Make It Last – Ep 163 – The 4 Keys to a Comfortable Retirement

February 12, 2022

This week on Make It Last Victor & Mark kick off the show by discussing interest rates and market volatility.

A new study published by the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that retirees who felt comfortable have done the same 4 things.

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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. I’m Mark Elliott. Victor has two companies, the Medina Law Group. Estate planning and Certified Elder Law Attorney, Victor is practicing estate planning and Certified Eder Law Attorney.

They can certainly help you. It’s flat fees and it’s really about client care. All those areas wills, trust. Those documents that you might need and most of us do need, certainly the powers of attorney, healthcare, finances, and all that. There’s a lot of moving parts. Medina Law Groups here to help you with that.

Now, Palante Wealth is the other company. This company is about holistic planning for your retirement.

Victor started the Medina Law Group in 2006. Clients are going, “How they can help me with the rest of my retirement stuff.” “Well, I probably can,” so he goes back, gets his education. He’s a Certified Financial Planner, professional registered investment advisor.

The Palante Wealth is all about your holistic planning for retirement. There’s income planning, investment strategies, tax efficient strategies, and then Medina Law Group comes in to close the deal with the estate plan. All those areas are super important. If you’d like to learn more about Victor and the team, you can certainly go to the website medinalawgroup.com. M‑E‑D‑I‑N‑A, medinalawgroup.com.

Palante Wealth is P‑A‑L‑A‑N‑T‑E, palantewealth.com. It might be easier just to call 856‑506‑8300. We’ll give you that number throughout the program. 856‑506‑8300. Hey Victor, how are you?

Victor Medina:  Hey Mark, how are you doing? With all of those email addresses, Web addresses, you’re right, it’s just easier to call. It’s funny sometimes I get confused about how many websites I have out there to talk to people, but it’s [inaudible 1:34] .

Mark:  You have a bunch of other websites as well.

Victor:  You can find me for the Jersey Transit a cappella singing. If you do a little Google search, you can find that as well. Watch out, you’re going to trip over Victor Medina somewhere in your life.

Mark:  Absolutely. That’s a good thing. That is a good thing. We’re going to start talking about some of the headlines going on, which means we’re going to break down the mask, we’re going to break down COVID, we’re going to…No. We don’t do that here. We talk retirement.

We’re going to talk interest rates. We’re going to talk market volatility. You remember, we talked about this last fall where the Fed had said…Jerome Powell the head of the Fed, the Federal Reserve, he’s the chairman, he had said, “Hey, we’re going to probably raise interest rates in 2022, 2023 and 2024. We’ll probably do it once or twice a year.”

Well, now they’re changing their tune. Their next meeting is in March and it looks like for sure they’re going to be raising interest rates at that point. They typically do it at a quarter percent of a time, but they’re now saying, “We have seven meetings in the year and we might raise it at every time.”

We’re talking March, May, June, July, September, November, and December and trying to get to around ballpark of three percent by the end of the year. How does that affect us in our retirement?

Victor:  Isn’t it crazy? Just because it’s been so much of the messaging that’s out there, and it’s interesting perspective as a financial advisor to watch how people’s behavior changes.

If we can back up for a second here, there’s people that are routinely holding onto cash and they’re holding onto cash for rainy days, even companies will hold on to lots and lots of cash.

There’s a lot of discussion in this new environment of higher inflation rates that, of course, that cash is not being productive, just sitting there. It’s not doing the purposes. It’s eroding in its purchasing power.

It is interesting to watch how the reactions of the federal government are set to either change people’s behavior or change their feeling about what’s going on with their cash.

For example, the indication that we’re going to be increasing the rates somewhere by year’s end is meant to give confidence around stemming the effects of inflation. Then, traditionally as an economic theory, what has happened is if you raise interest rates, you lessen the amount of money that’s out there because you’re making borrowing more expensive.

Fewer people will borrow money because it’s more expensive to borrow money, and therefore, there will be less money in circulation, which will help constrain some parts of inflation.

Of course, getting from our super low areas, low numbers now to even three percent by year’s end, first of all, is a long period of time to get there. We’re still early February, so we’re talking about the bulk of the year, and the number itself [laughs] is pretty low, right?

If we look at the highest inflation period, the interest rates at those times were closer to 7, 8, 9, 10 percent, and so the cost of borrowing money was much more expensive in the past when the increase in interest rates had the desired effect of constraining the money supply.

In this case, it’s still inexpensive. We’re not going to stop people buying homes because mortgages are all of a sudden more expensive when the prime rate’s at 3 percent and the borrowing rate might be 4.5 or 5 percent on long‑term mortgages.

It’s going to be interesting to see how people react in response to that. Are they still going to be concerned about inflation? Are they going to do anything different?

I have some ideas by the way, but I know that I’ve been talking for about five minutes responding to your first question.

Mark:  [laughs] Yeah, and it is, you’re exactly right. As we know even higher than the seven, eight, nine percent you’re talking about, the late ’70s, early ’80s, a mortgage rate in 1981, for example, hit an all‑time high of 18.63 percent.

I have a dentist buddy that we’ve talked about on the show, I think before. He’s retired now. He’s got millions of dollars, and he’s the cheapest individual I’ve ever met in my life, but that’s OK, that’s why he’s got all his money I suppose.

He was talking about when he bought his house when he first became a dentist in this little town, he was paying 15 percent interest for the mortgage, right? They lowered it. The bank called him in and said, “Hey, we’re going to knock your interest rate down to 10 percent.”

He goes, “Are you kidding? What’s going on? I mean, that’s like stealing.” The banker’s like, “Yeah. I don’t know. It’s crazy, but it’s going down to 10 percent.” [laughs] Now, we’d go crazy if it got up that high. Interest rates are a factor for retirees and savers, I would think. Back in the day, the ’70s and ’80s, you can put money in your…

You retired back then, you had a pension, you had Social Security, plus you could put money in a CD and get 12, 14, 15 percent on it. Pretty easy to create income. Today, it’s a challenge because of that.

Victor:  Great. You’re exactly right. If people think about retiring and they use the mindset of what their parents were doing as their retirement plan, where they’re using the people that did it in the ’80s and the ’90s, where there were reasonable interest rates.

Maybe not as high as 15 percent as they came down, but enough for them to generate income, what it leads to is a retirement mindset, is that all you have to do is shift your money from being, let’s say, in the stock market and volatile and at risk to in the bank.

Those bank products will generate enough income for you to live off of. If there’s generating 4 or 5 percent, not even the 15, but if they were generating 4 or 5 percent on a guaranteed basis, you can do that with a portion of your money.

Maybe even the majority of your money and expect to have a pretty successful retirement. Of course, the world is different now and so you can’t do that. You can’t do that as your plan and have any confidence because those aren’t the numbers that the banks are guaranteeing as payouts and so we have to come up with a different retirement plan.

Both interest rates and inflation play a very big part of being able to have your money last as long as you do and to generate the income that you need in retirement because of course, inflation is affecting how much purchasing power you have with the money that you’ve saved or the income that you’re generating.

Of course, interest rates are driving what kind of guarantees you can get out in the world because not only are you doing on the basis of bank products, but many times insurance products have guarantees that are driven by the interest rates that are set at the federal level.

All of that gets combined together and it gives you a little bit of a view of how complex putting a retirement plan is for these purposes. In fact, we actually did something more to help people understand how to create an income plan for themselves because these interest rates and inflation rates are all a factor of that.

If anybody is interested in that, it’s an absolute free download. It’s at 920income.com. It really will walk you through how to make sure your money last as long as you do. If you’re interested, you just go to 920income.com put in your name and email. We’ll send you a free report that will talk about all of these factors, interest rates, inflation, as well as the general concepts about how you create income in retirement.

Mark:  Now one more quick question about the interest rates. With interest rates going up, is what they’re all saying, right? You think about for the first time ever we’ve hit the US…You can go to usdebtclock.org and see all these crazy numbers that are on there. We’re now over $30 trillion in debt as a nation. Does this bumping of the interest rates by the Fed affect how we pay the debt? I don’t know.

Victor:  Well, that’s a really interesting question that you posed in terms of…That kind of pull it apart. When the federal government is setting interest rates, what they’re essentially doing is setting the amount that it will charge to borrow its own money and also as terms of being able to guarantee your underwrite loan so you can set that across what that rate is.

Those numbers have a ripple effect because other commercial enterprises like banks and other institutions will set their lending rate based on what the federal rate is. It signals the confidence that the federal government has in being able to collect the money that it is charging people to borrow.

In order to do that, that’s going to create revenue for the federal government. They’re charging higher interest rates to borrow money or what they will pay out on money that you lend the federal government.

Then, what they’re going to do is going to affect their revenue amount. What that does in terms of the national debt, is it again paints a picture for how they’re going to settle it or may need to paint a picture for what they’re going to need to do to settle it.

Without getting into the…because this is very complicated machine. One thing affects something else. A whole butterfly effect that has a lot of moving parts to it. Without getting tied up into that, what a retiree should be thinking about is the following, we have an obligation to settle this debt in some fashion.

We have been lending money out or crediting money in taxes for, at least the last two years in terms of the response to the pandemic. Generally running up bill for at least the last six or seven years in terms of increasing the debt and for that reason, they’re going to need to do something to generate the revenue.

What that means is that the thing that people should be worried about in retirement is their taxes. Worry less about the income that you’re going to be getting from the interest rates because that’s something that’s going to be affected.

Also, worry more about how the federal government is going to adjust, attack, or somehow change how much they’re taking from you. In income taxes, that’s primarily how they get their revenue, is through income taxes.

I think that I would be focused on making sure that I protect as much as possible in giving the federal government the least amount that I legally have to. That’s been a focus of ours, Mark, for retirement planning.

Everybody takes something they’re interested in, and they focus that as a specialty. Retirement planning might be good at picking investments or be good at talking about estate planning or something along those lines.

We certainly have competency in a lot of different areas. Where we focus, where we feel we bring a lot of value is in helping people manage taxes, and helping them play the game around how to pay the least amounts to federal government, overall, their beneficiaries and what they’re going to pay, thinking about the terms that are coming down the road and helping them manage that.

If you don’t have somebody that you’re working with that is thinking about your tax planning, as much as they’re thinking about your investment planning, you might want to reach out to us and see how our approach would match your best retirement plan.

Best way to do that, by the way, is to reach out to a simple conversation, 15‑minutes, to at least introduce one another. See if there’s a good synergy between us. Take that next step, reach out to the team. There’s absolutely no obligation and no cost to do so.

If you’re somebody that you want to know more about your own tax picture and how your retirement plan could factor into that, you should give us a call. The number is 856‑506‑8300. It’s 856‑506‑8300. Give us a call today. We’ll get you right on the calendar. We’ll talk to you about how taxes affect your retirement plan and what you might be able to do to improve it.

Mark:  All right, I’m going to give you a quick final question. The problem is it is not an easy answer or a quick answer. I’m going to say we need a quick answer here, Victor.

A lot of people, especially when you start messing with inflation starts rising, then, the Fed says, “OK, we need to increase interest rates to help the inflation numbers,” that the markets intend to get pretty volatile.

At the end of the day when we go to retirement, it’s about the balance between risk and safety, about growth and protection. That’s what the retirement, the Make It Last plan that you create for your clients has to balance that growth versus protection, I would think.

Victor:  You’re right. It is a balance between those two things, Mark, about growth and protection. What we have to do is making sure that we’re attending to both of those at the same time.

I know I’m limited on the time that I have for the response before the break, here’s what I would say, we look at the bright line guides about how to time segment these things. We want protection money in our short and midterm amount. We want the risky money in some long‑term view. Balancing that is how we create a plan that is specific to each of the clients that we’re working with.

There are some guidelines about how much we’re going to do for each one of those. We think about putting them into these categories. That’s typically new for somebody that might have thought of their retirement as one big block of money. We’re breaking it up into two different uses for that with different time horizons.

Mark:  Again, if you’d like the information that Victor made available to anybody that would like to get it, you can download it. There’s no cost. It’s 920income.com.

Mark:  Inflation interest rates, the challenges when you get to retirement, creating income compared to our grandparents, which was much easier to create income back then with pension, Social Security, high‑interest rates, as the bank has put money in a CD you’re good to go, 920income.com.

Of course, you can always call. 856‑506‑8300. 856‑506‑8300. We’re getting started with Make It Last with Victor Medina. We’re back right after this.

Mark:  Glad you’re with us today for Make It Last with Victor Medina of Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. Victor and the teams focus on traditional estate planning, asset protection, retirement distribution, proactive income, tax planning. Victor’s been featured on national television, “The Wall Street Journal,” “The Huffington Post, “US News” and “World Report.”

Again, if you have questions about any of the stuff that pertains to your retirement, you need an elder law attorney, you need a holistic retirement plan, all the teams can certainly do that for you, hopefully. They don’t know until they hear from you whether they can help you.

It’s not a given that everybody can be helped. It’s not always that Victor’s teams are a perfect match for you, or he’s a perfect match for you. It goes both ways. 856‑506‑8300, to learn more. 856‑506‑8300.

When you think about retirement, we would love to go in with a lot of confidence that we’re going to be fine, our money will last as long as we need it. We have clarity in where we’re pulling from and all these different things when it comes to retirement.

How do we do it? How do we make sure that we have a secure financial future? The Employee Benefit Research Institute did a study that found that retirees who say they feel comfortable in retirement, have done the same four things.

We’re going to talk about these four keys with you today. The first one going into retirement, Victor, is go into retirement with little or no debt. How important is that?

Surely you have some clients that you’ve helped that do have debt going in, and you have some that had no debt going in? How big of a deal is the little or no debt?

Victor:  I think that when people talk about debt they tend to talk about it as though it was a monolithic thing. If you owe anybody anything, then you’ve got debt, so you should eliminate it.

There’s a lot of people that carry what they consider to be good debt, and they’ll have [inaudible 16:27] …usually good debt is debt that is stuff that you can write off against your income taxes, that has some offset for what’s going on.

I think that the advice, Mark, to go into retirement with little to no consumer debt, credit card debt, things that you’ve used that are a cash flow for you, as opposed to long‑term investments, makes a ton of sense.

Then, if you start to look at what’s traditionally been thought of as good debt, meaning mortgage, things that you’re using to invest in other areas, there are some people that carry some margin debt, meaning that they borrowed against their investment securities.

When you think about that, it’s a little bit more nuanced of a response. I’m not sure that little to no is the right barometer, say, well, you should have none of that going in.

What we should do, though, is re‑examine what the purpose of that debt was. Let’s, for example, take the idea of mortgage debt, what people have traditionally done is carry mortgage debt or been comfortable carrying mortgage debt for one reason, which is that the interest payments that they make on that debt, bend up being tax‑deductible against their income.

All right, so that’s generally the reason why they’ve done that. People have been able to see the benefit carrying that most people don’t have 6, 7, 8, hundred thousand dollars in a lump sum that they could pay for a house. They’ve been comfortable carrying that as part of their cash flow.

However, once we get into retirement, our income picture changes, meaning that we’re no longer working for our wages where it’s all ordinary income. Even though we might be living on a similar amount of money where we draw it out from, may not have the same tax picture as before and that’s pretty straightforward.

I think people understand that their income picture is going to change based on how they generate their paycheck in retirement. This is no longer from a job that they have. If that’s the case, then we need to examine whether or not they should be carrying the same kind of debt that they had before.

It may be in many cases that they shouldn’t. That one of the things that we ought to do, is reduce the Cashville obligations of paying a long‑term mortgage by eliminating the mortgage, by paying off the home, and then going into that debt.

Maybe we would advise them that going into retirement maybe work on lowering how much that you owe so that it’s less of a burden going forward. Maybe recast it in a home equity line of credit, something, right?

Think about it differently. That’s what the advice is, is that your circumstances are going to be unique to you, and you should have a full‑fledged retirement plan that takes these things into consideration and be working with a financial advisor that focus exclusively in retirement that can help you navigate this complex world of how are you going to generate income?

How are you going to reposition your assets? What do you have to do to manage your tax planning in order to be able to know for certain that you should or shouldn’t have the debt that you had before going into retirement?

Mark:  This is an interesting question myself. I’m much older than you. I’m 62, so I’m eligible for Social Security, but I’m not taking it because I’m working. Victor Medina said, “Don’t take it yet. You’re working, so don’t do it.” Everybody’s situation is different when it comes to Social Security.

We’ll get to that in the next segment a little bit. I think of my grandparents who grew up, and knew they were born in the 1910s, teens and all of that, grew up during the Great Depression. They didn’t have credit cards. They didn’t have debt per se, maybe of the home or something.

They were the generation of you pay as you go. If you can’t afford it, you don’t get it. I remember going to college in the late ’70s or late ’80s, and the credit card people started popping up. “Hey, here’s a great opportunity. You need something? Here’s a credit card. It’s a great opportunity for you [laughs] to live beyond your means.” What a great idea.

Generations after, even my parents, my generation, the Baby Boomers, maybe the end of the Baby Boomers’ generation, but all the generations next, after me, have grown up with credit cards.

That is one of the challenges is that generationally things change in how we look at certain things, fair to say?

[crosstalk]

Victor:  I would say not even that. You’re completely right that generationally things change. You’re right on that front. What I would add to that is in the last 15 to 20 years, everything has moved to monthly payments. The way that we think about managing our lives, we don’t know anything any longer.

Nobody buys anything. They rent their iPhone on a new two‑year contract from one phone to the next, and they pay an extra $40 a month to own the new iPhone. Or if they’re going to end up getting their programming, they’re going to do that on a monthly basis.

They’re going to pay Netflix. They don’t own their cable box, they’ve rented. Do you know what I’m saying? Everything have moved to the cash flow monthly charge model.

While that creates some predictability for what your budget is in retirement, it’s a completely different way of living than is your mentioning your grandparents were which is, save up money, pay the man cash, walk out with the device, that thing.

Whatever it is that you were looking to buy, whether it’s a home or an appliance or a car, just pay for it once and be done. Now, we have so many people defaulting into leasing cars, which means that they’re going to own it for three years, but get a new one in three years.

I think there’s a lot that goes into that. There’s a lot about mindset and being able to keep up with the Joneses or having something new or being satisfied with what you have, way too broad of a topic for our little radio show right now.

It is a difference. It is a difference of how people think about their financial lives and the generations that are coming behind them. Not today with the Baby Boomers on what the life out there is showing them, they have to live.

How they have to manage it because everyone wants to charge a monthly charge for something, but then, how are they teaching the next generation behind them? I’d spend so much time with my three boys, the older two mostly, because the nine year old doesn’t want to talk to me about finances.

I don’t know why. At least we have that conversation. The older two though will at least suffer dad talking to them about how to structure their financial lives and see the trappings for what they are.

To be able to get to a point where they can actually generate wealth in the way that they’re living rather than maintaining, gaming their nose above water, and living within their cash flow with no cushion, with no safety net, with no opportunity to whether a bad month or bad quarter or something like that.

Mark:  We’re talking today about the four keys to that comfortable and confident retirement we would all like to have. If you have questions about, “Hey, should I pay off my house before I get into retirement? How do I do that? How do I set up this? How do I go into retirement with as little debt as possible? How do I do that? How do I get in the better position for me in my retirement?” 856‑506‑8300.

Victor and the teams at Medina Law Group Palante Wealth here to help, 856‑506‑8300. The second key to that comfortable retirement is having a clear spend‑down strategy. Now to me, one of the more difficult things if I am able to retire, Victor.

To me, the challenge would be, I’ve got 401(k)s, IRAs. I don’t have a lot of money in there, but I’ve got some money and I’m going to have Social Security. The question is, where do I pull from first?

I’ve got Roth IRAs. I’ve got 401(k)s that are traditional and a Roth. There’s a strategy to how do we do this to make sure that our money will last as long as we need it to as long as we do. That’s a challenge, I would think for most people. Surely like me that never paid attention to finances much.

Victor:  Well, I was going to say to you that I’m always going to be able to host this radio show with you, Mark. If you feel like you don’t want to retire, you have a needs to…

Mark:  [laughs]

Victor:  We can think about this show a little bit like a social work agency and will keep you employed going forward.

Mark:  I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Victor:  Well, look it, you outlined all of these complicated financial instruments that people have probably pretty routinely. They’ll have a 401(k) from where they work. They might have a dormant 401(k) from where they used to work, and then they’ve got a traditional IRA, and they had rolled some money over.

By the way, one year when they had extra money, they contributed to a Roth and they’ve got that. They’ve rolled it over. In lining up those different categories, you can get a sense of how complicated the picture looks like.

What I say to people is, it is not uncommon for you to have a junk drawer of an investment picture or portfolio. These things that you acquired from all the different areas.

You open up the drawer, everyone’s got one of these in this house, you open up the drawer and it’s got stuff in there that you need. It’s just not well organized. That’s where you have the eyeglass screwdriver set, and that’s also where you have the little needle that you need to put into the basketball from the air pump.

It’s where all of that stuff lives and you need it all, but you need to organize it in a way that serves you and is able to benefit you.

You’re right that the challenge is being able to take all of this stuff, put it together and be able to know where you’re supposed to draw stuff from, and have some strategy how to generate your own paycheck.

The hardest thing for people to do is be able to understand, which is when we meet them for the first time, that the strategy that brought them here is not necessarily the strategy that they will continue with, or that will serve them going forward as they need to start to use this money. It was great for them.

Whatever it took them to, in terms of this journey, we celebrate. Whether it’s a small amount or a large amount or whether they were successful on it, whether they had made mistakes, where we stand with you is to take you where you are right now and give you the best plan from this point going forward.

If that means, for example, giving you a strategy say over the next 10 years, assuming nothing goes wrong, here is our best idea about which account to draw from and in what order. What we’re doing in that situation is we’re looking at the piles that exist. How big are the piles? We’re looking at the tax qualification of them. How are you going to be taxed when you withdraw them?

We look at the way that they’re invested. How sustainable is that going to be for a period of time, and we’re giving you a customized plan so that you are able to use this and follow this. By the way, we’re staying with you because even the best plan needs to account for changes that may come in the future.

We need to be able to provide for you that guidance, that dynamic guidance that says as the ground underneath shifts a little bit from side to side, what is it that you need to do in response with that plan that we set up in order to be able to continue to be successful?

For every person, it’s going to be a little bit different, but all I can do is represent or talk to you about this idea that if you have a relationship with somebody like us as your financial advisor which you’re going to have as a partner and a guide that will help you manage retirement successfully.

I don’t know the questions that you’re going to have to answer in the future, but I do know that when those questions come up, we’re going to be a partner with you. Likely, it’s going to be questions that we’ve answered for other clients, and then you’re going to be able to rest easy at night knowing that you have a great companion and counselor with you as you navigate this retirement journey.

Mark:  You think about all these moving parts, and there are a lot of moving parts. You think of the megalast plan that Victor and the team creates for you in conjunction with you. You’re the CEO, it’s your retirement, it’s your hopes and dreams.

Victor and the team are the CFO, your Chief Financial Officer. You’re the pilot, they’re the copilot. You can look at it that way, but they’re walking side by side with you. They can help you in the investment world. They can help you in the insurance world. What do you need? Growth, protection, liquidity, safety, all those moving parts when it comes to retirement, so give them a call.

I think it’s a great opportunity for you with no cost, no obligation to find out where you are. Are there things you need to tweak a little bit, or if you already won the game, you could’ve retired two years ago. There’s certainly those situations happen as well. 856‑506‑8300, no cost, no obligation. 856‑506‑8300 is the number.

I think it’s a great opportunity for you. Certainly, if those first two keys we’re talking about being, having that comfortable and confident retirement, the first key is going into retirement with little or no debt.

Well, not everybody can do that. If you can, certainly, I think we all would agree if we didn’t have any debt, we’d be better off probably. Then, you think about the transition from saving for your retirement to now having to pull money out. That can be a challenge for people. Especially those people that were savers all the time.

Then, the spenders [laughs] when they get into retirement sometimes might have to slow down a little bit. Hey, this money’s going to last you for the rest of your life.

Mark:  There’s a lot of moving parts here. 856‑506‑8300. We’ll be back with the other two keys to that comfortable and confident retirement right after this, with Victor Medina. This is Make It Last.

Mark:  Welcome back to Make It Last with Victor Medina. We’re talking today about a study from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, that found that retirees who consider themselves to be comfortable in retirement, have done, basically, the same four things.

The first two keys we’re talking about in the last segment to that comfortable and competent retirement. One, go into retirement with little or no debt.

Now, your mortgage is a different scenario, but, certainly, credit card debt, those types of things, you wouldn’t want to have that going into retirement. There’s always strategy, certainly. That’s one key, little or no debt.

The second is creating a clear spin‑down strategy. We’ve been putting money away, saving for retirement now. How do we pull it out and do it the right way for our situation to make sure that our money lasts as long as we do? That’s important.

The third key, Victor, is taking advantage of some employer‑provided assistance. Today’s workers, there are still some that have pensions. That’s great. I don’t have one. I have the 401(k) retirement plan, you could say, take advantage of the matching. What about that? How do you see that as a key as having some employer‑provided assistance?

Victor:  I feel like we got to the water is wet section of what makes people comfortable in retirement. Certainly, if you have employer‑provided assistance in the way of a pension, you’re going to feel great in retirement.

It’s going to mean that you’ve got some form of a guaranteed payment. You are getting a paycheck for life, every first of the month. That’s going to make you feel great in retirement. I think that is completely accurate.

Of course, that’s not anything that people can control these days unless they were somebody that made a decision to go into an industry that is still providing pensions like they’re working the public sector in some fashion, maybe teachers, law enforcement, something along those lines. Of course, if you’re in that scenario, you should feel great. It’s fantastic. Those are my parents, by the way.

My parents were school teachers for 30 plus years. They retired with healthy pensions. What that meant for them into retirement plan is they could do different things with their investments.

They were also taking advantage of employer‑sponsored savings plans, which is what we can think of with a 401(k), 403(b), those types of vehicles. Those are essentially employer‑sponsored savings programs, that allowed you to defer some of your income into that, let it grow tax‑free and have that bucket.

Most people have already painted the picture for what employer‑assistance programs existed in their working life. If I meet you, you’re late 50s, early 60s, maybe you’re already retired in your late 60s, early 70s.

You already had the picture for what employer‑assistance programs were made available to you. Whether or not you took advantage of them. I will say that there were a couple of key decisions for people in these circumstances where a financial advisor is essential in order to making the best decision for your retirement plan.

The first is what kind of pension do you elect? For many people, the value of their pension can be represented by some number that’s got a value to it. There’s a lump sum option or at least there’s an expression of the value of the lump sum option that gives us some information about what an internal rate of return is on their payout.

You should be thinking about, for example, are you going to take the full amount for your life with nothing going to a spouse when you die, or are you going to take some amount that will continue 100 percent to your spouse after you die?

There are still decisions to be made because that in a vacuum is only one part of how you build a comprehensive retirement plan because you have other savings that are going to be needed to make up a comfortable income or paycheck in retirement.

That you can continue to live an awesome retirement and the kind of one in your dreams. If you don’t have any pension and most people don’t, then you have to think about the money that you have saved in a 401(k), let’s say to 401(k), maybe 403(b), and what you’re going to do with it.

Recently, they started to re‑implement the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule. One of the impacts of that is that to move money out of 401(k), the recommendation has to be done at a best interest analysis.

If you’re working with the right advisor, all of a sudden, you’re going to be presented with the options that say, “From your employer assistance plan, do you stay there? Do you move out of it? What are your options between the two? What fees are you going to pay that’s going to be different? Where are your investment options that are going to be broader or more narrow?”

All of those things get factored into how you convert this employer‑assistance plan that you have been contributing to and have access to, into something that can help you be successful as you enter into retirement.

Mark:  Quick question on this on the pension, for example, because maybe 2020, but even before that, there were companies going…When we started this pension for our workers they were going to retire at 65, get the gold watch. We gave them a pension. They were going to pass away at 72. Those same workers if they retire at 65, are living to 85 to 92. There’s more centenarians than ever before, people living to the age of 100.

It’s put a lot of pressure on the companies that have pensions for their employees. Where are you standing on the cash in the pension, control yourself or leave it there? That’s not an easy decision. You have to do your homework, I would imagine.

Victor:  No, it isn’t an easy decision, but it’s such a great question, Mark. We’re seeing this more and more in the clients that we’ve been working with. Somebody that when they made a retirement decision, let’s say we were in their lives, it doesn’t matter, they come in and they might be getting, I don’t know, $1,500 a month, $1,600 a month.

They’re getting offers these days from their companies to buy them out of that. They say, “Well, listen for the next 60 days if you want, we’re going to give you a lump sum and then not have to pay you for the rest of your life.” Exactly for that reason, by the way, that you stated, which is their concern about having to fund somebody this liability or having to pay somebody to their 100.

They have done some number crunching to give you an offer. That offer is on the table. “Monty Hall, you want what’s in box number two, or do you want to continue with the income that you’ve been getting?”

You choose but get 60 days to choose. Then, the number goes away, and then we may give you a different offer. When we evaluate, that is a fairly straightforward process. Although, it is complicated. Meaning it’s easy to understand what we’re doing. The numbers themselves are not very straightforward.

Inside of the calculation of that lump sum is some math that says that we are predicting both an internal rate of return of what our investments would generate in order to sustain that payment, and an actuarial analysis, meaning how long are you going to live? We put those two things together, and here’s our offer and what you do with that is a couple of things.

The first is, you look at that lump sum and see, if you can’t out commercially, not with the company, but just through another annuity provider, buy yourself the same or better income.

That’s the first thing you do, you compare it. So how does this offer compare with what I could get out in the normal marketplace? Because I might be able to get a different kind of guarantee.

When you do that, depending on the solution, you might eliminate one of the risks that you currently have, which is the following, if you die the next day, after being collecting this income, you could lose all the rest of that money.

Being offered a lump sum is like that bird in the hand, being worth two in the bush, be like, wait a second. I now have a lump sum and using a commercial product, might be able to eliminate the risk that if you died the next day, you don’t keep the rest of the money.

We can actually provide you a benefit so that what wasn’t paid out to you gets paid to beneficiaries, espousal and so forth. Then if you don’t use a commercial product, you going to take that same analysis around that lump sum and say, what can I do with this money if it wasn’t tied up in an income stream?

Maybe I want to protect it. Maybe I want to invest in the market. What would I do if it was added to my plan? I’m thinking about a particular client where this came up.

There’s married couple, and the guy was getting about $1,700 a month from one of the Babybel offshoots cases in telecommunications. He was given an offer instead of $1,700 a month, he was given an offer about $550,000 to buy him out. This guy was pretty young actually.

They knew that he was a prime target to get bought out because this is a big liability to the company to keep paying for ever. What we did is we figure out, hey, if you took the 500,000, what could we do with this? How could we use this money in a way that would help support a better plan for you?

You’re absolutely dead on that this is one of these things that’s going on in the world of these guaranteed pensions where specially private companies are revisiting this decision saying, how can we limit our liability? Now retirees have to re‑factor that in to figure out what’s in their best interest. Thankfully, we can help.

Mark:  856‑506‑8300. If you have that opportunity, it’s a great opportunity to make the right decision because not always does it make sense to pull that money out of the pension. Sometimes the pension is phenomenal. Why would you not leave it there? It’s not a real simple question.

I think we all like that, the bird in the hand than two in the bush, whatever you say. That’s saying we got to get that but that’s not a slam dunk, really either way. It’s really about looking at your situation and Victor in the teams will certainly do that for you. 856‑506‑8300.

This is a huge decision to make. It could change your lifestyle. Could even embolden you to do more things, and feel confident that your money’s going to last as long as you do because now you have control over it. Maybe that’s not the best scenario. Again, call, the teams are here to help, 856‑506‑8300. We’re talking about these keys for that comfortable and confident retirement.

The Employee Benefit Research Institute found that retirees typically do these four things. Go into retirement little or no debt, create a clear spin down strategy, then take advantage of those company plans, whether it’s a pension, 401(k), however the whole thing’s set up.

The final one is making the right decision with Social Security. We know a lot of people, Victor, go, “I’m going to retire at 62 because I get Social Security.” “I’m going to retire at 65 because I get Medicare.” They’re not looking at the big picture. They’re looking in a vacuum. It’s Social Security or Medicare. How about this decision? Is this an easy decision?

Victor:  It’s never an easy decision. A lot of people are wrestling with this idea that they can start getting a check. They also, by the way, are reconciling the fact that they’ve been contributing to this for 35 years, 40 years sometimes.

“Wait a second. This is my plan. You’ve been taking money from me out of every paycheck, out of every year that I’ve ever been working. This is my money to get back.” Those can be some drive to start to collect as soon as possible.

It’s never a clear cut answer like something we say to everybody works the same. Start taking it when your full retirement age. Start taking early. Wait till you’re 70. It’s never always the same answer for the client. It’s always dependant on your personal circumstances.

I think that what drives this is a couple of things that are hard to predict but are necessary for you to incorporate into rescue planning. One of them is your longevity, your expected life expectancy. Expected life expectancy is not a pro‑level move there.

Anyway, if you go to the websites that help you calculate when you should take your Social Security, one of things they’re going to ask you is what your expected life expectancy is.

What they’re doing there is trying to figure out when’s your breakeven point. When you start collecting Social Security when is it you start getting more from the federal government’s money, having waited a while versus having taken it early?

There’s more to it than that. If you were only relying on Social Security as your income in retirement, that was the only money that you had to spend. Let’s assume for a second that it was enough for you to maintain a decent quality of life, then it would be a pretty easy answer, you’d bet on when you’re going to die. Hopefully, you’re on the right side of that bet, make the election accordingly.

Most people are not relying on Social Security as the majority of their retirement income, they are relying on the savings that they’ve had over all of these years, typically, in pre‑tax accounts, IRAs, and 401(k)s. We start to factor in this calculation, that says, “Wait a second, if we were able to delay Social Security, that means that we will have to start to use of our own money.”

We have to start to generate more of our own paycheck. What do we get in return? Social Security will increase that amount by 8 percent per year until we reach age 70. That might work out. Wait a second, what if we flip it around? What if we start to take Social Security now and we let those other accounts grow? What would that mean in terms of our ability to have more spending power?

Once we elect Social Security, that’s our number and make up a little bit for cost of living increases. We had a big one in 2022, but we had many years of very small ones and some years of none, and no increase whatsoever.

What does that mean for my retirement picture? How much will I have? That might be something to consider. Wait a second, I’m not done yet. If I start to take it early, that means I’m going to have more taxable income.

That means something for my future income taxes are going to be. If I delay it, maybe I can make conversions into Roth. You’re starting to understand how complex this decision is because it is not driven by one factor alone, like, how long are you going to live?

That’s what these software programs will lead you to believe. That it’s driven by your life expectancy, but it’s driven by so much more. If you’re interested in understanding the picture around how much it takes to be retirement‑ready, then what I’d encourage you to do is download a research that we’ve created that will walk you through that.

We have that available to you at 920checklist.com. It’s our checklist challenge. What it allows you to do is look at 30 to 35 different…I say, by the way, range. I know how many are in there, but sometimes they don’t apply to everybody single, married, different things.

There’s 30 to 35 different elements that you can start to look at and see how you compare to being in your best possible position for retirement. If you want that information we’ve provided that to you free, just a name and an email. We will send it to you. You can start to do your own analysis from that.

All you have to do is go to 920checklist.com, put in your name and email. 920checklist.com. We will send you this checklist challenge. It’s yours. Use it to compare your life right now and see what path you’re on for being retirement‑ready.

Mark:  If you’d like to find out more about your specific situation, once you’ve maybe downloaded that checklist, now you have more questions, call the team.

You want to know more about how Victor and the teams create that Make It Last plan for you, I’ll give Susan a call. It’s 856‑506‑8300. 856‑506‑8300. Headed to our final segment next. 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. I’m Mark Elliot. You can always find out more about the Medina Law Group. Victor, again, is a practicing Estate Planning and Certified Elder Law Attorney.

Flat fees, client care, important for the group. There’s no questions about, “Wait, how come that that will or that trust cost me this much or whatever?” No, they’re very transparent with everything they’re doing. It’s all right there in front of you. Victor feels that transparency is a big thing. Would that be fair to say?

Victor:  It’s not just transparency, Mark. It’s also this idea that we want to sit on that side of the table with him. Once we’ve agreed on the fee, “Hey, this is what this check gotta cut us.” We don’t have to charge for hourly things for emails or follow‑ups.

It’s like we want there to be open communication back and forth. That we are handling everything that they need. Once we’ve settled the number, we’re fully on their side of saying, “OK, what do you need in order for this plan to be successful?”

That’s why we don’t charge by the document, how many trust you need? What is the matter? Why does it matter how many trust you need, because I’m not selling widgets? I’m not selling sandwiches.

We’re talking about creating solutions for clients. For that reason, we use flat fees as a way to encourage this relationship that says that we are always in their corner. We’re encouraging them to communicate with us, use us as partners going forward, and pick up the phone.

Anytime they have a question about anything to know that we’re going to be there to answer a question. They don’t have to figure out what’s one‑tenth of an hour at 500 bucks. Is that worth answering my question? No, no, no. We’re going to dispense with all of that. We’re in your corner. We’re working with you. Flat fees help deliver that.

Mark:  It brings back bad memories for me. I appreciate the flat fees because I remember going through a divorce and calling the attorney, and the next thing I know, I got a bill for $75. I’m like, “We talked for two minutes, what [inaudible 45:49] .”

Victor:  Plus the copy charges. They had to walk down to the copy machine and they charge you for the FedEx.

Mark:  I won’t be calling you anymore. Let’s hope it all works out. Again, it’s medinalawgroup.com, M‑E‑D‑I‑N‑A, medinalawgroup.com, and of course, holistic planning for your retirement. That would be Palante Wealth, P‑A‑L‑A‑N‑T‑E, palantewealth.com.

The Make It Last plan. It’s about income. Gotta create paychecks to replace those paychecks that are no longer coming in, your retired.

Investment strategies and your investments, IRAs, 401(k)s, and the like are not your retirement plan. They’re certainly important tools in your retirement planning process, but they’re not the plan. Investment strategy is important.

Taxes, you got 401(k)s and IRAs, well, don’t forget those are tax‑deferred. By the time you get 72, the IRS says, “Hey, we want that money. We want that tax money off the harvest. We didn’t care about the seed money when you started working. We let you grow it for us.” Taxes are super important.

Then, estate planning, how are you going to leave things and make sure you leave it the right way. Hopefully, leave your beneficiaries in a better state without causing them tax issues. A lot of moving parts here.

Glad you’re with us today. It’s 856‑506‑8300 if you’d like to reach out. You got some questions, 856‑506‑8300. We’re going to do a new segment today. It’s similar to maybe would you rather that we’ve done in the past.

This is called, yay or nay, different topics. We thought this would be a fun way to start with. It’s the yay or nay for the retirement RV. You think about this, you’re planning your RV retirement, do you have clients, currently, that have done the RV thing?

I know before we started the day, you were saying that you had an RV. Don’t have it anymore because you saw the price is double and triple on those during the pandemic. You sold it, made a huge killing.

[laughter]

Victor:  The RV that I enjoyed was basically a rental for four days. We packed another family into that. We had eight people in a space of 10 by 30, which encourages to be outside all the time.

I’ll tell you I don’t have a ton of people that are into the RV world. My soul connection with that is that my in‑laws live in Leisure Village, which is in Manchester, New Jersey. It’s over by the shore, close to the Naval Base that we’ve got around here.

There is a common building, is where they would set up their train thing downstairs. It’s a little center that they have for that development, is like 3,000 units in there, something like that.

In the parking lot, that’s where they park all the RVs for the retired people. I know what season it is based on how much space there is in the parking lot because sometimes that place is jam‑packed with stuff that needs a fifth wheel or something that needs a trailer or whatever else.

I look at them with the slightest bit of envy because I could imagine sometime the future, Jen and I are retire. Let’s say neither of the three boys wanted to continue on with Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth.

They’ve scattered to the four winds and we spend the time ‑‑ what was it ‑‑ Kane wondering the world, running the countryside in our RV, visiting them, and getting into adventures. Maybe that’s our future.

Mark:  You never know how it’s all going to play out. One of the things I would say, if you’re thinking about an RV retirement, do what Victor did. Maybe rent one before you go buy one. Maybe try it out and see how you like it.

Can you do all the hookups and all that stuff? Can you drive it? That would be important. We’re going to talk about some of the pros and cons. Did you ever have a motorcycle, Victor?

Victor:  No. Can I tell you a quick story about that? My father owned a motorcycle and he crashed it and broke his nose and lost his sense of smell.

What he said to me as I was growing up. He said to me, “Listen, when you become an adult, you can do whatever you want with your money, but if you buy a motorcycle, I’m committing to you that I’m going to come to your house and dismantle it with aluminum bat.

“By the way, I’m going to do that for every motorcycle that you buy. You’re going to run out of money, but I’m never going to run out of the willpower to dismantle any motorcycle that you buy.

“The only thing that’s [inaudible 49:32] to die. Hopefully, you have enough money after I’m dead to buy the last one, but for every one you buy I’m taking it apart with a bat.” That was impressed. I’m in a very early age, I’ve had no desire to get on any pocket rocket afterwards.

Mark:  The reason I brought that up is because I had one in college. Had a 350cc. Then, I decided to jump to the 500. Then, I went to the 750. You keep wanting a little bit more power.

Victor:  This are all bigger.

Mark:  Bigger and more power and faster and all of that. I bring that up because I have a buddy of mine that decided…His two daughters were four states away, they decided, “Hey, let’s get a camper and we’ll leisurely go see him and all of that. Will see the sights and it’ll be fun rather than just flying.”

They had a little camper. Next thing you know two months later he’s got a bigger camper. Then, he’s got the fifth wheel and then he decides, “I need the RV that I can just jump in and drive.” He keeps moving up.

Let’s talk about some of these pros and cons of buying an RV. Even, there are people out there that will sell their home when they retire and buy the RV, and that now becomes their mobile home, if you will.

Victor:  It’s interesting that people are looking for some way of being able to explore the world. Explore the countryside not necessarily be tied to where they were tied to when they were working. That they will always had to show up at their job.

What’s interesting is that the world post‑pandemic ‑‑ the working world post‑pandemic ‑‑ has opened up more of these options. Then, working from home or working remotely or being able to take a job remotely.

I even had a buddy of mine, was a lawyer out in California, take nine months and live out of an RV and practice law out of his RV in his…There was a picture of him on a Zoom call. Had shirt, tie, on top, and shorts on the bottom, and sitting in his RV taking the call.

People are thinking about ways of exploring the world and not being tied down to a place, but there are a lot of things that go into this. You might trade, for example, your obligation to be maintaining a home for the obligation to be maintaining your RV, and that might be at a lower overall cost as you budget, which is going to be in retirement it may turn out that it’s a less expensive for that.

You might be able to live more like a minimalist. There’s a lot of big moving on YouTube. What does it take to live as a minimalist? There’s a guy I was watching that counted the number of things that he owned and compared it to how many things that his wife owned.

I don’t know how the guy stays married. Anyway, you might be able to live with fewer things. That might bring you more joy to know that you don’t have as much crap to deal with from that.

You can also go and visit more people rather than having to fly and stay in a hotel or stay in their guest room or whatever else. You can make an entire six months out of traveling and seeing all these folks.

Mark:  Now, you don’t have to worry about a canceled flight or any of that. Then the pandemic and RV sales go crazy because we don’t have to stay in a hotel. We don’t have to go fly. We can’t do this. We have to do that if we’re going to do that. It made it a little bit simpler.

Victor:  It did because you controlled it right there. There weren’t any COVID barriers between states in that way. It’s the same way that there were canceled flights.

There are downsides to it, Mark, in terms of, as you mentioned, what you buy may not be essentially what you keep going forward. I’m sure that your buddy traded at an increased value. This things don’t always appreciate in value. They tend to depreciate in value.

There’s always a new version. There’s always a more vibrant market for a build your own home. If you get your own RV, you can get to build it out and customize it the way that you wanted. If you buy, somebody else has used one.

You have to live with the modifications they put in there. Repairs themselves can be pretty costly. This is not taking apart a lawn mower engine. There’s a lot of moving parts, especially, if you got one of these that has the sides that open and close.

They got a lot more moving parts that are in there. When it’s broken, you can be stranded on where you are. That will limit your ability to continue with the life that you had before in the little traveling that you were thinking about doing.

Then, finally, fuel costs. We’ve seen fuel costs [inaudible 53:11] .

Mark:  Are you saying the RV doesn’t get 40 miles a gallon? Is that what you are saying?

Victor:  It’s not an EV‑RV, it’s an RV‑RV. Most of them either come with engines in the ones that you’re driving or they’re pulled by things in engines, although they are coming out with that Ford F‑150 Lightning.

They apparently not only can pull anything you want it to pull, but also can power your house as a generator for three days. Really got an interesting vehicle, but they’re going to cost fuel, and so you want to be aware of the gas prices because they will change from state to state.

For a long time before they increased the gas tax here in New Jersey, New Jersey was the bastion of low gas prices, because we had our own refineries and we could lower the cost.

Now across the United States there, South, North, West, you could encounter one of these states like, “Oh my goodness, I didn’t know gas was going to be this expensive over here.” You have to plan around that as well.

Mark:  Are there any other factors we need to understand before we lock ourselves into an RV retirement?

Victor:  Look, there are ways that you to have to protect against this kind of investments. One of the things that we would definitely recommend is getting in touch with the property casualty broker for the kind of insurance that you need. It’s different.

The kind of insurance that’s in there is not only going to be insuring against the vehicle itself, but very much like renter’s insurance. You have to insure against the items that are in there as well. The other thing is that making a decision like this, especially if you are downsizing to this.

If you’re downsizing to an RV versus having lived in your home, you have to figure out how comfortable you’re going to be with all of the compromises because most people will do this as almost like a one‑way street. They’ll have sold their home to have bought the RV. There’s no place else to get to.

You mentioned, talking about recommending that you either we could do a little trial or a little audition ahead of time. I think that’s absolutely recommended in this case. You want to make sure that you have gone through and tested out what life would be like.

By the way, not just for a weekend, but we might want to do this for a couple of weeks live like this to make sure that it will be able to serve us in the way that we thought. Have the kind of retirement that we want.

Then we need an exit plan work, because most people cannot live in an RV as their retirement plan forever. Unless that recreational vehicle is a mobile home that doesn’t go anywhere and you park it eventually.

Most people are going to needs to transition out of that and we don’t always control when that’s going to be. If we’re thinking about kind of how long we’ve got these go‑go years and these slower go years, as we get on in life, we have to think about when that transition is going to happen.

How prepared are we to be able to make that transition successfully so that we’re not stranded on the side of the road because our health doesn’t make this a viable way to retire going forward.

There are a lot of factors in terms of making this decision. It’s not as simple as the romantic notion of getting an air stream and just attaching to the back of…By the way, I’ve seen some of these things pulled by Mini Coopers, thrown out on the back of your [inaudible 55:57] , and pulling it behind. There’s a lot more that goes into that.

There’s factors we can get into bet your retirement plan, and the specifics of your retirement plan in terms of income, investments, estate planning, taxes, and be able to manage that. This are lots of wrinkles. What do you call your residence? Where were your filing taxes? How does that all work? There are a lot of factors that go into this.

Mark:  The great thing about what you do, Victor, is that there are very few wrong answers for your clients whether they want to live in an RV, have an RV, downsize into an apartment, or keep their current house until the day they pass away.

There’s no wrong choice. It’s about what you want. The wrong answer, though, is failing to put any plans together in place for your retirement. That’s where you come in. I’ll give you 25 seconds to wrap it all up.

Victor:  That is where we come in. If you’re in a situation where you’re trying to figure out, is this plan for you. Let’s say the RV plan is the RV plan for you.

One of the things you got to make sure is that you have worked through all of the details and we can help you think through the details of life, not just in terms of an RV but in terms of the rest of your financial picture, your tax picture, your legal picture.

Are you set up to be OK? You want to walk away with the idea that you can rest easy in your plan, be confident that the plan that you set up is going to work for you, and that you have a partner in retirement.

If you don’t feel that way right now, I have to urge you to give us a call. Reach out to us. We’re at 856‑506‑8300. Write that down. It’s 856‑506‑8300.

Victor:  Start that process of having a conversation so that you can end knowing that you are resting easy having a plan and a partner in retirement. That you can go anywhere you want in your recreational vehicle no matter where it takes you.

Announcer:  Taxes are just a fact of life. You can’t avoid it, even in retirement. But 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 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 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 the particular needs 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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