this in a pretty unique way. Tell me that story. Well, yes. I mean, it's been a long journey that started almost, I guess, almost three years ago. We knew that there were many families that were facing challenges and paying for senior care, both, you know, for themselves, seniors, but also, you know, adult age children, you know, of my age and maybe yours who were concerned about their parents and thinking about how to fund it. Sure. So one of the things, I guess the real kind of game changer for me is that we went out and I spoke

03:58 to customers, to seniors, and actually spent some time in a senior living community. Really, the thing that really changed things for me personally was when I spoke to one lady called Betsy. This is a lady who was, I think, in her early 80s, very vibrant lady. Yeah, she had some health issues, absolutely, but completely vibrant. And she said something to me that I'll never forget. She said, you know what, George, I have maybe four or five years to live. That's what my son told me. And I was like, Betsy, what do you mean? She goes, yeah, because I think that's what, that's when he

04:46 thinks that I'll run out of money. Steve, that just broke my heart. I thought that's, that's got to be one of the saddest things I've ever heard, that someone has to feel guilty for, for living long. Well, and you know, she wasn't the only one. I mean, I think there's a lot of people that feel that way right now. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there, there are so many, I mean, there were well over 8 million people who were receiving long-term care and, and, and needed. And, you know, you know, the statistics and the, and the demographics, those numbers are, are growing. And, and there is a, there was a real challenge with, with, with people being able to fund that care and, and make sure that they have benefit income for the rest of their life to pay for those services that they, they so desperately need.

05:33 How does it work, George? The Reliable Living Plan, it sounds wonderful, but how does it work? I mean, how is it paid for? How are they paid? Sure. The mechanics are, you know, this is, this is probably the most innovative part of a product is that it's actually simple. I've been in the insurance industry for over 25 years. I'm an actuary and I find that most products that I, I hear about are very difficult to understand. And most of the time I don't understand them. So with Reliable Living Plan, we wanted to create something that you don't have to be a financial wizard to understand that a regular person like my 83 year old mother can understand. So here's how it works. First of all, it's four people who are 65 years or

06:20 older. There's no maximum age, which is again, very unusual for insurance who require assistance with two or more activities of daily living. And that those are eating, dressing, bathing, toileting, continence and transferring, or they have memory problems or cognitive, cognitive issues. And the way it works is, uh, the, the customer pays one single premium. So they make a one time payment. Sometimes people call it one and done. And then one month later, and essentially for the rest of the person's life, they receive a fixed amount monthly benefit that they can use to pay for their care. And it really, it's as simple as that. There, there are other elements to it. There's a 30 day

07:10 free look, uh, so that if a customer buys the product and within 30 days, they change their mind, they get a refund of their premium. Um, another feature is if, you know, on the side, uh, in the sad situation that someone passes within the first six months, we, we, uh, return their premium to them, less any benefits we've paid. The product is, uh, as I mentioned, I think is available in 32 States right now. And it's completely portable so that it, it, the benefit payments, these monthly fixed amounts so that someone knows exactly how much they're getting and they don't have to keep receipts or there's nothing complicated there. They, it follows them. So if they are receiving care at home,

07:57 as probably 90% of people, uh, prefer to do, they'd like to stay in their home. They, they receive, uh, you know, the payments there. Um, but if they decide to move to an assisted living community or a living community or memory care or a nursing home, um, or they move around to different ones, um, the benefits follow them essentially wherever they go. And if they decide to move back home, that's the benefits follow them there. Well, that really sounds fantastic. It really is that simple, huh? It is indeed. It is. And, uh, another nice feature of the product is that the benefits, uh, because it's long-term care insurance are tax-free. So when you say a fixed amount, how is that determined? Is that determined on a case-by-case basis? Is there, is there just a

08:46 plan for that or, or how has that worked out? The, the amount that they can purchase in, in benefit, uh, ranges from, uh, they can buy from $1,000 a month of benefit, which, uh, which some people like to do to fill, fill a gap in the, in the cost of care all the way up to $12,000 a month of benefit, which as we've talked to customers is very important because as you, and I'm sure your listeners know, um, the cost of, of care can be, can be quite, uh, expensive, um, assisted living, for example, on average costs approximately $5,000 a month. And so, and, and we've actually heard of cases where it can go as high as $10,000 a month. Sure. And so, uh, the ability to purchase benefit amounts and

09:36 levels that, that match those costs is, is very important to customers. Is there, is there someplace they can go or should they call their advisor? How should they begin the process? Actually, probably the easiest thing that they, they can do is, is go to the website, reliablelivingplan.com, or they can call the toll-free number 1-833-867-1865. And we will then, uh, connect them with one of our, uh, licensed representatives to talk through the product and find out whether it's suitable, uh, for them. Well, you know, George, I think, don't you think too, and again, my experience talking with planners around the country that, that when it comes to long-term care, it's one of these things where,

10:23 where oftentimes people will just want to bury their head in the sand and don't want to think about it because it, it, it signifies the end of something and, and, and it's scary and we don't want to deal with it. But this is something that's so refreshing that it's, it's not the end, but you're actually, you know, I think this could improve quality of life for who knows how long. Oh, absolutely, Steve. I mean, I think there's a couple of things I'd share with you on that is when people do, uh, require assisted living or long-term care. So they're at that point where they need it or their parents need it. Nine out of 10 of them don't have any coverage and they can't buy traditional coverage because they're already, um, requiring, uh, services.

11:10 Whereas with our product, it's for people who, who didn't have a plan and it gives them a new, a new opportunity to actually have a plan and set their minds at ease so that instead of worrying about whether, um, they're going to, to run out of funds or if they're going to have to, to move, uh, to change their, their lifestyle, um, they don't have to do that. And they can actually, um, you know, spend quality time with their, with their families and their, and their friends and, uh, enjoy living their life. This changes. I think it really is how it should be, you know, when you get to that stage in life. Um, and you've worked hard and you've, and you've saved and you've, you know, that, uh, you, you're entitled, I think, to, uh, to enjoy that period of life.

11:56 How in the world did you decide or come up with this to, to say, hey, we can do this, you know, as a company or, you know, or we can create this and it will, it will continue to sustain itself? Well, I mean, that's a great question. I mean, to be honest, it was, it was pretty difficult to, to, to explain this initially to, to a lot of people in the insurance industry because they thought, you know, there's no way you can do this. Um, it's, you know, it's so new. Um, and you know, really what drove me personally, and I think drove a lot of the people involved is, is that personal connection with, um, with people like Betsy, who I mentioned, and, and also with our own families.

12:42 In fact, what often companies, when they have projects to develop products, they give them, um, code names. And with this particular development of reliable living plan, we had the code name project mom. And I know that whenever I was, you know, working long hours on this, as well as everybody on our, on our team. And, and that there, there are many people involved. We would think about our own parents, our own mothers who were aging and, and think about how this was really something that we were, that we were doing for them. So a lot of our, um, I guess a lot of our motivation I'd say would be, would be personal. And, and, and that's, that's really the difference that,

13:31 um, it's something that, you know, well, even an actuary would want to buy. And, um, and that's, that's, that's pretty rare. Well, and I think an actuary is going to be a tough sell. Am I right? Absolutely. These are, these are very discerning people. I mean, one of the other things I, I didn't mention is that we, again, we try to make it simple, but normally with an insurance policy, when someone tries to buy one, it can take a couple of months to get the policy. There's a lot of, a lot of, um, underwriting and various things that go on. We've done something very, very unique with the reliable living plan. A person can actually have a policy in their hands in 24 hours. And that's important for people, uh, and families to know that they can get that coverage

14:20 and there's no maximum age. There are no health exclusions and they can have a policy in their hands in 24 hours, which is, which is, you know, again, unheard of in our industry. It's remarkable. Yeah. So, I mean, George, let's just go through this one more time. And, and, and again, we're talking with George Graziani, who was instrumental in creating the reliable living plan. And when, what, and you just sort of said it, it, it's a, it, you, there are no age requirement, well, age requirement, 65 or older. And, um, let's take it from there, John, just, or George, and, and describe for me what it is and how we can learn more about it. Well, it's a, it's a long-term care insurance and an immediate need long-term care insurance

15:08 for people who are 65 years of age or older. There's no maximum age who require assistance with two or more activities of daily living. And these are not necessarily medical conditions. These are just basic things like eating, dressing, bathing, toileting, consonants, and transferring, or they have some memory problems or cognitive impairment. And the way it works is it's a, it, single premium. So that the customer or their family, their adult children quite often pays a single premium. So they make one single payment to us. And then we pay a monthly benefit to them starting 30 days later, so long as they require and receive

15:55 care for essentially the rest of their, their, their life. And it's a, they know how much they're getting and that benefit payment can never run out. It's, it's reliable. That's part of why we called it reliable living plan. It's, it's a reliable benefit that's not exposed to any market volatility or anything like that. It's provided by AmeriCo Financial Life and Annuity Insurance Company, which is an A rated, A and best insurance company. It's also, um, it's also a product that's about living. So again, it's, you don't have to worry about outliving your, your, your funds because you know, you're going to be receiving this

16:43 known fixed amount benefit every month. And it's a plan. It's a plan for, so that 90% of people who didn't have a plan for, uh, for long-term care or assisted living, they, they didn't buy any traditional coverage, but they wish they had. And I think it's too late for them. And we wanted to give them a second chance at that and allow them to buy, um, something that would actually give them a plan and, uh, and provide them with the, those benefit payments so that they could, uh, focus on more important things like enjoying their, enjoying their life and their time with their family and friends. Again, the first step is go to reliablelivingplan.com, reliablelivingplan.com, all one,

17:30 and, or call 833-867-1865. Uh, either way, you're going to be able to learn some great information about the plan and, uh, how it could fit into your life. Because I think, you know, with baby boomers retiring every day, it'd be, this is going to become a bigger deal than it is already. And, and my guess is the industry is going to take notice and, uh, and embrace this with, with open arms. That's, that's so true. I think you, you said it, you said it better than I could, Steve. That's exactly, that's exactly the case. Well, George, thank you so much. I appreciate all your time today. Thank you, Steve. And thanks to your listeners. Thanks again to George Graziani, senior VP and head of senior immediate needs and actuary at Swiss Re. To learn more about the

18:17 Reliable Living Plan, simply visit reliablelivingplan.com. For the Financial Safari News Network, I'm Steve Sedahl.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 You're listening to the Financial Safari News Network. Each and every week I talk to very interesting people, and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me, that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned, folks, and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Wissens. For the Financial Safari News Network, I'm Steve Sedahl. Tis the season, the shopping season that is, and it appears Americans are feeling confident this year with one survey predicting consumers will spend approximately $728 on holiday gifts and other holiday activities. But the nation's shopping centers are doing more than just tracking how much we spend. They're also looking at where we're spending our holiday dollars.

00:48 Joining me today with the results of a survey is Tom McGee, President and CEO of the International Council of Shopping Centers. Tom, what's one of the takeaways from the survey this year? Our International Council of Shopping Centers forecast is for a 3.8% growth year over year from 2016. You have a strong economy, a good job market, rising consumer sentiment. Obviously, retail is the ultimate consumer-facing industry. So when you have those characteristics, I think it supports the concept of a strong holiday season. And despite a lot of the perception that's in the marketplace, physical stores will still dominate as a total percentage of retail sales. And so we expect $670 billion of total retail sales to happen over the holiday season.

01:37 About $570 billion of that will happen in the store with the balance happening online. So there will be growth in both segments as a percentage online. Obviously, it gets a lot of press because of the percentage of growth that it has. But the vast majority of absolute dollars still happen in a physical store. 90% of all retail sales in this country still happen in a physical store. You know, I think we lose sight of that. And it's, I mean, you can't get around it, really. Their stores are there and we go, right? I mean, that's what happens. And even though we hear, like you said, media, we talk about, you know, the biggest Black Friday ever. It's going to exceed retail and Cyber Monday. But when it comes down to it, the bottom line is the bottom line. Well, the bottom line is the bottom line. And, you know, U.S. Census Bureau numbers don't lie. So 90% of all sales in this country happen in a physical store.

02:25 Matter of fact, in yesterday's Financial Press and the Wall Street Journal, that was quoted for the U.S. Census Bureau. So we're clearly operating in an environment where there is a lot of change and trends that are impacting retail technology. Not in this concept just online, but the access to technology, the access to information is clearly informing the consumer and providing a lot of price transparency. Major demographic change is happening in the country with a rising millennial population and a baby boomer population that's transitioning out of their prime consumption years. And, of course, you just have changing consumer expectations, a real premium placed upon experience. You know, those retailers that do a really good job of offering a unique experience when you walk through those doors, shopping centers that offer an experience when you walk into that shopping center,

03:14 are going to be those that do best over this holiday season and, quite frankly, in the long run. Service, merchandise, price, those are tried and true. Timeless qualities in retail. And those retailers that do a good job of investing in their physical channel as well as their digital channel but offer great service, great pricing, great product are going to do well. Do you think retail as a whole was sort of late to the table when it came to Internet? They didn't think it was going to be as big a deal? You know, I don't know if they didn't think it was going to be as big of a deal, but I don't know that I think certainly people and I think maybe society kind of underestimated the big impact of what technology was going to do to lots of different industries, retail being obviously one of them.

03:59 I mean, the big thing that it's done, I think, has really created a lot of price transparency and ultimately a real premium upon a curated experience. We've all become accustomed by picking up our smartphone and having information that's particularly tailored to us, whether it's the stocks we follow, the sports scores we follow, or what have you. And so that cascades itself into every aspect of life, including in the retail environment. And so you do see a greater premium placed upon as a consumer wanting to have better service, wanting to have something that's unique and different, because we have grown to expect that. And so I think those retailers that do that, and you think of a retailer on one end like an Apple that provides a unique experience because you get to touch and interact with the technology.

04:46 On the other hand, you look at a retailer like a HomeGoods or a TJ Maxx that offer this treasure hunt quality to find something unique at a great price. They're both experiences. They're both very different. But those are what drives foot traffic into those stores because they offer that great experience. Well, you talk about that treasure hunt. That's a lot of what I think, you know, I think when you talk about baby boomers, I think that's a lot of what they look for, isn't it? I think baby boomers, but also millennials. You know, millennials are very price conscious. They've grown up with a lot of student debt. And so actually, based upon many of the studies that we've done, millennials in particular are quite price conscious and really look for a deal. They're very focused upon pricing and quality. So that discount store mentality is something that certainly will live on.

05:35 I think it will, yeah. And what other kinds of things are malls doing or shopping centers doing to attract us to come for this holiday season? A lot of folks on dining, entertainment, movie theaters, services within shopping centers. Holiday time period is also a big time to go to the movies, usually big releases. This year, of course, you're going to have Star Wars The Last Jedi that'll be released in December. That's going to drive a lot of traffic, probably a lot of people eating out as well. That meets the needs of millennials and baby boomers as well, both of whom are pre- or post-kids and like to spend a lot of time on entertainment. Do you expect a big rush at the end for the procrastinators out there? There's a lot of us like that. I think there's always a big rush at the end. And I think that's kind of human nature.

06:20 Super Saturday, which is a Saturday right before Christmas, is always the biggest shopping day of the year. And I think that will be, in fact, the case this year. Tom, I appreciate all your time today. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks again to Tom McGee, president and CEO of the International Council of Shopping Centers. For the Financial Safari News Network, I'm Steve Sedahl.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 You're listening to the Financial Safari News Network. Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Wissens. For the Financial Safari News Network, I'm Steve Sedahl. Holiday shopping is in full swing and both online and brick and mortar retailers are hoping for a big shopping season. In fact, one survey is predicting we'll spend approximately $728 on holiday gifts and other holiday activities. But where those dollars are spent is what retailers and shopping centers are concerned about. Tom McGee is president and CEO of the International Council of Shopping Centers

00:49 and he says yes, internet shopping is on the rise, but... There will be growth in both segments as a percentage online. Obviously gets a lot of press because of the percentage of growth that it has, but the vast majority of absolute dollars still happen in a physical store. 90% of all retail sales in this country still happen in a physical store. McGee adds that retail sales this year will reach $670 billion, with $570 billion happening in stores and shopping centers, the rest online. He says we as a culture still like that retail experience. And you think of a retailer on one end like an apple that provides a unique experience because you get to touch and interact with the technology. On the other hand, you look at a retailer like a HomeGoods or a TJ Maxx that offer this treasure hunt quality

01:35 to find something unique at a great price. They're both experiences. They're both very different, but those are what drives foot traffic into those stores because they offer that great experience. McGee says shopping centers are offering more dining and entertainment experiences to help drive traffic. He adds that the procrastinators among us will help put the cherry on top of this holiday shopping season. There's always a big rush at the end, and I think that's kind of human nature. Super Saturday, which is a Saturday right before Christmas, is always the biggest shopping day of the year, and I think that will be, in fact, the case this year. Thanks again to Tom McGee, President and CEO of the International Council of Shopping Centers. For the Financial Safari News Network, I'm Steve Sedol.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Being a professional athlete is more than just being good at your chosen sport. It takes hard work and discipline. And joining me today is 26-year-old Alexis Love. She's an Olympic hopeful and is on Team USA track and field. She holds numerous records and is currently training for the 2018 World Indoor Championships in March and has her eye on the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. Alexis, welcome. So when did you first get interested in being an athlete? It's funny because I just realized this year, I'm like, wow, I've been running track for a total of 14 years. I started when I was younger and I went on to high school and being on the varsity track team there. And then from high school, I attended Murray State University on a full-ride scholarship. And then just this year makes about four years that I've been running professionally. Wow.

00:46 I mean, you've been doing this for more than half your life, Darnier. Yeah, I have. Yeah. So, I mean, you have really accomplished a lot. And, you know, we're talking about, you know, student-athletes and really what they have to go through. How soon do colleges start looking at student-athletes and saying, hmm, maybe somebody I want to have come to my school? Right. You know, I think recruiters typically start to look around your sophomore, junior year. And, I mean, that was back in 2009, so it may be sooner than that since I've graduated. But they start looking when you're pretty early. Those scouts, I mean, if you're a big name and you're doing what you need to do out there on the field or on the track, they'll find a way to get to you. They keep their eyes on you for a while.

01:32 Yeah. Well, that's kind of going to be exciting at some level to say, hey, you know, I'm good. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's definitely something to look forward to. It's always that end state where you're like, hey, this is where I want to go. But even to know, you know, that recruiters want you, it just says a lot about you. And it just gives you that motivation to keep going forward and just know that if you're getting recruited, then you're with some of the best. And there's a certain expectation, too, that you keep striving to be better, knowing that, you know, somebody's looking out, looking at your back, saying, hmm, there's potential here. Oh, yeah, of course. Of course. I mean, I always, I never take that for granted. That's something that, you know, I'm very passionate about. I'm like, look, I can always be better. And I know that someone is always looking up to me.

02:18 You know, I'm very active in the community as far as being a mentor. And that's what keeps me going, you know, even on those hard days, because people look at me now and they say, you know, hey, Alexis, I know you're an elite professional athlete. And they ask me if it comes easy. And I'm like, no, if anything, I feel like it's two times harder. But I always have, you know, that motivation to where, hey, I know someone else is watching me. Someone else is coming up. And they're going to look to me. And, you know, that's what keeps me going and motivated. So when you say you're a mentor, I mean, so, I mean, how young do kids sort of come to you and say, hey, I want to be like you? I mean, even, well, I also speak at different elementary schools. So I even have kindergartners. Or, I mean, it starts even from the age of five or six. It starts young. Right.

03:04 So there's this whole perception, I think, that some people have, you know, that, oh, a college athlete, full ride scholarship, this is a breeze. They, you know, they can do it in their sleep. But you're telling me that's not how it is. No, not at all. Because some people do have that perception to where they're on a full ride scholarship so they can just relax and kick their feet up. I'm like, you know, I can honestly say this. While attending Murray State University, even as a freshman and being a student athlete, it just teaches you, you know, certain things about life as far as how to value your time. You know, you have to master time management. Because there were times where I had 10-page papers due. But then that may be the same weekend as the Ohio Valley Conference meet. And by me being, you know, a team captain and one of the runners on the team that would carry, you know, my weight and most of the points, it always went hand in hand.

03:55 Like, it was very hard. There were some days where we have to wake up, you know, throughout the week at 6 o'clock in the morning just to run the stadiums or go lift weights. And so when you put that together, plus I worked a part-time job and was attending classes. And then at night you have to do homework as well and go to study hall. It was a lot of work. So, no, it was not easy. It still isn't. It doesn't sound like it is. But you're aspiring to be really the fastest woman in the world. Is that where you see yourself? Of course. And how much of that is, you know, we talk about the law of attraction. We talk about, you know, believing and all of that. But how much of that is part of what you do, that whole visualization and I'm going to be able to do this and believing that you can do it? Well, you know, for me, I'm big on vision boards.

04:45 I make one every year. And that's basically where I have this big poster in my room and I print out, you know, pictures. I'll get different clippings from newspaper articles or magazines. And I put exactly on there where I see myself that year, the next year and five, ten years. And so that way I wake up every morning and I spend time and I meditate and I look at that board so I know that, hey, this is where I want to be. And these are the things that I need to accomplish. And even talking about visualization, before every race, the night before a track meet, what I usually do is even when I lay down at night, because my adrenaline is pumping and I can't get any rest. I replay that race over and over in my head. But the ending is always the same. So it's me crossing that finish line first. So when race day comes, I have nothing to think about because I've already visualized myself winning a race. So I even take it to the extent where, you know, in my bedroom, I have sticky notes on the mirror like, hey, you're number one.

05:35 You're already the fastest woman in the world. Because if I and I always tell my mentees this when I speak, if I'm going to go out there and do something, whether it be sports, political, whatever the case may be, I want to be the best at it. Because if not, you're just doing it to do it. So strive to be the best at whatever you're doing. And that's what I live by. That's fantastic. Who inspired you as an athlete growing up? Who inspired me as an athlete growing up? I would have to say Allison Felix. She's one of the best, if not the best, short sprinter, in my opinion. And even now she's still competing. And just to know that she's my idol and I've seen her run on TV and then to get to a point in my life where I was just a junior in college and I ended up, you know, running against her.

06:21 So Allison Felix was that one. So as much as you, you know, are the winning and you've got that optimism, how do you deal with the letdowns? Because there's got to be some too, right? Oh, of course. But you know what I've learned in life is that, you know, it's not about the letdowns and, you know, the races that you don't win. And it's about, you know, how you respond to adversity and how you pick yourself back up. Because, you know, and even in this life, there's no one that is perfect or no perfect situation. And I've even learned for me, speaking from the runner side, there is not a perfect race either. So I know that there will be days like that. But the way that I keep myself up with this, just knowing and believing that I won't always be in that place. Like even when I feel let down, I know that there's always tomorrow.

07:08 And with that being another tomorrow, then I have another beginning and another chance to turn that thing around and not stay down. So I do have those days, trust me, but I don't stay in that place. Of course, of course. Again, you must inspire people all around you. I mean, you said that you were the leader on the team and they expect that of you. But you seem to embrace that role and really do it well. Oh, I do, of course. I mean, being a leader, to me, I mean, it's an honor because they could have chosen anyone else on the team. And even to know, you know, I did that in high school and even to go on and do that in college and be a team captain. And so, you know, I take pride in that because I think to be a leader, it takes a special person. Not only that, but it takes a person who has, you know, been through things in life and has, you know, they've struggled, but they found a way to rise above it.

07:57 And so with me, I think leading comes with experience. And with that experience, I'm able to share with others around me. I have a positive impact on them. So, yeah. So what's next for you? You said you're training for an event in March. Sure. So next year is the Indoor World Championships, which is huge for me because I have not run indoors since college, which was about four years ago. So I'm very excited because it's something new. It's something I'm familiar with, but I haven't touched the indoor surface in a very long time. So for me, I'm very excited about that. It gives me that opportunity to make a real indoor team for my first time. And that's what I'm training for now, full time. So when you say training full time, what's a day in the life of Alexa's love like? Well, see, I also work part time.

08:43 So I wake up every day at 5 a.m. And I go to work. I work a top security job. I majored in criminal justice while it's in the Murray State. So after work, I go to the track and I have my coach who meets me there. And what we'll do, we'll warm up and then we'll go through our drills. And then we'll actually do the workout. And after the running workout, we'll go to the gym to do the lifting portion. So for me, I have long days. I don't complain because I'm used to it. And that's why that goes back to that question of, you know, the perception of it, of college being easy for student athletes. So I've realized that everything I went through at Murray State, it has given me, you know, the certain tools and resources and a strength to be able to do what I'm doing now.

09:28 Because, you know, the average professional athlete would ideally have, you know, a big contract. And I have not signed yet officially. So for me, you know, I also work part-time and train full-time. So it's a lot of work because, you know, people look at the Olympics, but they forget about all the other races throughout the other year. It's like year-round, we're still competing. You know, my season may start this January. It may not end until August. So I have long seasons. I have long days. But what matters is that it all works out and it's definitely worth it. Absolutely. So when you say you majored in criminal justice, is that something you see yourself doing, you know, 15, 20 years from now? Oh, of course. You know, I have a bachelor's in criminal justice and I minored in social work.

10:14 And for me, my other passion is just giving back. I love our youth. I love our children. So I may end up doing something where I'm working closely with children and somewhat being a grade school counselor, something of that nature. But of course. And you're doing that even now, right? I mean, you say you mentor kids. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Of course. I mean, and that's the beauty of it all. You know, track gives me that flexibility to where I can train, but then I can also work in my field and have that hand in hand. Always have a backup plan, even when you know that you're starting about the road that you're on now. I do want to mention that if someone would like to keep track of my races, speaking engagements, if they would like to request me to speak or be a mentor, anything of that nature, I do have a website with that information.

11:03 And it's www.motivatewithlove.com. Thank you so much for your time today and for the inspiration. I think you've inspired a lot of us. Right. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Thanks again to Alexis Love and to follow her progress as she trains for the Olympics, you can visit motivatewithlove.com. For the Financial Safari News Network, I'm Steve Sedahl.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Being a professional athlete is more than just being good at your chosen sport. It takes hard work and discipline. 26-year-old Alexis Love is an Olympic hopeful and is on Team USA track and field. She holds numerous records and is currently training for the 2018 World Indoor Championships in March and has her eye on the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. Love says her hard work caught the eyes of scouts early in her high school career. You know, I think recruiters typically start to look around your sophomore, junior year, but they start looking when you're pretty early. Those scouts, I mean, if you're a big name and you're doing what you need to do out there on the field or on the track, they'll find a way to get to you. They keep their eyes on you for a while. She graduated from high school in Palmetto, Florida, and was awarded a full-ride scholarship to Murray State University.

00:45 She says the life of a college athlete is no cakewalk. You know, you have to master time management because there were times where I had 10-page papers due, but then that may be the same weekend as the Ohio Valley Conference meet. And by me being, you know, a team captain and one of the runners on the team that would carry, you know, my weight and most of the points, it was very hard. There were some days where we have to wake up, you know, throughout the week at 6 o'clock in the morning just to run the stadiums or go lift weights. And so when you put that together, plus I worked a part-time job and was attending classes, and then at night you have to do homework as well and go to study hall, it was a lot of work. So, no, it was not easy. Love says her goal is to be the fastest woman in the world and believes she will attain that goal. I'm big on vision boards.

01:32 I make one every year, and that's basically where I have this big poster in my room, and I print out, you know, pictures, or I'll get different clippings from newspaper articles or magazines, and I put exactly on there where I see myself that year, the next year, and five, ten years. And so that way I wake up every morning and I spend time and I meditate and I look at that board so I know that, hey, this is where I want to be and these are the things that I need to accomplish. And even talking about visualization, before every race, the night before a track meet, what I usually do is even when I lay down at night, because my adrenaline is pumping and I can't get any rest, I replay that race over and over in my head. But the ending is always the same. It's me crossing that finish line first. So when race day comes, I have nothing to think about because I've already visualized myself winning a race. She says her days are long, but the rewards are worth it.

02:19 So I wake up every day at 5 a.m., and I go to work. I work a top security job. I majored in criminal justice while attending Murray State. So after work, I go to the track, and I have my coach who meets me there. And what we'll do, we'll warm up, and then we'll go through our drills, and then we'll actually do the workout. And after the running workout, we'll go to the gym to do the lifting portion. So for me, I have long days. I don't complain because I'm used to it. In addition to training full-time and working part-time, Alexis still finds time to mentor young people. To follow her progress as she trains for the Olympics, you can visit MotivateWithLove.com. For the Financial Safari News Network, I'm Steve Sedahl.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Wissens. If you're facing the reality that you currently are about to become a caregiver, whether you plan for it or not, cruising through caregiving is a down-to-earth and authoritative resource. Jennifer Fitzpatrick has been through nearly every possible scenario in the caregiving spectrum, both professionally and personally. And she offers advice on how to be a responsible, loving caregiver without being overcome by guilt, exhaustion or worry.

00:45 On a scale of 0 to 10, 0 being no stress and feeling like your stress level of your head is going to explode. If you're at an 80, we can get you down to a 60. If you make some small changes. So that was the whole goal of writing down all these. Every chapter has a different tip in cruising through caregiving about how to reduce your stress and provide good care for your loved one. But get help and don't let it overtake your entire life. She says the financial burden can really take its toll and not just on the caregiver. If you have a parent or a grandparent that you want to help taking care of, a lot of people start questioning, well, if I work, and again, most women are the caregivers, men are caregivers too, but more often it's a female. Does, do I retire prematurely? Do I quit my job? So, or do I go part-time?

01:33 And that can have an impact on our own financial prosperity in our later years. Fitzpatrick says checking with an elder law attorney can help you avoid problems and protect assets. For example, there may be two spouses and one is in need of nursing home care, and you don't want the other to lose the house. So, an elder law attorney can make sure that the person who's ill can maybe apply for Medicaid, get approved for Medicaid, but the spouse that's still living in the community gets to keep their car, they get to keep their home, they get to keep a certain amount of cash. So, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't bankrupt the family. So, if anybody is listening and they're trying to figure out how to pay for things, I think at least a 15-minute consult with an elder law attorney, if you have any assets, is worthwhile.

02:21 And she says look for a certified elder law attorney. The best place that you can go is NALA. So, it's naela.org, and you plug in your zip code, and it'll fill out a bunch of different options in your geographic area for a certified elder law attorney. That website, again, is naela.org for the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys. Fitzpatrick adds that caregiving is a big job, and you don't have to do it alone. Don't do it by yourself. Get plenty of help. And think really hard about your finances and how that's going to impact caregiving. Don't spend money you don't have on caregiving. There's lots of resources out there that can help you. The book is Cruising Through Caregiving, Reducing the Stress of Caring for Your Loved Ones by Jennifer Fitzpatrick.

03:11 Visit cruisingthroughcaregiving.com to learn more and download a free chapter. For the Financial Safari News Network, I'm Steve Sedahl.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Hello and welcome. I'm Steve Sedahl for the Financial Safari News Network. If you're facing the reality that you currently or are about to become a caregiver, whether you plan for it or not, cruising through caregiving is a downed-to-earth and authoritative resource. Jennifer Fitzpatrick is here today and she's been through nearly every possible scenario in the caregiving spectrum, both professionally and personally. She offers advice on how to be a responsible, loving caregiver without being overcome by guilt, exhaustion, or worry. Jennifer, welcome. So what made you write the book? Well, I've worked in this field since I was 16 years old and I'm in my mid-40s now, so I've got a lot of experience in working with caregivers that were losing themselves. They were stressing themselves out financially, mental health-wise, physically, and what I try

00:50 to tell caregivers is wherever you are today, so on a scale of zero to 10, zero being no stress, and 100, feeling like your stress level, your head's going to explode. If you're at an 80, we can get you down to a 60 if you make some small changes. So that was the whole goal of writing down all these. Every chapter has a different tip in cruising through caregiving about how to reduce your stress and provide good care for your loved one, but get help and don't let it overtake your entire life. Because it certainly can. I mean, I watched my mother take care of her mother, you know, my grandmother, and there was a lot of stress going through that at times and a lot of frustration that happened. Well, you know, it's really different than it was, you know, for us, our parents taking care of our grandparents and the previous generations, because in the past,

01:38 many women actually didn't work or they worked part-time. And nowadays, and so they would take care of small children, they'd take care of family members that were sick in the family, the elderly loved ones. And now it's really becoming a financial issue for a lot of families, because if you have a parent or a grandparent that you want to help taking care of, a lot of people start questioning, well, if I work, and again, most women are the caregivers, men are caregivers too, but more often it's a female. Does, do I retire prematurely? Do I quit my job? So, or do I go part-time? And that can have an impact on our own financial prosperity in our later years when, you know, that can have a spin-off effect for our kids and our adult kids when they need to take care of us. Well, of course,

02:27 I mean, you know, in the world that I live in, it's all about getting ready for retirement, retirement, planning for retirement, and there's a lot of budgetary concerns. So when you suddenly throw this in there, you don't want that to destroy you financially. Absolutely. I remember when my grandmother was really having some health problems, and we started looking at, did she need to go to assisted living? And I know that my dad and one of my aunts, they had talked about opening up their 401ks and IRAs to fund her assisted living. And because of all my experience, I told them they can't do that. I said, please don't do that. We're going to find other options because that can have a detrimental effect. You know, for my dad, you know, that would have potentially made an impact

03:13 on my sister and brother and I. For my aunt and uncle, that would have had an impact on my cousin. And so it was important that we find other ways to take good care of her without compromising their financial security. And how are, how did you come up with that? Well, one of the things that we did is in our family, at least, we had a lot of support. So there were about 11 of us who contributed every month to home care fees. So everybody contributed what they could afford. We, we, we limited to everybody that was over 30 years old, because we figured they were financially stable enough to contribute each month. And everyone gave whatever they could afford, what could they contribute. And we were able to get a good amount of home care in with my grandmother. And then we had a schedule

04:01 of family and friends who would stop by or come over to help with her needs. And actually, it did get to a point where she was going to need nursing home. And we looked into applying for medical assistance. And for a lot of people, if they have any assets, the best thing that they could possibly do. So if you own a home or say you, you have a, an IRA worth, you know, 50,000 or a hundred thousand or way more than that, you want to talk to an elder law attorney and to plan how to apply for Medicaid. So the best place that you can go is NALA. So it's N-A-E-L-A.org. And you plug in your zip code and it'll fill out a bunch of different options in your geographic area for a certified elder law

04:48 attorney. These are attorneys that are experts in helping folks to plan. Now, just to throw out an example, sometimes you've got a spouse, two spouses, and one might need nursing home care, for example. We don't want that other spouse to lose their house. So an elder law attorney can make sure that the person who's ill can maybe apply for Medicaid, get approved for Medicaid, but the spouse that's still living in the community gets to keep their car, they get to keep their home, they get to keep a certain amount of cash. So it doesn't, you know, it doesn't bankrupt the family. So if anybody is listening and they, they're trying to figure out how to pay for things, I think at least a 15 minute consult with an elder law attorney, if you have any assets, is worthwhile. That's great advice. And what was

05:33 that website again? It was... Sure. It's NALA. It's the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, and it's www.naela.org, and you just plug in your zip code. And I really like for people to utilize a certified elder law attorney. Anyone can call themselves an elder law attorney, but a certified elder law attorney actually has to take lots and lots of classes. They truly understand the issues that are important to older adults and their families. That's terrific. We're talking with Jennifer Fitzpatrick, who is the author of Cruising Through Caregiving, Reducing the Stress of Caring for Your Loved One. And one of the things, you know, we're coming up into the holiday season, and that's a tough time, you know, for a lot of reasons. You know, people struggle through the holidays, but especially if

06:22 you're caring for, you know, someone older, that's, that makes it even a little more stressful. Yeah, the holiday season sure can be stressful, because sometimes you're seeing people that you haven't seen all year, and you might notice changes with an older parent or an older loved one in the family. It's a great time to, to look at that and see if anything is different. If you go to that loved one's home, I think one of the best things to do is look in the refrigerator. Do they have proper amount of groceries? Does it look like they've been eating? Even if the holiday party or the holiday meal is not at the older loved one's home, try to make it a point to visit. You're going to get a lot of information. How, how kept is the home? Is it clean? Does it look like the person has been sleeping in the living room versus their bedroom? Sometimes when older adults start to lose independence,

07:11 they start limiting the parts of the house that they use. So even if the big holiday function isn't at the older loved one's home, just go make a stop, you know, drop off some flowers or, you know, drop off a pie or something like that. Just take a look around their home. And for a lot of older adults, they're doing great. Everything's fine. Their independence is intact. But if you do have a loved one who is starting to decline, taking a look at where they live is going to give you some clues. Well, and I think that's, that's too is great advice because sometimes the changes is, it becomes very subtle and then suddenly you go there and you realize, oh my gosh, this is, this is a problem. Right. And what you, what sometimes you see happen is that if you have a lot of local

07:57 people that are, you know, maybe you have a sister that's, that's right there in North Carolina and she is helping mom a lot. Maybe a brother flies in, say from Florida and he starts to notice, wow, I haven't seen mom in six months. Things really look different. Sometimes when you are the one that's around that loved one all the time, you don't notice it because it's, it's a very gradual, but sometimes family and friends that come in and they see the loved one, they see changes that seem more dramatic because they haven't seen them in quite a while. Yeah, exactly. Now, one of the chapters that I found interesting was the doctor doesn't know everything. Well, thank you. And that's not any insult to doctors because I love doctors. But we, but it's actually a, it's a helpful tip for not

08:46 just the patient, but for the doctor. The doctor's time is very limited. Doctors are great at prescribing, they're great at diagnosing, they're great at making sure that you, you know, helping you keep up your health and referring you to a specialist, but they do not know everything about community resources. And so for example, say your loved one is diagnosed with Alzheimer's, you need to find help outside the doctor's office. The doctor may or may not know to refer you to the Alzheimer's Association or tell you to go to a support group. They don't have all the answers for those types of things. And so like, again, there's a nonprofit for every condition. So say your loved one has congestive heart failure, maybe get hooked up with the American Heart Association, find out what kind of classes they

09:33 have, find out what kinds of services that they might be able to provide to help support you. And always your local area agency on aging is always a great place to go because they are sort of your, your first stop. If you call your, if you go to N4A, so it's Nancy, the number four A is in Apple, N4A.org, and you plug in your zip code, it'll tell you where your local area agency on aging is. And that every county or cluster of counties in the U.S. has one and it's funded by the federal government and the local government. And it just provides support and services to older adults and their families. So if you're not sure where to start, that's a great place. But yeah, we don't, the doctor has a big job and we just don't want to put too much pressure on him or her.

10:21 So seek out community resources that can help you. Well, and I think too, that, that even, you know, that generation, the older generation looks at a doctor as almost godlike and whatever they say is, is true. That's, and, and, and it's hard to get beyond that because sometimes you have to question things. Well, right. Well, and that's, that's really the point. So, you know, if you ever feel like things aren't working out, you know, if your symptoms are getting worse, things aren't going the way that you want them to, you may want to get a second opinion, but you're right. A lot of older adults do really revere the doctor. That's changing with generations. When the baby boomers are coming up and the oldest baby boomers are in their early seventies, they are looking at the doc as more of a partner. So we want to respect the doctor and certainly understand that the oldest older adults in our

11:11 society really do revere the doctor, but the doctor is important and the doctor should be in the loop, but they're not the only one that can help you. Physical therapists can help you. Psychologists, social workers can help you. Nurses can help you. And again, like those community groups that I was talking about, they can be invaluable. And if you ask your doctor, most of the time, they're going to say, yeah, you have cancer. Call the American Cancer Society, see what service they have. Most of the time, they're not going to be against it. It's just going to make their job easier, the more help that you have from other resources. Absolutely. Well, and again, cruising through caregiving, your book, that's a great resource as well. And I enjoyed the chapter. It was chapter two, let yourself off the hook. And I wish my mom was around so I could tell her that. Yeah, we oftentimes just put a lot of pressure on ourselves. You can't be the only one who's

12:03 caregiving. If you're the only one who's caregiving, you're going to get sick, whether it's physically sick, mental health wise, you may be suffer with depressive or anxiety symptoms. You want to also be really careful about making promises and saying the word never. You got to be real careful about that. You don't know what's going to happen. If your loved one is diagnosed with a chronic condition or any kind of illness that you have to help out with, it could be three months that you're helping them, or it could be five years or 10 years. So try not to speak in absolutes and always be open to course correcting whatever you decide to do today, whether it's, you know, moving your loved one in, or whether it's sending your loved one to an adult day center or hiring home care, know that you don't

12:52 have to make that permanent. You can always course correct because things change with your loved one's care. That's so true. And so Cruising Through Caregiving is a book available everywhere? Yeah, it's available everywhere books are sold. If you go to cruisingthroughcaregiving.com, you can get a free chapter download. And again, yeah, at Barnes & Noble retail stores nationwide, as well as amazon.com. The big thing is don't do it by yourself. Get plenty of help and think really hard about your finances and how that's going to impact caregiving. Don't spend money you don't have on caregiving. There's lots of resources out there that can help you. Thanks again to Jennifer Fitzpatrick. Her book is Cruising Through Caregiving, Reducing the Stress of Caring for Your Loved One. Visit cruisingthroughcaregiving.com to learn more

13:41 and download a free chapter. For the Financial Safari News Network, I'm Steve Sedahl.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. As they say in Game of Thrones, winter is coming. And as my guest, travel expert Melanie Fish says, bring it on and let's plan a vacation. Now's the time she says to plan that winter getaway. So if you're looking for some time on the slopes or hot cocoa around the fireplace, she's got some tips on getting the most for our money, especially when traveling with kids or grandkids. So how would we do that? I mean, you know, let's say you've got grandkids there, say 5, 10 and 14.

00:46 So vacation rentals are really the perfect choice for a multi-gen vacation as we call it when multiple generations of the family are traveling together. And that's for a couple reasons. One of the reasons is just the value. You get about twice the space at half the cost per person when you rent a vacation home over staying in a hotel. Sure. And then, of course, you have the room to spread out. Everyone gets their own bedroom. The kids can have a TV room down the hall. You have the kitchen so the family could gather and be together. There's also a bit of a cost savings there if you're cooking maybe breakfast at lunch at home and then going out for other meals. And then when we're talking about a winter vacation, I think it's really important for families to look at the interests of everyone in the group.

01:39 Actually, the first ski trip that we ever took with our small children was with my parents. And it was great because my parents didn't ski, but they were able to wander around the town and shop and enjoy their day. My kids went tubing sometimes instead of skiing with grandma and grandpa. And I got to go up on the mountain. And then I'm not going to lie, it was so nice to come off the hill at the end of the day. And sometimes my mom would have dinner all ready. So I think that's a great option for families. And so to be able to find the place that you're looking for, I mean, just pick a location. So let's say you want to go to northern Minnesota in January. Why, I'm not sure, but let's say you do. Let's say you do.

02:25 So what I would recommend is you go to a vacation rental site like VRBO.com and you put in your destination that you've chosen. You put in the dates that you want to travel. Then you can select how many people are going on the trip, how many bedrooms you want, and then you search. And it'll call up a list of all the available places that you can rent that are available for those dates. And then you can start narrowing it down by the amenities you're looking. Do you want a hot tub? I think you do. I think I do. If you're going to be in northern Minnesota. Yes, of course. Do you want a fireplace? Are you taking pets on this trip? That's one of the things you can choose. And then you start looking at the photographs and reading the reviews.

03:12 The reviews are so important to make sure that the experience that people are having on their trip really matches the description of the property that's there. And that's really, I think, the best way to find the perfect match for your family. I think you said on something earlier when you said something for everyone. And that's real important. I know. I mean, I've got seven grandkids. And I've done this kind of vacation with HomeAway and VRBO. And it absolutely is fantastic because you can find other things. I mean, kids can go play miniature golf. Other kids can go swimming. You know. I mean, it works out really well. Absolutely. And that also comes into play when you're choosing your destination. If you're not all hardcore skiers, you don't want to go to a resort that pretty much is the mountain and that's it.

03:59 Right. You want a town that has an ice skating rink and a fire pit so you can sit and watch the kids ice skate or go tubing or do some of these other fun activities. As a matter of fact, I thought it sounded fun. I saw that in Winter Park, Colorado, they offered dog sled rides. Oh, cool. How fun would that be for the family to do? So now it's only October. Is it too early to start planning that winter vacation? It's not too early. It's past time to start planning. I know it feels like it because you've just had your first pumpkin spice latte of the season. But it's really important to plan that winter ski vacation now. And here's why. HomeAway found that there's a spike in ski destinations the first week of fall. And by the end of November, 50% of the vacation rentals booked through the site in these ski destinations are already reserved.

04:53 Wow. And we're talking about these family getaways with multiple generations. And the bigger the houses come, the faster they book. Those larger homes book at the briskest pace. 50% of homes with four or more bedrooms are already reserved by mid-October. And that's for the whole ski season. That's through March. Oh, wow. So, Melanie, anything else you want to touch on that we haven't talked about, about just getting folks out for a winter's vacation? You know, it's fun to plan. And this is the time to do it, so you make sure you have the best selection. So get the family together. Figure out what you want to do and make those plans. Now, there is still some availability over the holidays. But we find that if you book right before or right after that holiday weekend, you'll find more availability and some better pricing.

05:43 Terrific. Melanie, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I appreciate you. Many thanks to travel expert for HomeAway, Melanie Fish. For more information, you can visit homeaway.com slash ski. For the Financial Safari, I'm Steve Sedahl.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. As they say in Game of Thrones, winter is coming. And as my guest, travel expert Melanie Fish says, bring it on and let's plan a vacation. Now's the time she says to plan that winter getaway. So if you're looking for some time on the slopes or hot cocoa around the fireplace, she's got some tips on getting the most for our money, especially when traveling with kids or grandkids. So how would we do that? I mean, you know, let's say you've got grandkids there, say 5, 10 and 14.

00:46 So vacation rentals are really the perfect choice for a multi-gen vacation as we call it when multiple generations of the family are traveling together. And that's for a couple reasons. One of the reasons is just the value. You get about twice the space at half the cost per person when you rent a vacation home over staying in a hotel. And then, of course, you have the room to spread out. Everyone gets their own bedroom. The kids can have a TV room down the hall. You have the kitchen so the family could gather and be together. There's also a bit of a cost savings there if you're cooking maybe breakfast at lunch at home and then going out for other meals. And then when we're talking about a winter vacation, I think it's really important for families

01:34 to look at the interests of everyone in the group. Actually, the first ski trip that we ever took with our small children was with my parents. And it was great because my parents didn't ski, but they were able to wander around the town and shop and enjoy their day. My kids went tubing sometimes instead of skiing with grandma and grandpa, and I got to go up on the mountain. And then I'm not going to lie, it was so nice to come off the hill at the end of the day, and sometimes my mom would have dinner all ready. So I think that's a great option for families. And so to be able to find the place that you're looking for, I mean, just pick a location. So let's say you want to go to northern Minnesota in January.

02:20 Why, I'm not sure, but let's say you do. Let's say you do. So what I would recommend is you go to a vacation rental site like VRBO.com, and you put in your destination that you've chosen. You put in the dates that you want to travel. Then you can select how many people are going on the trip, how many bedrooms you want, and then you search. And it'll call up a list of all the available places that you can rent that are available for those dates. And then you can start narrowing it down by the amenities you're looking. Do you want a hot tub? I think you do. I think I do. If you're going to be in northern Minnesota. Yes, of course. Do you want a fireplace? Are you taking pets on this trip?

03:06 That's one of the things you can choose. And then you start looking at the photographs and reading the reviews. The reviews are so important to make sure that the experience that people are having on their trip really matches the description of the property that's there. And that's really, I think, the best way to find the perfect match for your family. I think you said on something earlier when you said something for everyone, and that's real important. I know. I mean, I've got seven grandkids, and I've done this kind of vacation with HomeAway and VRBO, and it absolutely is fantastic because you can find other things. I mean, kids can go play miniature golf. Other kids can go swimming. I mean, it works out really well. Absolutely. And that also comes into play when you're choosing your destination.

03:53 If you're not all hardcore skiers, you don't want to go to a resort that pretty much is the mountain, and that's it. Right. If you want a town that has an ice skating rink and a fire pit so you can sit and watch the kids ice skate or go tubing or do some of these other fun activities. As a matter of fact, I thought it sounded fun. I saw that in Winter Park, Colorado, they offer dog sled rides. Oh, cool. How fun would that be for the family to do? So now it's only October. Is it too early to start planning that winter vacation? It's not too early. It's past time to start planning. I know it feels like it because you've just had your first pumpkin spice latte of the season, but it's really important to plan that winter ski vacation now, and here's why. So HomeAway found that there's a spike in ski destinations the first week of fall,

04:43 and by the end of November, 50% of the vacation rentals booked through the site in these ski destinations are already reserved. Wow. And we're talking about these family getaways with multiple generations, and the bigger the houses come, the faster they book. Those larger homes booked at the briskest pace. 50% of homes with four or more bedrooms are already reserved by mid-October, and that's for the whole ski season. That's through March. Oh, wow. So it really is time to start planning that winter vacation if you're going to have one. Well, it really is because it's the best selection, and you want to find the best match for your family, so you want to do that before these 45,000 mountainside vacation rentals are all snapped up.

05:31 And what other kinds of things can we expect? So, okay, let's say not really much into skiing, but I kind of like winter, and I like the activities. You said a skating rink might be something to look for. And are those kinds of things listed in the options for the homes, I mean, the activities around the area? Really, those property descriptions are so informative. The homeowners are really the experts on their area, so they can tell you it's just steps away from a shuttle stop, or we're right in town, so you can walk to the skating rink, or the best restaurants in town are right around the corner. I mean, they are really the experts on what's around, so reading those and reading the reviews really offer a lot of information. We've also compiled information about different ski resorts, which ones are best for families

06:18 and which ones might be more of a grown-up getaway, and we put that all together at homeaway.com slash ski. So if you're just at a place where you haven't even decided yet what your destination is, that's a good place to start. And obviously then you're negotiating with the homeowner. I mean, they have set rates, and it's all taken care of? They set their own rates. So when you go and look at the site, you'll see the cost per night, and then if you want to see what other fees are included, because you want to know what your all-in cost is. Right. So you click on Details, and it'll show you, okay, there's a cleaning fee involved. Here are the taxes that you're going to pay. And so you can see what that all-in cost is for your trip.

07:04 And you want to make sure that you're booking and paying through the site so that you're protected with the book with confidence guarantee. Oh, that makes sense, too. So here's one. How do you keep kids happy during the trip? Is it just making sure there's stuff to do? Well, one of the best ways to keep the whole family entertained is to keep your schedule full, but not too full. And I think part of that is getting a variety of activities on the agenda. So maybe you're going to ski school on some days, and on some days you're together as a family doing some of these fun activities we talked about. And let the kids have some say in what they want to do. One day on a ski vacation, my kids said they just wanted to build a snowman and do some sledding.

07:51 Well, that's a lot less expensive than buying that Lyft ticket, so I'm glad I asked them. Well, sure. And I think, too, when you start getting into that early teen kind of time, it's oftentimes they want to bring a friend along with them. And if that's okay, then they could have some time to do stuff, too. Well, a lot of these vacation rentals have great bunk rooms so multiple kids can stay in there. And I think it is okay to let kids have their own time and space to spread out a little bit. And so how do you get started? Do you just go to the website? Yeah, you can go to the website. And then if you already know where you want to go, you just type that in. So let's say you've decided that you want to go to Lake Tahoe. And you put that in. You put in your dates.

08:37 And then how many people are going on your trip. It'll show you a list of properties available. And then you start narrowing it down. You can put hearts next to the ones that you like the photos on that property. Or, ooh, that one has really good reviews. HomeAway will automatically sort the properties so that the properties with really good photos and good reviews and that are frequently booked will rise to the top to give you a better chance of finding that perfect match. Is there a general price range or does it vary? It varies. And the homeowners and the property managers set their prices. And you can set the price that you want to pay on the site so that it will only show you properties within your price range. And we've done a little math on this end.

09:23 And we've found that the average ski week stay in Steamboat, Colorado is really, I think, the value leader at $1,500 for a ski vacation. And then it ranges all the way up to Vail topped out at $2,900 is the average amount people are paying for a stay in a vacation rental. But the beautiful thing about renting a place for your whole family or group to stay is that you really have to look at the value of your price per person per night in a vacation home. And often when you do the math, it turns out that you're paying less than $50 a person per night in a lot of these ski vacation homes. I mean, $1,500 for a week's vacation in the whole house and everybody's, that seems pretty reasonable to me.

10:10 I think so. I think it's a pretty darn good deal. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, Melanie, anything else you want to touch on that we haven't talked about, about just getting folks out for a winter's vacation? You know, it's fun to plan, and this is the time to do it, so you make sure you have the best selection. So get the family together, figure out what you want to do, and make those plans. Now, there is still some availability over the holidays, but we find that if you book right before or right after that holiday weekend, you'll find more availability and some better pricing. Terrific. Melanie, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I appreciate you. Many thanks to travel expert for HomeAway, Melanie Fish. For more information, you can visit homeaway.com slash ski. For the Financial Safari, I'm Steve Sedahl. Thank you.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people, and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me, that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned, folks, and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. James Younger is an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker whose latest show, The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman, is airing on the National Geographic channel. The program takes us on a journey to find out what makes us tick and discovers that as much as we think we're different across the globe, there are things that unite us all. Coach Pete D’Arruda and I had a chance to talk with him about the show and how it all came together. The show is really kind of a search to understand what the common values all human beings have.

00:51 You know, what are the forces that shaped human society in all its different forms around the world? And I guess the mission of the show is to, we hope it shows people that we're not as divided and as different as we might think we are. You've got Morgan Freeman to help tell the story. That's pretty cool in and of itself. Well, Morgan is such a great leveler of people. I mean, everyone wants to talk to him, pretty much everyone. I mean, I think there was a 13-year-old boy in Ethiopia who'd never heard of him and wasn't that interested. But everyone else, you know, really wants to sit down and open up their heart to him and tell their stories. And, yeah, he is great. I would say one of those great seekers. You know, he's a truth seeker.

01:38 And so he's a perfect person to be at the forefront of the show. I'm 51 now, and I've been watching Morgan forever on TV and the movie screen. And I think he's played about every single part that's been available out there, from president all the way down to, who knows, like the bus driver, right? That's right. Or driving a car, exactly. He's played everyone, and he's from the humblest to the highest. He's acted all those roles. And, you know, as a human being, he is just a very straightforward, honest, well-meaning human being. You know, he's a great guy, very down to earth, and he wants to talk to people and hear their stories.

02:24 Well, the new series has been a tremendous success. And so what do we have coming forward in the series? Tell the listener about the series, by the way, on Nat Geo. It's on Nat Geo. There are six episodes. The first episode was about freedom. It was called The March for Freedom. The next episode was about war and peace, called The Fight for Peace. And the episode's coming up this week. One is about love. It's about how has love shaped the world. And then we have other episodes called Us and Them, which is about tribal divisions, how we get over tribalism. Another episode about power, how we share power, called The Power of Us. And then the final episode is The Rebel Spirit. It's about how, you know, the whole series is about human society. And the final episode is about how we remake human society every so often.

03:13 I don't know, maybe it's technology these days, but it seems like we're more tribal than ever, aren't we, as a society? Not just in this country, but worldwide. It does seem that way, doesn't it? But I don't think that's true. I think we're just more exposed. I think technology gives us more exposure. But it also offers ways to bridge the gap. I mean, I think, you know, we actually spoke to Evan Williams, who is one of the founders of Twitter. And he's since left, you know, left. It doesn't work there anymore. But when he founded that company, he was like, this is going to be great. It's going to need a lot of people to talk and have all kinds of dialogue. And we're going to empower people. And, you know, it didn't turn out the way they expected at all. It's almost like the Internet can bring out our worst qualities.

04:00 You know, it's like he uses the analogy of the car wreck. Like the car wreck is what makes people twist their necks around and watch. And people watch the terrible stuff on the Internet and follow that. But there's also great stories about how the Internet can allow people to bridge cultural divides. We interview in the film next week called Us and Them. We sat down and talked with Megan Phelps Roper, who grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church, which I don't know whether you know is kind of a notorious hate group. You know, she was out in the streets protesting against gays, protesting at military funerals, the most extreme form of kind of hate and division.

04:48 And she ended up, via social media, whilst campaigning and spreading this kind of venomous rhetoric, she ended up becoming friends with a Jewish man in Israel. And that conversation that they managed to start having after they stopped shouting at each other enabled her to change her life, leave the church, and try and undo all of this harm she'd done. That's pretty remarkable. Now, in the episode coming up, too, The Power of Love, you talk about from orphanages to battlefields. I mean, what a contrast. Yeah, I mean, love is probably the first human emotion that we experience. We see, you know, if we see our mother right after we're born,

05:34 or if we see the caregiver who looks after us, you know, you build this feeling of connection. And ultimately, that's what I think is probably the most powerful force inside all of us. We struggle to, you know, we strive to make a meaningful, lasting bond with people around us in the world. It's not just in families, though. It's in cities. It's in, you know, we just went to southern Ethiopia and saw a tribe who's bound together, and they even suffer greatly. They receive, like, lashings and whippings in order to show their love for their fellow tribespeople. And in the military, you know, soldiers have this great sense of really fellowship, which is a form of love for their fellow brothers and sisters in arms.

06:21 So love is a force that builds families. It builds cities. It builds nations. And ultimately, you know, it can even reach across nations. And people can, you know, you can feel that bond of love for a child who's suffering in a distant country and want to give to them because this is a very powerful force, probably the most powerful force in our lives. What was the most remarkable thing you found producing the series? I mean, there are some amazing stories. I mean, the thing that touches me probably the most is a woman in Rwanda who, her family was killed in the genocide of 1994.

07:07 She was a Tutsi. And, you know, a mob of Hutus had come to their village and chased them down and ended up killing the rest of her family, her children and her husband. Um, and 20 years later, she is now great friends with one of those killers. He approached her and asked for forgiveness. And she, um, she, after a couple of years was able to forgive him. And they now live in the same village and he comes and helps her with her cow every day and helps her around the house and they're friends. So I just, that's, that was probably the most remarkable story we came across. That truly is amazing. Well, the series is called The Story of Us and it's on Nat Geo Wednesdays at 9 p.m. Eastern.

07:53 And Morgan Freeman is doing, he's done an outstanding job in the episodes I've seen. I look forward to seeing more. I hope that people can, uh, re-watch this show because I think it really is hopeful. You know, we, we, as you said, we live in a time that seems to be getting worse. We seem to be fighting with one another inside the U.S., inside Europe, uh, you know, between, uh, us and North Korea. You would think that the world is, is going to hell in the handbasket. Um, but I think this series offers hope and that the, you know, as Bill Clinton quoted Martin Luther King in the series, says the arc of, the arc of, uh, history is long, but it bends towards justice. And I think the world is slowly becoming a better place for us to live in. Well, life is short, but temper fuses don't have to be.

08:41 And folks, that's The Story of Us, Wednesdays at 9 p.m. His name is James Younger, executive producer. James, thanks for your time today. Thank you. It was a pleasure talking to you both. Many thanks to James Younger, executive producer of the Nat Geo series, The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman. Visit Coach Pete Listens for more interviews on a variety of topics. For Coach Pete D’Arruda, I'm Steve Sedahl on the Financial Safari.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. James Younger is an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker whose latest show, The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman, is airing on the National Geographic channel. The show takes us on a journey to find out what makes us tick and discovers that as much as we think we're different across the globe, there are things that unite us all. The show is really a kind of a search to understand what the common values all human beings have. You know, what are the forces that shaped human society in all its different forms around the world?

00:51 And I guess the mission of the show is to, we hope it shows people that we're not as divided and as different as we might think we are. Younger says Morgan Freeman was a logical choice. Morgan is such a great leveler of people. I mean, everyone wants to talk to him. I would say one of those great seekers, you know, he's a truth seeker. The March of Freedom, the Texas around the world in search of a greater understanding of what freedom is. We meet the president of Rwanda, whose people have been able to make peace after a horrific civil war. A woman in Rwanda, who, her family was killed in the genocide of 1994. She was a Tutsi. And, you know, a mob of Hutus had come to their village and chased them down and ended up killing the rest of her family, her children and her husband.

01:45 And 20 years later, she is now great friends with one of those killers. He approached her and asked for forgiveness. And she, after a couple of years, was able to forgive him. And they now live in the same village. And he comes and helps her with her cow every day and helps her around the house. And they're friends. So I just, that was probably the most remarkable. In another episode, Morgan Freeman poses the question, can love change the world? Love is the first, probably the first human emotion that we experience. So love is a force that builds families. It builds cities. It builds nations. And ultimately, you know, it can even reach across nations.

02:31 And people can, you know, you can feel that bond of love for a child who's suffering in a distant country and want to give to them. Because this is a very powerful force. Probably the most powerful force in our lives. Other episodes include us and them on how it seems we are more polarized than ever and how we can find ways to come together. Others include the spirit of rebellion, the fight for peace, and the power of us. I think this series offers hope. And that the, you know, as Bill Clinton quoted Martin Luther King in the series, that the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. And I think the world is slowly becoming a better place for us to live in. The Story of Us airs Wednesday nights at 9 p.m. Eastern on the National Geographic channel.

03:18 For a longer interview with executive producer James Younger, visit coachlistens.com. For the Financial Safari, I'm Steve Sudol. For the Financial Safari, I'm Steve Sudol.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people, and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me, that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned, folks, and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Jessica Bruder is an author and journalist whose latest book, Nomadland, Surviving America in the 21st Century, takes us on a 15,000-mile cross-country journey in her RV named Van Halen, getting up close and personal with a relatively new subculture of America that includes many seniors who travel the country in motorhomes, a life many did not anticipate, and then 2008 happened. So Nomadland, Surviving America in the 21st Century,

00:47 I was intrigued by just on the jacket where it said you were the beet fields of North Dakota. I grew up and I was born in Fargo. Ah, you know those fields. I do only too well, yes. So let's talk about the book. It's rather an intriguing look at, well, like you said, Surviving America in the 21st Century. You talk about the 2008 financial crisis and how it really isn't over. No, I mean, for a lot of people, the crisis's echo effects will be lasting for the rest of their lives, particularly a lot of folks who expected to have more of a traditional retirement and then saw their savings wiped out, 401ks decimated, lost equity in their houses, and ended up living a rather different life than they anticipated. And what kinds of things have you discovered? Yeah, I mean, basically, what blew my mind, and perhaps I was a bit naive at first,

01:37 is initially when I saw RVers out on the road, I always assumed, wow, those are the last of the great pensioners. They are tootling around the country. They're going everywhere from Niagara Falls to Old Faithful and Yellowstone. And isn't that cool that they're doing that in their retirement and that they've got it made? And while those people are still out there, there's a whole new group of people as well. And when you look at the fact that we are in a nation where federal minimum wage is flat at $7.25, where housing costs have been going up, we've got the disaster that was the Great Recession, and we've got just all sorts of challenges in retirement finance and people not having enough set aside, sometimes because wages are just so depressed, it's kind of this perfect storm.

02:25 And for a lot of people, the solution has been, well, what's my biggest expense? My biggest expense is housing. I cannot give myself a raise, but I can cut my expenses. So what if I cut out housing, which sounds pretty radical, but has become a lifeline for a lot of people who moved into secondhand RVs and vans and travel trailers and even a few sedans and have found that they can go out on the road. And in fact, there's a whole subculture of folks doing this and a whole litany of employers who are looking for workers just like them. And they literally travel around from essentially job to job, and they have the rallying points along the way. Indeed. And the jobs, there's quite a wide range.

03:14 A lot of people work as campground hosts in the national parks, the parks contract with concessionaires who hire people like the ones we're talking about to come in and do everything from toilet cleaning to other routine maintenance to greeting campers to dealing with rowdy people. These people get hired to guard the gates of oil fields in Texas. They get hired by Amazon through a program called Camper Force to do 10-hour shifts on their feet on the concrete, doing pick and pack to get those orders out in the busy months before Christmas. They work in theme parks from Dollywood to Adventureland, where the headlines were a couple years ago. A gentleman in his 60s who was a retired pastor and postal carrier

04:00 actually lost his life as a result of the on-the-job accident at Adventureland, where a conveyor belt started up too soon, which does raise the point that a lot of these jobs are the kind of work that I think we've traditionally associated with younger bodies. Right. But these folks are out there doing it. And do you think that the folks that you've talked to that are, say, in their 60s or even closer to 70, let's say, do they see any end in sight? Is there a retirement for them? Honestly, no. For most of them, no. And this is a strange thing, too, because if you look at history and all the people who were out on the road following the Great Depression, the predominant attitude was that things were going to change, that this, too, would pass, that it was a phase in the economy, that things would normalize, the status quo would return,

04:45 and that they would just kind of merge back into the ranks of the housed middle class. But given all the tumult of our era, I think most of these people, and I know most of the people I spoke to, don't really think the cavalry is coming anytime soon. And many of them are preparing to do it for the long haul. Or they're trying to save up for a small patch of land where they could homestead. But this is both the present and the endgame for many, many people I met. So this is primarily a lot of retirees, but there's got to be other folks really just running the gambit that are out there, like you said, being nomads, going across the country. Even though, you know, we're hearing stories all the time. I just heard one on the way back from lunch. There's more jobs than expected. But really, are there? Yeah, well, when we say there are more jobs than expected,

05:34 a couple things are usually left out of that equation. So, for example, when they do the employment figures, they usually leave out the whole group of people that have just given up looking for work. Of course. So those numbers don't make it in. And often we don't account for the quality of the jobs. Just the fact that, again, our federal minimum wage remains at $7.25 an hour, and housing costs keep going up. So while it's easy to say, oh, yes, there are so many jobs, if the jobs aren't paying you enough to stay in a house, well, they're only worth so much. Right, exactly. And some of these motorhomes, they're not the best either, right? No. I've seen some. I mean, I know people who get quite attached to their motorhomes, but the woman who is featured most prominently in my book, Nomadland,

06:20 lives in a 1972 Hunter Compact, which back in its heyday was, I believe it was, oh, gosh, there were these really amazing retro now looking ads saying this was a crowning achievement in travel for leisure. And you look at this thing, and it looks like one of those styrofoam hamburger containers from the 80s. It's kind of like a fiberglass life support capsule. It's 10 feet long inside. It is, the ceiling accommodates somebody who's 5'3", and Linda is 5'2", so she makes do with it. But that's her home. So this is sort of a different look at tiny houses that we keep hearing so much about. Yeah, absolutely. In a way, these are tiny houses on wheels. And it really interests me so often when we talk about the tiny house movement,

07:09 we talk about chic minimalism, we really look at style, but we don't look at the impact that the economy has on style. I mean, I've met plenty of younger people out on the road who might fit more into this, you know, chic minimalism, wanderer aesthetic. But when you talk to them for a while, you realize they've got the same issues that everyone else does. Sure. In that many of them have student debt or didn't want to go to college because they didn't want to come out the other side with that debt into a job market where a job won't pay a living wage. So in your encounters with folks, how are you received? Are they happy to talk with you and tell their stories? People can be a little reticent at first. I think nobody wants to be perceived as homeless. And there's such a big stigma on that word. The people I spoke with prefer to call themselves houseless,

07:56 but they don't really know at first if you'll understand that. I remember speaking with one woman who now I think I talk to every week, but the first time she met me, she said, oh, you're the journalist. You're going to make us out to look like a bunch of homeless vagabond. But the great thing about having a book project is you can spend oodles of time with people. And that's what I did. I really didn't go away. I traveled 15,000 miles in my rig, a van named Halen. And I just spent days and weeks and sometimes months on end with people. And they get a feel for who you are. And I think the people I spoke with and who were generous enough to share their stories with me got a sense that while I recognized how complex their economic circumstances were, I also was not interested in portraying them as abject victims

08:45 who were walking around in sackcloth and ashes and bemoaning their lot and had no agency at all. Of course. Jessica, is there anything else you want to touch on that we haven't talked about? Oh, man, you've hit it pretty well. One thing I'm worried about, and I'll share just might be totally new to your audience, is there's a huge wave right now going on in this country where we're criminalizing homelessness. There are cities and towns all over the place saying it's illegal to sleep in your car. You've got rangers in the national parks saying, hey, you've got to prove to me that not only do you have an address, but that you live there, because if you can't prove to me that you live anywhere, then you're making this park your home and you're not entitled to the camping rights that everyone else gets. So I hope if people read this book and think about the stories of the people I met out on the road,

09:32 they'll think a little bit differently about this population and realize that they are us and we stigmatize them at our peril. And the book is available everywhere, I'm sure, Amazon, all the bookstores. I urge people to go to independent bookstores. Sure, I understand. They are a scrappy and dwindling breed, and we should support them as much as we can. So that's my vote. But yeah, you can find the book anywhere. But you're traveling around the country, you're making appearances, you know, literally around the country, and I'm guessing you're going to those independent bookstores. Oh yeah, I am about to take off in the van and drive from Seattle to Los Angeles, stopping at independent bookstores all along the way. Nice. And hopefully getting to share the book with some people. The book details the lives of many people she met from coast to coast, and their stories are fascinating, and you really get a sense of who they are.

10:17 And as she says, they are us. The book is called Nomadland, Surviving America in the 21st Century, written by Jessica Bruder. It's available everywhere. For the Financial Safari, I'm Steve Zidall. You're welcome.

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Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Jessica Bruder is an author and journalist whose latest book, Nomadland, Surviving America in the 21st Century, takes us on a 15,000-mile cross-country journey in her RV named Van Halen, getting up close and personal with a relatively new subculture of America that includes many seniors who travel the country in motorhomes, a life many did not anticipate. And then 2008 happened. Their savings wiped out, 401K is decimated, lost equity in their houses. She says many are still feeling the effects. We've got the disaster that was the Great Recession, and we've got just all sorts of challenges in retirement finance and people not having enough set aside. It's kind of this perfect storm. A perfect storm, she says, that had people examining their lives and their budgets

00:47 to figure out what they could trim, and for many? The solution has been, well, what's my biggest expense? My biggest expense is housing. I cannot give myself a raise, but I can cut my expenses. So what if I cut out housing, which sounds pretty radical? In fact, when she first started her travels and saw motorhomes, she believed it was the last of the pensioners going to Yellowstone National Park and Niagara Falls enjoying retirement. The reality she found was quite different. A lot of people who moved into second-hand RVs and vans and travel trailers and even a few sedans and have found that they can go out on the road. And in fact, there's a whole subculture of folks doing this and a whole litany of employers who are looking for workers just like them.

01:35 Bruder found there were rallying points around the country where groups would gather and trade notes about what kinds of work was available and where. A lot of people work as campground hosts in the national parks. These people get hired to guard the gates of oil fields in Texas. They get hired by Amazon through a program called Camper Force to do 10-hour shifts on their feet on the concrete, doing pick-and-pack to get those orders out in the busy months before Christmas. I asked her if the folks she met had any plans to settle down. I think most of these people, and I know most of the people I spoke to, don't really think the cavalry is coming anytime soon. And many of them are preparing to do it for the long haul. Or they're trying to save up for a small patch of land where they could homestead.

02:21 But this is both the present and the endgame for many, many people I met. Bruder's award-winning career is focused on the subcultures and the dark corners of the economy. And she left us with this. There's a huge wave right now going on in this country where we're criminalizing homelessness. So I just, I hope if people read this book and think about the stories of the people I met out on the road, they'll think a little bit differently about this population and realize that, you know, they are us. And, you know, we stigmatize them at our peril. The book details the lives of many people she met from coast to coast. And their stories are fascinating. And you get a real sense of who they are. And as she says, they are us. For the Financial Safari, I'm Steve Zidall.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Well, folks, this is the time of the show where we go out around the world and we find someone who's made a difference in the financial world or the world in general. And we're going to go to Portland, Maine, and we're going to visit with the author of the book, Help on the Way and a Survival Guide to Aging. His name is Chris Orestis. Chris, welcome in. Well, thank you. Good to be on the show. Now, tell me about the long-term care world, because I know health care issues are on everyone's mind these days. And that's why you've written two books on it. What are the main concerns out there these days when we look at long-term care? You know, the problem is that too few families are taking the time to plan for long-term care. It's a topic that people don't want to talk about. It's an unpleasant conversation to have with your loved ones. The idea that, you know, the person who may have taken care of you as your parent for years all of a sudden now may need to be taken care of.

00:49 It's just something people don't want to deal with. So people are misinformed. They're unprepared financially with information, having a plan among the family about what to do when that time comes. And it's creating a real crisis situation in this country. And it's something that over the last 20 years I've really dedicated my life from a financial and information standpoint to be working with families to help them when it comes to addressing that crisis situation. You know, one of the things that I've noticed, and I've been in the financial arena for about 26 years now, is that people are very reluctant to discuss the topic of long-term care ahead of time when they really should be talking about it. Now, why is that? Well, you know what? And that's what makes all the difference. The families that are planning and talking about it in advance are the families that when the time comes, they're able to handle it.

01:39 It's the families that avoid the situation, avoid the topic, really because it's unpleasant. And you don't want to – there's a reluctance to talk among family members about financial concerns, about what people want to do to plan for their care needs. There's a real reluctance to have that conversation. But if you avoid it, what you're going to end up finding is yourself in a crisis situation, and that becomes a point where it becomes very difficult to deal with it in a last possible second. Now, I'm a guy, you're a guy, and my producer, Thomas, we're all guys here. And I know that I am reluctant to even ask for driving directions. I don't want people to think I don't know where I'm going. So what are the signs that people need to look for in elderly family members that would indicate that maybe long-term care may be needed for them?

02:29 Well, that's the thing. It's recognizing those signs. Too few people recognize when their care is needed, and it'll get by them. But without realizing that the time for care has come, it'll sneak up on families so easily and quickly without them realizing it. And you want to look for signs like mental issues, physical issues, issues about the living environment that they're in. You know, if you look around the house, is it unkempt like it didn't used to be? Physical issues, there's been a big loss of weight and strength and dexterity, balance, and mental issues. Don't blow off people with a bad memory as just a senior moment. That becomes a real clue that you may have cognitive issues that need to be dealt with.

03:14 And when you see those issues, you need to react to them. And as a family, our advice is talk together as a family. Look at what you're seeing as real clues to is there a need to start to act now, to start looking at the financial, looking at the legal, looking at the care environment. Is it going to be home care? Is it going to be assisted living? Is it going to be nursing home care? What is the right kind of care? How are you going to pay for it? Those are really the two big questions every family has to confront. Is it time for care? What is the right kind of care? And how do we pay for it? Yeah. One of the things I've done over the 26 years I've been in the financial world is I developed something called a total retirement plan, which is 22 steps that get people to and through retirement. And one of the steps is long-term care on there.

04:01 And I know you have something you call a family action plan as relates to long-term care. What's that? You know, the family action plan comes from, one, being able to recognize those sides, and then, two, being able to take on various roles across the family. Who is the one in the family that is going to play the role of being hands-on, doing the driving, looking into the appropriate home care or assisted living center that you might want to get access for your family member? Who in the family is going to play the legal role, maybe take on that power of attorney? Who in the family is going to take on the financial role? It may be one person taking on more than one of these roles, but it's really who's handling hands-on, who's handling legal, who's handling financial, so that you're covering those bases and you're communicating.

04:51 And that's the key. It's the communicating, not staying in a bubble, not ignoring what's in front of you, and then knowing how to then make the move. Have that conversation with your loved one to move from inaction to action and get the form of care in place and in the form of payment and have the legal aspects of powers of attorney, living wills taken care of. Don't wait until the last second when you have a loved one laying in a hospital bed that's going to be discharged to a rehabilitation center within a couple of days to start having these conversations. Because then you're in an absolute crisis mode. You're reacting, and you're not going to get as good a result as you would have if you had taken the time months in advance to start getting organized, to know where the paperwork is.

05:46 Financial records, is there insurance? What kind of income and assets are there to work with? What kind of legal documents do you need to have in place? Our advice is don't wait until you're in a crisis and you start having this conversation in a hospital room. You want to start having the conversation as soon as possible. And for a lot of families, they're going to start having these conversations as the holidays approach. They get back together at Thanksgiving. They get back together at Christmas. They haven't seen each other in months. They haven't seen their mother or their father for some time. And you've got to look for those clues that we were talking about. Has there been a big drop in their physical, mental, or the environmental condition of the home? And once you start to see those clues, it's time to start having those conversations and put that family action plan into place. Yeah, very, very important.

06:33 Now, I know that the old saying is money makes the world go round. And so what are some of the financial issues that come up when we talk about long-term care? Well, you've got to understand that Medicare and Medicaid will only cover certain things, and it isn't an automatic to get on and start being covered by those programs. So Medicare, you need to understand, will only cover 100 days of rehabilitation stay in a skilled rehabilitation facility if you're discharged directly from a hospital. Medicaid will cover long-term care, but to get on to Medicaid, you have to qualify from a medical necessity and a financial criteria. And that financial criteria is you need to be below the poverty line.

07:18 So you want to also understand, what about private pay? If you want to get into a nice assisted living community, you want to have home care, most of that's going to be private pay. And private pay means you're paying out of pocket. Do you have long-term care insurance? Do you have life insurance that you could convert into a long-term care benefit? Do you have asset? Do you have income? Those are the financial considerations you have to take on. Understand what it takes to get on to Medicare. Understand what it takes to get on to Medicaid and understand their limitations. And then understand that private pay will let you choose any form of care you want. But to get private pay means you have to have the resources, be it insurance, income, or assets. Yeah, very, very important.

08:04 Again, folks, his name is Chris Arrestus. And the names of the books, very good books, Help on the Way and A Survival Guide to Aging. Now, Chris, where can they get these books? You can order them online. You can also visit us through our website. Go to lcx.gwglife.com. Again, folks, the names of the books, Help on the Way and A Survival Guide to Aging. Folks, if you like this interview, want to hear it again as an entirety, you can always go to financialsafari.com. Chris, thanks for your time today. Thank you so much for having me. And folks, we'll be right back after this. Let's do it.

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Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people, and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me, that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned, folks, and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Jen Sincero is a New York Times bestselling author. Her most recent book, You Are a Badass at Making Money, Mastering the Mindset of Wealth, continues to get rave reviews. She says she spent years getting really good at being broke. She worked as a freelance writer in New York City, lived in a converted one-car garage. Sincero says she was in her 40s when she finally decided she was done being broke and set out to get rich. Her first bestseller, You Are a Badass, How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, got her started on that path, and she hasn't looked back.

00:51 I had a chance to chat with Jen about her life in the garage and how she broke free. Jen, that was quite a transformation. Yeah, it was pretty epic, especially since previous to the transformation. I truly believed that it was not possible for me to make money. So it was a complete overhaul of my entire reality, basically. Well, you know, I think we're all aware of the law of attraction. And it always seemed to me to be, I don't know, more than just, you know, thinking of something and it's going to happen. And when I read your book, it became clear to me it is more than that. It's all about the mindset and sort of reprogramming our subconscious. Absolutely. And it's because your mindset is what propels you to take action. So if your mindset is focused on, I can't, it's impossible, it's going to be hard and no fun,

01:41 your actions are going to reflect that and you're going to get very, very much nowhere. And very, very quickly. Yes, exactly. Well, and I mean, once you decided that this is not how you're going to live, what happened? I mean, what did you do? The first thing I did was I allowed myself to focus on making money, which sounds very simple, but in our culture, it's very controversial. Money is the root of all evil and you have to do stuff you hate to make money. It means you have no morals if you focus on making money. You know, that's what we're, you know, subconsciously raised to believe. So allowing myself to focus on making money was the first huge step. And then I went out and read all the self-help books and hired private coaches and went to money-making seminars. I basically did everything I could think of to get myself in the game with the money thing.

02:30 And I read recently you said that we should be grateful for our debt and everything else. Really? Yeah, because when you, what you focus on, you create more of. So if you're angry at debt, if you're fearful of your debt, if you're angry at your income and your bills, you know, there's so many ways to look at things. And if you look at your debt like, hey, when I needed money, money was there for me. So if I need it again, it could be there for me again. That puts you out in the world with a very different energy and has you focusing on the positive instead of the negative, which is so, you know, so much more powerful than we give it credit for. I know it's sort of tagged as a very woo-woo ideal, but it's real. No, it is real. And I think that once you realize that you've programmed your subconscious all these years,

03:18 it's hard to, you know, reprint it or remake it. Well, you have to work at it. So, you know, to just sit around and hope stuff changes is not going to get you very far. Absolutely. You have to do the work. But, you know, by the way, doing the quote-unquote work is a hell of a lot easier than spending your entire life in struggle thinking it's impossible. You've got to focus on your thoughts and switch them around if they're not helping you and take scary action and surround yourself with people who are kicking ass who can help you out. You know, it's not that hard. It's scary and challenging, but it's not hard. Yeah, absolutely. And here's another one that I've read that I like, play to win instead of play not to lose. Good advice. Yeah, I think that we, you know, it's sort of like working in your business instead of on your business.

04:10 You know, it's sort of just putting out the fires of your day-to-day life. If you really want to create a new reality, you've got to step it up and go for it on a much bigger level than just sort of, you know, continuously keep the status quo. One of the things I liked about the book, too, is, and I never thought of it like this, but having a relationship with money. And it's like any relationship. You've got to work at it. You've got to understand each other. And once you start thinking that way, things start to happen. At least they did for me. Yeah, it's cool, isn't it? It really is. And really waking up to that realization. I mean, I have an exercise in You Are a Badass at Making Money where you write a letter to money as if it's a person. I did that. It's fantastic. Oh, good. Yeah, I mean, when I did it, I was like, oh, boy, I have more problems than I even thought.

04:57 Because like most people, I loved money. I wanted more of it. But I felt dirty admitting that. And I didn't trust it. But I was so happy when it showed up. So lots of us have this very push-pull relationship with money. And that is one of the roots of why you're not making much if you're not making much. Absolutely. Now, you talk a lot about affirmations and how powerful they are. And the book is full of them. And I have them all on my phone, or a lot of them. But one of them wasn't actually an affirmation, but I love this line. It's, shut up, slow down, breathe, connect with your higher self, and act with intention. I think of that every day. Yeah, that's sort of my personal one right now, too. Another one that we had, you say gratitude defeats fear. And you talk a lot about gratitude and how important that is.

05:43 You know, again, what we focus on, we create more of. And when you are in a state of gratitude for what you presently see standing in front of you, as well as what you are working to create, it puts you in a different energy. And we are creatures that thrive on energy. And so when you've got a low energy and you're focused on the negative and all the can't and the woe is me, you pull in more of that into your reality. That's what you're able to see. And so when you're in a state of gratitude, it opens you up to all the experiences and people that are going to help you get where you want to go. And you're just going to feel a lot better. You're just going to be happier. So what's to not like about that? You know, I work with a lot of people that are heading into retirement

06:29 or are scared to look at their retirement. And this is a book that can help them as well, because it really is never too late to start that saving, to start believing that you can have a good retirement. Absolutely. And I think you said something really important. They're scared to look at it. They're scared to look at their money. And, you know, like it or not, money is the medium of exchange on planet Earth in the human realm. So having that relationship with it, again, it's back to that relationship, like know what your money is doing. Create a yummy place for it to grow. You know, you have to know where your money is and how much you have and what's going on with it. You've got to be in the flow with it if you want it to really serve you. So I think it's so important, especially for people who are heading towards retirement, to have a very healthy relationship with their money.

07:19 Absolutely. And to face it head on, because money's not going to hurt you. It's only going to help you. Absolutely. And it gets such a bad rap. You know, why is money the root of all evil? Money is, you know, paying for this phone that I'm talking to you on and bought me a cup of coffee this morning. You know, let's focus on all the beautiful, beautiful things that money really does bring into our world. You know, people do horrible things out of greed, certainly, but it's not money's fault. One of the things you mentioned in the book, too, is the cocktail of creation. That's amazing, too. That whole thing of just, you go through that little list of just one-word things, but they really open up the mind and to sort of get you into that creative flow. Yeah, it's all the stuff that anybody who's schooled in self-helpery, it's the reason that we say this stuff over and over and over.

08:07 It's watching your words and your thoughts and taking scary action and stretching yourself and, you know, doing all the things that you've probably heard that you should be doing all the time and trusting that it really works and keeping the faith and surrounding yourself with strong people. And, you know, there is a method to the madness, and it's a matter of allowing yourself to do it. And you can change your life on a dime. I mean, I certainly, once I got serious about it, it started happening really quickly. What's next for you? You know, I honestly, this book just came out in April, so I'm letting myself be really happy about this book, being out and promoting it and celebrating it. And, you know, of course, I'm getting a million ideas for future books

08:53 that will be written someday, but I'm really trying to just be in the moment with the fact that I just gave birth and celebrating my new baby. Well, I'm happy to help you celebrate because I love the book. And, again, thank you so much for spending some time with us today, and especially talking to folks who are in that retirement red zone, we like to say. And those are the folks that I work with, and they need to hear this as well. They do. And really, honestly, guys, like I was such a late bloomer. I didn't, you know, I'm 52 now, and I didn't start getting my act together until my 40s. I was living in that garage in my 40s. So, you know, it's never too late. And if my broke ass can do it, so can you, because I had spent a lifetime teaching myself how to be poor, and then I decided not to do that anymore. So, seriously, you've got one life.

09:40 I'm with you. Thanks again to Jen Sincero, author of You Are a Badass, Making Money, Mastering the Mindset of Wealth. You can learn more about Jen Sincero at her website, jensincero.com, spelled S-I-N-C-E-R-O. Her books are available everywhere. For the Financial Safari, I'm Steve Sedahl.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700.

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate.

00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. Jen Sincero is a number one New York Times best-selling author. She's a self-described motivational cattle prod and a success coach. Her latest book, You Are a Badass at Making Money, Master the Mindset of Wealth. It takes a no-nonsense approach to making money and embracing wealth. Jen Sincero says she was in her 40s living in a converted one-car garage and she said she was really good at one thing, being broke, and then decided to do something about it.

00:45 It was quite a transformation. It was pretty epic, especially since previous to the transformation, I truly believed that it was not possible for me to make money. So it was a complete overhaul of my entire reality. That overhaul, she says, starts with retooling your subconscious mind and creating that mindset of wealth. The first thing I did was I allowed myself to focus on making money, which sounds very simple, but in our culture it's very controversial. Money is the root of all evil and that's what we're, you know, subconsciously raised to believe. So allowing myself to focus on making money was the first huge step. Jen Sincero says being grateful is a very important step and that means even being grateful for our debt. So many ways to look at things and if you look at your debt like, hey, when I needed money, money was there for me.

01:33 So if I need it again, it could be there for me again. That puts you out in the world with a very different energy and has you focusing on the positive instead of the negative, which is so, you know, so much more powerful than we give it credit for. I know it's sort of tagged as a very woo-woo ideal, but it's real. So when you're in a state of gratitude, it opens you up to all the experiences and people that are going to help you get where you want to go. She's got some advice for those heading into retirement, too, saying it's never too late to change your mindset and begin to see things differently and things she says will begin to change. Really, honestly, guys, like I was such a late bloomer. I didn't, you know, I'm 52 now and I didn't start getting my act together until my 40s. I was living in that garage in my 40s.

02:18 So, you know, it's never too late. And if my broke ass can do it, so can you, because I had spent a lifetime teaching myself how to be poor and then I decided not to do that anymore. For a longer interview with Jen Sincero, visit coachlistens.com. You can learn more about Jen Sincero at her website, jensinchero.com, spelled S-I-N-C-E-R-O. Her books are available everywhere. For the Financial Safari, I'm Steve Sedahl.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.