Make It Last – Ep 141 – The Go-Go, Slow-Go, & No-Go Years

August 21, 2021

This week on Make It Last, Mark and Victor discuss financial literacy and how the education system has failed in teaching it.

Then, Victor goes on to discuss the challenges behind guiding his clients through their estate planning and the three stages of life -the Go-Go Years, the Slow-Go years, and the No-Go years.

Did your parents leave you stuff you didn’t want after they passed? Victor and Mark discuss all of the stuff they would put in their “Keep” and “Throw-Away” piles.

Also available on SpotifyApple Podcasts, & Google Podcasts

Make It Last with Victor Medina is hosted by Victor J. Medina, an estate planning and Certified Elder Law Attorney (CELA) and Certified Financial Planner professional (CFP). Through his law firm and independent registered investment advisory company, Victor provides 360º Wealth Protection Strategies for individuals in or nearing retirement.

Full Transcription Below

Mark Elliot:  Welcome to “Make It Last” with Victor Media of Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. I’m Mark Elliot. Victor and his teams focus on traditional estate planning, asset protection, retirement distribution, proactive income, tax planning.

Here’s the deal. If you have questions about anything that we talked about today on the program, you’d like to learn more about, “Well, I didn’t know that. I would like to learn more.” You can always call the team. 856‑506‑8300.

Or, you’re in that timeline of five to 10 years out from retirement and you’re like, “Oh, there’s a lot of moving parts. I think, you know, I don’t know what my income plan is. Where’s my income coming from?”

“What about my investment strategy? Should I be tweaking that a little bit? What about taxes? Taxes go up. What should I be doing? How do I plan for that. What about estate planning? How do I put to all these together?”

That’s what Victor’s teams are here to help you with, 856‑506‑8300. Today, we’re going to talk a little bit out of the gate about financial literacy. It’s not a surprising thing to me, Victor, you said your parents were teachers, correct?

Victor Medina:  Correct.

Mark:  Any of them teach Math, either one of them?

Victor:  Neither of them.

Mark:  My dad was a Math teacher, and I don’t really like Math. My mom was an English teacher, and I did spend one year teaching seventh and eighth grade English.

Then my elective that I taught was a History class, like Zachary Taylor was so short, he had to be helped on his horse. William Taft was the first president with electricity, and I believe a bathtub in the White House. I think he even threw out the first pitch in a major league game.

It was a fun‑filled show or fun‑filled class, if you will, but I’m not surprised that most Americans get a failing grade when it comes to retirement literacy. This is according to The American College of Financial Services.

They did a test, it was a 38 question quiz. 89 percent of female participants flunked, 72 percent of men failed the quiz. The challenges in school and I had a business math class or something, I had general math class or whatever. I wasn’t the calculus person, so I didn’t go into the really deep, deep math classes.

To me, Victor, the things that you talk about on the show, about the importance of…You’re a math‑based company, not an emotion‑based company, but you do realize we all have emotions.

It seems to me that our education system doesn’t teach some of these basic things that we really need to know, especially during our working years, but maybe even more importantly, when we’re on that fixed income in retirement. It seems like we’re messing up here. I think maybe you should teach a class around the country about this.

Victor:  Sounds good. I’ll get right to that when I’m not working with my clients, but it’s not at all surprising. I totally agree with you that we’re failing and we’re failing at an early age.

I’ve got three boys. The oldest is working now. Aiden got his job as a lifeguard, and I feel it’s a personal success that he comes home. He decides that he wants to spend what are in the tens in the ones column. He wants to give me to invest and say what’s in the hundreds columns for every paycheck. That’s super unusual.

Among his friends, he’s a complete pariah for not wanting to spend every dollar that he has. It’s not universal. It’s certainly enough to the point where it’s unusual for people to have some sense of financial literacy.

The only reason I think that he might be more advanced is, because he’s got a dad that works in that area and has explained the concepts of compound interest and the what happens when you start as early as he starting with what he’s saving, and dollar‑cost averaging into it.

Yeah, we’re failing them. We’re failing a lot of them. Keen on another part you talked about, Mark, which is this higher percentage of women that are failing. We’ve got this incredible focus in our office, in our planning around making sure that we help empower women in retirement. That’s the name of one of the books that I’ve written.

What will happen is we’ll visit with women that are suddenly in charge of money, either because of a divorce, or they’ve been widowed or something along that. They weren’t familiar with it in the past. In the division of labor, it wasn’t something that they were in charge of. They’re in a position where they feel lost as to making smart decisions along the way.

What’s interesting about that, is women typically have a more conservative outlook about what they want that money to do meant to be a little bit more aggressive. It’s not universal, but it is enough for us to say that this is generally the way that it happens.

The reason why that’s important is that the majority of the information that’s out there doesn’t help them make decisions in conformity with what they want. In other words, you’re dealing with these fly by the seat or pants stock jockey folks that are going to talk about how much they’re going to grow and people swing for the fences.

That might speak to the men that they want to speak with. It doesn’t help the women that are trying to make sure that they have safety and security in what they’re doing. That’s where a retirement specialist like us can help because that’s our frame and our focus, is making sure that we protect it and help make it last.

In addition to that, because we’ve written this book, what I want to do, Mark, is I want to be able to give that away to folks. If you’re interested, you should give a call to the number, 856‑506‑8300.

This is for the women out there. I don’t want any men posing as women to get the copy of the free book. If you’re a woman that wants to learn more about it, I want to do you a service and go ahead and gift you a copy of the book. All you have to do is call the number 856‑506‑8300. Let us know you’d like a copy of the book.

“Make It Last: Empowering Women in Retirement.” We’ve got that available for you to get sent out and it’d be our pleasure to go and do that. We want to help. The whole story around that bookmark is that my mom faced a sudden bankruptcy when she got divorced.

It was because she wasn’t in a position to be able to manage her own money, and because of that, I’ve seen it as almost a calling of mine to help empower and respect all the women that make all these contributions to make sure that they’ve got the information to make great decisions as they go out through life.

Mark:  I like that. Make It Last: Empowering Women, one of Victor’s Make It Last series. He’s got about five different books in that series. 856‑506‑8300, just ask for it. Victor said I could get a copy. I need a little guidance here. I would love to read this book and learn more about some of the challenges that you might be facing, 856‑506‑8300.

Are there any certain topics, Victor, that you find most people struggle a little bit with when they come in for that first sit‑down chat with you and your team? When it comes to retirement? Are there any topics that stand out ahead of others that are a little bit more challenging to wrap our brain around?

Victor:  There are. It really in focusing around taxes. Most people who have addressed the concept of taxes have done in a reactionary responsive manner, meaning that they got to the end of the year, they prepare their taxes, they paid for whatever they needed to pay in April.

When we start talking to people about tax planning and retirement, we’re actually doing it from the other vantage point, which is what can we do proactively before the tax bill comes to take advantage of tax planning opportunities that will help expand the money that you have reduced total number of taxes in there.

The reason why that ends up being something that a lot of people struggle with is first of all the conventional wisdom is pay the least amount of taxes as you can no matter what. We actually expand this and pay the least amount of taxes overall that you can in that situation.

When we start to do that says maybe that means that sometimes we’re paying a little bit higher taxes now as part of our planning, because it means lower taxes overall, that starts to be a new concept that they haven’t heard. It’s not out there in the world.

The other element of that ends up being a challenge is that we have to project where the numbers going to be in the future. For people, they’re very presently focused, it’s this year with this taxes.

We’re having them expand their thinking to tax rates beyond the year 2025. Tax rates that your children will be paying versus the ones that you’ll be paying. We help expand their vision off of it. It usually takes some education to get their mind wrapped around that.

Mark:  Let’s finish talking about situations, whether you have a couple that comes in and you have topics that you’re going to chat with them about or you have an individual come in and talk about their retirement. It could be male or female, obviously an individual.

We do know that 80 percent of men die married, which means their spouse is there to care for them at the end. 80 percent of women die widowed, divorced or single. Who’s helping them? It’s moving challenge for all of us.

Talk about the conversations you have about a surviving spouse because one of the things I always say is my loved one is going to be OK if something happens to me. There’s some moving parts to this area that not everybody’s aware of, besides the emotional. [laughs]

Victor:  Yeah, exactly way beyond the loss, obviously, that’s in there. It’s significant. By the way, that loss often comes with people being in a vulnerable position if they’re not already working with a firm like ours that has got this as part of their planning, because they can sometimes make some bad decisions in their grief.

There are three things that come up when we have the surviving spouse question that needs to get factored into all of this. The first is that the income changes. If you’re relying on two social securities as part of your fixed income, you’ve got to recognize that when one spouse dies, we lose the lower amount of that social security.

We keep the higher one. We do lose one of them, which means we lose one of the guaranteed sources of income in retirement. We have to plan to make that up in some other fashion because the guaranteed nature of income is where we get our peace of mind secured the way that we manufacture that paycheck.

That switch, that change over that typically happens is something that needs to be planned for. The second thing that occurs is that your filing status changes from married to single. I know that sounds cute, simplistic and flippant.

What happens is it consequences that the way that you pay taxes increases so that there’s these little brackets that apply to tax rates. The brackets are one size when you’re married. Half that size when you’re filing single.

All of a sudden what’s happening is more of your money is going to the federal government and income taxes, because you’ve just checked the box that says filing single because you have to instead of the ones filing married.

Making sure that we account for the higher taxes or pre‑planned for that is another element of planning for that surviving spouse. The last element you alluded to when you were talking about what would happen with the women out living men and who cares for them. It is a long‑term care question.

When we have two married people, when they’ve been married couple in there and one of them gets sick, what happens most of the time is that one of the spouses cares for the other person. When we left out to the other spouse, we don’t have that same built‑in caregiver which means that we have to go and pay for that caregiving in some fashion.

Most people these days are not lucky enough to be living next door to their daughter or son who’s going to take care of them, or let them move in.

Which means that we have to budget for something like an assisted living facility or home health care are ways of providing for that long‑term care need from the resources that we have, not the free labor that was our spouse.

Those three areas are crucial to do planning ahead of time. In a crisis moment, it’s not as easy to go ahead and plan for the loss of some of the income, the higher taxes that might be need to be paid, and the provision of long‑term care.

Those three things could absolutely be handled in a Make It Last plan that we create for our clients for retirement planning. It’s best done if you do it ahead of time before you suffer that lost.

Mark:  Be proactive, not reactive, 856‑506‑8300, a lot of moving parts when you lose your spouse let alone the emotional trauma of that situation, 856‑506‑8300. Let’s finish with single folks because you don’t always sit down with married couples.

You help individuals, male or females, single, widowed, divorced, what have you. What about their retirement planning. There’s probably some different questions we’re looking at here.

Victor:  : There are some different questions. Some of them are what I’ve mentioned when we talked about a single spouse about taxes being higher and needing to provide for long‑term care. Some things that are part of a single planning, somebody who comes in as a single planner, not something that we have to account for at the loss of his spouse.

One of them is in the legal realm, Mark, so what we have to do is think about different legal planning documents. Here, I’ll take a second, kinds of powers of attorney. Most of the time when we draft powers of attorney for a married couple, we make them immediately effective.

That when somebody becomes disabled, there is no test. We can then use that power of attorney. It’s almost like giving somebody a blank check to walk around in your shoes and do whatever you want. When you’ve got a married couple, that’s totally OK.

When you’re a single individual, it’s a different consideration. We may need a different legal planning tool called the “springing power of attorney,” that’s only effective when you become disabled or incapacitated. That’s a special consideration for a single person. If they got kids, maybe they’ll be the agent.

They don’t want them walking around with a blank check to life. If they don’t have kids, then they may be relying on a friend or niece or somebody that’s a relative that’s a little bit more extended away from them. The right legal planning tool is helpful for them.

The other element of that is looking and planning around different investments for longevity. We got a different investment horizon for what’s going on with the single individual. That gets layered in as well. Those two things, different legal planning tools, and also different investment’s strategy for a single person over a married couple.

Then, if you’re interested in making sure that you get a lot more detailed information, married or single, we have an upcoming seminar that’s open to the public. We’re going to provide some food for you at Seasons 52 on July 29th or August 5th, a lunch or a dinner based on your schedule.

It’s going to be two Thursdays. If you would like to learn more about that, you can give a call to 856‑506‑8300, that’s 856‑506‑8300. Mention the upcoming seminar on July 29th or August 5th, and if we go space, we’ll register for that.

That will be a great way for you to spend a little bit more time getting more detailed information about how you can create a plan for yourself whether you’re married or single.

Mark:  If you’re in either situation, or you’re going, “You know what, I’m not sure when I can retire? Do I have enough? Will my money last as long as I will?” Certainly that big question, will my loved ones be OK if something happens to me? Victor and the team of Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth are here to help.

It’s 856‑506‑8300, 856‑506‑8300, and it’s hard to believe we’re only one segment in. There’s been a ton of information [laughs] that Victor has dropped on us. He’s got a lot more to get to. Stay with us. This is Make It Last with Victor Medina of Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth.

 

Mark:  Welcome back to “Make It Last” with Victor Medina and Make It Last. You’re like, “What is that all about? What does that title of your show tell me?” Well, Victor is a retirement planner. What do you want your money to do? You want to make it last. There is a process, a holistic planning process that he walks his clients through.

At the end of the day, you’re the CEO. It’s your retirement. It’s your hopes and dreams. What are you going to do. It’s decided by you. If you have questions, though, about how to put this planning process together, and it’s called the make it last process, because that’s what we want to do.

We want to make your money last for you as long as you’re here. If a priority is to leave it behind to beneficiaries and the like or charities, Victor is here to help you do that as well. That’s why we call it Make It Last. You can always find out more about Victor and the team.

You got palantewealth.com, which is a holistic planning for retirement. You got Medina Law Group, which is about estate planning, and all those things we need to think about when it comes to the end of life and even while we’re living.

Victor, you don’t wait to do all that elder law attorney stuff when you’re 90, do you? Don’t you do it when you’re getting closer and closer to retirement, or I suppose even in your 30s you should have some plan encase something happens to you.

Victor:  You should definitely have some documents in place. You’re going the other direction that I said. “You shouldn’t wait until you’re dead to do your will.” I was going to agree with that. That’s probably a pretty safe place to be. You should have your estate planning in place before you become incapacitated, and before you die.

That’s at least when we would like to do that. By the way, if you know that date, then we can back up…

Mark:  [laughs]

Victor:  …maybe six months, so you get your documents in place.

Mark:  It would be easy. Victor, when you sit down with people on planning their retirement, if you knew their end date, that would be a great help. If you knew if they would have any health issues at all along the way, that would help. That’s one of the challenges.

You have to do a little bit of “what if,” scenarios with your clients, I would imagine.

Victor:  Think about it this way, there are lots of variables that are going to happen in the future. We can go beyond the fanciful. Funny ones about when are you going to die, or when are you going to get sick? How long are you going to last? There are other things that are going to be variables that we can’t control.

What are market returns going to look like in the first 10‑years of your retirement. That has a mathematical impact on what you should be doing. Similarly, what are the tax policies going to be like. You have the tax laws today doesn’t mean that you know exactly what they’re going to be out 10 to 20 years as part of your retirement.

There are enough variables in place. What I do as a planner for you as the client is I start to design a plan that is flexible, and takes into account those contingencies. That if we have a situation where somebody gets ill, or we have a situation where the tax policies change, or whatever it is that the variable set the dial one way or the other that we weren’t expecting, we have expansion in the plan to account for that flexibility.

That it doesn’t submarine everything. That’s the risk. If you go into a situation planning for your retirement as though you assume that this is all going to happen exactly the same way. I know exactly when I’m going to die. I’m not going to live past age 85. I know exactly the same tax laws are going to be.

If you set all of those up and not any of them can change in order for your planning to work, when one of them does, boy are you scrambling afterwards. It’s much easier, as a retirement planner, to know what the things that we have to avoid.

Like, I say, “Hey, it’s a landmine field out there.” The nice thing is, I know where some of those things are. What we can do is, we can chart a path through the land minefield, so you don’t step on one of them in the course of the rest of your retirement.

Because I’ve been through this field many times with other clients, I understand what the right way to walk through this is, now you’ve got a better chance of success by having that plan in place.

Mark:  Today we’re going to talk about retirement in maybe a little bit different way than you’ve heard it talked about. I think we used to, especially when we were young, you think of your grandparents when you’re 10 years old, your grandparents are ancient.

[laughs] Now we’re that age, but we don’t feel ancient. We’re not ancient at this point, but we always thought of retirement as the final stage of life, and it’s really not the finish line anymore. Maybe, it was the Bucket List movie that got everybody thinking about, “Holy cow, there’s still a lot of things I can do.”

We’ve seen a 90‑ or a 100‑year‑old woman that’s jumping out of an airplane. It’s a different style of retirement than it was 20 or 30 years ago. It’s a little bit more on that Go‑Go category.

That’s what we’re going to talk today. We’re going to talk about three stages of retirement that we all go through but all at different times, basically. The Go‑Go years, the Slow‑Go years, and the No‑Go years.

We’re going to talk about all those. Victor, here’s my plan. I’m going to go 15 to 20 years in the Go‑Go years, a couple of years in the Slow‑Go years, and one night in the No‑Go year. That is a fantastic plan, ain’t it?

Victor:  I like that plan a lot. I’ve heard the No‑Go years is the won’t‑go years, but if you’re going to spend one day, you actually aren’t going after that one day. You want to carve it out that way. I’m good look with you, Mark, that’s fine.

Mark:  Yeah. It’s best said that, “I don’t have much control over all of that.” It’s fun when you think about the Go‑Go years. That’s what gets people excited about, the opportunity to leave their working years behind and jump into retirement, is the Go‑Go years.

How do you look at the Go‑Go years, Victor, for your clients? We’ve all heard of, “Hey, we can front‑end load our retirement a little bit because we’re gonna be more active.”

At the back‑end, we’re going to talk about all three of these phases. At the back‑end, there may be more medical expenses, doesn’t mean because you got 90 years old you’re not going as much, that there’s no cost anymore to retirement. That’s not the case.

How do you look at the Go‑Go years? I would think that’s an exciting part of your job when you sit down with people that were so excited about, “Hey, I got this bucket list on my list. I got this bucket list item, ” when they’re excited, aren’t they?

Victor:  I think most of them are. I do want to spend a moment with a folks that aren’t getting excited about retirement. What I’ve experienced is that, it’s very difficult when you lose the identity as a working member of society. What your job was. What you get up every day to go and do. That has a lot of sense of identity.

When people start to plan their retirement, I found that the most successful people are those that have a purpose or identity post‑retirement. Those can be the people that do come in on those Go‑Go years really excited about what they’re going to be doing.

They know that they’re going to be traveling, or spending time with grandkids, or picking up a new hobby, or volunteering at the hospital and shepherding some families around, worried about somebody that might be in surgery.

Whatever that’s going to look like, I know that if they’ve identified a purpose, a way of creating an identity post their working years, they’re going to have a much more successful retirement, because they’re going to have this purpose that just is bigger than them. That’s really important.

When we think about how to plan around for the Go‑Go years, if you’re coming in for retirement and you have plans about what it is that you want to do, many times those plans have got little sales tags associated with them. There are cost items.

There are things that we have to plan for, especially if we’re thinking about travel, whether it’s travel for pleasure like you’re going to go some place exotic as part of what you’re doing or it is just travel involved visit where all of your grandkids are.

They might be spread across the country, and you want to be able to do that. There are usually price tags associated with that, and what’s important is for us to be able to help you understand whether or not that’s all possible.

That’s where we have to take a look and say, “Well, that’s something that we can or can’t do,” based on what you have or if it’s something that it is possible, how do we ensure that it’s something that you can do with complete peace of mind.

Whatever you are planning for, you can do with the comfort and calmness of knowing that it totally fits within your budget for retirement and for you to be able to be successful.

We like planning for the Go‑Go years because for the people that have got a good clear design about what it is they’re going to be doing, its thing that launches them with a lot of momentum into retirement where they’re loving it.

They’re going in there every day’s Saturday and they’re spending time and they’re gardening and they’re reading and they’re doing all the things that they want to do. I want to encourage that.

The people that don’t take advantage of it, when we start talking about the slower‑go or No‑Go years after that, it’s usually because health considerations have started to overcome them and then it’s an last opportunity.

We think about each one of these stages. It’s very difficult [laughs] to go backwards, often never happens. You don’t go from the Slow‑Go years to now the Go‑Go years. You don’t go backwards from that. Take advantage of the Go‑Go years that you have, so that you can really fully live in retirement.

Mark:  Now we’ll say this though, is there opportunities for somebody that’s in the Go‑Go phase whose spouse gets sick? Now all of a sudden they’ve gone to Slow‑Go because that’s where the spouse is at this point.

The spouse then passes away and the other surviving spouse pops back into the Go‑Go years. Those kind of things can happen. Everybody’s situation is different. That is what I think is so.

Victor:  That’s a really good point, Mark. I overlooked that. I was thinking about from the individual’s perspective that usually when your health starts to go down, you don’t go backwards, but you are right.

I do encounter, especially from the estate planning and elder law side, a lot of couples that we’re doing planning for where one of the spouses may have come down with Alzheimer’s or they’re dealing with MS, and so the entire family has gotten into the No‑Go or Slow‑Go years to be able to deal with this issue. Then after somebody passes away they are…I don’t want to say it’s free, but their life circumstances have changed. They’re healthy enough.

They are taking advantage of the time that they had to put on the shelf being a caregiver for somebody else to then go and take advantage of it. I think that is definitely on the menu for some folks that, that is a possibility as well.

Mark:  You think about all these stages, we all go through the Go‑Go, the Slow‑Go, and the No‑Go, we’re going to break them all down for you. If you’d like to talk with Victor, about “How do I plan for all of this?” 856‑506‑8300.

I like to stay in the Go‑Go years, because that’s the more fun time that we all have when we think about retirement. Is that something that you have to put into that retirement plan, that Make‑It‑Last plan process that you do with your clients? Is “Hey, Victor, we’re going to travel overseas for one month. We’re going to stay at home.”

I mean, that’s a different planning. You really have to get an idea of what their retirements going to look like from their viewpoint, don’t you?

Victor:  Sure. That’s totally true, we need to know what your plans are, what your goals are. One of the first things we do in the meetings that we have with clients, if you were to come in, we’d go through nine areas as part of your overall planning, where we’re looking at each one of your goals and what are we starting with, to really understand whether or not we can make this thing happen for you.

Yes, we need to know that. Actually, I want to take this opportunity to talk about the value of planning, because even for the people that walk in with clear designs about what they are going to do, if that was the only thing that they needed to do for planning, there probably wouldn’t be no place for us going forward.

What we experience is that there’s enough of the ground that shifts underneath them, that their goals change, that their desires change, that the landscape that they were relying on, like taxes or an investment to the market changes.

Really, the value of an advisor in your life, especially when it’s holistic, the way that we are, that’s doing legal and financial for people under one roof. What it allows you to do is, just pick up that one bat phone. If there’s something wrong, you got them. You just pick up that one phone and say, how does this affect my plan now? With this new information, what’s changed?

While we are creating a plan now, based on what people want to do in their Go‑Go year, say, “I want to travel,” and we say, we can make that happen. The real value that we bring is that when that answer changes and they come back in and say, “Ah, I’m sorry, but this spouse now came down with Alzheimer’s. What does that mean?”

In a real serious thing like that, or it turns out that, “Travel wasn’t what we thought it was cracked up to be. Actually, what we want is a second home, and we want it over by the beach that the kids come in. Can we do that? Is that something that we can do?”

It’s when the circumstances change, the value of the advisor really comes in, because what we can do is refine the plan and help you navigate towards that new goal.

Mark:  It’s a great point. If we just retired, then had 20 years of perfect health, and then passed away in our sleep. There’s not a lot of you know what‑ifs along that path. The problem is, we never know what’s going to happen. If I could I want to go back.

The next segment we’re going to get into the Slow‑Go years, the No‑Go years, some of the things we need to think about in those areas. The Go‑Go years are the fun time to think about mostly, is what are we going to do? How are we going to spend our time and the like, but I want to go back to your mental side of retirement.

For me, when I retire, I’m going to miss you, Victor, I’m going to miss doing the show, but I know there’s going to be somebody that can handle my job very easily. I’m going to go right off and go play golf and I’ll probably be fine.

For somebody like you that has two companies that you’ve made very successful, helping others, Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth, your identity a lot to a degree I would think is tied up in the company. When you retire, it’s going to be a little bit harder to walk away, I would think. That’s a big mindset challenge.

Victor:  It is. Actually, it gives me an opportunity to talk about a secret project that we have going on that we’ll talk more about in the future issues of the episodes of the show. We’re in the process of creating a planner for clients in retirement, not really to…It’s not available yet.

It has me thinking how to answer exactly that question mark, which is, how do we guide people through retirement so that they can discover what their purpose is going to be? What their contribution is going to be? How they’re going to find significance? What are they going to be able to enhance about themselves? What skills are they going to work on?

How are they going to better themselves, really enjoy retirement, and find those elements that will help them either re‑establish an identity that is after their working years, or really maximize and just squeeze the juice out of their retirement life, because they know that they aren’t wasting any of their days, that they’re doing exactly what they want and it’s serving their purpose.

I would say that in that whole spectrum, whether it’s people that are so closely tied to their working identity needing to find something else that’s worthwhile for them, and a way of being in retirement that is as significant as where they were before that.

Or if it’s just folks that say, “I have a pretty good idea of what it is I want to do. Let me just not miss the boat on it. Let me just make sure that I’m kind of really taking advantage of everything that I thought was possible into there.”

Both of those are really important to do, because if you’re not enjoying, if you don’t have the right emotional and mental sides to retirement, I don’t care how much money you’ve got. This is not what that’s about it.

Forget about the fact that we’re creating an extra paycheck for you on a regular basis. These are the times that you need to be reflecting back to like, “I enjoyed that. That was awesome.”

Through retirement, I was able to do exactly I wanted to. I found a great new purpose in what I was doing. I was able to contribute beyond myself. That’s going to be the stuff that lasts longer than any of the money that we’ve created for you, how you spent it.

Mark:  When you think about all this planning that goes into this, and I say that jokingly. I would like to see that happen. That I’m 15 years in the Go‑Go, a couple years in the Slow‑Go, and I’m one night in the No‑Go. That would be nice. I don’t have a lot of control over that.

As we all know, things happen. Maybe you go into the Go‑Go years, your super excited. The Go‑Go leaguers only last two or three years because of health issue. That’s life. We have to have a plan for whatever happens. Victor said it very well because things happen and we have to be able to adjust.

The “Make It Last” process that Victor runs his clients through, it’s not written in ink, because things happen. We have to be able to adjust as we move along. If you’d like to get this process started, just come in and talk to him.

Find out where you are. What do I need to be doing? Am I on the right track? Can I retire? When can I retire? Do I have enough? Those are big questions. 856‑506‑8300 is the number, 856‑506‑8300.

Of course, the Medina Law Group, Palante Wealth served the Pennington, the greater Mercer County area as well as Bucks County. There’s clients in New Jersey. There’s clients in Pennsylvania. They’re here to help. They don’t know if they can help.

Give them a call. Why don’t you do it right now? Great time, 856‑506‑8300. We’re talking about the three stages of life that we will all go through. Hopefully, it’s longer in the Go‑Go years. Sometimes that’s not how it works out.

There’s the Go‑Go years, the Slow‑Go years, and the No‑Go years. We’re going to come back and talk about some of the challenges in those years. The Slow‑Go and the No‑Go right after this. This is Make It Last with Victor Medina.

 

Mark:  Glad you’re with us today for Make It Last with Victor Medina of Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. I’m Mark Elliot. We’re talking about the three stages of life that we all go through in retirement. Is what we’re talking about, the Go‑Go years, the Slow‑Go years, and the No‑Go years.

The old “Bucket List” movie got everybody excited about, “Wow, because I retired, my life’s not over there’s a lot of life to be lived.” It struck a chord with that generation, and so excited the baby boomer generation, their Go‑Go generation. At some point, you’re not going to go as much.

Victor my mom is 84. A couple years ago, her and a friend decided to drive from the middle of the country to Charleston, South Carolina. She’d always thought, “Man, that place always sound so beautiful, historic. I want to go there.” She drove 20 hours there.

When she came back. She said, “That was a wonderful trip that I am never doing it again.” I said, “Mom, congratulations, you’ve hit the Slow‑Go years. You can still go, but you don’t want to, as much.” [laughs]

How do you look at the Slow‑Go? The Go‑Go years will get it. The Bucket List we’re excited. Slow‑Go, it’s not that we can’t, it’s just that maybe we don’t want to as much.

Victor:  It’s partially that I think by the way, it is that we can’t, but it’s much harder for us to do that. What usually visits on us are health‑related concerns. Specifically, things that affect our mobility and whatever the demands of travel would be or the demands of up and go of life.

It’s health‑related concerns that slow us down and sometimes not in a way that ends our life or where we won’t go anywhere. It’s not the same. We can’t navigate the Cobble Stone streets in Portugal. We can’t deal with the getting up early to go and volunteer at a new job or a part‑time job or something else that we have going on there.

The Slow‑Go years are about taking the time that we’re filling it over. That we needed to fill with all the Go‑Go stuff, and then starting to think about what are the requirements for us now, if there’s a health‑related concern or something like that.

Is that plays into demand on the way that our assets are being used, and where we’re going to be spending, and the paycheck that we need every month. Is it going to change what the demands are on our plan? That’s what I think about.

Mark:  You think about the Go‑Go years. We all think, “Well, we’re going to spend more money in that phase of our life.” We’re going, we’re spending, we’re traveling, we’re doing whatever that we want to do.

We get to the Slow‑Go and the No‑Go. We don’t have as much expenditures. We get into the Slow‑Go years and the No‑Go years. No‑Go years, you might need to be in a facility. The Slow‑Go years, you might have more health issues. Because we’re not going as much, doesn’t mean we need a lot less money. Is it?

Victor:  No, that’s right. It doesn’t mean that we need less money. Many times we need as much, or sometimes even more. Those costs are crazy Mark. You start looking at the costs of a long‑term care facility, and not necessarily a nursing home where you’re all the time under health concern.

Even an assisted living facility, or an independent living facility. Where you’re in a place where those are, where the activities are. They’re going to range anywhere in New Jersey and this Northeast cost. They’re going to reach anywhere between 5,500 and 8,000 dollars a month, depending if it’s single or married coverage and what’s available in those facilities.

If we’re talking about generating a check that is to be getting spent on one place for your meals, and your roof over your head, and maybe some coloring books. That’s a lot of money for that.

It’s as much as we were spending if we’re talking about an extra spend of anywhere between 60 to 90 thousand dollars a year is what we were doing. We were traveling.

It is important to realize that the Slow‑Go years does not mean that we’ve turned off the spigot on the flow of money. If anything, we’ve kept it up. This is where it becomes important to start thinking about protecting against that risk with the use of something like long‑term care insurance.

This is difficult to give everybody the same blanket advice on the radio because there are a lot of factors that go into that. What policy should you have? Are you even healthy enough to get one? Should it be part of your annuity income rider? Should you be using life insurance with accelerated death benefits? There’s a lot of variations in there.

I will tell you what are the most important things to consider. One of those things is to make sure that it is a policy that covers your needs when you need them. One of the biggest things that’s overlooked is thinking about the health care costs as they are today.

If you’re putting this long‑term care policy in place for some time in the future, like 10, 15 years. When you think you’re going to need it, well guess what? The costs are going to be more than…You have to escape to where the puck is going to be on that.

The other thing that we want to make sure is that with respect to anything that looks like that solution, that it is something that we will have with us when we need it. The worst thing that we see happens, people will take a long‑term care policy where they have to pay premiums every year.

As their expenses go up, they ditch it as they’re getting older. That’s the time that they need it. We’d like to look at solutions to this that are a little bit more guaranteed that it will always be there. Maybe it’s paying for a little bit point in time and then it’s fully paid.

We don’t have to put any more money into it and that becomes a good way of solving it. Lots of little wrinkles to this but what’s important is people have need to do this planning, Mark, before they get sick.

They don’t do it in their Slow‑Go years. They do it prior to their Slow‑Go years. Most of the time, if we’re solving this with forms of insurance to help it, the underwriting for that, you got to be healthy enough for it.

If you’re waiting until you’re in your Slow‑Go years, guess what, the insurance company doesn’t want to talk to you. You’re already drawing from that. You’re not somebody that they want to have a conversation with. It’s definitely something you need to have in place before you actually get to that stage.

Mark:  Right. You think about you’re going into retirement. You don’t not think about those things that you might need down the road whether it’s long‑term care, whether it’s how you’re going to leave your money behind to beneficiaries, to charities, whatever it is.

You do all of that right out of the gate because beneficiaries may change. There’s a lot of things that may change, so you put it in place before you get to that point where you need it.

856‑506‑8300 because when you get to the No‑Go years, now it is you were really are trying to wrap things up, right? Where am I going to leave my money? How am I going to do it?

I know you have a report on 920elderlaw.com. What’s that all about? Because that seems like that fits right in here in the No‑Go years. We don’t want to wait till we’re in the [laughs] No‑Go years to think about elder law. Talking about why that report on 920elderlaw.com, it’s free of charge to anybody that wants it.

Victor:  With my lawyer hat on, I’m a certified elder law attorney, which is a specific designation for helping people that are in retirement, post‑retirement, navigating the world of elder law to make sure that things like, protecting assets against long‑term care, making sure you avoid guardianship and making sure that you navigate that world is very specific to folks that are getting older.

That designation has allowed us to create a guide that can help educate people before we get into that crisis mode. What we did is we created that guide. It’s entitled “Don’t Let Your Health Destroy Your Family’s Wealth” and it’s a great guide for you to download.

You got to 920elderlaw.com, you put in your name and your email so we know where to send it to. Then, we’ll send you this guide because this kind of planning, Mark is something that you absolutely need to get done before you’re in those stages.

Too many times, clients come into us in crisis. We’re a meeting with the daughter because the mom’s in the nursing home, like, what can you do? Look, the kitchen’s on fire, what do you want me to do? There’s stuff that we can help you with, but if you had Mom come and see us before this happened, we would have been able to do so, so much more.

What we’re doing by providing this guide in this report is to allow people to understand what the risks are as part of what you need to get in place for elder law ‑‑ for your asset protection.

If you do that ahead of time, are your choices better? Are you going to be in a position where more assets are saved that your options on how you get your long term care are broader? You don’t have to worry about Medicaid devastating your home. They’re all positive benefits.

The only way that we can do that is when we start to talk to people before the need arises. We provided this report as a way for people to be able to get into this discussion because it’s not things that people are often familiar with.

Do it in a way before you actually need it. All you have to do is go to 920elderlaw.com, put in your name and email address, and we’ll send you that report for your church.

Mark:  Hopefully, you’re getting the idea that you don’t wait for these types of things. We don’t know. I joke around and say I’m going to be in the Go‑Go phase for 15 years, the Slow‑Go for two years, one night in the No‑Go. I have no idea how that’s going to play out.

We can always hope for the best, but we better be planning for the worst. That means you need to start all this planning process when you’re getting closer to retirement. You should probably have all these wills and powers of attorney and all those things in before you even get to that point. There’s a lot of moving parts.

You can always call Victor and the team 856‑506‑8300 to talk about all of this. You think about these three stages. We’re all going to go through them. We don’t know the timelines for each. It could be long, could be short. We don’t know.

The Go‑Go, the Slow‑Go, the No‑Go, there are different challenges in each one of these phases. Doesn’t this may be talking about it this way? Do you ever talk about this with your clients in this way, Go‑Go, Slow‑Go, No‑Go? It makes it a little bit easier to understand. Wow, I need a comprehensive plan for all three of these phases.

Victor:  Yeah, it does. It allows us to frame that discussion. As you were saying, a lot of people will enter this thinking that retirements going to only have one picture, that it’s not going to change. As you were saying that you’re going to know exactly how much time you’re going to spend, or how many nights are going to spend in each one of them.

We don’t know the purpose of thinking about it this way, of breaking it down and say, “What if this happens? What would you do if this is what was going on? How do we plan if this is the circumstance that we have?”

Thinking about in each one of those different phases, what it allows us to do is build a plan that will allow us to have the best options in each one of those situations. It’s like this thing. It’s like, “Well, I know that I want to end up someplace.”

If I’m sailing a ship way out there, it’s important to make sure that my ship is aimed in the right direction, because this is like a big aircraft carrier. If something is off, we’re going to be off by hundreds of miles by the time that we need something.

It’s very difficult to make a real sharp turn in what we need to do. If we think about time segmenting these things where your Go‑Go years are your first part of your retirement.

Your Slow‑Go years might be in the second or third phase of your retirement in the second or third decade of what your retirement is. By the time we get to know, Go Years is at the final end. We start thinking about time segmenting it. We can layer on top of that, for example, which our investments look like because we might be allocating some of this money for use that is in one of these other phases.

The sooner that we get it and working in that area, the better benefits going to have for you knowing that that’s the purpose of that particular bucket of money. Whatever that looks like, whatever that investment looks like, whatever that strategy looks like, is that it’s for that time in your life.

Again, the idea is that if we’re able to think about that before you’re there. Your choices get better, your options get better, your quality of life gets better. It’s super important to think about it ahead of time.

There’s the other part, is be working with somebody like us that had focused in retirement. They can see each one of these phases for a lot of their clients, and then help you navigate what it is that that’s going to look like.

Mark:  Remember, there’s a lot of moving parts and a lot of moving pieces. That’s why Palante Wealth is about holistic planning for your retirement. The income strategies, investment strategies, tax strategies moving forward.

The Medina Law Group can certainly help you with all the estate needs, elder law stuff. It’s all a moving part. There’s no guarantees for any of us on any of this. That’s why Victor and the team put together that report on 920elderlaw.com. You can get it downloaded right too. They’ll send it to you. 920elderlaw.com, a lot of great information there.

Be some things that you probably haven’t thought about. Why not get this free report, 920elderlaw.com. Of course, at the end of the day, why not sit down with a team, and let’s get started on your situation.

What are your hopes and dreams for retirement? What are you going to do? How are you going to spend your time? What happens if, “Hey, do you need a new car in the first five years of retirement?” We better plan for it. You’re going to take the family to Hawaii, we better plan for it. There’s a lot of moving parts.

Victor and the teams are here to help. 856‑506‑8300 is a number again. No cost for this, 856‑506‑8300. There’s no time like the present. Let’s get started. 856‑506‑8300. We’re headed to our final segment of “Make It Last” with Victor Medina, right after this short time out.

Mark:  Glad you’re with us today for Make It Last with Victor Medina. I’m Mark Elliot. Victor has two companies, the Medina Law Group, which is about practicing estate planning. Certified elder law attorney Victor is as well.

That’s your estate planning world. We know there are changes coming in that world. Are you ready for it? Do you have a plan? We’ve talked about it before. If you don’t care about your family at all, then don’t do any estate planning, don’t do any legacy planning, because you’re going to leave them a major headache.

Most of us love our family and our loved ones or our favorite charities or whatever, we need a plan in place. Medina Law Group is here to help you with that. That is a big part of retirement planning. We don’t want to forget the last stage as how you could look at that when we’re no longer here. We don’t want to leave headaches behind. We want them to look fondly at us.

The Medina Law Group, you can go to the website, medinalawgroup.com to find out more. The Palante Wealth side is holistic retirement planning ‑‑ your income strategies, your investment strategies, your tax‑efficient strategies. You go to palantewealth.com to find out more there. That is about your planning for your retirement, the income needs, the investment strategies, taxes, all of that.

They’re tied in with the estate planning as well. That’s why those two companies exist. Victor started the Medina Law Group in ’06. Those clients were saying, “Why can’t you help me with the rest of my retirement?” I don’t know. It’s a good question. Why can I? What do I need to do? He did it. 2014, started Palante Wealth.

We’d love for you to check out the website. We’d love for you to give the team a call, if you have questions about where you are in your road to retirement. It’s 856‑506‑8300. Again, no cost, no‑obligation, no pressure. 856‑506‑8300.

Victor, we know that you like old houses. You had an 1880s home and now an 1870s homes, you like old stuff I guess, huh? Fair to say.

Victor:  I like the old homes. I don’t know that I like old stuff, but I do like the old homes.

Mark:  Have you ever seen the Netflix hit “Tidying Up” or maybe you’ve heard someone ask what, “Does It Spark Joy.” The whole show is about decluttering and that’s what we’re going to talk about for the next few minutes because all four of my grandparents are gone.

My dad is gone, but I got stuff from all of them and it’s unique. My mom is 84 and she’s one of those that have all the knick‑knacks around the house and if you pick one up, there’s a grandkid’s name on it. She’s always asking me, “What do you want?” I’m like that’s a weird thing to talk about, but maybe I could use that lamp, whatever. [laughs]

It is interesting. There was an article about five things that your kids really don’t want and we thought it’d be fun. Do you think you and Jennifer…because your kids are young so you’re not at that point yet but what about your parents or grandparents. Did they leave you something that you’re like, “I never liked that thing anyway,” but they thought you really liked it. I don’t know.

Do you have any of those stories?

Victor:  We changed that around a little bit in the order because usually you have stuff left to you when somebody dies, but I actually had my parents leave me basically the contents of their home when they moved out of Connecticut and retired. It came into my home for about four, five years.

When we were redoing our home which we’ve been talking about today, they went into storage for 13 months and then they went into the basement of my new home. I inherited this stuff way before they died and just last year did we bring a dumpster over when they were over for the weekend and have a discussion that said, “I want to be clear with you but I don’t want any of this.

“I just want to make sure that you don’t any of it either because whatever we’re keeping it here, you’re taking it with you when you leave today otherwise it should go into that dumpster.” I had to live that in the most unusual way which is inheriting stuff I don’t want while they’re still alive.

Mark:  Yes, so you actually could face to face, “Look, I don’t want this, what are we going to do with it?”

Here’s this article. It comes from an article on Forbes.com and it’s the things your kids don’t want. There are five different items here. Now I think some of these are cool and probably depends on your age too. Number five on their list of things your kids don’t want ‑‑ steamer trunks, sewing machine, film projector.

I will say this, my daughter is 20. She wanted a sewing machine so that was perfect to pass down. The steamer trunks are cool, it’d be a great place to store some of my golf stuff. Film projectors, I’m not sure the need for those anymore, then they’re not very valuable. You can feel free to donate those. How do you look at those?

Did your parents did you leave you any of the steamer trunks, sewing machine, film projectors?

Victor:  Thankfully no. We might have had a steamer trunk just in the house for a while, but my wife is the one that would probably take all three of those. She wants them mostly because she wants the memories that are associated with them. I don’t think she cares about them. It’s probably the same.

If your daughter is looking to take up sewing to get close to it or wants to pick up a skill that knows she’s happy by. I know that my wife wanted her grandmother’s sewing machine because she made her living as a seamstress, bringing over all of her siblings when she was here by herself in the States and paying for them talk more.

There’s a link into that, but thankfully none of them are in my mind and no, I don’t want any of them.

Mark:  My daughter likes to mess with her own clothes and so the sewing machine was so she could do her own stuff. Now number four on this Forbes list of things your kids don’t want ‑‑ the porcelain figurine collections. Do you do you have anybody in your family collect those precious moments figurine?

Victor:  No. My grandmother had them and she’s passed on for at least over a dozen years now. We did get rid of those, but you’re right, each one of them had a different grandchild’s name on them that nobody wanted it but she wanted them to have them.

Mark:  Because it was important to her. She liked them but I think that’s fine like my mom. It’s one item for the grandkids so if your grandmother left one precious ‑‑ not the whole collection just one ‑‑ so they can look at it remember grandma. I think that’s OK.

I will tell you this the next one on this Forbes list of things your kids don’t want ‑‑ heavy antique furniture. Now, I will tell you that I actually have some of my grandparents’ furniture and I have this big hodge. It’s got drawers at the bottom and big doors open on the front and that thing is terrible to try to move it because it is so heavy.

It’s really cool. They say our kids don’t want heavy antique furniture. What do you say?

Victor:  Mark, Forbes is totally wrong on this. Totally wrong. I want the heavy antique furniture too. Not only do I want it but my wife wants it. I tell you our life when we were living Massachusetts was spent going to the Cromwell antiques fair that happens four times a year. They take over 16, 17 football fields of different vendors.

I have plenty of memories of carrying something heavy on my head for about half an acre to bring it back to our car and I loved it. They’re now in the house. I’ve got a camel that weighs a ton that you couldn’t get anywhere else.

Then when we moved here to New Jersey, somebody had put on sale for us to pick up and we put in our truck a piece of furniture from France with this tiger wood that they didn’t want any longer. That they’ve gotten from the grandma that they paid to ship over. We snatch that up.

I don’t know what Forbes is thinking, but the heavy antique furniture, give it all to me. I’ll take it if you don’t want to.

Mark:  I think it’s cool. I would be like you. I disagree with Forbes on that. The next one though, this is number two on the list of things your kids don’t want and it’s the sterling‑silver flatware and the crystal wine services. I will tell you, I am single, my daughter that’s paralyzed waist down from a car wreck or senior year of high school three years ago at 17 ‑‑ she’s now 20 ‑‑ lives with me.

It’s a lot of paper plates. I don’t have a dishwasher. I wash them as I move, but I still use my grandmother’s China because it’s the only dish where I have. Victor, you cannot put it in the microwave. We have some issues there, but do you think people want the sterling‑silver flatware, the China from your grandparents?

Victor:  I tell you, maybe my wife got lucky by having an M in her maiden last name and an M for Medina in her married name so that way no matter what happens the M flatware can get passed on fine if she inherited it and we can have it. Nobody hosts formally these ways. I don’t know the last time that we put out the nice China.

We’ve been using the same set of dishes that were these casual everyday dishes for the last 20 years of our marriage. We ask for them as our wedding gift and we’ve been using the bejesus out of them for 20 years. I don’t think we’ve ever taken the crystal stuff out for anything.

One of the two times it comes out ‑‑ Thanksgiving and Christmas if you’re hosting it, maybe Easter if you’ve got those. Probably the only time that we were brought out the goblets. I’m pretty sure that my kids want no part of it and I will tell you that because we have our own, I want no part of my parents. Not at all, even all.

Mark:  Sterling‑silver flatware, crystal wine services number two. Number one is the fine porcelain dinnerware and I do think it’s because we do things differently than what our grandparents did. When we would go to Thanksgiving in my grandparents’ house, everything was that old China, the gravy boats and all those.

The bowls are incredibly small from back in the day. The portions must’ve been much smaller back in the day compared to today’s bowls you put cereal in or what have you. Things are moving, with the Medina Law Group, when you’re talking estate planning and legacy planning and all of that, I would think that this is something you do need to talk to your clients about.

Hey, what do you think your kids actually want? What should we try to sell? How do you go about that?

Victor:  We create inside of our plan the opportunity to have people sign what they call their special stuff list. It’s their opportunity to give their special stuff because sometimes they don’t want it lost. They don’t want to just be sold or thrown away, but there’s some value in there. They want to be able to pass it on.

It might be a car collection, guitar, might be a car itself. This might be something that’s in there and they want to be able to pass it on. It might be a car collection, a guitar. It might be a car itself. There might be something that’s in there that they want to pass on.

It definitely needs to be brought in. Here’s the reason why. Not only do parents want to make sure that they give the things to their kids that they want, but they also want to avoid kids fighting about stuff ahead of time. It is the replacement for putting the grandkids’ name underneath the porcelain figurine.

We’ve already been talking about some of stuff that they’re not going to fight over, but there are things that people do fight over. Unfortunately, you get really nice people, who are otherwise balanced, going 12 rounds for a coffee table now that mom and dad are gone.

What we want to do is we want to make sure we avoid that. I think that every parent who does estate planning is looking to make life easier for the people that they leave behind, and that includes not setting their kids up to be fighting afterwards and not sending them for there to be battles about stuff.

There there’s two elements to that. The first element is to create the list, that special stuff lists where you’re saying, “I want this to go to that person and the other thing to go to the other person.”

It’s also in the communication that you have with your family to say, “I have created a special stuff list about what goes where off of it and just want to let you know that after I pass on it’s going to be here and this is in the binder,” and all that stuff. It’s available for them, and they know where to find it.

The idea is to set the expectations about where stuff is supposed to go. That’s one of the hard paper things that we do to make sure that stuff ends up where it needs to go as well as recommending the softer skills of having the conversations so that people aren’t fighting after you’re gone, but you’re right it definitely needs to get incorporated into the estate planning and weirdly not.

It’s weird to me as an estate‑planning attorney, but weirdly people tend to be more concerned with that than any of the tax planning or other stuff that I’m putting in my estate plan.

I would say, “Listen to this to help estate taxes go up or down in the future.” “This is going to be great.” “We’re going to protect it against divorce inheritance.” They’ll say to me, “That’s all fine, but did you take care of where my guitar collection supposed to go?”

“Yeah. Yeah. We took care of that. That’s in the special stuff list. Here, it is on page 42,” but people are focused on it because there’s…and this is an important part, Mark, to bring it to a serious part of the discussion. People want to pass on their values as much as they want to pass on their money. They want to pass on their values as a way of passing on their legacy.

All of the stuff that we’re talking about here is about passing on the stories of who people are. The steamer trunks, the porcelain figures, the antique furniture, the crystal wine, the porcelain dinnerware, they are all parts of what journey somebody has come through that they don’t want to be wasted. They don’t want to be deemed not valuable.

We have to find an opportunity to be able to pass on those values as much as we pass on money or anything else that we’re doing with the estate plan. It’s an essential component to having success around the estate plan you’re creating is knowing that you’re leaving something behind more than just what the money is.

Mark:  Do you have a plan for that? Do you have your estate legacy plans in place, because there’s a lot of moving parts? Maybe you do have that special guitar collection. Maybe your thought was, “Hey, I’ve always dreamed about having this car.” Your granddad sat there and redid it himself and painted it, did the interior and all that. It was his pride and joy.

I imagine one of the grandkids would love to have that. Have you put all that stuff down on paper? Because people need to know your wishes. That’s really important as well. Victor and the team, they’re here to help you put this plan in place, so that you have peace of mind, that your kids, your heirs, and your beneficiaries all are on the same page.

There is no infighting. We don’t want that. Call Victor and the team, they’re here to help. 856‑506‑8300. There’s no cost for this. The team is here to help just don’t know if they can tell until they hear the situation. 856‑506‑8300, the best time to start would be right now if you haven’t started yet.

856‑506‑8300. Glad you’re with us today for “Make It Last” with Victor Medina, the Medina Law Group of Palante Wealth. We’re going to be back again next week. Have a great week. We’re back with more next week. Have a great week.

Announcer:  Taxes are just a fact of life. You can’t avoid it even in retirement. What if I told you there are ways to minimize what you pay in taxes? Victor Medina and his team can help. To learn more, visit 920taxes.com to get your free copy of Victor Medina’s tax guide. 920taxes.com. That’s the numbers, 920taxes.com.

Victor:  Palante Wealth Advisors are an independent financial services firm that utilizes a variety of investment and insurance products. Medina Law Group is an independent estate planning and elder law firm. Investment advisory services offered through Palante Wealth Advisors LLC in New Jersey and Pennsylvania registered investment advisor.

Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Investing involves risk including the potential loss of principal. Any references to protection, safety or lifetime income generally referred to fixed insurance products, never securities, or investments.

Insurance guarantees are backed by the financial strength and claims‑paying ability of the issuing carrier. This radio show is intended for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be used as a sole basis for financial decisions nor should it be construed as advice designed to meet the particular needs of an individual situation.

Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth Advisors are not permitted to offer and no statement made during this show shall constitute tax or legal advice. Our firm is not affiliated with or endorsed by the US government or any governmental agency.

The information and opinions contained herein provided by third parties have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed by Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth Advisors.

 

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