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Author: Kevin Lao

What is a flat fee financial planner?

Primary service models for financial advisors

There are so many different terms for “financial advisor,” it could make your head spin!  Financial advisor, financial planner, fiduciary financial advisor, wealth management advisor, financial consultant, flat fee financial advisor, financial therapist, and the list goes on. 

To make things simple, professionals providing financial advice can be categorized into one of three ways:

1. Broker/Commission Based Advisor:  These advisors sell products to the consumer for a commission paid by the insurance or investment company they are representing.

2. Fee-Based Advisor:  These advisors can sell products for a commission and provide investment and financial planning advice for a fee.  The fee is typically a percentage of assets under management, and the commissions vary widely depending on the product.

3. Fee-Only Financial Advisor:  These advisors don’t receive any compensation from an insurance or investment company, and work directly for the client within the scope of their financial planning and investment advisory agreements.   There is a sub category within the Fee-Only space known as a Flat Fee Financial Advisor or Flat Fee Financial Planner. 

I will cover all of these definitions later in the post.

There are also professional designations like Certified Financial Planner (CFP), that consumers might believe is a type of financial advisor.  The reality is, not all CFPs are created equal, and they can work under any of the three primary service models listed previously.  A designation, like a CFP, is meant to describe the education and experience an advisor has within the industry.

While the CFP is the mostly widely recognized and respected from a consumer standpoint, there are other designations that are well respected within the industry. 

Just to name a few:

Retirement Income Certified Professional (RICP) designation is for those who specialize in retirement income planning. 

Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU) is for those who have an in-depth knowledge around life insurance. 

Chartered Financial Analysit (CFA) is for those specializing in investment analysis and portfolio management.

These designations are of course helpful when determining if a prospective advisor can serve your needs.

Just remember, the designation doesn’t describe the service model, and ultimately how the advisor is compensated, which are both important factors when choosing who to hire.

Broker, or Commission Based Advisor

If you’ve ever seen movies like Boiler Room or Wolf of Wall Street, brokers portrayed in them give financial professionals a bad reputation.

Stocks can now be traded for zero commissions, and the traditional/old school brokers are becoming less and less sought after by the consumer given the distrust.

Nowadays, the most popular products that are sold for commissions are mutual funds, annuities and insurance.  I would argue that annuities and/or insurance products should be used in the majority of financial plans.  

Commission based mutual funds, however, are being phased out with the rise of no sales load ETFs and no load mutual funds.  These products perform just as well, if not better, for a fraction of the cost.  However, there are still brokers and even fee-based advisors that sell these types of loaded mutual funds. 

One of the most important factors to note is that a broker is not a fiduciary.  The fiduciary standard requires that the advisor always puts the client’s interests ahead of their own.  In the case of a broker, he or she is representing the firm they sell the product for, not the client. 

Some of these brokers will engage in limited financial planning, but most don’t. 

Another issue at hand is that the Broker/Dealer might limit which products they can or cannot sell.   Additionally, certain products might pay a higher commission than others, even if the products are identical.

These are just a few of the reasons why consumers look to other service models if they wish to engage in a long term, mutually beneficial relationship.

Fee-Based Financial Advisors

Fee-based advisors can charge both commissions and advisor fees for investments and/or financial planning.  This language is often misconstrued with the term “fee-only financial advisor,” which I will explain next.  Fee-based advisors oftentimes charge a percentage of the assets their firm is managing, hence the term “fee-based.”  Additionally, they can sell insurance, annuities or other investment products for commissions paid by their broker/dealer. 

The cost will typically range anywhere from 0.75% – 2% for the assets under management fee, and anywhere from 3%-12% for commissions on other products. 

Some of these advisors do comprehensive financial planning extremely well.  However, many do not do financial planning at all, given their fee is technically for managing the investment assets only. 

Here is the confusing part. 

Fee-based advisors act as a fiduciary…sometimes.  When providing advice for assets their firm is managing, they are a fiduciary.  However, other services in which they engage through their broker/dealer are not part of the fiduciary standard. 

Oftentimes, you might hear these advisors claim they are fiduciaries, but really they are a fiduciary “sometimes.” 

This makes it extremely difficult for the client who thinks they have hired someone to look out for their best interests, when in reality they are representing a third party instead.

Fee-Only Financial Advisor

Fee-Only Financial Advisors are fiduciaries throughout the entire relationship, period.  There are three ways these advisors can charge clients:

  • Percentage of Assets Under Management (anywhere from 0.75%-2%/year)
  • Ongoing retainer fee or flat fee (monthly or quarterly) ranging anywhere from $100/month – $2,000/month
  • One-time financial planning arrangement (ranging from $1,000 – $10,000)

These advisors are often much more comprehensive when it comes to the financial planning relationship than a fee-based advisor or broker.  The reason is because the fee they charge is for financial planning and investment management, not for selling a product for a third party.  Here are some examples of services fee-only financial planners provide that fee-based advisors and commission based advisors typically do not:

  • In Depth Retirement Planning Analysis
  • Income Distribution Planning
  • Social Security Optimization
  • Tax Optimization
  • Objective Long-Term Care and Life Insurance Review
  • Roth Conversion Analysis
  • Charitable Giving
  • Medicare Planning
  • Pension Maximization
  • Required Minimum Distribution Planning
  • Major Asset Purchase or Sale
  • Estate Planning Coordination
  • Debt and Cash Flow Analysis
  • Mortgage Review

Clients appreciate this dynamic because if they need a certain product that requires paying a commission, such as life insurance or long-term care insurance, their advisor’s compensation is not tied to the product!  It creates a relationship where they decide what they need together, as opposed to a cliche’ sales pitch.

Many clients who are doing their research are gravitating towards these types of planners, and they can be found on third party association websites like:

These advisors are not affiliated with any broker dealer, wall street company or insurance company, and therefore no compensation is received by anyone other than the client.

They will typically sign a fiduciary oath where if breached, they could be penalized monetarily or lose their license to practice as such. 

flat fee financial planner

Flat Fee Financial Advisor, Flat Fee Financial Planner

A  flat fee financial planner is a type of fee-only financial planner.  The difference is the fee is not based on a percentage of assets the firm is managing. 

Many of these firms charge based on what their hourly rate is, or based on your financial complexity. This method of compensation is gaining a lot of traction.

The reason is simple.  If you have two similar prospective clients.  One has $1 million of assets and the other has $2 million of assets.  The question is, are you doing twice the work for the client who has $2 million? 

The response from flat fee financial planners is a simple “no.”  In fact, the workload is likely the same for both of those clients, so how can the fee be justifiably twice the amount?

Some flat fee financial advisors do not manage investments, and these are known as advice-only planners.  They simply give you a second set of eyes on your situation, or help you create a roadmap on how to get where you want to go.  The client is presumably comfortable with the implementation and maintenance of those recommendations on a go forward basis.

There are other flat fee financial advisors that will manage investment assets, but it’s inclusive of the overall flat annual/quarterly fee that is charged.  Unlike the asset-based advisor’s fee, as your investment account grows, your fee doesn’t go up because of it.  Conversely, if your investment account goes down, your fee doesn’t go down either. 

This keeps the focus on financial planning and doing what is right for the client, regardless of the amount of assets under management. 

Why did we choose to be a flat fee financial planner?

flat fee financial advisor

After starting in the broker world and moving to fee-based, I decided the best way to serve my clients was as a flat fee financial planner/flat fee financial advisor. 

My firm, Imagine Financial Security, is a flat fee financial planning firm that includes investment management. 

We have two separate offerings:

  1. Ongoing retirement planning, tax optimization, and investment management.  We serve those who are close to retirement, or have recently retired and need help with their retirement income plan, Roth conversion strategy, investment management, and estate planning strategies.  The majority of our clients end up in this engagement as they prefer to live their best lives in retirement instead of spending time in the weeds of personal finance.
  2. One-time engagements.  This offering is best suited for those who prefer to implement their retirement income and investment strategy on their own, but want a professional second set of eyes to reveal any opportunities or blind spots.  Alternatively, this could serve as a great way to experience our value proposition before signing up for ongoing planning.

In addition to serving “traditional families” planning for retirement, we also have a niche that serves blended families planning for retirement.  These families have children from previous marriages, assets accumulated before marriage, wider age gaps, and other challenges that make the financial picture slightly more complex. 

I find the flat fee financial planner model allows our firm to focus on comprehensive financial planning without conflicts of interest that are inherent with other service models.  

Resources to find a flat fee financial advisor or financial planner

I’ve compiled a few links below that include other flat fee financial planners who are doing great work in the financial planning community. 

Tenon Financial has a list of flat fee financial planners who specialize in retirement planning and investment management.

7 Saturdays Financial has a list of flat fee financial planners who specialize in working with younger accumulators.

Wealthtender has an article about flat fee financial advisors.

Sara Grillo interviewed Andy Panko on the flat fee financial advisor movement.

Measure Twice Financial has a list of advice only financial advisors who do not provide ongoing investment management.

In summary

Your situation is unique, so hiring an advisor who specializes in working with others with your profile is extremely important.  Additionally, understanding how advisors are compensated should help you determine how you want to be served.

There are good and bad players in every industry, and financial services is no different. 

There are also good and bad advisors in each fee model, and simply hiring an advisor solely based on their fee structure may not be prudent. 

There are high quality advisors doing great work in each category, even the commission-based world. 

However, we recommend hiring someone who has a deep understanding of how to serve people like you, and who can always look out for your best interests.

 Here are three simple questions (among others) you should ask a potential advisor:

  1. Which service model do you fall under?
  2. What credentials/designations do you currently hold, or are currently pursuing?
  3. What is your firm’s niche?

Here is a link for the CFP Board’s 10 sample questions to ask a prospective financial planner.

I hope you found this information valuable as you look for the right partner to help you achieve financial independence. 

If you have any questions or want to schedule a call with me, click the link below to coordinate our schedules. 

Make sure to subscribe to our blog below to get our latest insights on retirement, tax and financial planning!

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Episode 11: What is tax planning vs. tax preparation?

What is tax planning vs tax preparation?

What is Tax Planning vs. Tax Prepartion

 


Kevin Geddings 0:21
Six minutes now after 11 o’clock, we’re live from St. Augustine, we hope that you’re having a good day so far. Kevin Lao joins me here live in the studio. And of course, he is an expert when it comes to financial planning and the like, Kevin, how are you doing?

Kevin Lao 0:36
I’m doing well, Kevin, thank you for having me. As always, yes,

Kevin Geddings 0:39
Imagine financial security, just imagine it if you can. I know a lot of our listeners are a little nervous these days, you know, they made the really bad mistake of looking at their January 30. Second quarter, you know, IRA statements that rolled in in the second week of July, you should never have opened those,

Kevin Lao 0:57
you know, a lot of clients, and people are telling me that they’ve been throwing their statements in the fire pit. So maybe that’s a good solution.

Kevin Geddings 1:03
Kevin has been doing this work for a long, long time. And he’s based right here in Northeast Florida. He’s worked with people from all over the country. And we’re going to talk today about tax planning versus tax preparation. And I know what you’re thinking, hey, it’s July, what? Why are we talking about taxes? You don’t do that until the end of the year or April? But no, there’s a reason why you would want to talk about tax planning now, right, Kevin?

Kevin Lao 1:25
Yeah, this is, first of all, please don’t take this as tax advice. Everyone has their own unique situation. But you know, there’s two different schools of thought you have tax preparation, and you have tax planning. And, a lot of people think tax preparation is tax planning. What that means is, in March or April, you gather your 1099s and your W2s and you throw them at your accountant last minute and make them work to death until they file your returns and figure out how much you owe. Or if you have a refund. And there’sonly a few things that you can actually do to impact your tax liability at that point in time. Whereas tax planning is proactive, where you’re not even just looking at the current year in terms of your tax projections and opportunities to reduce your taxable income now, but you’re looking years into the future, to look for opportunities to mitigate your tax exposure, particularly in your retirement years.

Kevin Geddings 2:17
Yeah, there are specific things you can do. And it’s amazing, so many people don’t do these things. I know, you may be thinking, well, you know, the government or somebody can give you some advice or guidance is really on you, or it’s on us individually to figure out a way to minimize, you know, our tax risk.

Kevin Lao 2:35
And it’s a boring topic, I was telling one of my neighbors, I was like, Hey, I’m gonna jump on the radio and talk about tax planning. He’s like, that sounds exciting. It’s not exciting for most people. And so that’s one of the main reasons they hire a firm, it’s not just for investment management, but it’s for this tax planning concept. And one of the basic things that pretty much everyone can do that’s contributing to, let’s say, a 401 K plan or an IRA, and they’re still in the accumulation phase, as to whether, weigh the pros and cons of whether or not you’re doing a traditional 401K or an IRA contribution versus a Roth 401 k or IRA contribution. And the basic concept of it is, do you think taxes are going to be higher or lower for you in the future? If you think taxes are going to be higher for you in the future, whether it’s because your income is going to be higher in the future, or you think potentially the government’s going to raise taxes in the future. Remember, at the end of 2025, the tax cuts and Jobs Act is sunsetting. So tax brackets, in general, unless they change, things are going to go up for most people. So if you’re in the camp, Hey, you think tax rates are probably going up over time, you may want to consider doing a heavier dosage of Roth contributions, whether it be in a Roth IRA or Roth 401 K. And you know, you’ve got to be careful with this. Because once you enroll in a 401 K plan with your company, the default for 99% of companies out there is in the traditional 401 K plan. And so you need to look and see your options. Can you do a Roth 401 K contribution or 403 B contribution or Roth TSP, if you work for, you know, military or government. And so this is a an easy sort of analysis to figure out, those Roth versus traditional contributions for retirement.

Kevin Geddings 4:07
Hey, if you’re just hopping in the vehicle, that’s the voice of Kevin Lao. And of course, he is the principal at imagine financial security that’s located right here in Northeast Florida. And they work with individuals just like you and me, and he will help you get to a better place in terms of your retirement. We’re all worried, Kevin, about running out of retirement savings, you know, outliving our retirement, but you help people with that all the time.

Kevin Lao 4:31
Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s the number one concern, they don’t want to be a burden on their loved ones. You know, and a big a big part of that is health care. And, Fidelity does a study every year. Right now, a 65 year old couple is expected to spend $300,000 on health care costs alone during retirement, and that’s not even including long term care costs. That’s a totally different issue. One of the things that I’m a big proponent of, if you have five or 10, or even more years of working, is whether or not you can qualify for a Health Savings Account better known as an HSA. I wrote a blog post about this on my website, I believe this is the most tax efficient vehicle you can utilize to save for retirement. It is a triple tax benefit, tax deductible contributions, tax free Growth and Tax Free distributions, as long as those distributions are used for healthcare related expenses. Now, the trick is, don’t get super aggressive spending those HSA contributions during your working years. Do the best you can to pay out of pocket for a lot of those healthcare costs. Because what you can do is you can turn around and invest that HSA take advantage of the market being down invest that HSA to let that grow for the next 15-20 years of tax free growth. So you can actually pay for those health care costs that Fidelity mentioned in retirement.

Kevin Geddings 5:48
So you can actually take HSA funds and invest those in the market. Yeah,

Kevin Lao 5:52
Most of the time, once you hit $1,000 in savings. There are limits, once you’ve contributed more than $1,000, then you can start to invest the surplus, so you have to keep a certain amount of cash, and then you can invest a certain amount. For me, I invest every dollar that I can in the HSA and I do my best to never touch the HSA. You can touch it before 59 and a half for health care related expenses. So, if you have an emergency medical event that happens, by all means you need to consider this as an option. But if you can let those continue grow tax free, it’s the most efficient vehicle you can utilize to save for retirement because it can be also used to pay for those long term care costs that I mentioned, it could also be used to pay for long term care insurance premiums tax free. So there’s a lot of benefits that you can utilize with the HSA, once you get to retirement.

Kevin Geddings 6:34
Wow. And there’s no cap in terms of how big that HSA account can become?

Kevin Lao 6:39
There is no cap on how big it can become, there is a cap on how much you can contribute. So for 2022 for if you’re single $3,650 If you’re married filing jointly $7,300 per year in annual contributions. So think about that. $7,300, over a 10 year period, you just contributed $73,000 into a tax free health care plan that hopefully you’ve invested wisely. And hopefully that doubles a couple of times over the next 20 years. And all of a sudden now you have 210 $220,000 in an HSA.

Kevin Geddings 7:10
These health savings accounts, Kevin Lao. I mean, sometimes you’ll see little ads at your bank, are there other ways? I mean, how would you recommend setting up these accounts and can they be set up through an investment account approach? Or how does that normally work?

Kevin Lao 7:26
Ya know, there are a lot of different carriers The first qualification to use an HSA is you have to have a high deductible health plan. If you don’t have a high deductible health plan, you can’t qualify for an HSA. And there’s some rules around that. So, just do a Google search and say, Hey, do I qualify for an HSA? But if you’re with an employer, a lot of times, they’ll say, hey, this type of health program, you can utilize an HSA, this one, you cannot. For military service, or government, if you’re on TRICARE, those cannot qualify as high deductible health care plans. So you cannot use an HSA if you’re military tricare. But if you’re civilian, and you’re working for an employer that has different healthcare options, go to them and say, hey, which which of these offers a high deductible plan with an HSA and which of them are kind of your traditional health care programs. And they usually partner wit a broker to set up the actual HSA account.

Kevin Geddings 8:17
moving funds into an HSA a health savings account, that’s just part one aspect of tax planning that Kevin Lao can help you with, once again tax planning is taking advantage of all the legal vehicles that are out there that will reduce your tax exposure, right?

Kevin Lao 8:33
Absolutely. Yes, I mean, a big one right now, we were talking a lot about this off air, with the markets down, we’re officially in a bear market since last time I was on the show. Which is basically measured by a 20% drop from a previous high. So many people out there might have some losses, some embedded losses in their investment accounts. And a lot of times, like we talked about, people are kind of throwing away their statements, they’re burying their head in the sand, but these losses can be utilized to offset potential capital gains or income in the future. And so the strategy is better known as tax loss harvesting, it has to be done inside of a taxable account, it cannot be done in an IRA, whether it be a Roth or even a 401K plan, it has to be in a non qualified account. But if you recognize the loss, meaning you sell that investment at a loss, now you actually have a Realized loss. And so let’s say you sold an investment at a loss for $50,000, that loss can be utilized to offset capital gains, whether it be this year or in future years, or reduce your taxable income, up to $3,000 per tax year. And the best part is, there’s no limitations on how many years you can carry that forward. So if you’re recognizing a lot of these losses, while the markets down, you can sell these investments at a loss, and we’ll talk about reinvesting that in a second and utilize those losses for many, many years to come. Now, the key is to avoid the wash sale rule. And so what that means is you cannot sell an investment and then turn around within 30 days and buy the same investment, or a substantially identical investment. Okay? So if you buy an individual stock, it’s pretty simple. You can’t sell Apple and buy Apple in the next 30 days. Otherwise, it’s a wash sale rule, it’s the same investment. But let’s say you have a mutual fund, like fidelity s&p 500 fun if you sell that, and bought, let’s say, the Vanguard s&p 500 fund, that might be a substantially identical investment. So you’ve got to be careful with that wash sale rule. The rule is within 30 days, you can’t turn around and buy an identical or the same security within 30 days otherwise, the tax loss harvest doesn’t work.

Kevin Geddings 10:36
Hey, we’re talking about tax planning versus just tax prep. And obviously Kevin Lao knows his stuff. Imagine financial security that’s imagine financial security located right here in Northeast Florida, you can always reach him at imaginefinancialsecurity.com cleverly enough, imaginefinancialsecurity.com or call the office number 904-323-2069 That number again, 904-323-2069. We’re gonna put all of Kevin’s information up on our social media platforms as well at WSOS radio on Facebook and Instagram. We’ll be right back.

Kevin Geddings 12:10
The Beatles here on 103.9. We had to play tax man because while we’re talking about tax planning versus tax preparation with Kevin Lao, he, of course is the principal at Imagine financial security, imagine financial security located right here in our part of the world. And he helps individuals, with all sorts of financial issues mostly focused on trying to get you ready for retirement. That could be retirement for you in the next 10 or 15 years. Or maybe you’re one of these, you know, super successful 20 Somethings that wants to retire like Kevin at age 40.

Kevin Lao 12:39
I wish. Having three kids under three, I think I’ve got a little ways to go. But yeah, that’s a good point. Early retirees is definitely a hot topic and it’s not necessarily retiring, and then not doing anything. It’s retiring from your day job, and then at 45 or 50, doing a passion project and having that financial independence to do so. So I think we talk a lot about the FIRE movement, financial independence to retire early. So it’s gaining a lot of traction.

Kevin Geddings 13:09
If you know somebody who’s in that situation, or you’re in that situation, I would encourage you to reach out to Kevin. Today though, we’re talking about tax planning, some various aspects of it. In the last segment, we talked about health savings accounts and how they can be a very interesting vehicle that can be more than you think. The way I was thinking of it before Kevin stopped by today, which is, well just a pool of money that you set aside tax free, and then you spend it down on your eyeglasses and things like that. But it can actually be a much more creative vehicle than that. So he has a great blog posts at his website, imaginefinancialsecurity.com that you can read about his thinking on health savings accounts. We were talking about, obviously, tax loss harvesting, with a lot of investments that have taken a hit here in 2022. There’s some benefits there. Let’s talk about one of the old school things even baby boomers out there, we’ve been told all of our lives, hey, you make a charitable contribution, give some money to the Salvation Army and you get to write that off your taxes.

Kevin Lao 14:03
Absolutely. This is probably one of the one of the topics that is that is misunderstood by just about everybody. They think they’re donating to charity, and they’re getting a tax deduction for it. But studies have shown that nine out of 10 taxpayers since the tax cuts and Jobs Act Act went into effect in 2017. Nine out of 10 taxpayers are taking the standard deduction. So it doesn’t matter what you’re doing with charitable donations. It’s technically not making a difference from a tax standpoint, because the standard deduction was multiplied by two with that legislation, which is, set the roll off at the end of 2025. But for now, most people are not itemizing deductions, and therefore those charitable donations don’t matter. Except for $600 for a couple and then $300 For a single if you’re if you’re doing the standard deduction and you’re doing charitable donations, you can take $300 If you’re a single filer and $600, if you’re married and actually reduce your taxable income, but everything above that is not dedutible if you’re taking the standard deduction.

Kevin Geddings 14:59
So I would imagine people that worked with you. And some of our listeners have some significant retirement savings. If they want to make charitable contributions, you can give them some advice, right?

Kevin Lao 15:08
Yes, one of the big ones, one of my favorite strategies is called a QCD, or qualified charitable distribution. Okay, so this is for individuals that are over 70 and 1/2 that have Ira plans, they can donate up to 100,000 dollars per year from their IRA to a charity. And this works extremely well, when you turn 72, and you’re taking required minimum distributions. The amount you have to take out per the IRS rules based on your life expectancy table. So if you’re taking out, let’s say, $50,000, because the IRS makes you, and normally you give, let’s say, $10,000, to charity, okay, well, you can take $10,000 from that required minimum distribution and donate it straight to charity. And that is never included in your ordinary income. Okay, so it’s better than a tax deduction. So don’t even worry if you’re itemizing, or taking a standard deduction that is not included in your ordinary income. So now, it looks like your distribution was only $40,000, not $50,000. So for folks that have, let’s say, Social Security income coming in, or they have maybe a pension from the military, or government, maybe they don’t need all of the required minimum distributions, and they’re sitting there complaining, oh, the IRS, they make me take out all this money. And if they’re charitably inclined, or maybe they just want to reduce their taxable income, they can start to do those QCDs each and every year and have a QCD plan is what I like to call it. Especially if it’s going to reduce your tax bracket. And that’s another thing, we can get into all day long, but tax brackets also impact what you pay for Medicare premiums, and QCDs work extremely well coincided with both of those two topics.

Kevin Geddings 16:41
It just strikes me, Kevin, there’s so many folks that don’t know this stuff, because the government doesn’t say, Hey, here’s a little pamphlet where we’re gonna explain how we’re going to nail you on taxes, you really have to go out there and search and find on your own.

Kevin Lao 16:54
Yes, all this information is online. That’s like the nice thing about the internet, you can do Google searches all day long, and read about QCDs and required minimum distributions or charitable donations. I think the value that my clients find, in working with someone like my firm, or other financial planners out there is that we can get that information that you can find yourself and apply it to what is relevant to your situation, and maximize those rules in your favor based on your circumstances and your financial situation.

Kevin Geddings 17:27
Well, what you do with people is you work with them in a tailored way, right? Because it sounds cliche, but the reality is, we are all different. Even if you have the same amount of money, you have half a million or a million in assets, or 2 million, or what have you, how you want to utilize those funds in retirement is greatly different from person to person.

Kevin Lao 17:45
That’s why that’s one of the reasons why we named our firm what it is, I like to have people imagine what financial security means to them, it means different things to different people. You know, one other thing real quick if we have time to talk about is the donor advised fund which is also the acronym d A F, donor advised fund. And so if you’re not 72, if you’re not taking those required minimum distributions yet, what you can do is you can make these contributions to a donor advised fund, which think of it as like your own personal charity. So if you’re charitably inclined and you typically make, let’s say five, or six, or even 10,000 dollars per year to a certain charity, but you’re not getting a tax deduction for it because you’re taking the standard deduction. It doesn’t really matter how much you donate to charity, you’re already getting that standard deduction, what you can do is we call it bunching, bunching those contributions. So in one year, make a larger donation into this DAF, this is still your account. But the nice thing is, let’s say you put in $50,000, which might be five years worth of donations, now you can deduct those contributions, because it’s above that standard deduction. And then what you can do with that DAF is completely up to you from there. It has to be used for charitable donations going forward. So you can’t donate it to, you know, little Johnny’s college fund, or pay yourself a salary, it has to be a legitimate 501 C3 organization. And you can start to make donations from that donor advised fund on a tax free basis. And the cool thing is similar to the HSA, like we talked about, you can also invest that donor advised fund in a diversified pool of funds. So you can set that account up with fidelity or Schwab or Vanguard or whatever it might be. Get that invested according to a plan that works for you and your risk tolerance. And you can actually potentially have more money to give to charity over time. And it’s also kind of a multigenerational tool. I see clients utilize it teaching their kids to be charitably minded, those types of things. And again, you can actually take the deduction for those contributions because of the bunching rule.

Kevin Geddings 19:43
And that’s the voice of Kevin Lao. If you just hopped in the vehicle, and we’re taking a little break from the music we’re gonna get back to the songs are here in just a second. And we’re talking about tax planning versus tax preparation, what can be done to minimize your tax risk, regardless of the income that you have or whatever your assets are? Kevin works with individuals on the He’s issues and on investment issues overall to make sure that you have the retirement that you always wanted. So we’ll be right back. Talk to me about Medicare planning.

Kevin Lao 20:17
Yeah. So Medicare planning is an interesting one. When you turn 65, you’re going to enroll in Medicare, and you’ve been paying into the system for your entire career. Your employer takes out a certain percentage of your paycheck to pay into the Medicare system, what a lot of people don’t realize is that your premium for Part B is dependent on your modified adjusted gross income. Okay, and so based on that modified adjusted gross income, you might pay what’s called an Irma penalty, okay. And so, if you look at if you look at different things, like your Social Security, or a pension that you might have, or perhaps it’s required minimum distributions, once you add all that up, you need to see, hey, is your premium going to be higher for Medicare, and that also coincides with those Roth conversions to potentially pay a little bit more tax now to not only save in tax your tax brackets going forward, but also to reduce what you might pay for your Medicare premiums? Once you’re 65 or older.

Kevin Geddings 21:15
if you have any questions about tax planning, or just investing in general and getting ready for a secure retirement, you can get in touch with Kevin Lao by going to the website. Imaginefinancialsecurity.com. That’s imaginefinancialsecurity.com. So Kevin Lao, we see all these ads on television all the time for life insurance, that you can be 70 years old, and be a diabetic with one of your arms falling off, and you can still get a term life insurance, you know, but you help people with these issues, right, figuring out whether life insurance is a good investment or not?

Kevin Lao 21:47
I know a little bit too much about life insurance and long term care insurance. But it’s a topic that’s super important. And I think it’s one that’s often misunderstood by by the consumer. But the basic idea around life insurance in retirement is, if you have a goal to leave a legacy to your children, or a charity, or maybe you have an estate tax issue, life insurance could be one of the most efficient tools you can utilize to pass on to the next generation, because it’s income tax free to those beneficiaries. Whereas if you think about your 401 K, or an IRA plan, those are going to be taxed to your beneficiaries, assuming those traditional contributions are tax deferred contributions. And, think about the secure Act, which is another piece of legislation that passed at the end of 2019. It’s made the rules on on passing those 401 ks and IRAs to the next generation, extremely tax inefficient. So, if your kids are working at Google, or some big tech company or Amazon, they’re making way more money than you ever made, you need to think about that, what is their tax situation going to be if they inherited your IRA tomorrow? So life insurance can be a good solution to offset some of those tax liabilities upon the inheritance of those 401Ks and IRAs. And again, it’s it’s one of those things, the earlier you do the life insurance planning, the more cost effective it can be. And so I work with my clients in terms of shopping carriers with them, looking at all of the different landscapes, all these different contracts, and help them understand what they currently have and what they might potentially need. Because these contracts are extremely complicated. I think the insurance companies, they like to make things complicated, but that’s one thing I can help my clients is like looking at their current life insurance, looking at their current long term care, does it make sense to refresh and upgrade based on what the markets doing now, and based on what their long term goals might be?

Kevin Geddings 23:41
Yeah, well, it’s a great vehicle. There’s all these different vehicles that are out there, whether it’s health savings accounts that we were talking about earlier, you know, obviously taken advantage of some of the investment losses that many of us have experienced, since the beginning of 2022, charitable donations, how those can be structured with donor advised funds, all that stuff. I know if it all sounds like a foreign language to you, that’s okay. Because it’s not a foreign language to Kevin. That’s what he does all day long, and he actually enjoys it. It’s fun. You can tell. I enjoy getting to spend time with Kevin on the radio because not everybody loves what they do. But he actually loves what he does.

Kevin Lao 24:18
I you know it’s fun. I mean, helping people plan for retirement. It’s an exciting time in people’s lives. But it’s also very unnerving, because there’s a lot of uncertainty, a lot of unknowns. The media likes to play on fear. So people read things and they say, hey, does this apply to me? Does this not apply to me? So I think I think my clients really appreciate an objective third party that’s not affiliated with the media, telling them what what is relevant for them and what they need to be concerned about.

Kevin Geddings 24:43
I highly recommend working with Kevin once again, imaginefinancialsecurity.com That’s imaginefinancialsecurity.com The phone number 904-323-2069. As promised, here’s the phone number 904-323-2069. You’ll get a sense of Kevin In his bio, his thinking on a variety of financial issues, if you check out the website, that’s where you may want to start. Imaginefinancialsecurity.com. Kevin LAO. Thank you very much for coming by. We learned a lot.

 

4 Retirement and Estate Planning Strategies for Blended Families in Florida

What is a blended family and why does it impact my retirement plan?

First, what is a blended family?

Simply put, a blended family involves a remarriage that comes with children from a previous marriage or relationship.  Maybe you and your new spouse both have children from previous marriages.  Or, perhaps you have children with an ex and a current spouse. 

There are many varieties of blended families, and they are quite common.  In fact, it is estimated that 40% of households with children in the United States are blended of some kind.  Each blended family has unique circumstances, but retirement and estate planning strategies are more complex when it comes to dealing with blended families.  I have been working with blended family retirement planning for over 13 years in our home base of Florida, as well as across the United States virtually, so let’s discuss some key issues to focus on.

How does having a blended family impact my retirement plan?

There are four major topics we will cover in this post.  Keep in mind, there are other considerations you should address, and no two families are identical.  You have to consider your own family dynamics, financial situation, and much more.  However, this should get you started as you think about planning for retirement with a blended family.

  1. When should you claim Social Security?
  2. How will you approach your retirement income withdrawal strategies?
  3. How will you pay for Long-term care costs?
  4. Inter-generational Wealth Planning and Estate Planning
retirement planning for blended families

1. When should you claim Social Security?

Social Security is likely your largest source of guaranteed income in retirement.  It represents 40% of all income for those 65 and older.

There is a possibility you and your spouse each have children you may want to leave assets to, and this could impact the surviving spouse’s retirement income plan.  For example, if you have three children and a new spouse, you may decide to divide your estate into 1/4 for each beneficiary. 

However, Social Security is one income stream that will always be available to the surviving spouse, no matter what.  So, how can you maximize the lifetime benefits for you and your spouse?

If you and your spouse are both eligible for Social Security benefits, the surviving spouse will keep the larger benefit after the first spouse dies.  If you have the opportunity to delay Social Security longer to maximize your benefit, this will also maximize your surviving spouse’s benefit if they were to outlive you.  If you are able to delay until age 70, you will be eligible for your largest monthly benefit.  If that benefit is larger than your spouse’s, it will help maximize their Social Security income in the event some of your assets were not left outright to your spouse.

 

Other blended family Social Security nuances....

Dependent benefits are also important. 

22% of men and 18% of women have a 10 or more year age gap in a second or third marriage.   Therefore, you may have remarried a younger spouse, with potentially dependent children.  Or, you are remarried and had new children with your younger spouse.  Nonetheless, if you are approaching retirement age, consider dependent benefits for Social Security!  Dependents are defined as children under age 18 (or 19 if still in high school), or disabled before 22.  These dependents could be eligible for a Social Security benefit when you start collecting yours!  The benefit is equal to 50% of your primary insurance amount and is available for each dependent child and for your spouse, regardless of age! 

There is a cap on the total amount paid based on your primary insurance amount, and it usually ranges between 150%-180% of your full retirement benefit.  The caveat is you must begin claiming yourself in order to trigger the dependent benefits.  This may result in you filing earlier than you had anticipated.  Therefore, you have to run some calculations to see what is best for your situation.

Another consideration is determining your ability to collect Social Security on an ex-spouse.  This will depend on how long the previous marriage lasted, and whether it ended in a divorce or premature death. 

For example, if your first spouse passed away and you remarried after age 60, you could still qualify for survivor benefits on your former spouse.  On the contrary, if you were remarried before 60, those former spouse’s survivor benefits will be forfeited. 

For divorcees, ex-spousal benefits will be forfeited (in MOST cases) once you are remarried, but you would then be eligible for a spousal benefit from your new spouse.  This is often a consideration on whether or not to legally remarry if your former spouse’s benefit would result in a significantly higher monthly benefit.  But let’s be honest, if you want to marry your new partner, don’t let a few extra Social Security dollars prevent you from doing so!  

2. What is a safe withdrawal strategy for retirement income?

There is a good chance you and your new spouse both had assets before you were remarried.  Perhaps you and your spouse have Traditional IRAs, 401ks, Roth IRAs, and taxable brokerage accounts.  However, those account values probably vary between the two of you.  Furthermore, you may have slightly different estate planning goals involving children from your previous marriages. 

The key is to come up with a safe withdrawal strategy from each bucket based on:

  • tax characteristics
  • risk tolerance
  • inter-generational wealth planning or estate planning goals
  • insurance coverage
  • other income sources like Social Security or a pension

If you plan to leave everything to your new spouse and simply divide it evenly between all of the remaining children, the withdrawal strategy is more straightforward.  However, if your children will inherit assets upon your death, how does that impact your new spouse’s retirement income plan?  Will they have enough to live on throughout their life expectancy?  Remember, Social Security will be reduced after the death of the first spouse, as discussed earlier. 

Also, let’s say each of you has children from a previous marriage.  If you are burning through your assets more aggressively to support the retirement lifestyle, how does that impact your goal to leave money to your children? 

safe withdrawal strategies for blended families

The SECURE Act changed the game with inherited IRA's/401k's.

If your children are in a higher tax bracket, you might not want to leave them your IRA or 401k outright.  Your surviving spouse will likely have more favorable withdrawal options and be able to stretch this account over their life expectancy.  Conversely, leaving the 401k or IRA to your children will likely trigger the new 10-year rule from the SECURE Act of 2019.  This would force them to liquidate the retirement accounts fully within 10 years, likely triggering a much higher tax consequence than had you left those assets to your spouse.  This is especially true if you are a Florida resident without a state income tax, and your children are residents of a state with high-income taxes (California, New York etc.).  In these situations, you may want to consider a slightly higher withdrawal rate on your 401ks or IRAs, and a slightly lower withdrawal rate on your taxable brokerage accounts or Roth accounts.  This way, you maximize the tax friendly assets to your children, and also maintain the tax efficiency of traditional 401ks and IRAs by leaving them to your spouse first. 

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to creating a withdrawal strategy, but starting with open conversations about each other’s legacy goals for both sets of children and getting on the same page about a plan is a great first step.  Once the goals are set, a safe withdrawal rate should be established.  I wrote an article about this and you can read it here.  The basic formula I use is; Financial Goals – Income sources  – Risk Intolerance = Safe Withdrawal Rate from investments.  Noticed how I used risk intolerance instead of risk tolerance.  The reason is that the less risk you are willing to tolerate (the higher your intolerance score), the lower your withdrawal rate would be to accommodate for lower expected investment returns.

 

Should I follow the 4% rule?

Bill Bengen created the 4% rule back in the 1990’s, which back tested rolling 30 year retirement periods from 1926 to 1976.   He concluded that a 4% withdrawal rate resulted in money left over at the end of retirement in all of the tested periods.   You could certainly use this as a starting point, but there is much more to consider.  If you want to maximize the inheritance for your children, you might need to stay close to 4% or even below it!  If you don’t have a huge desire to maximize your estate to children, you might be able to inch closer to a 5% or even 6% safe withdrawal rate. 

If you are comfortable with more volatility in your investments in order to maximize returns, you could potentially have a slightly higher withdrawal rate than 4%, perhaps 5%-6%.  On the other hand, if you cannot withstand any volatility, supporting a 3%-4% withdrawal rate is a more realistic goal. 

Finally, guaranteed income sources play a role in determining your rate of withdrawal.  If you have most of your expenses covered by Social Security and/or a Pension, your rate of withdrawal required might even be 0%!  In this scenario, you could choose to simply reinvest your earnings, gift to your children or even your favorite charity.  On the other hand, if guaranteed income is a very small portion of your required standard of living, your rate of withdrawal might be higher than average.

All of these factors; guaranteed income, risk intolerance, and financial goals; play a role in determining what withdrawal rate to use, so be careful with using a rule of thumb from a textbook.

Using the "Guardrail" approach to withdrawals...

The higher your withdrawal rate, the greater the uncertainty.  If you are more aggressive with your investments, you could expect higher returns, and maybe for a period of time a 5% or even 6% rate of withdrawal works just fine.  However, what happens when the first recession hits?  Or the first bear market?  

This is why we like to use Dynamic Withdrawals by way of a “Guardrail Approach.”  This involves reducing the rate of withdrawal during a significant downturn in stocks.  Conversely, our clients can increase spending when markets are performing well.  In our modeling, we have concluded that this is the best way to maximize the safe withdrawal rate, but at the same time maintain flexibility based on current economic conditions.  I also wrote more in-depth about this topic in this blog post.

Should I Buy An Annuity?

One final topic to consider is whether or not you will purchase an annuity to fund retirement.  There are many flavors of annuities, but the general concept is to create an income stream that you cannot outlive, much like Social Security.  These products also provide some peace of mind in that the income stream is typically guaranteed, and not tied to market volatility.  If you don’t have a pension, this could be a nice supplement to Social Security.  Furthermore, you can name your spouse as a joint annuitant to ensure that they will continue to receive the life income if they outlive you. These products can also be beneficial in that it could allow you to take more risk with your investment portfolio, as well as impact your safe withdrawal rate, knowing that a good portion of your expenses will be covered by guaranteed income.  

Many consumers believe they will be sacrificing their intergenerational wealth planning goals for their children or grandchildren by purchasing an annuity.  Based on research in the industry, this might be true if you were to die prematurely.  However, if you were to live to or past your life expectancy, it could actually result in an increased amount of wealth transferred.  The reason is because your investments were able to ride the ups and downs of the market without being tapped into during a recession or bear market.  I always recommend seeing what’s out there and comparing the rates between several carriers as they do vary greatly. 

Finally, interest rates have been on the rise so far in 2022, and that trend is expected to continue at the moment.  Therefore, the payout rates have become quite attractive for new annuitants, so it’s prudent to do some due diligence as you approach retirement.

3. Long-term care planning

Long-term care planning is complicated enough to prepare for during retirement.  For blended families, long-term care planning is even more complex. If you and your spouse both accumulated assets for retirement, how will one pay for Long-term care costs if they are needed?  Do both of you have Long-term care insurance?  Or, do you plan to self insure?  Are your estate planning goals the same?

Chances are, we will all need some level of custodial care at some point in our lives.  The question is, how extensive is the care?  And, for how long is care needed? Genworth published their annual study that indicates there is a 70% probability of needing Long-term care costs for those 65 or older.  If you have children from a previous marriage, and your spouse needs care, are you going to burn through your own assets to pay for it?  If you are like me, you will do anything you can to take care of your spouse and give them the proper care they need.  However, if you have goals to leave money to your children, is that a risk worth NOT planning for? 

On the other hand, if your spouse has children from a previous marriage and you needed care, how would he/she pay for it?  Would you expect your spouse to accelerate withdrawals on their accounts unnecessarily in order to provide you care?

Should I buy Long-term Care Insurance?

If you are still young enough and healthy enough, you could consider buying Long-term care insurance. The last time I checked, it’s very rare to find a company that will cover you if you are over age 75. The sweet spot is often between 50-60 years of age, as there is a much lower decline rate and premiums are still affordable. When you get into your 60s and 70s, the decline rate goes up substantially and your premiums are quite costly.

Long-term Care Insurance is a very clean way to dedicate specific resources for this major retirement risk. Of course, nobody has a crystal ball, and you might be in the 30% that never needs care, but it’s a gamble you may not want to take.

There are also hybrid Long-term Care and Life Insurance policies that will provide a death benefit if you never use the funds for Long-term Care. Or, a reduced death benefit if you only used a portion of the Long-term Care benefit. This can provide you with some peace of mind knowing that someone will benefit from the policy. These products are much more expensive, so be prepared to write some larger checks.  Also, work with a broker that can represent multiple carriers to help you shop around.

What about an annuity with a Long-term Care rider?

If you or your spouse have health issues that might preclude you from getting traditional Long-term Care, consider an annuity with a Long-term Care rider.  These products do require a certain level of funding, but they are a viable option if you have a nest egg you could allocate to protect against this risk.  Even Suze Orman, who is typically anti life insurance, is an advocate for these types of hybrid policies!

What about “self-insuring?”

There is nothing wrong with self-insuring,  just over half of my clients decide to go this route. 

If you decide to self-insure, having that discussion with your spouse about what assets to use to pay for care is critical!

If you have accounts that are more tax favorable to leave to your heirs, you may not want that account aggressively spent down for your care!

Also, consider the state you live in relative to your beneficiaries.  If you live in a state like Florida or Tennessee without a state income tax, you might consider using some of your 401k or IRA to pay for care.  This is especially relevant if your children are in a higher tax bracket and/or live in a state with high income taxes.

Have a plan, communicate it with your spouse, your financial planner, and your other agents so they know what to do!  I also wrote an entire article on Long-term Care planning if you want to check it out here.

4. Estate Planning Basics for Blended Families

We have touched on some of the estate planning and intergenerational wealth planning challenges throughout this article.  Each spouse might bring a slightly different perspective on transferring wealth.  However, the amount you leave or who you leave it to isn’t the only estate planning challenge for blended families.  Here are some other key points to consider:

  • Who will step in to help make financial decisions as you get older?
  • What about healthcare decisions?
  • Who is going to be the executor of your estate, or successor trustee?
  • Do you have any special considerations for any of your beneficiaries? (special needs, spendthrift concerns, son/daughter-in-law concerns, or stepchildren that you may or may not want to include)

These individuals should know what their role is, and what it is not!  We’ve all heard of horror stories when someone dies without a plan, and unfortunately impacts how that person is remembered.  If you have ever watched the show “This is Us,” there is a scene in the last season where Rebecca calls a family meeting with her three adult children and her second husband.  This is a textbook model on how a family meeting should be conducted! 

If there are different sets of children involved, consider naming one child from each “side” to participate.  If it’s a successor trustee role, perhaps you can name successor co-trustees to avoid any ill will. 

I certainly would make sure that a successor trustee or successor financial power of attorney is financially savvy and responsible.  This does make things a bit tricky if one “side” does not have a viable option.  Instead, I’ve seen where families will name the successor trustee a corporation, also known as a corporate trustee, to serve in that capacity.  This way, clients don’t have to worry about anyone’s feelings being hurt because they couldn’t be trusted. 

Don’t worry about giving specific dollar amounts on what you are leaving.  You certainly can, but it’s not the point.  The point is proactive communication and agreement from the adult children and other beneficiaries.  This can really protect their relationships long term, which is far more meaningful than the dollar amounts they each receive.

If you didn’t see the episode of This Is Us, check it out here!

Should you consider a trust for your blended family?

I spoke with my own attorney and friend in detail about this.  His name is Ryan Ludwick and he’s an Estate Planning specialist with Fisher and Tousey law firm based in Florida.  He told me some couples come in with the idea they want to simply leave everything to one another, and then whatever is left will be divided evenly to the children.  This makes things very simple, almost like a traditional family estate plan. 

However, certain blended family dynamics could be solved with a trust.  For example, if you want your spouse to utilize the assets for retirement if they were to outlive you, but still guarantee the remaining assets are left to your children, you might consider a trust.

A trust would essentially be set up for the surviving spouse.  When you pass away, the trust becomes irrevocable (nobody can change it), and your spouse can use the assets for their care.   Once the second spouse dies, the remainder beneficiaries (presumably your children) will receive the trust assets.

A few reasons why a trust could make sense are:

  • The assets held in trust would not be up for grabs in the case of a remarriage.
  • Potential creditor protection benefits.
  • Oversight – meaning you could name a trustee to help manage the trust, in case your surviving spouse was incapacitated down the road, or if they don’t have the financial acumen.
  • And of course, the terms are your terms, and cannot be altered.
Ryan also made a great point to be careful with naming a trust as primary beneficiary of a retirement account (401k or IRA).  There might be unfavorable tax results by doing so, and you should consult with your financial planner and estate attorney before making any changes. 
 

Life Insurance

Life Insurance could also be a great tool for estate planning for blended families.  You could set up a new policy, or change the beneficiary of an old policy, to satisfy certain estate planning goals. 

For example, let’s you wanted to split your investment assets four ways at your death between children and your new spouse.  Between your spouse losing one Social Security benefit and only receiving 25% of your estate, their ability to maintain financial independence could be at risk.  Therefore, you could consider leaving your life insurance policy to your spouse to make them whole. 

On the other hand, you may not want to leave those 401ks or IRAs to your children for reasons mentioned before.  Therefore, you could elect to leave those assets to your spouse (outright or in a trust), and leave the life insurance policy to your children.  The death benefit is always tax free, so this solves the issues related to inheriting retirement accounts with the new SECURE Act law. 

Elective Share Rules

Ryan said to “be careful of the elective share rule for spouses.”  In Florida, and many other states without community property laws, the spouse is entitled to a percentage of the estate, regardless of what your will says.  For Florida, it’s 30%.  So let’s say you only designate 10% to your spouse in your will, he or she could contest this in court, and would likely win. 

There are legal ways to get around this by way of signing a prenuptial agreement, or having your spouse sign a waiver form.  It’s just something to be mindful for, especially with blended family estate planning.

Final word

As you can see, blended families are unique in an of themselves, so cookie cutter retirement and estate planning advice doesn’t work.

There are other considerations for blended family retirement planning, and no two situations are created the equal, which is why we love helping people like you!

Book a call with us!

If you have questions or want to discuss your situation, feel free to book a 30 minute Zoom call and we would be happy to connect with you. 

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5 Reasons To Own Life Insurance In Retirement

"Should I own life insurance in retirement?"

Your kids might be financially independent, your mortgage is close to being paid off, and you are getting close to having what you need to retire comfortably. You might be wondering, “Should I own life insurance in retirement?”  So, before you go and cancel that policy, read this post and see if you would be a good candidate to own some amount of life insurance for the long haul.

Basics of term and permanent insurance

basics of life insurance in retirement

Before we dive in, let’s go over the basics of the two primary types of life insurance.  Term Insurance is just that, it’s for a specified term.  This is a cost-effective solution for a temporary need.  Let’s say you have young children, a mortgage, and another 20 years of earned income until retirement.  The death benefit you will need, on average, will be at least 10-16x your gross income (according to the CFP board).  So, if your income is $200,000/year, you will need approximately $2mm-$3.2mm of life insurance. 

Depending on your health, this will only cost you pennies on the dollar (perhaps $1800-$3200/year).  The reason it’s so cost effective is that only 1% of term policies ever pay a death claim, so term insurance is one of the most profitable products an insurance company can sell! 

Permanent Insurance is of course, permanent (mind blown).  There are many flavors out there; whole life (traditional), universal life, variable life, variable universal life, joint survivor universal life, and indexed universal life, to name a few.  If you see the term variable, this means the policy performance is going to be tied to an underlying sub account that can be invested, like your 401k plan.  If you don’t see the term variable, this means the performance is going to be tied to the performance of the insurance company’s general account, which is quite conservative.  If you see indexed, this has a component of a fixed rate with potential upside of a targeted index, like the S&P 500.  The difference between universal and traditional whole life is essentially the cost of insurance schedule.  With traditional whole life, you have a fixed cost schedule at the time you start the policy, and it stays that way for the life of the plan.  With universal, the cost of insurance goes up each year as you get older, but the premiums don’t necessarily go up each year.  The schedule is flexible in that you can stop paying premiums one year (assuming you have enough cash value to support it), start again the next, pay half the premium another year and double the premium the year after.  If you attempted this with traditional whole life, your policy would get cancelled, so don’t do that.  I’m also not advocating you make premium payments to a universal policy like so, but it’s nice to have some flexibility.

I just want to emphasize how important it is, if you have a universal life policy, to review the performance at least annually.  You can request an in-force illustration at any time to show how your policy has performed, and how it’s expected to perform based on fresh assumptions.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at universal policies that people have paid into for decades that are on the verge of breaking.

The common theme for all permanent policies, if they are structured properly, is the death benefit should be in force for as long as you live.  Additionally, there is a cash value component that you can access while you are living.  This can be done through policy loans or partial surrenders. 

So you might be wondering, why wouldn’t everyone buy permanent insurance and skip the term?  The answer is simple, the premiums can range from 5-15 times more expensive!  For this post, I will mainly discuss the argument of simply owning life insurance in retirement, whether it’s term or permanent is not the point.  However, there are certain arguments I will make that ONLY permanent insurance can solve for.  This is why it’s critical to begin with the end in mind and work backwards.      

Reason #1: You are over the estate tax exemption limits (federal and/or state)

Currently, the federal estate exemption is $12.06mm/person (or $24.12mm for married couples).  If your total estate is valued above the threshold and you die in 2022, you will pay tax on the amount ABOVE the threshold. The tax rates range from 18%-40%, depending on the size of your estate.  Let’s say you had a total estate of $30mm and were married in 2022.  If both you and your spouse passed away today under the current law, you would pay taxes on $5,880,000 at the federal level.  There are also 17 states that have a “death tax,” so be careful where you live when you die as you might owe state AND federal estate taxes (and by “you,” I mean your beneficiaries)!   For example, Massachusetts and Oregon tax estates in excess of $1mm!  As you can see, living in an estate tax friendly state is a big decision point for many retirees. 

This can become problematic for your heirs to pay these large sums of taxes. If you own a closely held business, a real estate portfolio, or a mix of stocks and bonds, you probably want your heirs to continue to enjoy the fruits of your labor and preserve those assets.  Well, if your beneficiaries owe a seven figure tax bill, they might be forced to sell an extremely valuable asset in order to pay the taxes. This is where permanent life insurance can come into play. Life Insurance is a tax free payment of cash to your designated beneficiary. Therefore, instead of forcing your beneficiaries to sell that valuable asset, the life insurance death benefit could be used to pay the estate tax bill. 

*The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will sunset after the year 2025. The federal exemption is scheduled to revert back to the $5mm/person limit (plus some inflation adjustments). So, while you may not exceed the federal thresholds today, you certainly could exceed them in a few short years.  Plan accordingly!

Reason #2: You Have a Dependent with Special Needs

Life Insurance Special Needs

Children with special needs often require permanent financial assistance. Meaning, their condition won’t make their life any easier as they get older. In fact, quite the opposite. The government provides some financial assistance for those they deem disabled in the form of Social Security Income, Medicare and Medicaid. However, you will likely want to provide additional financial support above and beyond the  government assistance.  While you are alive and working, you will do anything you can to provide that additional financial support. However, if something were to happen to you, how do you address that financial shortfall?

Owning a life insurance policy is a great solution to this problem. You can simply calculate the amount of annual income needed to support the beneficiary with special needs, and come up with an appropriate amount of life insurance to pay out to that beneficiary.  These policies are often owned inside of what is called a Special Needs Trust. This special type of trust allows for the preservation of government support for the child, while at the same time receiving supplemental income from the trust. The longer you live, and the more assets you accumulate, might impact the amount of insurance that you need to own. Ideally you will want some amount of the insurance to be term and some permanent to accommodate the future accumulation of other assets. 

Reason #3: To Replace Lost Retirement Income

 Social Security Income

You might be thinking life insurance is there to replace income when you are working, but how does it factor into retirement income?  For starters, Social Security represents the largest pension fund in the world, and most retirees rely on it for some or most of their income in retirement. When one spouse dies, there is an automatic loss in Social Security income.  The surviving spouse will elect to keep their own benefit, or the deceased’s benefit, whichever is higher.  If a couple each had $24,000/year in social security benefits, this would result in $24,000/year in lost social security income upon the first spouse passing away.  Additionally, after two tax years of filing as a qualifying widower, there could be a widow’s tax given they will have to transition over to a single filer, and potentially pay higher tax rates. 

Furthermore, you might receive a pension from the military or government, or perhaps VA Disability income.  The benefit might be cut in half, or even go to zero upon the annuitant passing away.  Therefore, owning a life insurance policy through retirement can help replace lost social security or other pension income, making the surviving spouse whole and protecting their own longevity.

Reason #4: To Replenish Lost Assets from Long-term Care Costs

It’s estimated that medical costs in retirement will total about $300k for a couple that is 65 years old today, and that excludes Long-term care costs.  The average cost of a nursing home in the US is north of $100k/year (in today’s dollars).  If there was a need for long-term care at the end of the first spouse’s life, this could create a significant drain on retirement assets.  This is especially true if the assets that were used to pay for long-term care came from retirement plans such as traditional IRAs or 401k plans, given the tax drag on withdrawals.  Therefore, owning a life insurance policy can guarantee a cash infusion for the surviving spouse to protect their retirement lifestyle and their own longevity going forward.   This could also be achieved with a life insurance policy with a Long-term care rider, which would allow funds from the policy to be paid in advance for long-term care costs, instead of waiting for the death benefit of the first spouse. Either way, utilizing some form of permanent life insurance in retirement is a great way to protect and/or replenish assets in the event long-term care becomes a financial drain.

Reason #5: To Guarantee a Financial Legacy

I often times hear from clients they have a strong desire to leave assets to their children, grandchildren or even their favorite charity.  Ultimately what they are saying is they don’t want to burn through the assets they have accumulated, but they still want to ENJOY their retirement!  These clients often times have a very difficult time spending their own money in retirement simply because of the fear of running out of money and being a burden on their loved ones.  My clients that own permanent life insurance in retirement can sleep extremely well at night knowing that at least one asset is guaranteed to be there upon their death.  This ends up liberating the client to spend more freely on travel, bucket list activities, charitable giving, and overall results in a more enjoyable retirement lifestyle.

BONUS Reason #6 – Owning Permanent Life Insurance in Retirement as a Fixed Income Alternative

Here is a fun concept, especially in light of today’s bond market!  With the bond index down double digits year to date, many clients are asking about an alternative to bonds.  A few come to mind including an individual bond ladder, fixed income annuities, or even a zero duration hedge strategy.  However, the cash value in a traditional universal life or permanent life insurance policy can be extremely powerful, if structured properly.  If you google “cash value life insurance,” you will see a mix bag of opinions.  For the right client profile (maxing out qualified plans, maxing out Roth conversions, higher tax bracket etc.), there could be a very compelling argument to begin accumulating dollars within a permanent life insurance policy well before retirement.  For starters, it will solve for all of the primary challenges we mentioned previously.  Additionally, it will allow time for cash value to build up inside of the policy.  If it’s structured properly, it can become a liquid asset to draw from during your retirement years. 
You will likely experience anywhere from 4-6 bear markets during your retirement years.  You’ve probably heard the concept, “buy low, sell high.”  In retirement, this involves avoiding selling a depreciated asset for income.  In a market like 2022, both stocks and bonds are down.  If you have cash values built up in a fixed life insurance policy, it’s a viable hedge to allow your riskier assets to fully recover when the market turns around. 

A few last words of advice

Life insurance does get more expensive as you get older, and you also have a greater risk of developing a medical condition that might make life insurance unobtainable. There is no one size fits all when it comes to retirement planning, especially when it comes to using life insurance in your retirement plan. The life insurance industry is quite complex with many carriers and many variations of permanent life insurance. Therefore, I highly recommend you consult with a fee-only financial planner who has expertise in this arena, like our firm! (Yes, I’m quite biased).

If you are interested in learning more about working with our firm, or would like to discuss your financial objectives, book a Mutual Fit meeting with the link below. Also, feel free to share this article with anyone that might find it useful.

Book an initial consultation

Episode 10 – Six Reasons to Take Advantage of Roth Conversions

Are you approaching retirement with the bulk of your next egg in tax deferred 401ks or IRAs? With so much uncertainty on where tax rates might head in the future, you might be wondering, “Should I take advantage of Roth conversions?” They are not for everybody, but in the right situation you could end up saving thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, in taxes during your lifetime. Additionally, your heirs will also benefit from a more tax efficient inheritance. I hope you enjoy this episode, which includes my interview with Kevin Geddings at WSOS 103.9 in St. Augustine!

Episode 9: The 5 Most Common Estate Planning Mistakes

Kevin Lao  00:00

[music] hey, everybody and welcome to the Planning for Retirement Podcast where we help people plan for retirement. My name is Kevin Lao and I’m your host. Just a quick disclaimer, I have my own registered investment advisory firm. It’s Imagined Financial Security. We’re registered here in Florida. But this information is for educational purposes only and should not be used as investment, legal or, tax advice.

 

If you do have questions about how to work with my firm, you can go to my website at imaginefinancialsecurity.com. So, today’s episode nine, the 5 Most Common Estate Planning Mistakes, I’ve seen a lot of them over the years, being in the business and I’ve been thinking about doing this episode for a long time, because Estate Planning is a conversation I have with just about everybody, and it’s not a fun conversation because we’re talking about death, disability in capacity.

 

So, no one wants to address Estate Planning and it’s no surprise that only 1/3 of American adults have an Estate Plan in place. But one thing I always hear from any client is, that they don’t want to be a burden on their loved ones. I’ve put together this episode, and hopefully you find this helpful. These are easy to address, easy to fix. But I always recommend talking to a licensed attorney that can actually help you create and execute your documents properly.

 

So, the first most common mistake is probably, obvious for most and that’s simply not having an Estate Plan.

So, if you’re one of the 2/3 of adult Americans, you’re obviously in the majority, and you may not have an Estate Plan, that’s ok. It’s very easy to set up your basic will, your basic power of attorney, which is someone that can make financial decisions, if you’re incapacitated, a living will which is essentially, if you are in a vegetative state.

 

Who’s going to make that decision? What are your wishes in that situation or, a power of attorney for health care, which is someone that can also make healthcare decisions on your behalf, if you’re unable to? Those are the primary documents that most Estate Plans will incorporate. You may need a trust, you may not need a trust and that’s again, up for a licensed attorney, someone that can review your situation and give you some advice on that.

 

Many people think that if their situation is fairly simple, they may not need a trust and that’s may be true. But you might need a trust for variety of reasons, which we’ll cover here in a minute. So, number one, simply getting an Estate Plan done is, really the first battle.

We get into mistake number two, which is not properly executing those Estate Planning documents.

Again, I’m guilty of this too, my wife and I, we did our first Estate Plan before we had children. So, it was all about who’s going to receive our assets, if something happened to both of us? Who’s going to take care of our dogs? At the time, we had three dogs in our household.

 

So, there were there was some complexity but not a lot. Since then we had three children and we finally updated our state plan about a year ago. It felt pretty good, frankly, to get it done. To make sure everything was directed to our beneficiaries, making sure that we had guardianship for our kids. If something were to happen to both of us.

 

03:23

We had someone named that would take care of our kids and also to manage the assets for them. But not properly executing your documents is, super common because it takes a little bit of heavy lifting. If you set up a will or, set up a trust, you are going to have to go in and look at all of your accounts whether you have 401K’s, IRAs, life insurance, annuities, bank accounts, investment accounts, and you might need to make some changes on those beneficiary designations.

 

So, there are two types of assets in this world, assets that can pass outside of the probate process by having a beneficiary, and then assets that will pass through probate if proper beneficiaries are designated or, if there are no investment beneficiary designation, eligibility. So, let’s start with accounts that can be passed outside of probate.

 

Most commonly those would be retirement accounts like a 401K, 403B, life insurance contracts, annuity contracts, even assets that are not held inside of retirement accounts like, joint bank accounts or, individual bank accounts or, joint or, individually held investment brokerage accounts. All of those have the option to name a primary beneficiary and most of the time a secondary or, contingent beneficiary. And then for bank accounts the alternative, the name for it is a TOD or, a POD, which is transfer on death or, payable on death.

 

So, once you’ve reviewed all of your accounts and you have an Estate Plan in place, most of the time your attorney will tell you, hey, here’s who you should name as primary based on your wishes. Here’s who you should name as the contingent beneficiary based on your wishes and you have to do that for every single account that you have. Again, this is up to you, your attorney is not going to do this for you. You’ve got to contact those institutions, get those beneficiary designations updated.

 

I’ve seen scenarios where clients have been divorced for 20 years, and their ex-wife or, ex-husband is still the primary beneficiary on their 401k. Especially, if you’ve moved around from company to company, a bunch of different retirement accounts or, you have several life insurance policies, one with work, one outside of work, one that your grandmother took out for you when you were a baby, look at all those beneficiary designations. Make sure they are up to date and then make sure you have a contingent beneficiary if that option is available.

 

Now, the second part to this mistake of, not properly executing is, if you have a trust, making sure that the assets that should be held in trust are titled to the trust. So again, some heavy lifting involved, especially, if you’re moving a property inside of a living trust or, an investment brokerage account inside of a living trust. If you’re naming a trust as a primary or, contingent beneficiary of those accounts that we just talked about, all of that needs to be done by the individual client.

 

06:23

Again, if paperwork might be involved, you might need to get on the phone with customer service and jump through some hoops. But it’s worth it in the end, because your documents aren’t really going to do anything unless you have the proper beneficiary designations and the assets are titled with the right ownership.

 

So again, those are all scenarios that you can easily review, take a look at, making sure that they’re all up to date, and review them once every year, two years, three years. I mean, if your situation isn’t really changing a lot, you may not need to review them every year. But definitely every couple of years, every three years, you probably want to review those beneficiary designations and make sure that they’re titled properly.

 

Third most common mistake is thinking a living trust or, a trust in general, is just for ultra-high net worth people.

I hear this all the time, hey, Kevin, I don’t need a trust. I don’t have over 11 and a half million dollars, which is the current exemption for estate tax purposes. Maybe they have $5 million or, $6 million and they might have other concerns in terms of inheritance for their children or, grandchildren or, they might be concerned about divorce of the one of their kids and assets being split to that son-in-law or, daughter-in-law that they’re not a huge fan of to begin with.

 

Maybe there’s a creditor protection concern or, spendthrift concerns are a child with special needs that may need care for the rest of their life. Therefore a trust could make a lot of sense in solving those issues in terms of inheriting assets outright. So, all of those reasons are reasons to own a trust, whether it be a living trust or, an irrevocable trust or, a testamentary trust or, if you have minor children that’s another one.

 

My wife and I, we have three kids that are under 18. If something were to happen to both of us, we have guardianship named and we also have a trust that would be set up to be managed for our boys, until they are of age and that is designated inside of the trust.

 

So, think of a trust as essentially another entity that will help you execute your wishes and manage the assets properly for your beneficiaries, if there are concerns about them inheriting assets outright or, if you just want to make sure that those assets stay in the family and aren’t subject to divorce proceedings or, creditor protection concerns those types of things.

 

Another reason I have a trust is, to simply avoid probate. Probate is expensive. It can cost anywhere from two to 3% of your estate. So, if you have an estate that’s $2 million, I mean, that could easily cost you a 30, 40 $50,000 to go through the probate process, and setting up a trust might cost you three or $4,000.

 

09:02

So, this is a big reason why a lot of people will go through the process to setting up a living trust, even if there aren’t a lot of the concerns that I just mentioned. They love their son-in-law or, daughter-in-law or, their kids are totally able to manage a large inheritance. They may still want to set up a trust. So it’s passed outside of the probate process to avoid the cost of probate and also the public record of probate. It keeps that privacy involved.

 

The assets may still stay in trust for a lot of those concerns that we just talked about. But that beneficiary their son or, daughter or, whoever that beneficiary is, can still access the assets for whatever purpose that they want to access those funds for, if they’re able to manage it themselves. You also have the ability to set up a corporate trustee.

 

This is an area that I see is, definitely becoming more common where, maybe there’s several children involved, and one of them is just completely off the rails. Not able to manage assets. There’s a lot of concern, if there was a big windfall of a million or, $2 million that’s passed on to one of the children, they may want to have a trust set up for that beneficiary, and not have that person as the trustee into, in terms of making the financial decisions, when you’re no longer here.

 

So, you may want to consider a corporate trustee, which is a trust company or, a bank or, financial institution, can serve as a corporate trustee, to ensure the wishes of the trust are executed on that beneficiary’s behalf if you have concerns of the management of those assets.

 

Special needs trusts and other things as well, having a corporate trustee. I see a lot of times will fit in those situations, because the siblings of that special needs child may not be available. Maybe they’re, a neurosurgeon or, they’re deployed overseas, and they’re just not available to make those financial decisions for their brother or, sister. So a corporate trustee can also be put in place, in lieu of an individual, if you have a trust setup.

 

There’re a lot of benefits of trust. I’m talking a lot about trust, because I’m a big fan of them, just for the simplicity of the execution of your wishes, and all of the benefits of trust provides, whether it’s a living trust or, a testamentary trust. Again, consult your attorney, see if that makes sense in your financial plan and if it does, make sure that it’s properly executed on the back end.

 

All right, number four, is leaving tax inefficient assets to beneficiaries.

So, what does that mean? There are certain assets that when they’re passed on to the next generation, are going to be heavily taxed, and then there are some assets that are not going to be taxed at all that are super tax efficient to leave to beneficiaries.

 

The big one I’ll highlight here is, for traditional 401k is, traditional IRAs that used to have the benefit of what’s called a stretch IRA, when they’re inherited by a non-spousal beneficiary, like a son or, daughter or, a grandchild. Those are no longer available for most beneficiaries. Ok, there are some exceptions to the rule.

 

12:11

I did a Podcast on this recently, maybe episode three or two. It’s called the Tax Trap of Traditional 401Ks and IRAs. So, look at that, I talked more about this in detail but generally speaking, there could be a scenario where, you have several accounts and certain accounts you may want to designate for retirement income, and spend those down during your lifetime.

 

Then there are other assets that you may want to protect and preserve, to leave those, to the next generation, given the tax efficiency of those, how those assets are passed on? A lot of that’s going to be dependent on your tax situation in retirement, if you’re in a high tax bracket or, low tax bracket, where you think taxes might go in the future? And then also, what tax bracket is your beneficiary in?

 

Are they in a really high tax bracket or, a really low tax bracket? And that will drive a lot of those decisions that you’re going to want to make as you approach retirement, and then go through retirement, in terms of spending on your assets.

 

Number five, last but not least is, just simply not informing key decision makers with important information.

I mentioned earlier, not being a burden on loved ones is important to just about, everyone I talked to. What I find is, that sometimes, you’ll get an Estate Plan done, and you may not tell your brother-in-law that they’re the executor or, you may just mentioned in passing, hey, something happened. Would you be able to manage the trust or, manage the financial affairs?

 

But they really don’t understand or, know what that means, what’s involved? And I’ve seen a lot of scenarios where a big mess is left to a family member, to clean up and take care of it. So, I think, being transparent with the key decision makers, that are going to help execute your estate, whether it’s a trust or, being the executor of your will, I believe is super important, and then making getting things organized in a way that’s easy for those individuals to execute on.

 

So, if you have tons of accounts all over the place, does that make sense? Do you want to simplify your balance sheet a little bit? I create a two page document for all of my clients just to simply say, hey, here’s a list of our assets. Here’s a list of our liabilities. Here’s a list of insurance. Where are those accounts held? Who’s a point of contact that you can reach out to? Here’s even a phone number that you can call, and giving that out to my clients powers of attorney or, executors or, trustees.

 

14:42

I find that as super valuable just to make sure that process is easy for those individuals that are going to execute on your plan. Hope you found this helpful. That’s it for today. Be sure to subscribe if you like what you heard, that way you can stay up to date on new episodes. Again, I always love to hear from you if you have any questions about your personal situation that you want to talk about. You can just visit my website at imaginefinancialsecurity.com and schedule a call with me.

Episode 8: What to do when stocks are volatile?

Strategies for navigating stock market volatility

What to do when stocks are volatile

 

Kevin  00:12

Hello everyone and welcome to the Planning for Retirement Podcast. My name is Kevin Lao and I am your host. Just a quick background on me, I’m a CFP been in the business for almost 14 years and I have my own firm serving clients all over the US. We’re based here in St. Augustine, Florida. My firm is Imagine Financial Security. But this Podcast is to educate you on the strategies we put in place every day to help our clients plan for retirement and achieve financial independence.

 

If you have any questions about working with me one-on-one or, even had feedback on our Podcast, I always love to hear from you. And you can visit my website at imaginefinancialsecurity.com and contact me that way. Also, be sure to subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes, if you’d like what you hear.

 

This episode on January 24th 2022 is episode number eight. It is called what to do when markets are volatile? Before we jump in just a quick disclaimer, this should not be construed as investment, legal or, tax advice. And you should consider your own unique circumstances and consult your advisers before making any changes. So, let’s dive in.

 

All right, as I mentioned it is Monday, January 24th, it’s the evening. My three boys are now sleeping. So, I have some quiet time to record this episode, which I’ve been looking forward too. We’ve been in some ballot of volatility over the last four to five months really starting with the Delta variant in the third quarter.

 

The markets got a little bit spooked. Of course, with the recent variant Omicron in the fourth quarter of 2021 and we’re officially in correction territory with the NASDAQ intraday today was down 17% from its previous high. The S&P 500 was minus 10% and some change from its previous high.

Correction vs bear market

We’re definitely in correction territory with both of those and the small caps in the US, are actually in bear market territory. So bear market, just to define this, is a drop of 20% or, more from previous market highs. So, many times I’ve clients or, prospects, they come to me and ask what should they do? What should their strategy be?

 

So, really to simplify things, there are three things you can do. You can sell something. You can buy something or, you can do nothing.

And I hear many talking heads in our industry, even advisors, co-workers, friends, family, I hear a lot of people talk about number three, which is do nothing. Bury your head in the sand, just let the dust settle and just don’t look at your statements, and then wait a year.

 

This is great for people who don’t know what to do because making a mistake is, you certainly want to avoid selling something at the wrong time and making that big mistake.

So, doing nothing is certainly better than making a big mistake.

But the real answer, the one the pros practice, and the one my firm employs is, to do a little bit of both. You sell some things and you buy others.

 

03:21

Now, what to sell and what to buy is, much more of a complex question. I’ll go into what our process looks like, in just a moment. But first of all, I just want to talk about what’s going on in the markets now? We’ve had record high inflation. We’ve had for many months, really since June, we have had interest rates spike at the beginning of the year, so far in 2021. So, the concern, there is large purchases like, homes and cars are becoming less affordable.

 

It also impacts the ability for businesses to borrow money, which has been a very easy thing to do for businesses, for many years, really since 2010. So, that’s going to become a little bit more difficult. A little bit more expensive, which will impact the growth and then ultimately, number three, which is really related to the first two is, this concern of slowing growth in 2022 and 2023.

 

Really, with the reopening from the global shutdown in 2020 towards the end of 2020 and 2021, we’ve been experiencing a rapid expansion because we were experiencing the reopening from the lock downs. Naturally, the pace of growth is going to slow and so, investors are certainly concerned with that, and ultimately concerned with stock prices not being aligned with their valuations.

 

So, those three things are really contributing to the stock markets being volatile and what I will say is, volatile markets are normal. They’re healthy. If stocks had no volatility, they would not provide the upside potential, they have provided for decades. We’ve all heard the notion of risk and reward.

 

Well, if there’s no risk involved, there’s no reward involved. I tell my clients and friends, and family and people I talk to is, embrace the volatility. This is an opportunistic period of time in the markets, and we’ll talk about here in just a second. So what do I mean by opportunistic?

 

Let me throw out a quick statistic that really jumped out to me. This was done by Hartford Funds I believe, and I’ve been looking at this study year after year, and I think they update this almost every year. We talked about bear markets being minus 20% drop a bull market, conversely, as a 20%, increase in prices from previous lows.

 

06:02

So, listen to this, more than half or, 56%, of the S&P 500, its best performing days in the last 20 years have occurred, while we are in a bear market.

Again, we’re not in a bear market for the S&P or, NASDAQ yet, but I’m just talking about volatile markets in general. When things are bad, we tend to have some of the best performing days in the market. Actually, here’s another one. I’ll follow up on that.

 

Another 32% of the best days in the market took place, in the first two months of a bull market.

So, if you really add those two up which probably, isn’t fair to do, but let’s say 88% or, north of 80%, of the best days in the S&P 500, over the last 20 years have occurred, while we were in a bear market. Ok. Now, you could argue. You know, a large part of that was 2008-2009, with the worst recession since the Great Depression. We were in a really deep recession, a deep bear markets.

 

Of course, there were a lot of good trading days during that period of time, but you really look at 2020 as another example, that was the other bear market we’ve had over the last 15 or, so years. There was some great opportunity in March, April, May, June, July of 2020, where if you didn’t take advantage of it, it hurt your recovery.

 

If you sat it out, there’s no way you would have made back what you’d lost at the beginning of 2020. But the important note is, that when things are bad people tend to run. People tend to get scared and that’s when opportunity arises. Ok, valuations become more attractive, stock prices are lower than they were previously and so investors that have been sitting on the sidelines, opportunistic investors, are now buying in, now getting into the market.

 

It’s like the quote I love from Warren Buffett is, be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.

I love that quote and I think it really applies to the process I employ for my clients.

 

Another interesting statistic I want to throw out there is that, bear markets last 10 months on average, but bull markets last three years. So, this really goes hand in hand with a lot of the advice people give around, just wait it out, don’t make any moves. You just buy and hold.

 

Don’t make any rash decisions because on average, bull markets tend to last longer than bear markets. If you did nothing, you probably did just fine over the course of a long period of time. Ok. But how do we become opportunistic? How do we really take action during periods of volatility?

 

This is really what the answer that people are looking for when they come to me during these periods. Ok. What my clients are looking for in an advisor during volatile markets?

So, the answer is simple. We manage to each investment policy statement. Ok, let me repeat that, we manage to each individual investment policy statement.

So, what’s an investment policy statement?

 

09:09

A simple way, a simple definition is, it’s a written document that designates a certain percentage to be allocated for each asset class. Ok. How do you create an investment policy statement?

So, the equation in my mind is very simple. It’s your financial goals, combined with your risk tolerance or, risk capacity. Minus your financial resources equals your investment policy statement.

 

Some examples of asset classes would be, let’s say, large cap US growth stocks or, International stocks or, US bonds or, Real Estate, just to name a few. A well-designed investment policy statement will have asset classes that move in different directions during different periods of each economic cycle. Meaning they’re well diversified from one another.

 

So, as the market shifts, the percentage you own and each designated asset classes, you then have the opportunity to sell at a premium or, buy at a discount relative to your IPS or, your investment policy statement. Ok. If you have no starting point, it’s never going to make sense mathematically of, when to buy and when to sell?

 

Whereas, if you have an investment policy statement, and you have a certain percentage that’s supposed to be allocated towards international stocks, and a certain percentage that’s supposed to be allocated to US growth stocks, ok, and that percentage has shifted, based on fundamentals of the economy and stock prices. That’s going to give you the answer of what do you buy and what do you sell?

 

Let me give you a quick example. Let’s look at the recent bear market we had. Ok. Again, I’m not predicting we’re going to enter a bear market right now. I’m just talking about bear markets, because typically people start to pay attention when their accounts dropping by 20%. Even now, people are starting to look its headlines, are being made because the NASDAQ was down intraday today at over 4%.

 

So, if you’re like, oh, should I be doing something? The last bear market we had was February, March of 2020. Ok, this was the beginning of the Pandemic sell-off. It was short-lived in early, in August. We had recovered all of the losses from the bear market and stocks have been on a rally ever since. But stocks dropped 35% in a six-week period.

 

Bonds, on the other hand, were up close to 7% during that same time horizon. Ok, so why is this? I mean, interest rates were low, relatively speaking. Ok. So, how could they return 7% in a two month period? Well, it’s because when people are selling out of stocks, because they’re fearful or, they’re concerned about what’s going on in the economy?

 

12:01

They have to buy something. I mean, yes, you could go to cash. But a lot of these individuals, a lot of these investors are going to flight to safety. So, US Treasuries, Municipal bonds, Corporate bonds, they’re flighting to safety. So, bonds spiked because of prices going up. People wanted safe investments paying a coupon rate of, one and a half or, two and a half percent, just because they were concerned with stock prices dropping 35% over a six-week period.

 

Ok, let’s say for simplicity purposes, we had an investment policy statement, based on your financial goals, based on your risk tolerance, based on your time horizon, based on your financial resources. We said, hey, you know what? Let’s use half of your portfolio to be in the stock market. Obviously, diversified within stocks, US stocks, International stocks, large stocks, small stocks, mid-sized stocks, and the other 50% would be in fixed income also, diversified US bonds, International bonds, high quality investment grade versus Junk bonds, high yield.

 

So, in the first few months of 2020, stocks were down 35% and bonds were up 7%. So, as it relates to your investment policy statement, ok, we are now, under exposed and stocks, and over exposed to bonds simply by the drastic difference in performance during that time. Instead of reacting to headlines, which is very tough to do, I promise you, ok, you wouldn’t believe the phone calls, I was receiving from clients during 2020, at the height of COVID when stocks in a single day, were going down 11 to 12 and 13%.

 

Ok, the calls that we were feeling were concerning, ok, but we had to stay disciplined, ok, and if we’re now, underweight and stocks, ok, and overweight and bonds, mathematically speaking, as a relates to your investment policy statement, and that 50-50 designation, we had the asset class. By simple way of math, we have to then trim off some of the gains from bonds so, sell at a premium, and purchase stocks at hopefully, discounted prices.

 

Now, hindsight is 2020 we know how that worked out. But in practice, this is literally the discipline that goes into this, ok. So, we’re not reacting to headlines. We’re not trying to time the market, ok. We’re simply looking at a financial goal, a time horizon, and an investment policy statement related to a certain account, and we’re going to buy some things and we’re going to sell others.

 

Now, within stocks, we’re going to have different percentages allocated to different segments of the market. Ok, within bonds, same thing. Okay, so I’m just using a very high level simple example of half in stocks and half in bonds. Once we made that move, I know Hindsight is 2020, but stocks went on a tear for the next four months because we had repositioned and loaded up in stocks during the bottom March, April of 2020, and we had that recovery over the next four months, we recovered much faster than, if we had did nothing.

 

15:34

Ok, the same thing held true in 2021. So, fast forward, ok, we’re looking at it and said, hey, we had a massive run in 2020, and even into 2021. So, that same 50-50 portfolio, we’re now overweight in stocks, and we’re underweight in bonds. As painful as this might be, especially, when we’re going through a significant bull market, we need to buy discipline.

 

Trim off some of the gains from stocks, not bail out of stocks, but trim off some of the gains, to get it back to that targeted 50% that we want to have in the portfolio and purchase fixed income albeit, it’s not going to generate a ton of interest. Given interest rates are super low, but it’s there for that stability. We’re not overweight, when stocks take the next tumble, which we talked about happens every four years on average for a bear market.

 

Now, that we’re going into this ballot of volatility, third quarter of 2021, fourth quarter of 2021, first quarter of 2022, if we had followed this discipline, follow this process, we’re not going to be experiencing as much of a dip, as we had, if we had done nothing.

Ok, this also is beautiful because it works well when you’re retired, and you’re actually, drawing income from the portfolio.

 

So, my clients that are— let’s say, a client needs $5,000 a month from the portfolio. We need to raise cash somewhere by liquidating a certain asset class. Every single month, when we go into the portfolio, we look at the Investment Policy Statement and figure out what we’re under? What we’re over weighted?

And that drives our decisions on what we’re liquidating to generate income from the portfolio.

 

Again, it works in the accumulation phase. It works in the income distribution phase, and for those of you that are younger listening to this, and let’s say, you don’t even have fixed income in the portfolio, where you might have cash. You might have cash that you’ve been waiting to invest, that you haven’t put to work yet. This is dry powder. It’s an opportunistic time to deploy that cash strategically, to buy equities at potentially discounted prices and especially,

 

If your time horizon is 10 or, 15-20 years, you don’t need to even time it perfectly, and you shouldn’t even try to time it perfectly because conceivably, if capital markets continue at the trajectory, they’ve been going over the net, over the last 100 years plus, you’re going to be much better off than just leaving that money in cash. I promise you that especially with inflation.

 

18:08

So, those of you that are long ways away from retirement, there are strategies you can deploy, instead of selling off fixed income. If you’re closer to retirement, it’s a perfect time to look at what are you overweight in? What are you underweight in? What is your investment policy statement look like? What should it look like? Should it be updated, based on your time horizon, based on your financial goals and circumstances changing? For those of you in retirement don’t panic.

 

Hopefully, you have a process in place where a certain dollar amount for income each year is, going to be generated from asset classes that are immune to stocks. Ok, in summary, if you don’t know what to do don’t make a knee jerk reaction but at the same time, don’t just sit idle and do nothing. Ok, create an Investment Policy Statement for each account. Ok, that you have follow the Investment Policy Statement, implement it with a discipline process. Don’t act on emotion.

 

Ok, if you want to consult with an advisor, consult with a fiduciary, go to NAPFA.org. Go to Fee Only network. Go to XY Planning. If you want to consult with me one-on-one, I’m happy to talk. You can get on my website at Imaginefinancialsecurity.com but I hope you find this helpful and can apply during periods of volatility moving forward. Be smart, review your situation, make sure you’re taking the appropriate steps for your own strategy and your own unique circumstances.

 

Ok, again, hope you enjoy today’s episode. Be sure to subscribe. Leave a review on iTunes like, I mentioned if you liked what you heard, and I really appreciate all of you, and appreciate you tuning into today’s episode. Until next time, have a great one.

 

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