Plan Smart, Retire Well with Mark Fried, Episode 14
Cynthia:
Welcome to plan smart retire. Well, my name is Cynthia to Fazio. I’m joined today by Mark freed. And Mark is the president of TFG wealth management. Mark, how are you today?
Mark:
I’m doing great. How are you doing?
Cynthia:
I am doing great as well. I’m always excited to see you. You’re always happy and you always have so much information to share
Mark:
And I can’t wait to get started. It’s been what a a week since last time we spoke and a lot can happen in a week. A lot can happen in a week. Absolutely.
Cynthia:
Well, Mark, on that same vein, let me ask you, what is changing in the world of retirement? Has the trajectory changed at all?
Mark:
The world of retirement has changed dramatically. We’re busier than ever. And you would think with everything going on in the world that would might’ve slowed down, but it’s exactly the opposite. And I’ve seen, I think, two really interesting things going on. So on the one hand, you know, we put a plan together for every family that we work with and we monitor it and we updated all the time. So that if someone has a change of heart or change of mind, we’re ready to give them good advice. Well, what I’ve seen this year is that folks who we thought were going to be working forever when they started working from home, they decided they had had enough. I don’t know if it was, they found that there was just a lot of things they wanted to do. They wanted to, you know, their hobbies or just realizing that, you know, work wasn’t everything.
Mark:
It wasn’t all, it was cracked up to be that there was a lot more to life than that. And, you know, so we get the call you know, they’d call and they say, Hey Mark, Hey Lisa. You know, I know we said we were going to retire two, three years from now, but I’m ready to do that right now. What do you think? And you know, with our retirement readiness review and our retirement readiness planning process, we were ready to say, okay, let’s go. On the other hand, we had a lot of folks who had been thinking about retirement and all of a sudden they’re home, they’re out of the office politics, you know, which I guess was maybe driving the crazy, their new boss. Wasn’t on top of him all the time. And like, this is okay. I could keep, you know, collecting that paycheck.
Mark:
I don’t mind. So as long as they’re going to let me stay at home, I’m going to hang out. Now you might think that there wouldn’t be any change because of that. But the fact is, you know, when you put a retirement plan together and you’re looking at a time when someone’s going to retire, there’s so much that goes into it. You know, with a retirement plan, you have to plan for that retirement income. When’s it going to start? How’s it going to work? You have to look at taxes and inflation, right? You have to look at how those investments are going to be structured. And so if you’re retiring a year from now, that means that your money has to be positioned in a very specific way. Versus if you maybe aren’t going to retire for another five years. And by having our plan in place, one that we share with the families, we serve one that we go over every year with them. They know exactly where they are and we can answer whatever questions they have. So, you know, if you want to retire now where you want to retire another couple of years from now, that’s okay. Yeah, absolutely.
Cynthia:
Mark, let me ask you how important is it to have a plan in place for retirement in your words,
Mark:
How important is it to have a plan in place? Well I like to think of it this way. All right. If you wanted to drive from Philadelphia to New York right now, and you’ve never done that before, wait. All right. I, it just reminds me of a story I’ll just share. So when my kids learned how to drive, we had dad’s test and dad’s test was you had to drive from our house. I grew up in Margate, New Jersey at the beach. And that’s test was you had to drive from our house to the house that I grew up in two blocks from the beach in Margate. And I was in the car, but I wouldn’t say anything. And we turned the GPS off and they had to figure it out. And now if they were thinking ahead, they would have created a plan on how to get there or they could wing it.
Mark:
And so we live on one side of the Delaware river, you know, in Pennsylvania, you have to cross the river, you have to go over a bridge, you have to get on highways, you have to read the signs and, you know, five, 10 minutes in, you know, they’d be looking at me like, okay, dad, where are we supposed to go? I’m like, what’s your plan? And that’s kind of the same thing with retirement. Now it’s not, it’s not dad’s test, but you know, when you’re retiring and you’re trying to know, do you have enough money saved? How much are your investments going to generate? How much are you going to be able to live on? How do you figure any of that out without a plan know? I’ll tell you one of the scariest things that we hear when people come to visit, right?
Mark:
And let’s say they’re working with another advisor and we’ll say, so what was the plan that you had? And, and they’ll share with us, they’ll say, you know, I asked my advisor and he said, I was okay. Like, okay, what does that okay. Whereas when you have a plan, you know exactly how much money you can live on how you’re going to pay your taxes. What’s going to happen with healthcare. How about when, when not just paying your taxes, but taxes go up. How are you going to get your money from your, you, to your spouse, to your children? How’s that all gonna work? And by the way, if you wake up one day and decide you want to retire early, well, how are you going to figure that out without?
Cynthia:
Absolutely. That makes perfect sense. So it all comes down to a very personalized, very customized plan, Mark Collins, to take you and Lisa to design a plan for someone.
Mark:
So when folks call to make an appointment and they come in and we sit down and we talk with them or we’re doing a zoom meeting now usually it’s five to seven days after that meeting that we’re kind of ready to have that second meeting, which is really just a basic plan. It’s we call it the retirement readiness review. And in that retirement readiness review, what we do is we analyze where they are right now. Do they have enough money to retire? Are they taking too much risk? How much in taxes are you going to owe over the rest of your life? Because maybe you have most of your money in a 401k. Most people don’t know that. Wouldn’t you like to know if you owed a hundred thousand or 500,000 or a million dollars in taxes, it’s a, it’s a real eye-opener.
Mark:
And so then folks come in and we go through that very detailed making sure that they know exactly where they are, how they’re, how their everything works together. And then at the end, it’s, it’s very simple. You know, we, we explain what the red flags are on the yellow flags are. And then if they want us to help, if they would like us to put a solution together for them, we’ll do that. And we’ll have another meeting where they’ll come in and we will give them a detailed breakdown, a cashflow statement. How are we going to deal with taxes? How are we going to lower taxes? If possible, how are you going to pay for if one spouse gets sick, we put that all together in a way it’s not, we don’t want to make it complicated. You got to keep it simple, right? So everyone can understand it. And if it makes sense, then they become a member of the TFT. I love
Cynthia:
That. I love that. And we have a special offer for the people that are calling in today. Do you want to talk about that before we go to our first commercial break?
Mark:
Liso for those of you watching today, if you want to meet with me or Lisa and have a retirement readiness review completed for you, there’s no obligation you need to call right now. Eight eight, eight five six eight one seven five five. We only take the first 10 callers from every show because we’re very busy. We’re booked back to back. It is a crazy time. So if you do want to know where you’re at eight, eight, eight, five six eight one seven five five. And I, and I just want to share, you know, there is a cost and here’s the cost. What’s the cost of not knowing how much in taxes you might know or not knowing when you can wreck tire. So we are glad to help folks with their retirement.
Cynthia:
Mark, thank you so much to the viewers at home. The phone lines are now open that number to call. Once again is (888) 568-1755. We know you have a lot of questions about how to retire comfortably and retire with confidence. Mark and Lisa are offering you the complimentary review today, actually known as the retirement readiness review. Make sure that you’re on the right path for retirement. All you have to do is pick up the phone and call (888) 568-1755. We’ll be right back after this very short commercial break.
Speaker 4:
How confident are you in your current financial plan? Do you know with certainty how the recent market volatility will affect your future hopes and dreams? How much are you paying in taxes and how much are you losing to unnecessary high fees? You didn’t work to save this money so that you could spend your time worried in retirement. Now is the time to take charge of your finances. So you can feel confident about your future call in during the next 30 minutes of today’s show only to set up an absolutely complimentary, no obligation full-blown financial review that will result in your own customized written plan. This is a $999 value that we’re giving away complimentary to the first 10 people who respond. We’ll start with a full-blown analysis of what you already have by running a report to untangle how much you’re currently paying in fees, how you’re allocated for risk and what it’s costing to work with your current advisor. Next, we’ll identify your goals. Where do you see yourself in the next five years? Where do you want to go? And who do you hope to go there with is your current financial plan set up to get you there without mishap, let’s design a roadmap to create a financial plan. You can follow with confidence, get the piece that so many people are missing from their retirement. Find out how having a written plan can make a difference to your retirement dreams. Call now to schedule your complimentary no obligation full-blown financial review today.
Cynthia:
Welcome back to plan smart retire. Well, my name is Cynthia DeFazio. I’m joined today by Mark freed. And Mark is the president of TFG wealth management Mark. A great show that we’re having today and obviously talking about the importance of planning for retirement and what that looks like for each individual person that comes into the office. Wanting to talk to you a little bit about pensions and retirement, because you have a very interesting theory. Good. You have a pension, but that might be a little bad that you have a pension. Let’s talk a little bit about that.
Mark:
The good news is you’ve got a pension. The bad news is you’ve got a pension and you know, not a lot of people have pensions, but for those who do for police officers for teachers, for executors of, of executives of local businesses like pharmaceutical comes, we have a lot of pharma in our area who are our clients and they come in and they’re very excited. You know, they’ve got their social security and they’ve got this pension and it’s fabulous. And then they’ve got this 401k or four Oh three B and I always owned by saying, Hey, the good news is, you’ve got a pension. The bad news is you’ve got a pension because of, okay, when you have, I have a pension and social security, it’s great that it’s guaranteed secure income. That’s going to be coming in urine and year out, but it gives us very little wiggle room.
Mark:
When we’re trying to bring down the cost of the money you have in your 401k. When, when we all re you know, started saving for retirement 10, 20 years ago, you know, the myth was I’m going to be in a lower tax bracket when I retire. So I’m going to stuff all this money in a qualified account and account where I haven’t paid taxes yet. And the problem is that was a myth. Okay? Most folks who retire today, especially if they have a pension will be in a higher tax bracket, or at least the same tax bracket. And then obviously there’s a lot of other issues that come with that. In addition to the fact that taxes are probably going to go up. So tax planning is so key. Sure. Now here’s, what’s interesting. When you have a pension, when you have a pension, you have a lot of choices, some pensions will allow you to take a lump sum.
Mark:
In other words, you don’t actually take the pension. You take a dollar amount, which could be significant. Sometimes you can take a pension in which it lasts just your life, or it can last for your life and your spouse’s life. This is a critical decision that can make a huge difference in your financial success. And you only get to make it work. You know, we talk a lot about a plan. Well, how do you figure out the right answer for you without a plan without really understanding the difference between taking that lump sum or taking any income, having it just for yourself or for you and your wife, and so much goes into that. And that’s why, you know, part of why we created the retirement readiness review and then our retirement readiness review planning process, which comes after that was to help families that we serve, make the right decision to break it down so that it was clear and simple.
Mark:
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the booklet, these folks get from, you know, their companies when they have their decisions or, you know, I’ve got a call, the pension, we have, we have families that will call us from their meeting with the pension people, because they have no idea what they’re talking about. Like Mark, Lisa, can you please just, can you listen, hear what you know, and we just try and break it down to very simple terms. If you do this, here’s what it means. If you do this, here’s what it means. And, you know, we recommend this direction and here’s why, okay. But we can only do that if we’ve been working with them and if we’ve prepared a plan and we’ve kept that plan up to date year in, year out. Yeah,
Cynthia:
Absolutely. That makes sense, Mark, let’s talk a little bit about your book. That’s next to you today. I’d like to just speak a little bit about the road rules of retirement. Let’s talk a little bit
Mark:
About it. So a few years ago, well, about eight years ago, I really wanted to write a book, but as life gets so busy, it took years and years and years for my finally to sit down and I wanted to write a book that wasn’t, you know, up here, I wanted to bring things down to a very simple, basic level for people to understand. So there are a few numbers, but there are not in a lot of numbers. There aren’t tables. We don’t go on and on about, you know, some kind of crazy investment or in crazy strategy. This is a book to help folks begin to think about retirement in the right way and to educate them on the issues that they will face. So there’s 10 chapters and each chapter, I deal with a different issue. And I share with them a, a story real life of one of our clients who walked in the door and I’ll share a couple with you in a second.
Mark:
But at the end of every chapter, we have questions. We have four or five questions. And what I ask is sit down with your spouse, your significant other, your partner, your friend, and talk about these questions because that’s really where you’re going to find out the right direction for you in retirement to think about. So the first, so the first chapter we have a client, Paula, Paula was an executive at a fortune 50 company. She was in her late fifties and she couldn’t take it anymore. It was just, she was at the end of her rope. She had gone to her advisor and, and said, I want to retire. And he said, well, Paula, you can’t, you got two kids in school. You know, your mortgage, whatever you’re going to have to work another five years. So she looked for a second opinion.
Mark:
She called up, she came in, sat down with her. We listened to her and, and here’s where we start. We start at, where do you want to be? Paula wanted to retire. That was, that was the answer. We just had to figure out the steps to get her there. And that’s what we do. So I sat down and I, and we spoke and I put together a step-by-step and, and comes in for the second meeting. And she’s excited, you know, and, and I have this, this, you know, fairly basic plan that will get her to retire. And she, she comes in and, you know, she, she meets Lisa in the lobby and we’re talking, she goes, and I retired and I’m like, what? We hadn’t even gone over a plan yet. We hadn’t even gotten started. But she said, you know, after that first meeting, after you told us about the process, the questions that you asked, I knew that we were going to be okay. And now years later she’s retired. She went back to school and got a master’s degree. She’s teaching, she’s happy. The kids graduated college and her husband just retired recently.
Cynthia:
That’s amazing. So she was told by her previous advisor that she couldn’t retire. Right. But then you and Lisa took the time to really sit with her, to really dive in, to see what her total picture looked like. And you were able to tell her that she was okay,
Mark:
Right? I mean, if you just looked at just her situation and didn’t look at the family and how college was being paid for and what her husband’s situation, wasn’t all of that put together and their mortgage. I can understand why someone would say, well, you can’t retire because this is all you’ve got, but we don’t believe that that’s the right way to go about this business. The right way to go about this business is to really get to know someone, understand their situation and help them because we’re in the business of solutions. And that’s why we like to say that our job is to make your vision of retirement, a reality, and you
Cynthia:
And Lisa, listen, that is the most important gift that I think you give your clients the gift of listening. Mark. This is the perfect time for us to reopen the phone lines. Do you want to tell the viewers again, what they can expect to receive by calling it
Mark:
Call right now? And again, we only do it for 10 callers. I don’t know how many are left. We have, I’ve heard the phones ring. So there’s probably only few left. We will do our retirement readiness review complimentary. If you call eight, eight, eight, five six eight one seven five five right now. And you can make an appointment with Lisa myself. We’ll sit down. We’re going to get to know you. You’re going to get to know us, and we’re going to answer those big questions for you. Can I retire? How much money will my investments generate for me? Am I going to have a tax problem? How am I going to take care of my spouse and family? If I happen to pass too early or how bet if I live too long and much, much more. So it’s really important, but it starts with you. If you don’t call right now, eight eight, eight five six eight one seven five five. You’re never gonna know if you’re on the right track. So call right now (888) 568-1755, Mark.
Cynthia:
Thank you so much to the viewers at home. The phone lines are once again. Now open that number to call is (888) 568-1755. As Mark mentioned, you want to know that you’re on the right road for retirement. You want to have that map drawn out for you. All you have to do today is pick up the phone and call (888) 568-1755. We have to take a very short commercial break, but don’t go anywhere. We’re going to have so much more. When we come back about how to plan your perfect retirement, please stay tuned
Speaker 5:
As a good saver. You’ve been putting away money during your working years. Studies find that the biggest fear of retirees is running out of money market volatility. Isn’t just a downward movement of stock prices. It’s the size and frequency of change. The more dramatic the ups and downs, the higher the volatility. This can put sabers who are newly retired or a few years away from being retired at greater risk. Today’s generation of retirees is not receiving traditional pensions as our parents or grandparents did. Instead. We have retirement accounts such as 401ks or four Oh three BS. These accounts typically expose your money to market risk. The last thing you want right before retirement is to lose a portion of the money you need for income. But how do you turn these accounts into a retirement income? Is it safe to keep all your retirement money sitting in the stock market?
Speaker 5:
The last thing you want is to lose a portion of the money you need for income due to market loss, by working with a financial professional, you can learn how to turn a portion of your savings into an income stream for life and income for the life of your spouse. If you’re married, we all have moments in our lives. When we wish we had taken action sooner, don’t let procrastination rain on your retirement parade act. Now, before it’s too late, please call our office to set up your no cost, no obligation retirement income review today,
Cynthia:
And welcome back to plan smart retire. Well, my name is Cynthia DeFazio. I’m joined today by Mark freed. And Mark is the president of TFG wealth management Mark. A great show that we’re having today. And we actually have a viewer question that came in. So I don’t want to miss the opportunity to go ahead and ask his name is ed. And he called in from Doylestown. He would like to know Mark I’m retiring shortly. Should I leave my 401k where it is? Or should I do a rollover to an IRA?
Mark:
That is a great question. Now we get that question a lot. I mean, how many people have saved up all their money and now they’re leaving their employer and what do I do with it? Some people even have two, three or four 401ks. Obviously specific to ed. I don’t know all of his background. So I have to just give a very general answer. But 401ks were built for people who are saving for retirement, right? Not people who are in retirement, the investments that they have, the options that you have about how you can get your money out, all revolve around someone who is an active employee, who isn’t in drawing that money out. He’s just going to leave it and continue to contribute. So what’s going to happen and it’s going to retire. Well, the first thing’s going to happen is he stopped growing and he’s going to stop contributing, right?
Mark:
The second thing that’s going to happen is he might need that money to live on. So by rolling it from a 401k into an IRA, it gives you so many more options. It gives you options on how you can invest it. It gives you options on more tax strategies that we have to be able to save money, to manage the required minimum distributions, the, you know, that ugly word RMD and, and much, much more. But I always caution everyone. You should sit down with an advisor before you make any moves, because believe it or not, there are even some benefits, some tax benefits in how you move the money from a 401k to an IRA, depending on your company. So many people miss out because they don’t, they don’t go to an advisor who knows what they’re doing about retirement, who understands the rules and can explain to them how they can change you know, having to owe a whole boatload of taxes too much less.
Mark:
And and that’s, you know, what we do. And so when we talk about the retirement readiness review and, and that’s a big part of it, folks come in and they’ll bring their 401k statements in. And they’re thinking about, you know, we’re going to say like, what are my options? You know, how, how does this work? And we dig in and help them to understand their plan, how it works in language that they understand, not like what the HR department does, or look it up on a website and try and figure your way through. But you know, real English. Here’s how it works.
Cynthia:
Okay. Excellent. I’m so glad that he called in with that question, because that is a really, really good question. Why are people so stressed Mark, when they’re trying to plan for retirement, where does that stress come from? I
Mark:
Think that that stress comes from the fact that you’re only retire once and you don’t want to make a mistake. You don’t know where to start. You’re getting different advice from different folks. If you listen to commercials on TV, if you Google something, you know, you look at four different calculators that will tell you when you can retire and you get four different answers. And in all of that, no one’s even asked you, like, what do you want? And so the stress starts building up and, and people freeze. You know how that is? When, when you know you, you don’t want to make a mistake. You’re cynical is hack because you know, who can you believe? And so you just say, all right, I’ll deal with it later, but you can’t deal with it later because retirement sneaks up on you and it’s here and you have to be prepared.
Mark:
And that’s why, again, we put together the retirement readiness review. Let’s take that stress off, kick back, relax. We’ll take you. Step-By-Step through, we’ve done this hundreds and hundreds of times for families throughout the Philadelphia region, some of them have become clients. Some of them just known they’re. Okay. So if you want to know where you’re at, you want to make sure you’re okay. If you’re stressed about all this stuff, give us a call at (888) 568-1755 right now, and make your appointment with me and Lisa to, for your complimentary retirement readiness review. That’s (888) 568-1755. But do it right now. I think we only have a few appointments left,
Cynthia:
Mark. Thank you for another amazing show this week. It always goes by so fast. Thank you for all the information that you share with the viewers at home to the viewers at home. Most importantly, thank you for spending time with us again. This week, that number to call is (888) 568-1755. If you’d like to get an idea of where you are with your plan for retirement, Mark and Lisa are offering you a complimentary consultation. Please take advantage of that. Thank you again for watching. Be safe, be happy, be blessed. We’ll see you next week.
