Most Americans are getting a failing grade in financial literacy especially revolving around retirement. Victor and Mark share the top topics people are struggling with so you can understand!
Then, they will go on to discuss the insurance world, and how it can benefit retirees.
Finally, they’ll talk about why it’s important to have a financial advisor, even if you have a financially savvy spouse.
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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 Medina, Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. I’m Mark Elliot.
Victor and his teams focus on traditional estate planning, asset protection, retirement distribution, and proactive income tax planning. He’s been featured on national television, “The Wall Street Journal,” “The Huffington Post,” and “US News & World Report.”
Here’s the deal, if you ever have any questions about anything we talk about today on the program, or you’d like to learn more about it, “Wow, I didn’t know that. I would like to learn more,” you can always call the team. 856‑506‑8300.
Or, if you’re in that timeline of 5 to 10 years out from retirement and you’re like, “Boy, there’s a lot of moving parts here. I think I don’t know what my income plan is. Where is my income coming from? What about my investment strategies? 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 all this 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, and it’s not a surprising thing to me, Victor. Now 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.
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 the bathtub in the White House. I think he even threw out the first pitch in 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. Maybe you should teach a class around the country about this.
Victor: All right, sounds good. I’ll get right to that when I’m not working with clients. It’s not at all surprising, I think I totally agree with you that we’re failing, and we’re failing at the early age. I got three boys, the oldest is working now. Aiden’s got a job as a lifeguard.
I feel like it’s a personal success that he comes home and he decides that he wants to spend what are in the tens and the ones column, and he wants to give me, to invest and save, what’s in the hundreds column for every paycheck. I think 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, but 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.
What happens when you start as early as he’s starting with what he’s saving and dollar cost averaging into it. We’re failing them, we’re failing a lot of them.
I want to key in on another part that you talked about, Mark, which is this higher percentage of women that are failing. We’ve got this incredible focus in our office and our planning around making sure that we help empower women in retirement. In fact, that’s the name of one of the books that I’ve written.
What will happen is we’ll visit with women they are suddenly in charge of money either because of a divorce, or they’ve been widowed or something along that, but they just weren’t familiar with it in the past, just in the division of labor. It wasn’t something that they were in charge of and they’re in a position where they really 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 and conform with what they want. In other words, you’re dealing with fly‑by‑the‑seat‑of‑their‑pant stock jockey folks that are going to talk about how much they’re going to grow and be swinging for the fences.
That might speak to the men that they want to speak with, but it really doesn’t help the women that are trying to make sure that they have safety and security in what they’re doing. That’s actually 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 are interested, you should give a call to the number, 856‑506‑8300.
This is just for the women out there. I don’t want any men posing as women just to get the copy of the free book, but 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 you 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 there available for you to get sent out and it’d be our pleasure to go and do that.
We want to help that. The whole story around that book, Mark, 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.
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 asked for it. Say, “Victor said I could get a copy. I need little guidance here. I would love to read this book and learn more about some of the challenges that might I be facing.” 856‑506‑8300.
You think about it, 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: I think there are. It’s really in focusing around taxes. Most people who have addressed the concept of taxes have done turned in a reactionary responsive manner, meaning that they got to the end of the year, they prepared their taxes, and 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, reduce the total number of taxes in there.
The reason why that is 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 that 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 that 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.
Then the other element of that, that ends up being a challenge is that we actually have to project where that number is going to be in the future. For people, they’re very presently focused, it’s this year with these taxes.
We’re actually 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 and it usually takes some education to get their mind wrapped around that.
Mark: Let’s finish talking about kind of 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 and 80 percent of women die widowed, divorced, or single.
Who’s helping them? It’s a moving challenge, I think, for all of us, but talk about the conversations you have about a surviving spouse because I always say that. One of the things I always say is, “Are my loved ones 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.
Victor: There are.
Mark: Besides the emotional. [laughs]
Victor: Oh, yeah. Exactly. Way beyond the loss, obviously, that’s in there and 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.
I think that there are three things that come up when we have the surviving spouse question that need 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 security, 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 kind of cute, simplistic, and flippant but what happens as a consequence is that the way that you pay taxes increases so that there’s these little brackets that apply to tax rates, and the brackets are one size when you’re married and then 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 in 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‑plan for that is another element of planning for that surviving spouse.
Then the last element you alluded to when you were talking about what would happen with women outliving men and who cares for them. It is a long‑term care question.
When we have two married people, and they’ve been a 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 care giving 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 or a facility or home healthcare aide or 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 because, 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 need to be paid, and the provision of long‑term care.
Those three things can absolutely be handled in a Make It Last plan that we create for our clients for retirement planning, but it’s best done if you do it ahead of time before you suffer that loss.
Mark: Be proactive, not reactive. 856‑506‑8300. A lot of moving parts when you lose a 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 female, single, widowed, divorced, what have you.
What about their kind of 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 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, and not something that we have to account for with the loss of a spouse.
One of them is in the legal realm, Mark. What we have to do, is think about different kinds of legal planning documents. Here, I’ll just take a second on kinds of powers of attorney.
Most of the time when we draft powers of attorney for a married couple, we make them immediately effective, so that when somebody becomes disabled, there’s no test and 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 got a married couple, that’s totally OK. When you’re a single individual, it’s a different consideration, so we may need a different legal planning tool called a springing power of attorney that’s only effective when you become disabled or incapacitated.
That’s a special consideration for a single person, because if they’ve got kids, maybe they’ll be the agents but 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 is a little bit more extended away from them, and so the right legal planning tool is helpful for them.
The other element of that is looking and planning around different kinds of investments for longevity. We’ve got in different investment horizon for what’s going on with a single individual, and that gets layered in as well. Those two things, different legal planning tools, and also different investment strategy for a single person over a married couple.
Then if you’re really interested in making sure that you actually 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. There’s going to be two Thursdays.
If you’d 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’ve got space, we’ll register for that. That’d 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 really sure when I can retire. Do I have enough? Will 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.
Mark: It’s 856‑506‑8300, 856‑506‑8300. It’s hard to believe we’re only one segment in. There’s been a ton of information 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: Glad you’re with us today for Make It Last with Victor Medina of Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth.
Mark: Medina Law Group, that’s estate planning. Victor is a certified elder law attorney. It’s really about the clients, what do you need moving forward, trust, wills and powers of attorney and all those kind of things that are in the elder law world, Medina Law Group can help you with.
They also figure into the Palante Wealth world. Palante Wealth is about holistic planning. Victor is a certified financial planner professional, registered investment advisor. Palante Wealth helps create that Make It Last plan. Income, investments, taxes, Medina Law Group pops in to help with the estate side of it.
Both these companies work together to help you make some decisions that are right for you and your situation moving forward. The question is, do you know the answers to some of the questions? 856‑506‑8300 is the number if you have questions. 856‑506‑8300. There’s no cost to chat with the team.
It’s medinalawgroup.com to find out more about that side of the business. M‑E‑D‑I‑N‑A, medinalawgroup.com. Palante Wealth, P‑A‑L‑A‑N‑T‑E, palantewealth.com. Victor, I know you’ve done this a long time, so I think you understand this. This is crazy to me. Every year, and I’ve had a stent put in my heart a year ago.
My daughter, of course, had a tragic car wreck almost three years ago now. No, almost four years ago, because it was 2018, her senior year of high school, paralyzed from the waist down. I’ve seen obviously healthcare costs and all the craziness. My heart thing, I was walking on the golf course and my chest was getting tight and they do whatever tests they do.
They said, “It looks like you need to stent.” “OK, fine.” It was an easy procedure, no big deal, but the surgery itself was like an hour and it was 55 grand. Good thing, I have insurance, right? Here’s the stat though, every year, Victor, more than a half a million Americans file for bankruptcy due to medical bills, healthcare emergency, catastrophic illness, accident.
Certainly, they can knock you off your feet physically, but boy, they can really knock your feet off financially, can’t they?
Victor: I think it’s one of the sad things that happens. I’m not one to get into the politics of what we should be doing, but it’s certainly to me as a Christian seems wrong, that we’ve got people getting financially ruined for taking care of them. I’ve had my own encounter with that not directly, but through my mom who’s suffering from lung cancer, who a lot of our clients know about.
They were kind enough to ask me how she’s doing. She takes a pill once a day, that keeps her in pretty good shape. It’s not really a form of chemotherapy, her quality of life is super high, it almost wouldn’t appear to the outside world that she has stage four lung cancer, but that pill costs $15,000 a month.
If she didn’t have the insurance that she has, it wouldn’t be covered and she’d have to apply for some form of forgiveness plan or some sort of leniency with the company and the manufacturer. There was one month in the transition of the formulary from her former employer, she’s worked for the state of Connecticut as a teacher, where they moved from what they had.
Some form that was under CBS, and for one month in the transition, the wires got crossed, and she actually received a bill for that. Of course, what is she going to do with the terminal illness with this pill being the only thing between her and dying much sooner, then could otherwise be prevented.
She’s ready to sell it all in order to keep making this $15,000 payments. I had to calm her down. I said, “It’s probably a clerical error. Don’t send them $15,000 yet. You’ve got 30 day supply, they’ll send you some more, we’ll square this away.”
You could see how quickly someone’s life turns around when the cost of healthcare becomes something like cutting a check for $15,000 a month, or in your case having a one hour event that looks like its own six, five‑figure transaction where people make, probably, don’t have a savings to just cover that.
It shouldn’t need to have the savings for it. To me, it’s staggering that this occurs at all. I’m very familiar, as I know you are, about how quickly your life can change, or some of these things might actually visit on somebody’s head.
Mark: When you think about it, you remember little games of would you rather? This is an interesting would you rather. Would you rather be wealthy or would you rather be healthy? If you had to choose one or the other, I think most everybody would choose health, wouldn’t they?
Victor: I think they would.
Mark: It’s terrible. I’m a baby if I don’t feel good. I don’t get sick hardly ever, which is probably the reason why I don’t like it. I prefer to feel good.
Victor: I was going to say the same thing. It’s funny, I just turned 46 in June. In doing that, everything started to break. [laughs] It just was falling one thing after another, another pill having to follow another one and the interactions between them.
I thought to myself, this is miserable. I can’t imagine it for people, I now understand if you’ve got chronic pain, why you probably so grumpy all the time and looking for a way out because this is a horrible place to be in.
I’m with you, Mark, I think probably health overwhelmed. It probably sacrilegious to say that as a financial advisor, that I wouldn’t be wealthy. I would much rather be healthy, having been unhealthy just for two or three months when they were figuring things out and being miserable.
Mark: My daughter, with her car wreck, obviously messed up her vertebrae in her back and all of that, and why she’s paralyzed. She’ll have days and the doctor said, “You’re just going to happen sometimes,” where she can’t get out of bed. There’s too much pain. I feel for her, but she’s a trooper. I appreciate that.
That’s really our only options. We just have to keep going. We got to keep moving forward. Healthcare is one of those things that can get really dicey and you need to have a plan, you need to have the coverage.
Don’t forget, Palante Wealth can help you in the investment world. They can also help you in the insurance world, the world of life insurance, the world of annuities.
They have no idea if any of this makes sense for you. We all have tools in our retirement tool belt. Do we need the banking world? I would think so. Do we need the insurance world? I would think so. The investment world? Absolutely.
We really need a blending of all three worlds. The team at Palante Wealth and Medina Law Group can help walk you through all of this. There’s new tools all the time being created in the insurance world, in the investment world.
We think about the old tried and true, my Blockbuster stock probably is not…I’m going to hold on to it because I know it’s going to come back, but it’s probably not the best idea.
Things change and we got to change with it. 856‑506‑8300 is the number. Victor and the team would love to help. 856‑506‑8300. It’s about having that plan.
Now, when you think about it, the annual election period for Medicare Advantage Part D and all that is every year October 15th to December 7th. You have Medicare Supplements and if you’re having Medicare Supplements/Medigap, you can move into the Medicare Advantage world.
Medicare Supplements, if your health is good, you can change it anytime during the calendar year because you’d need to have the doctor’s approval, but you can do that. You’re healthy enough to do all of that. I think a lot of people think, Victor, once I hit 65 and I’m Medicare eligible and I sign up for Medicare, I don’t have to worry much about any healthcare issues anymore.
Are people more educated?
Victor: I think it’s probably common. No, I don’t think…Jeez, are you going to put me in that position where I’m going to have to say the words, “No, they’re not that educated”? That’s not where I want to go with this, but I do think that people are unfamiliar with what healthcare looks like in a retirement.
Unless you worked for an employer that’s going to grant you the same healthcare that you had while you were working in retirement ‑‑ which happens for some public school employees like my parents. They basically just continued on with the same kind of healthcare that they had, nothing really changed ‑‑ you’re going to have to make a switch.
When you make a switch, things are going to change because it’s not going to be exactly the same care that you had from before.
Now when you’re on Medicare, there are a host of things that aren’t going to get covered that you would probably think are going to get covered as just part of your normal healthcare, especially if you had a more robust plan, working for an employer that granted you that.
For example, if you needed something like hearing aids or needed to visit an eye doctor and get an exam for there. Those things aren’t going to necessarily be covered by Medicare. If you had some issue overseas, you needed something catastrophic over there, likely not to get covered unless we add a supplement for what you’re doing.
I think it’s one of those things where people need to go in with their eyes open. It’s one of the things that we do for clients is walk them through that transition when they turn age 65 and they’re making their election to get onto Medicare Part A at the minimum, even if they’re still working.
Then when they eventually retire and are thinking about what kind of care that they need, either helping them in‑house or making sure that they’re in the right hands to get a supplement in place so that they can enter retirement with a complete peace of mind around their healthcare, their routine day‑to‑day healthcare that their needs are going to be covered and there aren’t going to be any surprises.
Another thing that happens when you’re in retirement that most people don’t have to do or can’t do while they’re working is you actually get to shop for your prescription plan. You don’t necessarily shop for something other than something called Part D, but you get to shop on a formulary based on your specific medications that you’re taking and where you get those filled.
When you go onto the government site and you log in and you put in your prescriptions and dosages you get ‑‑ whether you get them by mail order or you’re getting them from one of a multiple different places that you might pick up your prescriptions, you change actually pharmacies based on the cost in there ‑‑ it will get you the opportunity to shop for that.
That is a change for people too, to know that they can go a little shopping on the cost of their plan to make sure that they’re paying less for their prescription plan overall.
When those things come together and you’re entering this retirement phase, it is something that I find that most clients aren’t super prepared for. They know something’s coming and they aren’t often prepared for the changes because they tend to be definitely different than what people were getting when working.
Mark: All right. I’m going to use your experience in sitting down with thousands of individuals and families talking retirement. What do you think most people overlook when it comes to healthcare costs and retirement? Do you think that’s part of it, that Medicare covers most everything, or is there any typical thing, do you think?
Victor: Probably breaks down into three areas, if I’m drawing on experience and thinking about these meetings that I’ve had where we’re encountering questions around healthcare. One of them is one that we talked about already, that there is some form of coverage that is not in place unless you go and elect it, like a form of a Medicare supplement.
Navigating through making sure that you’ve covered all of the circumstances. That’s the first one and I think that’s probably pretty common. The next area that I think is one of these things people don’t plan for or they overlook when it comes to their healthcare is actually in the area of their catastrophic healthcare needs.
If they needed something on a long‑term basis because they get diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, or they get diagnosed with Parkinson’s or MS, and what they’re going to need is persistent and regular care. They don’t know how to fund that or they haven’t done things to fund it.
The bad thing that happens that people don’t recognize until it’s too late, is that the longer that you wait to do that planning the fewer options that you have because as you’re getting older and potentially getting sicker, the less attractive you are for companies and for how you’re going to fund this like a long‑term care insurance policy or something similar.
Also, we do legal planning for people where we use legal tools to help them protect their assets and those have a time horizon that are associated with them. We need five good years of health before the plan that we can put in place from the legal side will help you protect assets and help you fund for your care. That, also, is something that’s time‑dependent.
The third that one I see happen from time to time, in terms of overlooking their healthcare is the, and this is I’m going to fudge the definition on this, but the cost of not discussing this with your family ahead of time.
With the ability to work as both a lawyer and a financial advisor for our retiree clients, we actually get to not only to put the great retirement plan in place around their finances for their dollars, their money, and what they’re doing but also help them put a great plan in place for their family and the kind of care they’re going to receive.
What I think happens is people will sign a healthcare directive or financial power of attorney as one document that they know they need to have in place, but they won’t have a conversation with their family. The cost that comes up is the issue where there is something that’s written on the document, but not communicated to the family.
There’s family squabbling and you’re incapacitated. Thankfully, you’re not around for that, but you didn’t understand or appreciate the impact that you’ve had on your family members and the fighting that they were having. I know people don’t want to engage with their mortality.
I know it’s difficult to have a conversation about what would happen if I got struck by a car and I’m in a comatose state or if I got diagnosed with an illness where I’ve lost my mind and here’s the things I would want to do. That’s an uncomfortable place to be. I think would be foolish not to recognize that’s a difficult place to be, but it’s an essential conversation to have.
One of the things that I would encourage is, look for a major holiday like a Thanksgiving or a Christmas or some gathering where family’s going to be around. You’ve had a good time so far.
If you are the matriarch or patriarch of that family and you have yet to have a conversation with the rest of your family about the kind of care that you would expect to get or who you put in charge and what instructions you’ve given to them, you don’t want to miss that opportunity because like many things in life by the time it’s relevant, it’s too late.
You can’t go back and have that discussion with them. I would absolutely encourage people to really have conversations with people and avoid the cost of all of these negative effects of not having communicated this stuff ahead of time.
What we can do to help you address some of these issues is that we’ve created a website where you can download information that is relevant to this. It’s at 920elderlaw.com.
If you go to that website, what you’ll get is you’re going to get a white paper, that’s going to help you understand how to avoid letting your health destroy your family’s wealth when it comes to healthcare costs and long‑term care costs.
It’s a great resource to use, because if you’re not ready to have that conversation with people, because you don’t know how to discuss it, you can actually use that, download the information on there as a guide to having those conversations.
If you go to 920elderlaw.com and just put in your name and email, you’ll get that automatically delivered to you. It’ll set you on the path to being able to have that kind of conversation.
Mark: There you go. 920elderlaw.com. Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth serve the Pennington, the greater Mercer County area as well as Bucks County. Victor’s got clients in New Jersey and in Pennsylvania, they’re here to help you. Do you have any questions or concerns, you can certainly pick up the white paper that would be great just to do your own due diligence.
You can go to the website, medinalawgroup.com, palantewealth.com, but you can always give them a call too. No cost, no obligation, no pressure. Why wouldn’t you really when you think about it. It’s half an hour to an hour of your time to get some big questions answered. I think it’s super important and it’s great opportunity that we’re giving you. 856‑506‑8300.
You just have to take advantage of it. The door is open, walk in. 856‑506‑8300.
Mark: All right. One of the challenges for all of us, hopefully we never have this but they say 70 percent of us will need it at some time, that’s long‑term care. Medicare doesn’t cover it, we’re going there next. Stay with us. This is Make It Last with Victor Medina.
Announcer: Remember that first paycheck when you started working all those years ago? You looked at the net amount and thought, “Whoa, what happened here?” Well, it can be this way with your retirement accounts. You know how much you’ve saved, but if you haven’t planned for Uncle Sam you could come up short in retirement.
With tax laws constantly changing, there’s a lot you need to know to make sure you’re now paying more than your fair share.
The Palante Wealth Advisors team can help. They will help you create a retirement plan that shows you how taxes could affect you now and in the future. Set up a visit with the Palante Wealth Advisors team today. Call 865‑506‑8300. That’s 856‑506‑8300.
Make sure you know how these changes could affect you so you can avoid those “whoa” moments in retirement. Call 856‑506‑8300.
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Mark: Welcome back to Make It Last with Victor Medina.
Mark: Victor’s got two companies that are here to help you. Medina Law Group, Palante Wealth and they work together, because the Make It Last plan that Victor creates along with you, if you want a retirement plan, you got to have a lot to say because it’s your retirement.
Victor and the team have done this before. They understand some of the missteps that people make. Some of the mistakes that people make. Some of the expectations, “Whoa, I didn’t expect that to happen.” That’s pretty common that can happen. Just to open your eyes a little bit about some of the challenges of retirement, because we want you to enjoy your retirement.
The Make It Last plan, income planning, investment strategies, tax efficient strategies, estate planning, super important taxes. You got to understand all of this stuff and you really don’t. I’m going to play golf. Victor is going to tell me, Mark, you can’t play golf this week, you’re running out of money. Let’s start it again next month. That could happen.
I don’t want to worry about all the X and O stuffs. That’s where Victor and the teams come in. There are a lot of people that like doing it.
Do you have that, Victor? Do you have a lot of people that enjoy the do‑it‑yourself stuff, and then maybe the spouse says, “What if something happens to you, I need to have somebody that kind of knows what we’re doing here.” Do you have that?
Victor: Yeah. I do. I don’t know necessarily that always it’s the spouse that’s saying something, although that probably is an unspoken concern of theirs. Actually, we get the opportunity where we’re blessed to work with the financially savvy spouse that wants to do it themselves. I’m sorry.
That they are concerned themselves about what happens to their spouse if something happens to them, they’re driving that conversation.
It’s not where we have to go in and say, “Hey, don’t forget. I know that you like doing this, but you ought to consider giving this up, because if you die early, this other spouse is going to be not in a great position.” We’re blessed that the clients we’re working, they’re thinking about that on their own.
They’re the ones often driving that decision. You might be at home saying, “Well, I’ve been managing my stuff and probably very successfully for a period of time, but I’m going to start the relationship earlier than necessarily a need for that.”
It’s not that you’re doing anything wrong with the investment management, but you want to create a relationship between let’s say, a firm like ours and the entire family, you, your spouse, the kids might be inheriting this, because when you’re gone, and if you leave before you had the time to do that, then they would be left in the lurch.
Our clients sometimes often drive that on their own as being something that they’re concerned about, is making sure that they’ve done the right thing for the people that they love and care about, by establishing a relationship with a trusted advisor.
Again, that’s where our value of having both legal and financial under one umbrella makes it easy for a family just to have one phone that they can pick up, no matter what comes up in life.
Something happens on the legal side, something happens on the financial side, they’ve got one relationship that they can turn to, and one that knows their entire family to help them through that.
As I said, we’re in an incredibly lucky position to be meeting families where the savvy spouse that may have been managing it on their own the entire time, is actually leading the charge and saying, “I need to do this.
“I need to establish this relationship with you, because I’m concerned about what happens if something happens to me, I don’t want to leave this person feeling like they are uncovered in any way or scrambling. If I check out sooner, then I have an opportunity to control.”
Mark: I like that. That’s good. That’s great, because we’ve talked about it before. If you hate your family, do no planning, but if you love your planning, do some planning. Estate planning, legacy planning, retirement planning, all of that, the better off you’re going to be. Again, that number is 856‑506‑8300.
All right. One thing that people don’t really like to talk about as well is estate planning and all that, because that’s my demise. If I have talked about it, then I’m going to die sooner rather than later. Some people do think that. The other challenge that we don’t want to talk about is long‑term care.
Long‑term care is not covered by Medicare. Now, it covers certain aspects, hospice, for example. If you’re going to a nursing home for the final five years of your life, or whatever. There’s certain challenges when it comes to long‑term care. I guess, how do you broach that? I would imagine you bring it up probably.
Well, maybe if the couple’s gone through that with their own family, “Holy cow, grandma was in this situation, and we had to pay $8,000 a month for her care, for three years,” they’re going to be more aware of the challenges of long‑term care, I would imagine.
Victor: Yes. It’s interesting, because you think about the families that you see most often. One of the ones that we see most often that come on full on board, and having this work is retirement planners both in the financial and legal sense, end up being the children of the parents for whom we do crisis elder law planning.
Like their mom or their dad needed to go into a facility and they started writing a check, and we help them manage that crisis. We helped them get to a point where they had saved as much as was possible, even though their parent didn’t necessarily do planning ahead of time.
Then the next very logical conversation that flows from that is, “How can I avoid this becoming a problem for my own kids?”
We will begin a plan that will help them cover all of those circumstances, but proactively, preemptively, where what we’re doing is, we’re setting up the conditions since we have the time and the health in our favor to avoid having a problem like the one that we cared for their mom.
I guess, good or bad for what’s going on the grandkids is often not, this is what happened to grandma, and I know it could happen to my grandma, is most often this would happen to my mom, and where they’re actually dealing with the child that is principally responsible for caring for that parent.
Then they take the next step, and they say, “Well, how can I avoid this becoming a problem for my own kids?” We’re able to do that.
The nice thing is that in a couple of cases it was actually…While it is tragic that our client ended up getting sick, it was very fortunate that they did the planning. We get to have a conversation with their kids and say, “When we met your mom or dad, we were actually caring for grandma. It was a problem.”
Now that this is happening to them ‑‑ what often happens with like an Alzheimer’s situation which is hereditary ‑‑ you’re actually going to be OK. They’re going to be OK. They’ve greater options, and you have more flexibility. That’s a really great conversation to get to have with a family in a set of really tragic circumstances that you’d otherwise want to avoid.
Mark: That’s really well said. I think it’s so important that we handle some of these things that we don’t really want to talk about, but we need to talk about.
The number again to chat with the team of Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth is 856‑506‑8300. It might be one of the more important phone calls you’ll ever make. 856‑506‑8300. There is no cost, how can you beat that?
A lot of people when they get ready for retirement, they’re nervous. “Do I have enough? Can we really retire the way we want to retire? We need a retirement plan.” The income, the investment, taxes, those types of things.
Then we think of long‑term care or estate planning, those types of things. We tend to think we can put those things off a little bit further down the road. Maybe when we hit 70 or 75, or if our health starts to take a turn, maybe we need to start thinking about that.
When do we start thinking of estate and legacy planning? Do you put all that together when it’s retirement planning time?
Victor: It depends when somebody comes and does retirement planning time. Some people are thinking about retirement in their early 50s, that’s probably a little too early to think about long‑term care planning. Although there are some solutions that may be better utilized when you’re younger.
I would say, for the most part, we start thinking of that kind of planning in their early 60s. There’s different options the older that you get. Meaning to say that there are actually fewer options the longer you wait. For the people that are in their mid‑70s, there’s still plans that we could put together that look different than the ones we put together for their early 60s.
It’s never too early to have the conversation. I will tell you that depending on someone’s experience with this, like having a parent or a grandparent gone through a long‑term care crisis, they’re going to be more concerned about it.
For example, you got a situation where you knew that your grandmother or your parent had already had Alzheimer’s, you’re going to come in and have a conversation with us really trying to avoid that circumstance. It is going to be present in your mind. It’s something that you lived through.
If you didn’t have that in your family, then it’s our responsibility as we go through Make It Last plan for you, where we are looking at the income, investments and taxes, that when we get to that last section about estate and legacy planning, that we bring it up as a consideration.
What we’re going to do is we’re going to put a pin in it if you’re in your early 50s saying, “Listen, this is something you want to consider. Here are your options that are available now.” If you don’t do it, then as we continue in our relationship, we’re going to remind you of that. It becomes a to‑do that you may take on a little bit later.
Having lived the majority of my career as an estate and elder law attorney, that was the first part of what we did, and then we added financial services. What ended up happening is that that’s the thing I turned back to, that’s a little battle‑scarred.
I helped so many families through that. When you’re in that situation, it’s like you never forget about the impact that long‑term care crisis can land on someone’s head and in a family’s head. I never fail to bring that up in conversation with our clients.
Mark: Let me give you this scenario then.
[crosstalk]
Victor: Go ahead.
Mark: Three minutes left in our segment before we get to our final segment, we’re going to play a little trivia game.
This one is, give me two scenarios and I’ll give you the two scenarios you tell me how it differs. First, is you’re dealing with a married couple, and then second, you’re dealing with a single. It could be a single man, it could be widow, a widower, could be divorced, but single. You got one…
Victor: The married couple, the big focus on there is maintaining quality of life of the non‑sick spouse.
While we’ve put in place something that will help the sick spouse manage their own care, what we’re thinking about when we do planning there is, how do we make sure that the terrible thing that visited your spouse doesn’t have a secondary effect of limiting your quality of life, limiting the money that you have available.
Somehow, impoverishing you by having done nothing else wrong, but being married to this poor sucker that something happened to. We think about the married couple as a planning for both of them with a focus on that healthy spouse and making sure that they’re going to be OK.
The single individual has an important plan to do as well because for them, there are two elements that they can’t necessarily get in a situation when they’re married. The first is, a built‑in support system to make sure that there’s somebody there to help them manage a care crisis.
They might have a child, does that child live nearby, who’s the backup for it? They don’t have that built‑in caregiver like they do when they’re married. We want to think about putting in the normal support.
The second thing that we’re doing from a financial planning perspective, or an asset protection planning perspective is, we’re building in flexibility in their options so that they don’t pay out‑of‑pocket, watching doors close along the way.
Because the single individual wants to make sure that they’re maintaining their dignity, that they’re getting care in their home, that they’re getting care in a facility, but that they chart their own course of care. It’s not dictated by what’s in their wallet at that time, and that’s our focus for a single individual.
Mark: We all know people have gotten sick, certainly. A car accident, something that happens suddenly. Those kind of things if you don’t have a plan in place, if you don’t have coverage set up, boy, it can cause you to have a lot of angst, I think, about moving forward.
How in the world do we go forward after that happened? Boy, it could sink our ship financially and cause us so many difficult scenarios, could be ahead. The idea is about being proactive. Are you a fan of proactive planning? Or do you want reactive planning?
Victor: I definitely believe in proactive planning. Look, we’re here for people that have to react to what’s going on. They didn’t get the opportunity to go proactive planning. It’s always the better option. Always get better options, more flexibility, more control of what you can do if you take the bull by the horns and you’re on top of it than if you wait for something to happen.
We can still help you there, but it’s just not going to be as great of an outcome as if you could control it from the beginning.
Mark: Yeah, absolutely. We all understand that none of us are promised tomorrow. The idea is, let’s get a plan in place. Victor and the team at Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth will sit down with you for no cost and talk about all of this.
I would think it would ease a little bit of stress that you may have as well when you know, “OK, I’ve got a plan.” Victor can’t guarantee you perfect health the rest of your life, that’s not how this works. It’s about having a plan just in case, what if.
856‑506‑8300 again is the number. 856‑506‑8300. No cost for this, and I still think it’s one of the more important phone calls you could make. 856‑506‑8300. Back with our final segment of Make it Last with Victor Medina right after this.
When you’re close to retirement, every dollar matters. Wouldn’t you like to know where your money’s going? Find out what kind of fees you’re really paying. Palante Wealth Mark: Welcome back to Make it Last with Victor Medina. I’m Mark Elliot. Victor, of course, two companies, Medina Law Group, medinalawgroup.com, M‑E‑D‑I‑N‑A. Medina Law Group practicing estate planning, certified elder law attorney is Victor Medina. Also has Palante Wealth, and you can go to palantewealth.com as well, P‑A‑L‑A‑N‑T‑E, palantewealth.com.
Palante Wealth is about holistic planning for your retirement. Victor’s a certified financial planning professional, he’s a registered investment advisor.
They can help you come up with a plan, and it’s called the Make It Last plan ‑‑ income strategies, investment strategies, tax efficiency, moving forward, estate planning, all of that is a part of the Make It Last plan, at Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth, the Make It Last plan with Victor Medina.
Now we’re going to do a little trivia today on the program, kind of fun, we’re going to do taxes. Maybe before we get into our little game, I think taxes was maybe the biggest concern that people had in 2021, it seems, when it came to finances.
Because we know the Trump Tax Law ‑‑ I guess it’s the easy way to say it ‑‑ is ending December 31, 2025. 2026 we revert back to 2017 tax rates and brackets, but we know the Biden administration has talked about changing our tax structure, if you will. Taxes seem to be a big topic this year, Victor.
Victor: They are a big topic. I’m fond of saying to clients that your business partner in retirement is the federal government. So that, it comes in forms of the income taxes that you have to pay as well as other kinds of taxes that are a little bit sneaky. For example, your Medicare premiums, how much you have to pay in those, those elements of it.
That business partner gets to tell you how much of your earnings that year, how much of the business revenue they get to keep. They get to change the rules whenever they want and you have no control over it. Taxes are one of the most important elements to putting a successful retirement plan together and by the way, one of the most overlooked.
The majority of people go through life saying, “Taxes are what they are, I can do a little bit between January and April to make sure that I am saving or deducting or doing those things but there’s nothing I can preventatively.” One of the biggest values we can bring into your retirement life is to let you know that we can help you do better.
Most of the time we’re finding clients, we can help them with a plan on taxes that will help them keep more of their own money.
If you’re in a situation where you want more of your own money, it’s probably a good opportunity for you to reach out and talk to us. If you want more information on this, we’ve got a download paper for you. We’ve got something that help you through that. It’s at 920taxes.com.
If you go to 920taxes.com, it will help you plan for what taxes you can expect, how you might think about avoiding them, and then, it might spark you to have a conversation with us. That’s the preamble.
It’s about as good as I’m going to sound, because now you’re going to go into the trivia Mark and make me look foolish. Please take it away.
[bell dings]
Mark: Give you a little bell there for nice work. 920taxes.com, and you can always call the team if you have questions about any of this, 856‑506‑8300.
You heard the correct bell if Victor gets the answer correct. We do have…
[buzz sound]
Mark: …the buzzer that I do enjoy playing from time to time, but this is a trivia game on taxes. Pay attention because there might be some things you can throw out to your friends and see if they know the answers to these, because some of these I think are fairly difficult.
We’re going to start out a little harder because we’re going to go way back in time, then we’re going to get a little bit more up to date. Victor, here’s what I did, I didn’t want you to get started off on the wrong foot. My first question and every question has, unless it’s true or false, but typically, we’re going to have four answers.
Now, this first one, though, I’ve given you the opportunity, I’m going to give you four answers, but just know that two of those will be acceptable. You’ve got a chance. You got a chance right out of the gate. All right. Here we go. Trivia time taxes on Make It Last with Victor Medina. When was the federal income tax created, Victor, 1776, 1804, 1861, or 1913?
Victor: I’m not going to go with 1776. That’s…none of them felt like they were familiar.
Mark: They were leaving England at that time because of taxes too.
Victor: You are right, exactly. I don’t think we put the tax in immediately afterwards. I’ve seen Hamilton on the stage. We didn’t put the taxing structure in exactly in 1776. I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to guess 1913. That’s going to be my guess.
[bell dings]
Mark: That was one of the two acceptable answers, because it’s a two‑part option you had here. 1861, is when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Revenue Act in 1861 that imposed the first‑ever federal income tax to generate funds for the Civil War. You think back to our highest tax rates and brackets, World War I, World War II.
It makes sense that the first Revenue Act was during the Civil War. Well, that Act was repealed 10 years later in 1871, but in 1913, which is why you got the correct bell, in 1913, the 16th Amendment established the federal income tax system that we know today.
That first federal income tax bill, 1913, had 400 pages. This is a free one for you. Do you think the tax law today has more than 400 pages?
Victor: I’m going to go ahead with yes. We probably have more. You can give me the ding on that one if you’d like.
[bell dings]
Victor: We have more. It’s so long now. There’s not a chance that it fits in 400 pages. It’s so convoluted, and there’s so many exceptions upon the exceptions, upon the exceptions to get through that. I’ve been doing this for a very long time.
There are codes and provisions that are layups for me, things that I know about, especially from the estate planning world. I still have to go look up the other half. It’s why the code exists in my shelf is that I can actually look it up because it’s always changing and there’s so much of it.
Mark: About five, 10 years ago, there were over 70,000 pages in the tax law, we can figure there’s more than that in today’s world. I’m going to stay back in that time period, 1913 for the next trivia question for Victor Medina.
When was the first tax deadline when the modern federal income tax was established? Today, it’s April 15th, unless there’s a pandemic and we back it up a month, but it’s April 15th. Today, when this started back in 1913, was that tax deadline, January 1, February 14, March 1st, or April 1st?
Victor: I’m going to go by process of elimination. I’m probably going to be wrong, but I don’t think it was the 1st of the year. I don’t think it was Valentine’s Day. I sure hope it was on April Fool’s Day. The last one was whichever day you gave me in March, that’s going to be my guess.
[bell dings]
Mark: I liked how you got there. I liked how you got there because you are correct. The original deadline for filing income taxes starting in 1913 was March 1st, but by 1919, the government pushed it back to March 15th to help people crunch for time.
March 15th remained the filing deadline until 1955 when the IRS said it would help their employees and tax filers to have an additional month to get all the paperwork done, moving it to April 15. Good. You are two for two. Good job.
All right. Now, the next two are going to be true or false. I feel good about your options here. The next one is this. The job of tax preparer is female‑dominated. True or False?
Victor: I’m going to go with false. I think the most of them are men. That’s going to be my guess.
[buzz sound]
Mark: Sorry. I can see why you’d say that, even though my tax preparer has always been a female. An online research firm, Zippia, has found that 65 percent of all tax preparers are women. The average age for tax prepares is 47, even though my average age of my tax preparer is about 65, but still, it’s a woman.
The majority are located in New York and Chicago, which makes sense because they’re big cities. Actually, the job of tax preparer is female‑dominated.
Let me give you another chance. I feel really good about your chances to get this one correct. True or false, your Social Security benefits are the only source of income guaranteed to be tax‑free?
Victor: That’s absolutely going to be false.
[bell dings]
Victor: Thank you. Hey, you know what’s interesting about that too Mark is, it was at one time guaranteed to be tax‑free when it was put in place. They said this will never, ever be taxed as your taxes coming in. It will never, ever be taxed going out.
I gave a presentation recently where when I said that to the room, they all chuckled. I said, “How many people here are currently paying taxes on their Social Security?” Everyone in the room put their hands up, there was nobody who was getting their Social Security tax free.
There is a category of people who don’t pay taxes. Once you get over that provisional income number, which is barely $25,000 for single people, you’re going to be paying tax on some portions of your Social Security.
Mark: FDR started Social Security back in 1935, saying, “No, we’re never going to tax this,” but you had to be 65 to get it. The average age was, men died at 60, women at 62. They didn’t expect that many people to get to it.
Well, 1983, they then decided, “We need to get a little bit more revenue in our coffer, so we’re going to tax Social Security up to 50 percent.” Then, 10 years later, 1993, “Hey, we’re going to tax Social Security up to 85 percent,” which is where we are now. [laughs] It might even move again.
Victor, you’ve done really well. I would definitely get this one wrong if I didn’t have the answer in front of me. I know which state I would guess. Which state offers an exemption from income taxes for people the age of 100 and over. Is it Texas, Kentucky, Hawaii, or New Mexico?
Victor: This is a terrible question, and I blame you for it. There is not a chance I’m getting this right. I’m not guessing. I would guess Texas, but I think that that one is a red herring. I’m going to go with Hawaii, because I think Hawaii should win on everything. I’m going to go with Hawaii.
[buzz sound]
Mark: Hawaii is where we all should be able to go retire. It’s actually New Mexico. They started this in 2002. People over the age of 100 who are not dependents of others are exempt from filing and paying New Mexico personal income taxes. To me, Victor, you should run for office and try to get that where everybody that hits the age of 100 no longer has to pay taxes.
Victor: It gets good, and if I could couple that with guaranteeing that people could get to 100, I would get elected. Basically saying, not only are you not going to be taxed, but I can guarantee that you’re going to get to 100. That would get me elected in every jurisdiction that I ran.
Victor: Yeah, I like that though. New Mexico, I think that’s good. People at the age of 100 and over don’t have to pay personal income taxes. I like that.
All right. You’re doing so well. I’m going to give you a final one. We’ve got a couple of minutes left, so I’m going to give you a little extra credit.
We’ve all heard of the term “Uncle Sam,” right? The question is, where and how did this happen? The American symbol, Uncle Sam, is allegedly based on businessman, Sam Wilson, founding father Samuel Adams, General Sam Houston, or Sam‑I‑Am from “Green Eggs and Ham?”
Mark: [laughs] I’m pretty sure that the symbol of Uncle Sam came out before Dr. Seuss wrote his fantastic book. I don’t think it’s the founding father. I’m going to go with the businessman, Sam Wilson. That’s going to be my guess. By the way, it is a complete guess.
[bell dings]
Mark: You got it. Now, here’s the backstory. Sam Wilson was a businessman during the war of 1812. He supplied barrels of beef to the Army, and they were stamped US to indicate government property. That identification led to the widespread use of the nickname Uncle Sam for the United States. I like that. It’s kind of good to know a little history.
Victor: I didn’t do so bad this time. I’m going to tell you, you can bring it back again. This one made me feel good. It was a holiday gift. I won more than I lost. All right, you can bring this segment back in the future. It wasn’t a complete disaster, but I reserve the right to change my mind later.
Mark: Taxes are certainly a big concern that a lot of Americans have today. Today’s federal income tax rates might be the lowest that we will see for the rest of our life. Don’t forget the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act ends at the end of 2025. Then we go into 2026 with a new tax rates and brackets. It’s a big deal, isn’t it Victor?
Victor: It’s a huge deal and we have an expiring window. We have also seen all of the policies that have come out recently to help support the reaction that’s going on after the pandemic, and those are all bills that need to get paid.
You don’t want to seem like you’re not going to be impacted at all by the current tax laws or what those tax laws might be in the future. Just because you’re not a big corporation or you’re not in the high‑income individuals, or however they’re defining it. It’s likely to come and visit you.
By the way, the ones that are coming in 2026 require no action whatsoever from Congress for you to end up paying more taxes.
I would imagine that if you’re listening right now, that you probably would admit there are some areas that you could do a little bit better with your tax planning, specifically, how to get a more tax‑efficient retirement. I want to help you, I want to help you get there. I want to help you understand what the potential impact taxes have on your retirement savings.
I want to help you learn about ways that you could possibly reduce, or even eliminate taxes in retirement. I want to help you create an income strategy for your entire retirement income that lasts as long as you need it to last, while also getting the very best and most optimal tax picture.
If you’ve saved let’s say about $400,000 for retirement, and you’re in a category you want to know how to make that work best for you, you should give us a call at 856‑506‑8300. That’s 856‑506‑8300, write the number down. Give us a call, so that we can help you go over your retirement accounts, go over your guaranteed income.
Also help you uncover what kind of tax liabilities you have and what might be coming down in the future. Maybe when one spouse dies, maybe when you have to take a required minimum distributions.
We’re going to talk about some of these strategies that can help you reduce your taxes down the road and help you put together a plan so that you know that you’re getting the very most out of your retirement dollar.
It could mean tens of thousands of dollars back in your pocket, for you to spend it the way that you want in retirement. There’s no cost, there’s no obligation, you should call us now. That number is 856‑506‑8300. Don’t delay, this is the opportunity for you to do the kind of planning that you know is possible to help you get the very most out of your retirement dollars.
Woman: 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.
Announcer: 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, a 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 refer to fixed insurance products, never securities or investments. Insurance guarantees are backed by the financial strength and claims‑paying abilities 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 a particular need of an individual situation.
Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth Advisors are not permitted to offer, and no statement made during the 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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