Plan Smart, Retire Well with Mark Fried, Episode 17
Cynthia:
Welcome to plan a smart retire. Well, my name is Cynthia DeFazio and I’m joined today by Mark freed and Lisa Odeski. Mark is the president, at least the vice president of TFG wealth management. Lisa, let me start with you. How are you today? Great. How are you today? So great to be here. Thank you so much. Always a pleasure to see you and Mark. Always a pleasure to see you. How are you today? Good
Mark:
To see you. Yeah. Doing well. You know, hanging in there trying to have fun. Enjoy life.
Cynthia:
Most definitely. No, this is a special treat for me because I’ve been able to host shows with just you Mark and with just you, Lisa, this is the first time for me to host the two of you together. So I’m so excited because you’re known as the ying and the yang.
Lisa:
Yes. I’ve heard that before. You’ll have to guess. Who’s who it took me a little bit. I’m so
Cynthia:
Excited about today’s show, obviously, because I have you both together, but we’re talking about such an important topic. The need to have a plan for retirement, because Mark, let me start with you. If someone’s entering into the retirement years without a plan, what does that look like for someone?
Mark:
That’s a good question. Cause they don’t have a plan. How, how could you possibly know what it looks like? You know, we have so many decisions to make taking social security, which account you want to take your money out of. And then, you know, the bill, Steve keep calming, the taxes have to get paid. You might want to have a little fun. Right. And you know, we see a lot is that people start denying themselves of things. They won’t spend money because they’re so afraid that they’re going to run out of money. So instead of enjoying retirement and doing the things they want to do, they just sit at home and worry.
Cynthia:
Oh, and we never want to see that. Lisa, what kind of advice do you have for someone that’s coming into the office and perhaps they tell you, you know what? I just want to get by, what do you tell someone like that? Well,
Lisa:
I’m going to speak what Mark was just talking about. So we have people that don’t want to spend money, but then we have the other people that spend too much money. Okay. So we all know those. So they want to do everything they want to do. Everybody want to do everything and that’s so that’s always a challenge that can get you into trouble. And that’s why you need your plan. Sure. Cause every now and then we do have to have that conversation, that hard conversation with folks that, you know, you, you might, your plan might be in jeopardy. Mm
Mark:
12 cruises this year. Can we cut it back to six,
Lisa:
Six next year?
Mark:
Here’s the beauty of a plan. Yeah. You love to travel. You love to take trips. You only have so much money, right? Let’s say you want to take a $10,000 trip, but really that’s a lot. Okay. But if we budget, let’s say we budget $5,000 a year for a trip. You want that $10,000 trip. You say, you know what? I’m going to take a smaller trip this year because I know I can roll that up money over. I can do that big trip next year and then get back on track. You can do that because you have a plan and you understand, we know where the money’s coming from. You know, what’s gonna be having, we have a couple, they came in they were getting ready to retire and they’re taking a trip around the world. Wow. Yeah. I don’t want to tell you how much it trip around the world costs, but not only that they’re selling their house, they’re putting all their stuff in storage and they’re like, we’ll figure it out.
Mark:
When we get back, we got a plan. Just take care of our stuff for us. Wow. You know, and, and off they go left. No, they couldn’t. They had it delayed. So it’ll be this January. Yeah. Hopefully, hopefully. Yeah. But it’s all paid for ready to go and all figured out. And then again, you had a, we had a Zig and zag because something came up, but that’s okay. And they’re right on track. So yes, there are times that we have to have hard conversations, but more often than not, it’s having those great conversations with people, you know, either talking about what item on their bucket list they checked off or what’s the next thing they’re going to do. Okay.
Lisa:
Mark. Do you remember the meeting we had with one of your clients? He’s laughing because we’re talking about the bucket list and they were so excited that they got this thing off their bucket list. We couldn’t wait to hear what it was. It was a whole house generator. They got a whole chapter. Do you remember that?
Mark:
Yeah. Whole house generator off the bucket list. Okay. Frequently
Lisa:
Just, they just always wanted a hallway.
Mark:
Everybody’s retirement. Vision is different. There is no cookie cutter. And you know, if you look around at a lot of the big box places, the big box store, financial stores and all hell it’s, you know, do you want a happy meal, a happy meal, B or happy meals. C and you know, that’s just not what we’re about. Yeah. You know, you want to have a whole house generator. You want to take a trip around the world. I don’t know if you’re going to be able to do it, but you know, people come in to see us. We’ll have, we’ll have a talk and we’ll say, please tell us what it’s like. And we always add don’t hold back. I mean, really? Cause people will edit themselves. Can’t promise you’re going to make it. But our job is to figure out the plan to try and make that possible.
Cynthia:
Lisa, what are some of the people asking you today more than ever before when it comes to planning retirement, is there one question that you hear more than? Anything else?
Lisa:
Do we have enough money to retire? Number one, question number one question. Are we going to make it? And our answer to them is we’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out.
Mark:
And that goes back to a plan. Sure. Right. If they had a plan, they wouldn’t be asking the question. Absolutely. Right. And all of our client, all of the families we serve, they know exactly where they are. You know, they come in and they meet with us one, two, three times a year, whatever makes sense for them. And and it’s fabulous, you know, it’s, it gets us up in the morning so we can head into the office and you know, hopefully, you know, have a great day.
Cynthia:
Well, we’ve talked about this before, because no two days are ever the same for both of you. You’re always meeting with different people and you have different stories and just different things to share with each other. And I think that’s amazing. So Mark, how long does that first consultation take when someone first comes in?
Mark:
So when they come in for the retirement readiness review it takes anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes. It’s about you. It’s about what’s going on in your life. It’s about tell us, do you have a pressing financial concern? Maybe we can work through with you. What is your vision of retirement? What’s worrying you? And we get all that. And we’re really finding out about the person, their family, their spouse and then they give us the pile of stuff, right? We take all their financial information, insurance, whatever it is that they have. And we go away for about five to seven days and we come back to them with our review and a basic plan. Okay. So, and then the conversation begins and you know, it’s amazing that, that moment, when you see the light bulb go off and it’s like, Oh, I know this is possible.
Mark:
Oh, Oh, that’s where we are. Okay. the stress lifts. It’s great. Absolutely. Yeah. So, and you know, that’s why we offer the retirement readiness review. And it is only for 10 folks who call every, every show. So if you want a retirement readiness review, if you want to know where you’re at right now to be like one of the families we serve call eight eight, eight, five six eight one seven five five that’s eight eight, eight five six eight one seven five five. You have to call right now. Okay. We can’t start the process. It’s up to you. And though you want to know if you’re on track. If you can take those trips, what’s going on in life, it is painless. It is complimentary. Okay. And we have great coffee. We have some chocolate, we have some fun and you know, we’re going to get to learn a lot about you. You’re going to get to learn a lot about us. So call right now eight eight, eight five six eight one seven five five. We only take 10 appointments per show.
Cynthia:
Perfect time for us to go to the phones. Lisa, thank you so much, Mark. Thank you so much to the viewers at home. The phone lines are now open. That number to call is (888) 568-1755. As Mark mentioned, we only have 10 complimentary spots available today. So please don’t miss the opportunity to grab one of those. Again. (888) 568-1755. We’ll be right back after this very short commercial break.
Speaker 6:
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:
And welcome back to plan smart retire. Well, my name is Cynthia DeFazio. I’m joined today by Mark freed and Lisa Odeski. Mark is the president, at least the vice-president of TFG wealth management. A wonderful show that we’re having today. Again, talking about such an important topic, planning for retirement. So once you design a plan for someone Lisa, how often can they expect to hear from you throughout the year? Well, you know what,
Lisa:
I’m going to let Mark start that and then I’m going to finish that.
Mark:
So from the, from the plan perspective we absolutely do a full review once a year. Okay. But then, but then their plan is actually updated regularly through our systems so that we can see where things are going. And you know, I’m sitting in the back watching all of that, looking at the strategies, but we don’t want to just have it be a numbers conversation. And that’s kind of where we work together because then Lisa picks up the other part
Lisa:
Where I will just call and say, hello, I’ll just call and chat. And how are things going with you the last few months was, have you got your vaccination? Then? You know, the rollout in where we were was a little rough. So we talked about that and where was the best place to go? And we gave each other ideas and the ideas I got I’ve has to other families. So it was wonderful. Absolutely.
Cynthia:
So Mark, when we’ve been on the show together, you’ve always talked about how Lisa is so warm and engaging. People love to hear from her that you love to give the facts. You’re very direct. You’re a people person as well, but Lisa takes it to a totally different level. It’s kind of that female perspective, if you will all about.
Mark:
And then you know, whether it’s a new grandchild or some other event obviously when Lisa is talking to them and finding out and whether flowers need to go out or whether, you know, she’ll say at our regular meetings, we have regular meetings where we talk about, yes, we talk about our clients all the time. She’ll say, Oh, so-and-so had a grand baby. Hmm. Do we think they might be interested in maybe saving for them or whatever. And so we start kind of working in, coming up with these ideas that they might be interested in my, they might find it helpful. Yeah,
Lisa:
Absolutely. Do you know what we send for our grandparents gifts? We try to send a piggy bank to get them on the road to savings, perfect with their names and grades. If we have all the information that’s beautiful,
Cynthia:
Special, it really is. So Mark, I have to ask if someone’s in the viewing audience today and they have not heard from their advisor in, let’s say the past year, is that a red flag in your opinion?
Mark:
I would be really surprised again. You know, we’re a registered investment advisory firm, which means we’re a fiduciary and the general definition of a fiduciary is to put your client’s interests first over yours. Well, how can you possibly put your client’s interests over yours if you don’t know what their interests are. Right. And that is why we have this two pronged approach to, you know, talking and, and, and understanding what’s going on in our client’s lives so that we can be thinking ahead and preparing for what might be coming. So I would be very skeptical and that’s, you know, that’s kind of why a second opinion is so important. Right? Are you on track? Are you doing okay? One of the things that, that I hate to hear when someone comes in to visit with us for the first time and they’re with an advisor, so of course I’ll ask, well, why are you here?
Mark:
If you’re already with an advisor, like, well, you know, my advisor told me I was going to be okay when I asked him about retirement, but that was it. Well, what does okay mean exactly. And how do you put, okay, is that a piece of paper? You get a piece of paper, it says, okay, here’s your plan? You know, where we produce a written plan for our clients it’s gets updated. We give them updated plans. Every time we meet we run risks analysis, we do income planning. We look at tax implications you know, and these things change every year or even more than every time, a few times a year. So there’s always something to do you know, in planning and in having something to talk to our clients.
Lisa:
Absolutely. And a lot of times people will say, well, I already have a plan and what they actually have our accounts. Okay. Just their statements, their statements. Right. So we have to educate them that that’s not a plan. Lisa
Cynthia:
Are the needs different for, let’s say single females, if you will, what would their specific needs be versus a married couple? Well, it
Lisa:
Is going to be different taxes for singles. Okay. Right. The tax rates are different social security. Okay. Long-term care. Who’s going to care for them. Okay. So we do, we go over quite a bit with our single we have you know, quite
Cynthia:
A few because you’re very passionate about educating women specifically and also empowering them to take charge of their finances. Let’s talk a little bit about maybe some of the workshops. I know Mark made an appearance at one
Lisa:
Oh, a very brief appearance at a woman health and wellness here comes Mark. [inaudible]
Lisa:
Clients were like, what’s he doing here? They weren’t like that.
Lisa:
They were happy. They were actually happy to see him, but he fine. He learned quickly that it wasn’t his really his name to be there. Okay. Back now it was, I think one of maybe our first events, it was at the winery. It was at the winery and we had a longterm care speaker. Okay. And he stopped by to say hello and didn’t stay long. Okay.
Mark:
I mean, you’ve done, you’ve done long-term care. You’ve done Medicare. You’ve done beneficiaries, estate planning. You’ve done. Self-Defense one was just, unfortunately we had to cancel what was the one
Lisa:
That was traveling alone, women traveling alone.
Lisa:
And we had we have a one of our families. She went to Russia by herself, took a trip by herself. So, wow. So w we were going to have her come in to talk to the other single people, because the one thing we hear about single people, they love to travel. Yeah. Sometimes it’s hard. Right. And especially on cruises, you have to pay for a double. I don’t know. They tell us that they have to pay for a double rate. So it’s interesting. Yeah. So we’ve learned, and then we were trying to help them. Oh, that’s amazing. What
Cynthia:
An amazing idea for workshop. So where do you come up with these ideas? Lisa? I don’t know. [inaudible]
Lisa:
But yeah, definitely the conversations, because what happens is I hear what they’re saying. Yes. Listen to what they’re saying. And then I take it in. And at two o’clock in the morning, when you wake up and you think this is how I could help them. Yes. We could have a workshop on how to travel as a single person.
Cynthia:
I love that. I love that. Well, Mark, there’s a special offer that you’re going to be presenting to the viewing audience today. Do you want to talk about that right now? Before we head to the commercial break?
Mark:
Absolutely. Our retirement readiness review. Now our retirement readiness review has a number of pieces to it. We have, you know, how long is your money going to last? How much income can you expect from your investments? How much in taxes could you possibly pay based on where your money is? Social security benefits. What’s the best strategy for you given where you’re at and much, much more. And so if you call eight, eight, eight, five, six, eight one seven five, five, you’ll be able to make an appointment to come in and visit with us and get your retirement readiness review, which has all of those things wrapped up plus more. Now it’s painless. It’s complimentary. So you really have no reason not to pick up the phone right now. Eight eight, eight, five six eight one seven five five. You know, we like to say you only retire once, so you don’t want to make a mistake. Absolutely.
Cynthia:
You’d have to get it right today. Mark. Thank you so much, Lisa. Thank you so much to the viewers at home. The phone lines are now open. That number to call is (888) 568-1755. You have a complimentary review coming your way. If you’re one of the first 10 callers, and again, don’t miss this opportunity. (888) 568-1755. We have to take a very short commercial break, but don’t go anywhere. We have so much more. When we come back
Speaker 7:
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 exposure, muddy 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 7:
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 to Fazio. I’m joined today by Mark freed and Lisa Odeski. Mark is the president, Lisa, the vice president of TFG wealth management and a great show that we’re having today talking about all the important things surrounding retirement. Like you said, Mark, you only retire once you want to get it right. You want to get it right. So important. So we were talking in the commercial break a little bit about some special events that you’ve planned for your clients. Let’s talk about that cruise that was supposed to happen, Lisa.
Lisa:
Yeah. I’ll just talk about that for a moment. We, it was a year in the making our clients they love to cruise. So we put together a a cruise for, to see who would like to go. And we had an outpouring of course families that wanted to go the F we were leaving on a Saturday, the Friday before a 2:00 PM. We all started getting texts. Do you remember the following’s going crazy? The Bo had to be rerouted. And it was only, it was a five day, you know, cruise and it ended up being canceled and, and everyone of course got their money back and all, but it was really sad. Yeah. Because
Cynthia:
So many of your clients love to cruise. They want to travel during the week. They want to
Mark:
Travel and, and some of the places they’ve, they’ve been around humbly will be out. It’s just another example of, you know, you do your best to plan. It was a year in the making and, you know, it came from one of the clients, what we, we negotiated discounts, you know, cause it was a group and all of that. And everybody was paying for themselves, but at a lower cost
Lisa:
[Inaudible].
Mark:
But you know, these things happen and 2:00 PM on Friday we had, we got the entire team, you know, at TFG and they went to work and, you know, everybody got notified, everything got settled out and, and got everybody, got their money back and it was all okay. But it’s just another example about that unexpected. Now this was just a cruise. Right. But you know, how many unexpected things happen in life. Okay, sure. Yeah. It was unexpected. And you know, are you prepared, you know, one of the interesting things about the retirement readiness review is we do a stress test. Okay. And the stress test, we take a look at what if’s, if it was 2008 again, and you were exactly in these investments, where would you be? 2001 end of 2018. COVID, you know, looking back what would have happened to your investments, what would have happened to that income?
Mark:
Folks who, who, you know, when you’re, when you’re developing your investment plan and you’re going through that accumulation phase you know, things are going well and things have been going well for awhile. You know, everybody gets revved up, Oh, this is great. You know, doing better and doing better and just put more money in and more money in, you know, everything is going great. I like to say until it isn’t, that is true. And you have to always keep that in mind. You know, I’m not going to say how long lease has been in the business. I’ve been in the business almost 30 years. She certainly has a lot of experience. And you know, we’ve seen a lot through our experiences and through our careers and, you know, we bring that to the table and we’ve each seen things in a different way. And that’s, you know, we use that when we’re doing our planning, when we’re putting our review together to really help the families, we serve, make sure that whether they’re it’s good times, bad times or unexpected things that they’re going to be okay. Sure.
Cynthia:
That’s the most important thing that you just said, Mark, obviously, because it’s a very customizable plan. It’s a living, breathing organism, if you will, because life changes. Perfect example. A very good friend of mine was entering retirement. Her adult child moved back home with her daughter. So all of a sudden her whole plan for retirement changed. And so you have to be able to adjust to the different needs. Are you having calls like that quite a bit? Lisa, we
Lisa:
Do changes apps. A lot of changes, of course. And with adult children moving back in, you know, taking care of their parents, that’s a big one. Absolutely. No. And we talk about that when we first meet or our families, you know, are your parents still living? How are they going to be taken care of? Do you need to put that into your plan? Are you going to be not only taking care of them, but sometimes you have to help financially. Sure.
Mark:
And where are the kids?
Lisa:
Yeah. Where are your kids? How far are you? Kids are [inaudible]
Lisa:
We have a family right now buying their daughter
Lisa:
In New York. So
Mark:
You know, when all of this happened my son works in New York and we needed to start working from home. So I was looking around the house he’s in his twice as looking around the house and I’m like, Oh, wait a second. His room. So I called them up and I said, Steven, you got 30 days. Okay, come get your stuff. Cause that’s my office. Did he come get his stuff? He did. I mean, what he didn’t get, we put in the basement, but you know, one way to prevent children coming home is to take over their room. That makes sense. These are the challenges we face. Sure. Yeah.
Cynthia:
Mark, if someone’s in the audience today and we only have a minute left in the show, what final words of advice do you want to give them about the importance of having a plan in place for retirement?
Mark:
Peace of mind. Okay. If nothing else, a plan will give you peace of mind. You will know what’s going to happen in the future. You will understand if tomorrow was good or tomorrow was bad and it all starts with the retirement readiness review. And that’s why you have to call eight, eight, eight five six eight one seven five five. Right now, come in, meet with us. I think there’s only two or maybe even one appointment left. So call right now, grab that last spot. Eight, eight, eight five six eight one seven five five coming visit you. It’s relaxed. It’s nice. We’ll have a cup of coffee, Lisa, and I will chat with you. Or if you don’t want to come in, we can do a zoom meeting, whatever makes sense. Okay.
Cynthia:
All right, Lisa, thank you so much for another amazing show this week, Mark. Thank you so much. So great to be together. Most importantly to the viewers at home. Thank you for spending time with us. That number to call is (888) 568-1755. This is your opportunity to call in and grab that last spot that’s available for the consultation. Again. Thank you for watching. Be safe, be happy. Be blessed. We will see you back here one week from today. Take care now.
