5 Things a Retirement-Focused Advisor Should Do and a Long-Term Care Question

Speaker 1 (00:00):

<silence> Welcome everybody to the Retirement Power Hour podcast. My name's Joe Allaria, and this is episode 10. And as you can see today, I'm gonna be joined by Scott Carson. Scott, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:12):

Glad to be here again. Joe Scott

Speaker 1 (00:14):

Is a 30 year industry veteran in the financial services industry, and as a senior wealth advisor at Carson Allaria Wealth Management, Scott started all the way back in 1989 at a company called IDS, which is an American Express company, and began working in the financial services industry there. And Scott says that you were, you worked as a commercial banker for five years with MidAmerica Banks and Citigroup, uh, you were a partner with Pines Financial Group prior to found, prior to founding Meridian Financial Group in 1999. Do I have all that right?

Speaker 2 (00:51):

Uh, that pretty well sums it up.

Speaker 1 (00:54):

I know your recent history a lot better than, than when you started, but Sure. In fact, what we're gonna talk about today, today, we're gonna be talking about five things a retirement focused advisor should do. And I think this ties really well back into where you started early in your career. 'cause uh, we were talking offline, you know what, when you first got into financial planning at that time, hardly anyone was doing financial planning. But I don't wanna steal your thunder. We'll, we'll just get into it here in a second. But I think the main thing, Scott, is when people are looking for advisors and they're trying to find someone that's a good fit for them, it's hard to differentiate and it's hard to understand what this advisor does that's, that's different than this advisor and, and even how well they do x, y, and Z services and, and different things.

Speaker 1 (01:42):

And I think we all have an idea of what we think advisors should do. Um, there's some low hanging fruit, but then there's some other things that maybe people don't know. You know, they, you don't know what you don't know, a a a phrase, I'm gonna steal from you, but people don't know on all the time what an advisor really should be looking at on your situation. So I think we're gonna get into that a little bit today and maybe bringing light some things that people didn't think that really fell under the an advisor's umbrella. But with that, with no further ado, let me get into the, to the first thing. So again, we're gonna talk about five things a retirement focused advisor should do. And Scott, let's just jump in thing number one. These are all your, these are your five, Scott, I'm just, I'm moderating here. I'm gonna let you talk on these. The first one you have here is ask thought provoking questions and be an excellent listener.

Speaker 2 (02:34):

Yeah, Joe, having started out at a financial planning based organization back in an era when the industry was far more transactional based, which means the people who were calling themselves at that time, stockbrokers, financial advisors, et cetera, they were predominantly living and working off of a commission. And it was a, a sale to a client or a prospect and then move on to the next. And I had the good fortune of starting with a firm that said, we're gonna do planning first and we'll worry about transactions second. So I think that has served the industry quite well over the years and has allowed financial advisors who are planning focused, planning driven to develop deeper, more thoughtful relationships with the people that they do business with. And a lot of that stems from, again, asking good thought provoking questions when you're meeting with a prospect and being an excellent listener, you know, we're not there to sell, we're there to advise and consult.

Speaker 1 (04:07):

And I think there's two types of questions you can really ask. And there's qualitative and quantitative. And when you get trained on how to be an advisor, the focus is really on quantitative. It's the numbers. What accounts do you have, what are the balances? What do you, what's your income? You know, things like that. The, the numbers side of it, because, hey, I, you know, as a young CFP, you know, I'm talking about people that are trained, um, but we need to have the numbers to go to put in that financial planning software. And fortunately and unfortunately, um, we have younger and younger advisors and those advisors are becoming certified in what they do, but they're really, I think, getting certified in one area. And that's the, the quantitative side because it takes years of experience to get the qualitative side those questions that really invoke feelings and emotions and, and really get to the meat of what the goal and what the objective is. And I just, I've witnessed it myself. Younger advisors, they, they wanna rush to show you that financial plan, but they're not really, they don't have a good understanding of what makes you tick and what, what are you trying to accomplish and what are your fears, uh, what are the things that keep you up at night, your concerns

Speaker 2 (05:31):

A agree, Joe. And I think what advisors will find, if they do a good job of asking those thought provoking questions is there's typically three areas of primary importance in an individual's life. I think it's family, finances, and faith. Maybe not necessarily in that order, but I think those three items probably rank near the top Yeah. Of about everybody's priorities. Sure. So if finances, let's say are number two, then it's a great idea for advisors to understand everything they can about the client's family. Sure. Because it's their family that they have now, or it was their parents, or maybe even their grandparents who shaped their ideas about how they think about their finances. Right. And I, they're focused on utilizing finances at the family level, whether in a current situation, uh, a future situation or a post death situation. Yeah. The, the faith we don't typically get into, but it does come up from time to time if it's a very important aspect. Yeah. Clients may wanna do something financially, uh, to help support maybe a religious organization. And we need to understand, again, by asking the right questions, how important is that to them? And where do they wanna rank that or put that in the scheme of their overall financial plan? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:12):

And those are all really good conversations to get into. And I love when I'm in that, in that moment, having that conversation, I feel inside, like, I am doing my job, I'm doing a really good job. But we know that those conversations don't happen with every advisor, you know, in every client meeting. I think the, maybe one of the biggest reasons is time constraints, you know, with a lot of firms out there. Um, it's just a different model. And we understand advisors provide investment advice that's part of the title investment advisor. So we get that. But I think if you, maybe if you're an advisor out there, even that's listening and you have 300, 400, 500 clients, you don't have the time to get into that depth. And so you have to just pick off the low hanging fruit, the investments, make sure that your ducks are in a row there, and then you gotta move on.

Speaker 1 (08:09):

'cause you got six more meetings, you know, that same day. So what helps is for us, for, you know, here to not have that level of, uh, the quantity of clients per advisor. Any firm that has a low client to advisor ratio should inherently have more time to, to get deeper into those conversations. And again, to really drive the bus or help you help the client, the listener, understand things that are most important to you. And I mean, it's, steal your thunder, Scott, 'cause you, you made this comment, but, uh, offline, but if you get the response, I've never had anyone ask me these this question before, or no one's asked me these questions before. We know again, we're doing a good, a good job. And I know you've had that, I've witnessed it in, in certain interactions and I know when I've heard that it's, again, it's a, it's a signal to me that I'm, I'm doing a good job at least asking questions.

Speaker 1 (09:07):

Let's go to the next one, Scott. So we're, we got five things here that a retirement focused advisor should do. Why do we say retirement focused? Well, is not all advisors specialize in the area of retirement? So maybe these aren't five things that every advisor should do. If you're an advisor working with younger people, you have other things you should focus on. But if you are an advisor who works primarily with people that are trying to transition into retirement, if you're listening to this show, it's the retirement power hour. That's what we're talking about is getting into retirement. You're either close or you're retired. So that's why we're talking about five things a retirement focused advisor should do. And the second one's, Scott, you have here develop a financial plan that is consistent with the client's goals and dreams.

Speaker 2 (09:54):

So again, back to being planning driven and focused, I like to look at it this way. All of us go through essentially three phases of life. We go through what I would call a learning phase, right? As we start out as kindergartners going to school all the way through whatever level of education one chooses to pursue, whether that's high school, college, graduate studies, et cetera. And then most people enter the workforce. So I say that becomes their accumulating years, right? And then there'll come a time, hopefully for everyone where they'll transition to retirement and that becomes their distribution years. Right? So learning, accumulating and distributing. Yeah. And we have to have a solid plan in place. No different than an architect developing house plans for somebody to build a new home. Right. You gotta have a blueprint, you gotta have something to work off of. And if you stick to the plan right, they typically will be successful. You know, I think.

Speaker 1 (11:11):

Yeah. And I think, uh, on what you said there, I think the learning phase is pretty much mapped out for us, right? As we just follow, we follow, you know, K through 12, go to college. It's, it's all mapped out. You, you know, what it's gonna look like. For the most part, even the working phase, I would say the vast majority of people, it's sort of mapped out, you know, you work at a job, you make what you make, maybe you have a, you know, it's, it's very important if you're younger and you have a 401k that you're saving enough and that you, that you think about these things, but you're not so much mapping it out. You're kind of hitting these short term goals, uh, when you're a younger person because it's very hard to map out, you know, if you're 30 years old and you're trying to map out the rest of your life, you know, in financial terms, that's very hard to map that out with that much time.

Speaker 1 (12:00):

But what you are trying to do is say, well, I got 5% going into my 401k. Can, can I do 6%? You know, or I don't have an emergency fund. Uh, I got maybe two grand in there. I don't, I want, I need to get 10 grand, so can I hit that goal? And you're kind of just doing a series of goals, but when you hit that retirement phase, it's a completely, it's not mapped out at all because everyone's situation is different. We have to answer questions like, where's the money gonna come from? How much can we take out safely? So yeah, it's, it's a lot. It's a very new, new phase in life. Would you agree? <laugh>?

Speaker 2 (12:37):

It, it's definitely new. And I go back to my earlier comment about we as individuals shape our ideas based upon things we witnessed in our own family. So give you a great example. In an era, uh, of my parents' generation, let's say, yeah. Many of those people retired with defined benefit pension plans. So Right. A lot of kids looked at their parents and said, geez, the, the roadmap kind of appears to be you work until you're 62, 65 ish, you tell your employer you're gonna leave, and then you start collecting a check every month for the rest of your life. Right.

Speaker 1 (13:25):

Pretty easy. If that's the case, then that's, again, that's kind of mapped out for you. You don't have to

Speaker 2 (13:30):

Exactly. And you

Speaker 1 (13:31):

Don't have to think about where the money's gonna come from or, or running out.

Speaker 2 (13:34):

So again, my parents' generation, that was the norm. Yeah. They didn't have to think about all the other caveats that come along with the transition to a distribution model. Right. Fast forward 40 years and a defined benefit pension is literally a thing of the past. Yeah. They, they still exist, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say maybe 15% of the population today working maybe 20%, I

Speaker 1 (14:07):

Don't really know. Government employees, state employees, you know, uh, teachers. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:13):

But we, we advisors will not run across as many individuals today. No. With that benefit inherent within a client's overall financial portfolio.

Speaker 1 (14:27):

If, if I do, it's someone that had one, the company had one, they switched over to a 401k, so there's a frozen pension, you know, that they have from years ago that hasn't grown. I mean that, I've seen that a lot too. Sure, sure. Like you said, very rare to see an active pension in today's world. So, which guy I think leads to your point of develop a financial plan, you know, or develop a retirement plan. What does that mean? We talk about it a lot on this show, and people may have heard it, but what does a, what does it mean to develop a retirement plan physically? What does that look like?

Speaker 2 (15:02):

Sure. Well, again, it goes back to that questioning session with the prospects or clients to understand exactly what it is they want to get out of retirement. And to be frank, many people don't know, again, they haven't had the opportunity to, to think that all the way through. So an advisor can assist someone in developing that plan again, by asking a variety of questions of, yeah, do you see yourself staying in the area? Uh, if not, where would you go? Why would you go there? Do you have any idea what it costs to go there? What would you do there? How do you see your travel activities in retirement? All again, a myriad of questions can be asked to start the client thinking, you know what, haven't really thought about that. Yeah. Or, yeah, we have thought about that and we need to do some more work on it. So all of those things that will come about in a retiree's life right after work Yeah. Need to be answered. And they should be documented in that financial plan to show the person the reality of their goals or dreams.

Speaker 1 (16:20):

Yeah. And I,

Speaker 2 (16:21):

Whether they could shoot higher or maybe they need to shoot lower.

Speaker 1 (16:25):

Yeah. And the way I think it materializes is, you know, we, we show sort of that roadmap, but a roadmap and a retirement plan sort of looks like, let's map out year by year, you know, income, excuse me, income expected expenses, um, like you said maybe one time expenses that come up, just changes in distribution, portfolio withdrawals. And you just kinda look at it from when you're, when you're doing a financial plan, you're looking at the financial aspects of everything in your life that might happen and including, you know, how long you live and expenses as you get older, inflation, all that stuff. But the way it looks is you just kind of look year by year, you know, and see what's what we think will happen to your entire finance financial situation, your portfolio year by year, based on what you know, the things that you wanna do, like you said, where you want to go, where you wanna be, how much money you're gonna spend.

Speaker 1 (17:25):

Do you need to spend a little bit less? Can you spend a little bit more? And then you just start to massage that. But it's a retirement, that's a retirement plan is you have to map it out the best you can. It's like building a house, like you said, it's that architect, you know, putting, uh, putting plans together, a blueprint for your house. The house isn't built yet, but it's as close as we can get to understanding what that house is gonna look like, the measurements of each component, you know, what goes where, which way the doors are gonna open. I mean, you're really trying to get down into the details and that's what a good retirement plan looks like too. And Scott, last point I'll make on this, but I, I do hear a little bit more now that Oh yeah, well, um, my, yeah, my advisor kind of threw up on the, on a screen, you know, he asked for social security and, and did sort of a projection and, and that's great, but I know enough to know that there are a lot of retirement calculators out there that are very simple and it's kind of like garbage in, garbage out.

Speaker 1 (18:32):

If you don't get down to the nitty gritty details of what, you know, changes are gonna occur in the future, you're not gonna get good out, good output. So, bad input, bad output. It's like, uh, on the last show I talked about a life expectancy calculator and I was looking for the best one. There were lots of 'em. I found some of 'em asked me two or three questions they're gonna tell, you know, tell me what my life expectancy is. Probably not gonna rely on that too much. Uh, the, the better ones asked over 50 questions, got a much better idea of my personal situation than generated a result. Scott, the third one here. Uh, so we talk about retirement, kind of projecting out retirement. Your third one here is manage the relationship from a comprehensive and holistic perspective. So what does that mean?

Speaker 2 (19:22):

Well, back to your commentary about all the inputs that go into creating a good financial plan. There are things outside of what the typical person would think of that are important to incorporate into that plan. And when I say comprehensive, it's looking at the big picture, which might include assisting someone with applying for Medicare, uh, helping them with a Medicare supplement. Again, they get bombarded by these things when they get to the age of 65. Oh yeah. And most people who've had no experience, don't know where to go, don't know what to choose. Right. So being able to provide advice on those two things are critical Absolutely. When it comes to helping that person with a comprehensive and holistic plan. And then we all know that as we age, certain things happen to our bodies. And we may need to see medical specialists helping people understand their insurance benefits to know how to use those properly and most effectively because it can become a very big, big expense in the overall scheme of things.

Speaker 1 (20:41):

Then that can be medical health or even long-term care, just to throw that in. Exactly the concern for retirees. So you know it as best you can, you, you want to be able to be advised on all these areas. 'cause I think all these areas are new, but at the same time, you, so that's the challenge, is you have to find someone who can advise in a few different areas. But there, there are other areas that, you know, um, that may not like taxes and estate planning where an advisor might not do your taxes, and we'll get to that in a second. But, but there are still some, some things that you can do as an advisor that we can do to help reduce taxes to get more efficient, right. To help the estate be set up better, even with beneficiary designations. So I don't have to be an attorney to, to help with beneficiary designations or, you know, on the tax front, there are things you can do, and I don't know if that's where you were going or not, but well, in addition to social security and Medicare and insurance, those are some other really big areas that need to be evaluated.

Speaker 2 (21:52):

A good, well-rounded advisor should be competent in all of those areas. Now again, that doesn't mean do a tax return or draft a will, right? Right. We don't do that. That's outside the scope of our, uh, fiduciary and professional duties. But we need to have great resources and advisors should have a good resource, uh, pipeline Right. To introduce clients to, to help with those things because they all matter very importantly. So that, yeah, that's what I mean by the holistic approach.

Speaker 1 (22:28):

Don't, and before you even get into,

Speaker 2 (22:30):

Don't just stick to managing assets, uh, you just gotta continually ask questions every time you're in front of a client to understand if situations have changed. And again, do they need to be introduced to someone to update their estate plan as an example, right? Have they had a unique tax event? Do they need to be introduced or coordinated with their tax preparer slash cpa? Yeah. Those are only able to be accomplished by just continually asking questions, right. Every time you're in front of that, that client.

Speaker 1 (23:09):

And like I said, there are a lot of things that can be done without being an accountant, without being in an attorney just as an advisor. You know, I think about taxes, I think about looking at things like does a Roth conversion make sense? And we, we haven't done a, at a a show only on Roth conversions, I'm sure we'll at some point. But, you know, that's a strategy from a tax standpoint that can help save taxes over a long period of time. Tax loss harvesting is something that you can do in the year to save you taxes this year. You know, like for example, in 2022, the market's been down. We've been able to do some tax loss harvesting here at our firm to lock in some losses without exiting the market. You know, and that will help future offsetting future gains, offsetting a little bit of this year's ordinary income.

Speaker 1 (23:56):

So there's always, there's things that can be done. What accounts should you be contributing to that? That's also a tax conversation. So advisors, again, should be having those conversations with you. Uh, this is a good segue into the next, the fourth point, Scott. Uh, you know that we're talking about things that a retirement focused advisor should do, which is coordinate advice amongst all clients, uh, professional advisors. Before we get into that, as if you're listening right now and you've kind of already heard a few things that maybe you haven't been advised on and wanna get some advice on, you can go to our website, retirement power hour podcast.com. You can write there on the website. You can either ask a question and, or you can just schedule a call with one of our advisors and, and then we'll start the process of asking those thought provoking questions and, and helping you, uh, with whatever you're looking to get help on.

Speaker 1 (24:51):

But like I was saying, there's, there's, we can do a lot in tax planning, we can do some things in estate planning. We don't give tax advice or, or estate planning advice. If client needs that, now we need to get an attorney involved. We need to get an accountant involved. Scott, I think too often, everyone in the professional circle, accountant advisor, we just say, uh, not we, but I think a lot of, a lot of those individuals will say, I'm just gonna do my part and I'm not really in control or I don't have any responsibility on any of the other parts.

Speaker 2 (25:27):

Well, not every client has an ongoing need for lawyers, accountants Sure. Bankers, et cetera. Right. But I think advisors will find that if they're working with people who have they own businesses, they're professionals, medical I medical, otherwise there's gonna have be a time when they need one, if not all of those professional advisors. Oh, sure. And again, most of the people that I have seen over the years are very busy and don't always understand what, what does an what does a lawyer actually do for me when it comes to an estate plan? Um, what, what questions do I need to ask of my banker if I want to go about financing a project? And that's where a good advisor being. Well-rounded, being holistic in nature, knowing as much as they can about the client situation, allows them to help coordinate that advice. And we all know that there's an hourly bill generated by most of those professionals, meaning more specifically CPAs or attorneys. And that's perfectly fine. They de they deserve to be paid well for the advice that they give. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. It's just, if we can help the client be more efficient in getting the right answers that they need for their specific situation, it turns out to be a better result at the end for the client.

Speaker 1 (27:05):

Yeah. I think the default is, again, everyone does their own thing and then runs everything through the client. And the client is automatically their own coordinator, um, of their financial plan. So the accountant says, you know, talk to your investment advisor about doing X, Y, and Z. Or again, the estate planner says, okay, I'll set up your trust. Uh, but there's no action to, to do the most important part, which is fund the, fund the trust. Um, you know, again, one time someone came in, I asked about estate planning. Um, they said, Nope, we're all good. We got that done. We, uh, we have a trust. And I said, oh, okay, great. Um, so then we're going through, you know, investment statements and I see they have a joint investment account. And I'm like, um, you said you had a trust, right? And they said, yeah, oh yeah, we gotta trust.

Speaker 1 (28:01):

I said, well, did you, did you ever fund the trust? And they kind of looked at me with a blank stare, uh, what do you mean? I said, well, you have titling your assets in the name of the trust so that those assets actually go through the trust. They said, no, no one ever. I don't remember. I think I thought the attorney did all that, you know, <laugh>, they did all a bunch of stuff. And I said, well, I can see right here by the, the registration on this account that this account at least has not, has not been funded in the, in the trust. And there may be other things. So rather than have everything run through the client, you know, you listener out there, you know, you don't know about accounting, you don't know, you know, the investment side, you don't know the estate planning side, that's not what you do.

Speaker 1 (28:46):

So rather than have everything run through you, it's a retirement focused advisor should, should be helping coordinate all of those things, you know, with you alongside you. Um, I can't tell you how many times I even Scott, you mentioned business owners, but just regular kind of regular folks. It's like, Hey, you don't have a will. So in my early in my career, I kind of would pull the, well, you should go get that. You should get that done. It's important to have a will and power of attorney for property, for healthcare. And you know, six months later we check back. Did you get that done? Oh, not yet. Not yet. And then six months again, did you get that done yet? Uh, we haven't haven't done it yet. So, you know, really after I met you, Scott, it was, it was, you know, why don't we just coordinate this for you so we know that it gets done. We know that we have someone that's good doing the work and we can get it in place. And so that's, that's, I think the provides the best outcome. Go ahead, Scott.

Speaker 2 (29:45):

Yeah, I I think one of the most important things an advisor can do is develop their own relationships with those other professionals, again, CPAs, lawyers, bankers, insurance agents, and make sure you're comfortable with the way they manage their business and interact with clients so that you have a good resource to go to when these situations come up. And most people don't just wake up on a Thursday morning and say, you know what? Probably need to get an estate plan today. Yeah. It typically is a result of an interaction potentially with their advisor who asks some thought provoking questions to the point where the client says, you know what? We've been thinking about this and, uh, we think we need a trust. Okay. Why do you feel that way? Well, I don't know. I just hear friends talk about them. I read about them. Okay, well, let me understand more about the situation. And I think we can probably guide you in the right direction to the right professional to help truly determine if a trust is important and how to utilize it best in your situation.

Speaker 1 (30:57):

Sure. You know, um, I think about this in medical terms because we, we are all forced to be our own coordinator of our own health plan and benefits. And most of us are not qualified to do that, including myself. You know, I'm among the least qualified, but that's sort of exactly what we have to do. We have to go see the general practitioner who might refer us to a specialist and then we, we go see that specialist and, you know, how much are they actually talking? I mean, you've got the medical records, but it sure doesn't feel very coordinated when you know, the two people don't even, you know, they don't know each other, they've never had a direct conversation. And then you're having to make big decisions like, well, do I get this surgery? Or where, where do I go? I mean, it's just, it's really all on your shoulders.

Speaker 1 (31:48):

And it's something that, um, you know, with medical stuff, with dental stuff, it, it's, it's, it's just hard to do. And it doesn't leave you feeling like you've got a great experience. And I've often wished, like I wish I could have a medical quarterback, you know, like, like a financial quarterback, you know, but a medical quarterback, just a tell me all the things I need to be doing, where to go, who to talk to, and people they're telling me to go see are actually people they know they've talked to about my situation. Boy, wouldn't that be awesome to have from a medical standpoint? But you can get it from a financial standpoint. I guess that's the good news. It's a silver lining.

Speaker 2 (32:28):

Well, real, real quick. You, you can actually, it's becoming more prevalent in the medical community now. Yes. So having a concierge doctor right, is the equivalency of having a holistic financial advisor. That's right. It's just they're focusing on the health piece. Right. And the advisor is focusing on the finance piece. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:49):

And if, if you're in retirement and you've built up all of your savings over your entire life, you've probably have as, uh, as much money or more money than you've ever had before. And you don't wanna make a mistake, you know, the, the stakes are higher at that point in time. So the importance of coordinating and having a cohesive plan that works together just gets more and more and more important as you get older. Scott, the last one here, something that doesn't deal a lot with the financial component, but still something that, you know, you mentioned is important for a retirement focused advisor to do is to help clients transition to retirement emotionally and psychologically. So why, why should a retirement focused financial advisor be talking about, uh, the emotional and the psychological part of retirement?

Speaker 2 (33:41):

Well, I think the big reason there, Joe, is if the client has not prepared themselves well on the emotional, psychological aspect of transitioning from those working slash accumulating years to that retirement slash distribution years, oftentimes there's gonna be a bad outcome, or at least not the outcome that that client worked all those years to achieve. Yeah. So coaching and helping clients understand what retirement really looks like is critical to helping that client again, shape and formulate their ideas, their plans, their objectives, whether it be travel, whether it be post-retirement, some type of employment. A lot of people do that to keep busy. So again, you gotta ask a lot of questions Sure. To see if clients have prepared themselves mentally for this next phase of their life because it could last another 30 years. That's a long time to go down a path without a plan and just wander.

Speaker 1 (34:54):

Yep, absolutely. Uh, it's the folks that retire and they don't stay retired, they go back to work, you think about them 'cause they're just, they're not satisfied. They're not fulfilled. A lot of people, Scott, that I meet with, they, they never think about anything beyond. I just wanna make sure I can maintain my lifestyle. And that's the big initial hurdle of retirement. And it takes it, it could honestly take years for me to convince them that they will have no problem overcoming that hurdle. Even though it might take me, you know, a few hours or, you know, a couple weeks, whatever, to feel good about them retiring. It, it may take me a lot, lot longer for them, for it to really sink into them. It's part of that planning process. But what I try to help some clients think about is what's, what's after that?

Speaker 1 (35:51):

Like you said, how can you get the most out of your life savings and what you've worked so hard to actually have the retirement that, that you wanna have. And that doesn't mean not talking about everyone having a yacht, having a jet, having five different homes. I'm just talking about using your money in ways that will provide you more fulfillment. And maybe they were things, again, a lot of people don't even think about what they can do because they're so focused on that first hurdle of can I even retire? I just don't, I just wanna take what I need and maintain and maybe do a little travel and things, but nothing too crazy. But as time goes, you, we start having conversations with some clients about help me design a charitable gifting plan, or I want to gift to my kids or my grandkids. Well, how much can I do? And the those conversations are really exciting, really fun. 'cause they really mean something to the people that you're working with. You know, they're at that point, they're confident in their own plan. Now they're looking, how can I impact others with, you know, with what I've saved up and what I've, what I've built.

Speaker 2 (36:58):

Advisors will find that every client's situation is different and unique and some adhere to that transition quicker than others. Oh yeah. But I think they'll find as an advisor that clients have to be convinced and fully comfortable to make those gifting decisions or spending decisions that they put off and put off, even though they really wanna do it down deep because it makes 'em feel good Sure. About putting their capital to a, a higher purpose. That's right. And that's where the planning process Yeah. If you continually keep that in front of the client before long, the black and white under good and bad circumstances Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> will reflect whether they have the financial wherewithal to do those things. And as you said, Joe, that's probably going to be some of the most rewarding experiences for advisors when they can tell a client with confidence, you know what, if you wanna start gifting to the kids annually, I think it's more than affordable. Absolutely. If you wanna give more money to your church, there's a great way to do it through a qualified charitable distribution, which helps tax wise. Yep. If you wanna commit money to a community foundation, yeah. Let's do a what if scenario. The advisor can do a what if scenario in their plan and show them that if they decide to commit on a regular basis to some sort of charitable entity, that it really is not gonna affect the bottom line when the day is over. So

Speaker 2 (38:54):

Absolutely. Again, can't emphasize enough the thought provoking questions, listening to how the clients answer and feel about those things. Because we all know that if you just ask yes or no questions, there's really not much thought or emotion that goes into that. Right? Right. But if you ask an open-end thought provoking question, an advisor will learn way more about how clients feel about family finances and potentially faith. I'm not here advocating any one of those things. I'm just saying every client's different and unique and they'll tell you what's important to them. And based upon that you can guide 'em in the right direction.

Speaker 1 (39:36):

I found that some people have, like you said, no problem transitioning over to retirement. They've been thinking about it for a long time. They have a lot of hobbies. They know exactly what they wanna do, but other people really struggle with it. And I think advisors who are again, retirement focused would be doing their clients a disservice to not be trained and equipped to have those discussions with them because who else are they gonna talk to about that? So there's only so many things that, that, uh, you know, one person can specialize in. We talked about five today, but one of the five is to make sure that you have a network of other professionals ready, readily available. And so, you know, we're not trying to be, and you shouldn't, as a retirement focused advisor, try to be a jack of all trades do, but do what you do very well.

Speaker 1 (40:27):

A lot of that goes back to, well, we only work with people that are in this phase. So I don't, I don't personally work with people that are getting started saving and investing. Um, that's not my specialty. I only work with people in this phase getting close to retirement in addition to business owners and medical professionals. So there's those small group of people. So find an advisor who, who works with a lot of other people in your situation, they're gonna be better suited to help you on the issues and the concerns that you have. But Scott, we hit five. There's, there's a lot of things we could, you know, add to this. I think one bonus, I, I'll, I'll throw in a bonus number six really quick, and that's educate a good advisor, a good retirement focused advisor should be educating his or her clients all the time.

Speaker 1 (41:19):

And really that's what we're doing. So we, we check that off the box. But if your advisor isn't educating you, isn't bringing ideas to the table, um, doing things I think like this, or whether it's a written communication periodically, then again, I think they're probably doing you a disservice. You don't need to get the PhD, as we said, we don't, you don't need to understand how the watch works, but you do need to know what time it is and you, so you need to be in the ballpark of, you know, understanding kind of the things that are, that are happening and the things to, to be aware of. But we did a whole episode, Scott, uh, I think it was episode five, designing your retirement life, that, that pairs well with some of our discussion today. Definitely point number five. So for those that are listening, feel free to go back, check that episode out. Uh, it's a good one. Scott, thanks for coming back, being again on the show again. Always good to have you. Glad to be here. All right. And thank you for everyone for listening to The Retirement Power Hour, where we help listeners invest wiser and retire better. Take care.