Make It Last – Ep 182 – Finding Your Purpose

June 25, 2022

This week on Make It Last, the show starts with a little, “Get To Know Victor,” segment. Find out how he is connected to the hit trilogy: Pitch Perfect.

Then, Victor talks about the importance of maintaining your mental health in retirement, and finding your purpose outside of your career.

Finally, they’ll wrap things up with a game of Inflation Trivia!

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Make It Last is hosted by Victor J. Medina, a Certified Elder Law Attorney (CELA®) and a Certified Financial Planner (CFP™). Founder of Medina Law Group & Palante Wealth Advisors, Victor and his companies are dedicated to empowering people through education about estate planning and their finances.

Full Transcription Below

Mark Elliot:  Maybe you’ve heard Victor’s radio show before, so you’ve heard him. Have you seen him? Victor, you’re probably on billboards all over the New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas. Just New York City, you’re there, Times Square.

Victor Medina:  Yeah, I think today’s billboards are probably my YouTube channel. That’s the only thing that anyone’s staring at these days. I don’t know anyone’s looking at billboards any longer.

Mark:  Now, I will say though, that people might have seen you as the local director of the a Capella group.

Victor:  Oh, my goodness. You didn’t warn me that you’re going to embarrass me this way off of it.

One of the things that I do for fun is that I’m the musical director of a local a Capella group, which is great because I’ll tell you, what we do for that for fun is every Wednesday we start singing at 7:30 at somebody’s house in the area, everyone’s from general Mercer County, New Jersey area.

We meet at somebody’s house at 7:30. We sing from 7:30 to 10:00, and then we drink wine and eat cheese until we get kicked out of that person’s house from 10 o’clock on. It’s really a cover for being able to hang out with some great people, and I have the privilege of leading just talented musicians. Lot of fun.

Mark:  I will tell you that one of my favorite movies of all time, and there’s three of them, “Pitch Perfect.”

Victor:  Yeah.

Mark:  Anna Kendrick. Yeah. That’s what you do, ain’t it?

Victor:  Yeah. What’s interesting is that the musical director who was on this was a guy named Deke Sharon, who went to my college, at Tufts University/New England Conservatory of Music, and somebody that I knew personally.

He’s somebody that sent arrangements to my a cappella group called Jersey Transit, which is a cool connection that that music made it to Hollywood‑movie level. They had TV shows called “The Sing‑Off.” It’s cool to watch somebody that I went to college with turn that into something that’s almost mainstream‑accepted.

Mark:  Yeah. Absolutely. Well, that’s cool. That’s we’re going to talk about. We’re going to know Victor a little bit, because I think it’s important that…

We do a radio show. We’re talking about retirement. We’re talking about some of the challenges, some of the what‑ifs. What if this happens? What if that happens? How are we going to handle it? What about the fun stuff we’re going to do? How do we do all of this?

We get bogged down into it’s really all about the money. Well, it’s not. It’s really about what is your plan? What are you going to do to enjoy your retirement? How are you going to do it? What’s your perfect day in retirement?

I think a lot of it, though, is, if you’re going to talk to somebody about your retirement, your hard‑earned money for 20, 30, 40, 50 years in the workforce, and say, “Hey, I want you to help me with my retirement,” you need to know a little bit of something about him.

I don’t think you’re just going to go to a stranger on the street and say, “Here. Here’s my retirement. 401(k) and IRA. Can you help me in my retirement?” No. You’ve got to know a little bit about them.

This is a fun segment, I think, Victor, because we’re going to learn a little bit about Victor Medina. To start with, a little bit about your background and how did you get involved in the financial business, because you certainly started in the law area first before getting into the retirement world. What’s your background?

Victor:  Yeah. I did exactly that. After going to college, I worked for a little while, had a job, working in the pharmaceutical industry. Then, I went back to law school that was mostly driven by my wife.

Just wonderful. What she said to me is, “Look. You’re reasonably intelligent, but if you don’t get an advanced degree, people are going to think that you’re fool of it for the rest of your life.” I owe her thanks for pushing me to go to professional school.

I went and got a law degree, did what I think traditional people do. Going into law school meaning that I went to go clerk for a judge and work for a large law firm, do a lot of corporate‑related work. That’s where the money was.

Then, there was something deeply unsatisfying about that because I was working for corporations and not for people. In a fit of entrepreneurial spirit, I left that job and started a firm where we were going to focus on estate planning.

I did that mostly because I had a family member who suffered an untimely death. It was early. They’d done some estate planning, really thought they had everything in order, and it turns out it was like a big disaster. It was not malpractice. It was a common practice on the way the estate planning was done.

It gave me an opportunity the way that we were going to do estate planning, whether we’re going to be partners with people all the way through the rest of their lives that we make sure that plans work when we needed to them. We tested them along the way.

We completely changed the way that estate planning was practiced based on the fact that I had this family member have something that he wouldn’t want that happened to his family. We started doing that differently.

Because of that, what we were doing with people on an annual basis, we were establishing deep and long‑term relationships where it wasn’t around the paper but around the plan.

It gave me an opportunity to start to be in a position of trust with them, where they would seek my opinion on things, lots of different things, not just because I was a lawyer, but because they knew that I cared about them and I was invested in their family’s success.

One of those areas was about finances. For the longest time, maybe the first six, seven years to practice, they would ask me about their investments and say, “Can you help me with this? What do you think about it? We really like you, we trust you, and we want to make sure that we’re OK. I want my family to work with you. Can’t you manage our investments or help us with a retirement plan?”

For the longest time, I would say, “No. I don’t have those credentials. I can’t do that for you. I try to put you in the right hands.” What I found was that about 50 percent of my clients were being successful not working with somebody that was really an expert in the area.

I looked at myself in the mirror and said, “You know what? You’re not meeting the expectations of your clients. You’re letting them down. They came to you to make sure that they were going to be OK.”

What we did is then go ahead and create this sister company that handles retirement planning. I own that completely. It’s not a relationship, where we send you to somebody that we have a relationship with. It’s here. It’s all in‑house. It’s with exactly the same team that you’re dealing with your estate planning, you’re dealing with your retirement planning.

It went gotten all the credentials. I got more letters, Mark, after my name that are in my name. The idea is to be able to do that the right way for clients. That’s how I got started.

Mark:  If you want to find out more about the law group side, just go to medinalawgroup.com. M‑E‑D‑I‑N‑A, medinalawgroup.com. Palante Wealth is P‑A‑L‑A‑N‑T‑E, palantewealth.com. You can find out about both companies, but they work under one umbrella. They’re all here to help you.

I wonder your wife, Jennifer, is a school psychologist. Do you think she did a little psychology work on you, thinking, “You know what? I can make my husband a better man if I can get him to law school. He can take better care of my kids.” Did she use some psychology on you do you think?

Victor:  I’d hate to ascribe that much manipulation forethought. I would rather think that she insulted me to do it, which is kind of what she did. Yeah, maybe she did know what the ultimate result was going to be if she tweaked it one way or the other.

Mark:  All right. Tell me your growing up. Finances, were they a big part of the family? I’m sure you went to a private school. You went into the limousine. You sat in the back, got dropped off at first grade. It was an easy upbringing.

Victor:  [laughs] It’s funny. No. Of course, it’s the opposite. They were important for reasons why are very real and understandable people, but it wasn’t something like we were sitting on a whole bunch of money. I was raised with really financially‑savvy folks.

The biggest and most impactful, early introduction to finances was essentially when my parents ended up getting divorced. I was living with my mom. She didn’t have enough money to make it where she was at, and ended up taking me back to Puerto Rico to live with her and her family for a while, ended up having to declare bankruptcy for what was going on, and start over.

Look, it’s a wonderful story in the sense that after having married and met my stepdad, she’s got multiple properties. She’s retired with an apartment in New York City. A really successful story, but nobody really ever trained her or taught her on the concepts of finances.

I’ve taken that lesson, by the way. It’s something that’s crucially important. Even one of the books I author is called, “Empowering Women,” specifically in retirement, empowering them in retirement.

I took the lesson around my mom and said, “How is it that we can help serve these women that are either suddenly single or just weren’t the financially‑savvy person in the relationship if they got divorced or widowed. How do we serve them to make sure that they’re getting the right advice?” The book is one of the ways that we’re able to do that.

The earliest lesson on finances was watching my mom struggle and realizing that as I was going to make my own family and being able to be responsible for supporting them, I want to make sure that I avoided similar mistakes or struggles and got sophisticated in thinking about it and doing things the right way.

Mark:  You think about now as a parent. You and Jennifer, three boys. Aidan, 17. Lucas, 14. Dylan eight.

There are different stages. Aidan’s getting ready. One more year of high school, then go off to college if that’s what his choice is. Luca’s getting ready for high school. Dylan’s just graduated from middle school…No. Lucas just graduated.

Victor:  Yes. Second grade still for him.

Mark:  Lucas just got out of middle school as he moves on into the junior high level. You think about them because I’m thinking for your wife’s a school psychologist. You’re an attorney, but you’re a certified financial planner as well.

Finances were always something hard to talk about. It seemed to me growing up. I never really heard much about money. My dad was a college coach. My mom was a school teacher then worked for a bank. We really didn’t talk.

I knew I got all the sporting stuff because my dad was a coach at a college. I got new footballs, new basketballs, new baseballs. It was perfect for me growing up, but it wasn’t like we had a lot of money. We didn’t take a lot of trips or anything. How important is teaching your kids about finances?

Victor:  I think it’s essential. It’s one of those areas that they probably ought be adding into school‑related topics much more than physics. I think it’s very difficult conversation to have with your kids.

You go back and forth with one of these two positions, Mark.

Either you don’t have a lot, and the last thing you want to do to your kids is make them be the warriors about where security is going to be coming from in the future, ‑‑ that’s not anything you want to saddle them with ‑‑ or you have a ton and the last thing you want them to do is become complacent about either work ethic or what it took to get there.

You’re in this no man’s land for trying to figure out how to have these discussions. They’re important discussions to have. There’s discussions that I’ve had with each of my kids, specifically the two older ones. The youngest one is always listening and always offering comments from the peanut gallery, but the older two are interesting examples for me.

I’ve learned two things from each of them or how successful I’ve had these financial conversations. Aidan has got a job as a lifeguard. By the way, great job for a high school kid to be sitting at the pool, getting a tan, swimming, and looking good.

He works and he gets his paycheck. He’s now driving. He’s responsible for his own gas. We’ve got a lot of stuff in there.

This is after I’m trying to, “Hey, listen. Your savings rate’s important. If you want to retire, if you want to have a nest egg, the more that you put aside…” He’s the guy that comes to me and says, “Look. this is what I want you to do. Help me manage this, dad. Help me manage,” which I think is great.

“I’m going to take everything in the hundreds level off of that paycheck. I’m going to give it to you to invest. I’m going to spend what’s in the 10s and the 20s.” I thought, “My goodness. That’s a lesson really well landed on this kid.”

Instead of giving me the 10s in the one spot, he was giving me the hundreds spot off of it because he understood the value of a savings rate and why that was important for him. I knew that that was like I had landed that one. That one was successful.

Then with Lucas is the middle one is 14 these now of age to work and the first thing is thinking about is how and where do I get a job? He’s thinking about getting his working papers and it’s not that we’re setting out to the fields to get working early but what’s important about discussing finances is the value of what labor is to generate money.

That’s such an important lesson to know. There is a spectrum on this about what you’re going to work out, how much you’re going to get compensated for, what the value of your effort is off of that and then eventually, how you increase that over time. I think the one that is got his designs on following in dad’s footsteps, the clearest, at least the way he’s communicating, is my middle son, Lucas.

He wants go to Tufts the way I went to Tufts. He want to go to law school. He wants to have a financial degree, and he wants to come and work in the business. I think what he sees in that is a road that he wants to emulate because we’ve been able to show him that it’s got a lot of benefits for him.

The lesson on finances is, work hard and understand what the value of your labor is. I think hopefully this other part of it, I hope he gets its, I know it to be true for what we do. I hope he understands that we’re delivering an immense value to families.

What we do for a living is transform their lives and give them security and retirement. He wants to be a part of that.

I like those elements. With the eight‑year‑old, Mark, we’re not sure. We’ll see how it turns out. The first two, so I’m baton Hall of Fame numbers so far.

Mark:  Absolutely. The financial retirement business is important because Victor and the teams of Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth are not only working to improve your retirement life, but they’re also assisting with important decisions about the family as well. Whether that’s a state and legacy planning, helping to establish trust with an attorney or long‑term care planning.

There are a lot of things that impact the other members of the family.

When you work with Medina Law, with Palante Wealth, it’s a big family. There are all here to help support and we know that there are challenges. There’s going to be some of those what if situations that happen and how do we handle this? Holy cow, we’re getting ready to start our beautiful retirement.

Now all of a sudden, my spouse has Alzheimer’s. We’ve got cancer. We can think of all those things we don’t want to, but it’s life. The important thing is you have a plan that is built for the what‑ifs, but it’s also there in place where you put your head on the pillow at night and say, you know what? When I wake up tomorrow, I’m going to be fine.

We’re thinking we got things moving in the right direction. How do you do that if you’ve never worked in the retirement world? Well, that’s where Victor’s companies come in to help you do that. It’s about you, you’re the CEO. It’s your retirement, it’s your hopes and dreams.

Victor’s team is your basically your CFO, your Chief Financial Officer to help you understand the things that you don’t and to make sure that you make the right decision, according to you because at the end of the day, it’s your final decision. Victor can really help walk you down this path.

I don’t know why you wouldn’t take advantage, there’s no cost. There’s no obligation, there’s no pressure to chat with the team’s. It’s 856‑506‑8300. Great opportunity, take advantage. 856‑506‑8300. Stay with us, this is Make it Last with Victor Medina, with the Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. We’re back in one minute.

Mark:  Welcome back to Make it Last with Victor Medina, Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. The team’s here to help you with any of your estate planning, legacy planning, your powers of attorney, healthcare financial, all those kind of things.

Then, of course, Palante Wealth is all about planning for your retirement, income, investment, taxes. It’s really the two companies work together. Sometimes people just want estate planning, legacy planning, information, so they go to Medina Law Group. Sometimes they just want a retirement plan. Hey, do I have enough? Can I retire? Will my money last as long as I do?

That’s Palante Wealth, but the companies really work together when it comes to your entire retirement plan. If you have questions, you want to learn more, it’s 856‑506‑8300 because Victor’s team’s focused on traditional estate planning, asset protection, retirement distribution, proactive income tax planning. 856‑506‑8300.

Now, this next two segments, we’re going to talk about something that we really don’t talk about on this program, very often. That would be the national conversations, really starting to shift when it comes to mental health and how well you take care of yourself. Well, here is Simone Biles.

Now, Simone had a ton of pressure on her ‑‑ there’s no question ‑‑ as the face of the Tokyo Olympics for United States. An incredible gymnast, incredible athlete, and so many gold medals, it’s amazing.

When you watched her those the first couple nights of gymnastics, you’re like, wow, she’s taking an extra step, she’s not really in sync. All of a sudden she’s going, I don’t think I can do it anymore. Here’s what she said back in the Olympics.

Simone Biles:  I say, put mental health first, because if you don’t, then you’re not going to enjoy your sport and you’re not going to succeed as much as you want to. It’s OK sometimes to even sit out the big competitions to focus on yourself because it shows how strong of a competitor and person that you really are.

Mark:  This is an interesting thing for people that you help with retirement, Victor. I played football and my coaches, probably back then could care less about my mental health. You just shut up and do it. It’s a different mindset for somebody like me.

It’s 61 years of age because I’m like, holy cow, Simone, you’re going to win more gold. You got to fight through it and do it. When you’re whirling all around in the air and you’re not really sure where you are, you could see it in her face.

I don’t know, it’s a different time and I get it that I’m old now. You’ve got three kids that are 17, 14, 8, senior in high school, freshman in high School, fourth grader or a third grader. It’s a different mentality. How do you deal with kids, but also with retirees who are going through some mental challenges as well?

Victor:  I think it’s the same thing whether you’re a kid or you’re a retiree and I have a side hustle where I coach other lawyers and there’s people that really put a lot of pressure on themselves. I agree with you. I think that historically it’s always been suck it up and do it.

There’s never been anything that’s been talked about in terms of the area of mental health, or whether or not, you respect it over, there’s too much pressure, what that means? There’s a false dichotomy in that examination which is, you are either strong or you need help with mental health.

You’re very difficult for people to see it that the strength happens in both of those areas. It’s like a trade‑off most people see it as. When I got started a long time ago, so I’m big into meditation mindfulness and that’s been a practice that I’ve had probably for the last six to eight years, I would say.

When I started there weren’t any lawyers that did it. When I went and spoke on it, most of the lawyers that were out there dismissed it because what they believed is that, by doing it, you lose your edge.

That’s the idea around focusing on mental health means that you’re going to lose whatever edge you need in order to be the best at whatever you’re doing, whether it’s in sports or in your chosen profession.

Then we were able to find some studies around it and some studies, for example, on Marines in combat situations and they would teach them mindfulness exercises. They had the four square breathing methodology, which is a mindfulness activity.

What they found of course, is that they were so much better at their job, making sure that they took care of their mental health. Their reaction time was better. Their judgment was better. Their overall mental health was better.

You’re going to go and tell a bunch of Marines in the middle East that they’re not tough. Good luck. I’m going to step away while you go into that. I think that if you think about the distinction and this is a concept in mindfulness between attachment and commitment, it starts to clarify some of the decisions that people make.

A lot of people, I think that, when they were reviewing Simone Bile’s situation, what they were thinking about is they were very attached to her result, and that she should be similarly attached to result.

She wasn’t so much about the attachment, because, when you’re attached to something, especially something in the outcome that you can’t control, it ends up meaning that there is this great loss. The risk of loss is very…A very binary evaluation. This is going to work or it’s not going to work.

Attachments are a very dangerous place to be, but, instead, what she was was is very committed. She was committed to being her best, and, when she was participating, she was committed to her own mental health. When she’s committed, there’s lots of outcomes that can be successful for that, as you long as you remain committed.

How do we bring this over to retirees? We do this little dance, and end up talking about retirees. We talk about the same thing. You can’t necessarily be attached, for example, to a set of results from market performance. You can’t be attached to a having your plan work out exactly the same way as when you first set it up.

You can be committed to having a great plan. You can be committed to being flexible around what’s in there. The commitment gives us lots of results that are potentially successful. The attachment has a lot of risk that’s in there.

If you went into your retirement with an attachment to saying, “I have to generate X dollars out of my portfolio every year, and there can be no changes to this for how I define success,” then it’s going to impact your mental health very greatly, because, when that gets knocked off, invariably, you’re not going to be successful.

I’m just going to say, in the world of results, and then their life is going to live you at some point in time, you’re going to have to deal with the ramifications of that. You’re going to have to deal with, for example, the situation where you’re like, “I wasn’t capable of getting successful retirement.”

Well, hold on a second. You had such a narrow definition of that. If that’s your only metric, probably it’s not going to work out so great. If instead, you’re like, “Listen. We’re committed to controlling the things that we can control. We can control how we navigate tax rates.

“We control our diversification, so how much risk that we’re taking. We control our legal documents to make sure that we’re protecting against the risk in the future. We can control for things with insurance to control catastrophic risk of what would happen.”

If you’re committed to controlling the things that you can control, now you’re in the best position or time going forward. Mental‑health‑wise, you’re in the best position going forward. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the news because that’s not going to affect the way that you had set up your original plan.

When we deal with clients, we’re very clear that we’re not attached to particular results. It’s no longer necessary for what your plan needs. We are extremely committed to controlling for the things that we can control for.

If we can get their mental, their mindset on that same evaluation, thinking about it the same way, the same approach, we can get them committed in there. We’ve got very mentally‑secure clients in retirement.

When the pandemic first hit, there’s great market correction, about 20 percent correction, even as much as closer to 30 percent for one particular period of time. That drove a lot of people crazy. It drove a lot of people to sell off things, a lot of people to wonder what’s going to happen in their retirement.

Do you know the number of calls we got, Mark, in that period of time concerned about the portfolio? Zero.

Now, we did a bunch of outgoing calls. We went and we touched base with them, wanted to make sure that…Most of our discussions were, “How’s your toilet paper situation because we got a lot in the office? Do you need anything? I go and deliver it for you.”

We were there concerned about them, want to make sure that they were healthy, that they were OK. Did they need anything?

The plan component of it was not impacted by something because it wasn’t anything that we knew they were going to be able to control. Going into their retirement plan, we knew we weren’t going to be able to control when there was a market correction, or if there was going to be one that happened. We couldn’t control for that.

What we could control for, though, was making sure that we had some safe money aside so that when that happened, if that happened, it wouldn’t affect whether or not they’re going to be successful in retirement.

It great way to their mental health because then they showed up perfectly fine. They only had to deal with the part of the COVID that was the COVID. They didn’t have to deal with the other components of that. That’s just one small example, but I think it’s a pretty illustrative one for how people can be using concepts around mental health in their retirement generally.

Mark:  That’s really well said because it comes down to having a plan to ease some of the stress that we all have in our lives.

I think it’s about the plan. Having a plan in place for the what ifs, what if this happens, what if that happens. There are bad things that happen. You could lose a spouse. Now, what do you do? You don’t wait till that happens to have a plan. You put all this stuff in place with Victor and the team’s you do it first.

You’re proactive, which Victor loves to talk about being proactive, not reactive. You put the plan in place and then when those things happen, it doesn’t mean the plan is written in stone, because things happen in our lives. We always have to adjust as we move along.

It’s really about being proactive, and just being able to live your life and not worry about every single thing. 856‑506‑8300 to sit down and chat about where you are, maybe to ease some of your stress that you may have. 856‑506‑8300. This is so important. Stress is a health issue too, right Victor?

Those kind of things where you’re worrying about things that you cannot control, my daughter’s 20. We’ve talked about it before, it’s 17, senior in high school, car wreck, paralyzed from the waist down, incredible. I don’t know how she’s made it. I don’t think I would be alive if it had happened to me at that age.

For her now, she has panic attacks because the things flashing in her mind, or whatever. There are so many things on the middle side of things that we don’t really understand. Now you do as a meditator.

You probably have peace and calmness in your life at all times but you think about it, people are worried. Do I have enough? Will my money last as long as I do? What happens if I lose a spouse? How will I do it? There’s a lot of stressors that we really don’t have total control over. The plan is what helps get us through it, I would think.

Victor:  Absolutely. The plan allows us to have some grounding on what were there. If we’re going to focus this on mental health, then we can spend all day on the value of a plan, but we want to focus on this concept of mental health.

You’re right, what happens with stress is that it has these collateral effects and it’s just been well‑documented. It’s going to impact your health and other areas. What we do is we have a way of finding a safe space. I know that’s like a little woke thing that we’re going in there.

If we have a place that we have some grounding, a touchstone, a way of greening comfort from it, then it’s going to allow us to respond rather than react. By the way, just to dispel any rumors or myths about that just because I meditate does not mean I’m super Zen all of the time.

The meditation is what allows people to get into that situation. This is what it does for me. I don’t walk around on lithium all the time because of my meditation, but it allows you to respond rather than react. Because you’ve got the plan you can use that to respond adequately to the inputs the stimuli that’s out there and not react.

I’m so sorry that’s going on with your own in terms of the panic attacks but that’s a reaction. It has an impact because it’s just she reacts to what’s going on in there. If people in retirement doing the same thing like, oh this is what’s going on the news. I have to react to that. Hold on a second.

That’s not good for you at all. You need to be in a situation where you are properly responding. By the way, that’s where the value of an attorney, an advisor comes in. That allows them to like, we’ve trained them. They pick up the phone, they talk to us when they’ve got concerns.

What is that? That’s a responding to it. We’ve got that reacting that they call us, and then we help them respond to what’s going on to there. Then we give them the piece that they need to move forward and know that it’s going to be OK.

That’s the purpose of having that plan is to know that you do have a mechanism to respond rather than to react, especially when we’ve got all of these overwhelming things, which we really been tested in the COVID in the recent years.

Mark:  When you think about all these things that go on in the world, certainly. You think about retirement. You think about holy cow, boy, I had a great job, as a wonderful job and I identify myself with my job and now I’m retiring, now what? That’s a mental issue.

That’s some things that you really have to work through. For some, it’s harder than others. I hate my job and I can’t wait to retire. You don’t have that issue, but people that love their job, love their co‑workers, really enjoyed, and really identified with their job.

There’s a mental transition to sliding into retirement. We’re going to talk about some of that when we come back. If you would like to create your own, Make it Last plan with Victor and the team at Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. You can certainly do so.

Questions like, hey Victor, when can I retire? Do I have enough? Will my money last as long as I do? That’s still the number one fear of retirees is the fear of outliving their money. What about if something happens to me? well, my love won’t to be OK. Those are big questions.

The Make it Last plan covers all of that, income, investments, taxes, estate planning. If you like to sit down with the team and get started. Maybe you’ve got the investment side, but all the other parts you don’t really have because they all go together. 856‑506‑8300.

Again, there’s no cost, there’s no pressure. There’s no obligation to chat with Victor and the team. 856‑506‑8300.

Do you realize that more than two million Americans at the age of 65 or older suffer from some form of depression? Believe it or not, working on a financial plan can help reduce your chances of struggling mentally later in life. That’s where we’re headed next, stay with us. This is Make it Last with Victor Medina.

Mark:  Welcome back to Make it Last with Victor Medina, Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. They can help you with all of your estate planning, legacy planning, your powers of attorney, healthcare directives, financial directives, a lot of moving parts there.

Palante Wealth is about holistic retirement planning. It’s about you, your income. Where’s your checks going to come from? How are you going to replace those paychecks are no longer coming in? Your investments, where’s your risk level? You’re taking too much risk, not enough risk? Are losing money safely, because you’re scared, you put it in the bank.

We’re not keeping up with inflation, so you’re losing money safely. Bad investments, so on taxes, in estate. All of that is a part of retirement planning. The Make it Last plan puts it all together for you and nobody has the same plan, because the Victor and the team’s build the plans around you and hat you want to do, your bucket list items.

What do you do in retirement? How you spend your time? Everybody’s situation is unique to them. The Make it Last plan is about you and your family. 856‑506‑8300 is a number. No cost. 856‑506‑8300. We’re talking about mental health today on the program and it’s been I think in the year of the pandemic and 2021 with the Olympics and Simone Biles.

It’s been more to the forefront. Where even young athletes are bailing because they’ve got some mental issues. We got to get our mental health in order and online therapy resource, betterhelp.com, says, in many cases, depression happens during retirement when there is a lack of preparation.

If you don’t have a plan you’re going to spend your time, you’re more likely to feel depressed in retirement. Is this something Victor that you spend much time on when you’re helping people retire? How they will actually fill their days?

Victor:  It’s one of the benefits of having a wife, who’s a school psychologist. She even from time to time, we’ll offer some services for people that are in transition in our client base because of these tremendous pressures that are come in. We do spend time on it, educate people that are on the verge of retirement to do a few things.

One of them is to find purpose outside of what was your job before. So much of our identity is wrapped up in the job that we did for decades of what was going in there. You think about your career, your career likely didn’t have these five‑year things and then you did something completely different.

You might have ascended in what you were doing, but you were identified by the success that you had and probably by the end of it you are earning the most amount of money, you were at the highest level of responsibility. Skillset, you were at closest thing to mastery for whatever it is you did right before retirement.

When you separate from that, this loss of identity, the switch in there, especially if you enjoyed what you were doing, can really impact it. I see often to by the way, in people who are in retirement who lose a spouse.

What will happen there is that a lot of the identity was wrapped up in this marriage that were together and it will impact depression of course that’s in that loss as well. When we’re thinking about there in terms of finding purpose is to find a way of identifying yourself and what it is that you’re doing that is greater than just you by yourself.

What I mean by that is that once you start looking outside of you, so a lot of people will volunteer. It’s like my mom, when she retired, she spent her entire career as a school psychologist. By the way, that’s an interesting story for later because if you’re paying attention at home, yes, my wife and my mom are both school psychologist.

Yes, my mom introduced me to my wife, but we’ll talk about that sometime later in the future. By the way, the punch line to that is that I get to tell my mom, you can’t complain about her, she’s your choice. She of course, she never has in 20 years.

Anyway, the idea is that when she left, she was so much was wrapped up in her being great administrator and Grace was psychologist. She found purpose in holding babies in the NICU and in retirement that’s how she filled some of her time. It was outside of herself. I’m excited.

She was out there externally focused use, in service of others. She was contributing. My dad did the same thing at the same hospital. He didn’t hold the babies, but what he did is he would talk to families about what was going on for people that were waiting for reports for surgery. The doctor come out later, he’s a liaison between the two.

When people discover a purpose or can define a purpose around their retirement. What it is that they are going to be defined by and if they can do it outside of themselves to be in contribution and service of others. It completely changes the potential and the incidence of depression. It’s really difficult to be depressed when we’re serving others.

It’s very difficult to be depressed when we have a good identity for who we are. I spent a lot of time with people who were on that verge of retirement, making sure that we’ve got a plan for what they’re going to do tomorrow, that next day.

In fact, in every that we’re going to, how are we going to fill that time? Because if you thinking that you’re just going to sit on the porch and do nothing, that retirement is like the reward where you stop doing stuff, that’s really where we start to see the depression come in.

This has something to do with the financial planning because often people will fill that void with buying things. The blow through out there.

They’ll blow their budget out for it and specially the initial years because they’re trying to fill the void with something else and I’m trying to help them avoid the risk to that, the pressures on that by finding identity, finding reason and purpose in something else.

I know that sounds really hippie for a financial advisor to be talking about that. I will tell you that most of financial guidance is about behavioral finance and not about the math. There are strategies that were using that are good strategy but you could Google half of these things that are out there probably get a pretty decent way of putting it together.

When we think about the habits and the behaviors that are going to lead to this to success, I’ll give you another one that’s a behavior related one. That’s that in the pre‑retirement years, you’re all about accumulation and accomplishment. You’re looking at returns, you’re looking at numbers and you’re measuring your success by that.

I need a behavioral shift. I need a mindset shift. In retirement is about keeping, it’s like staying rich. You got rich and we’re going to stay rich or keeping what it is that you’ve accumulated, getting that nest egg in place. That’s a behavioral item where I get to shift.

Their thinking is that, that’s no longer the rules of the winning game. To go back to the depression, we do spend a lot of time with people and I think it is an important thing for people to spend time on and it really is, I found that the secret sauce to that is really finding ways that you can serve others.

If you can be in a position where you’re contributing, a local foundation. Maybe you’re somebody that was into the Lions Club, you can help collect glasses off of it. Maybe you love sustainability and you’re out there planting community gardens off of it.

Whatever it’s going to be is that jazz is you, if you keep being serviced, maybe you were jazz musician and you can train and go to the high school and teach some kids about what you do, whatever that is. If you find purpose outside yourself, it is really difficult to be depressed in those situations, especially not depressed critical in retirement from that.

Mark:  F you’d like to be part of the a Capella group in the area, you can certainly talk to the local director that would be Victor Medina. 856‑506‑8300. Because it is really, as I told you before, I coached quarterbacks in college for three years. I coached college golfers for seven years, and I coach men’s and women’s team, and there’s different mentalities when it comes to men versus women.

That was interesting. It’s the same thing when you sit down with couples and you’re helping them come up with this plan and the strategy that Make It Last plan.

The income, investment taxes, estate planning, all of that goes into retirement planning.

Social security, Medicare, all those kinds of things that, sometimes you have a couple one might be a spender one might be a saver. Maybe they’re both spenders. Maybe they’re both savers.

“Hey, I want to go on a trip. Well, I don’t think we can afford it. Well, I think we can.” You put the numbers together. It is a lot of the behavior of finances that you were talking about. It’s our mindset.

It seems to me that it’s important to have an open mind when delving into an area that you’ve never done before. You’ve never retired. Victor has never retired, but you’ve certainly helped a lot of people retire. You have a different insight into retirement because you’ve helped people do it.

There’s a middle side of this that is fascinating.

Victor:  Totally agree. It is fascinating because a lot of people’s expectations on retirement are set by their prior experiences approaching it. Just like what you said, you don’t retire twice. Very few people do this. This is nouveau retirement where people have partial retirements. People retire once in 25, and again in 35 and then 45. Really rare thing.

Most people will work their entire lives, and they retire once. Because they’ve never done it before, how they think about retirement is completely informed about what they did before they retire, how they approached everything.

When we think about having an open mindset, and trusting in someone that has guided other people through there before, it allows us to be introduced to new ideas and new concepts.

If all we do is go by the old metric, and do the measurement on the things that we had before without being open to new ideas, we’re going to miss some great opportunities. They were the ones that we spent so many times in this show talking about. Is this concept about proactive income taxes, voluntarily paying more income taxes than you would.

If you took your RMDs and you skated by on the minimum that was in there because it helps you in the end.

If you were somebody that was trained in your entire life, but you pay the minimum on taxes and don’t pay anything more off of that, if that was your entire thinking and I come to you, and I’ve got this great idea and be like, “Listen, this is what you’re supposed to be doing. This is how you’re going to make more money overall. Have more flexibility by the government.”

If you’re not open to that idea, you’re going to miss opportunities where you could have saved a bunch of money on taxes, being a little bit more forward‑thinking or open‑thinking, kind of turning into the skit a bit. That will open up greater planning opportunities.

If you’re not open to that concept, then you’re going to miss out. I’m not going to tell you each one of these things is going to somehow make you catastrophically poor, and end up in the gutter with your friends pointing and laughing.

Enough of these will significantly impact your retirement so that when it comes time for you either to live a retirement that you dreamed of or live a retirement that you’re forced to, you might be on that second one a little bit closer because we didn’t maximize what it is we’re doing there.

That’d be the same thing if we were talking about leaving an inheritance behind for people or anything like that. The idea is you’ve got to be open to new ideas. If you’re not, then you will be limited in the outcomes that you can have by the things that you come into that situation, what those foretell, what those conclusions are. It’s really important for that.

By the way, that’s one of the reasons why we do this show. It’s one of the reasons why we end up putting a bunch of information out on YouTube, and with books that I’ve written, because we know that I have to give people lots of ways to come in, to be open, to be thinking about new ideas.

I share these ideas ahead of time, not just coming in the first meeting. We’re going to change your entire life. Just be open to what we’re doing. It’s just paving it out for people a little bit more so they can contemplate it, get comfortable with it because we are coming with new ideas. They’re going to change what their prior things were.

I want them to have enough time to be thinking about this, adopt to be OK with it so that we can continue to guide them to a successful retirement.

Mark:  Victor is the author of five books on retirement planning under his acclaimed “Make It Last” series. You could certainly search for those, Amazon and the like, Make It Last series by Victor Medina. Let’s finish this up with this before we had to our final segment.

I do think it’s interesting that a lot of people today, because of the 401(k) world, they’re putting their money into 401(k)s because that’s what we’re supposed to do. We’re taking advantage of company matches. We’ve seen the markets go well, so our 401(k)s should be doing pretty well.

When we retire though, typically you don’t leave it in the 401(k). You move it into an IRA and it gets a little bit more directed. When is the right time to get a second opinion on what we’re doing and where we are heading into retirement?

I would think for a lot of people, it would be a first opinion because they’ve just had their job, handling their retirement through the 401(k), and maybe have never really sat down with anybody to talk about retirement. When do we start looking into a second opinion or even a first opinion?

Victor:  I wish that there was an easy answer for everybody, but I always find that the best way to think about this is that, there is a moment in which you have a question and that’s typically the right time to have a conversation. Let’s pull that out a little bit.

When you separate from service and you’ve got money inside of 401(k), you’ve got a question about whether or not you should leave it there or roll it over to your new company, or roll it over to an IRA. That question is the right time to ask for an opinion.

Because as soon as you recognize there might be some information out there that I don’t know, it’s great to be able to get that information from somebody that might know that. We’re actually having conversations for people at different stages but they all at these little intersections of when they have questions.

Let me give you another example. We did planning for a client and he is a physician and he’s at the tail end of his career and he’s got questions about how is he going to have a successful retirement? We’re helping him with that. We put a plan in place.

We’re talking to his daughter because his daughter is in a position where she’s got a question about what 401(k) options in her company she should be electing. We can give her some ideas on that and how to position those things.

It’s really about training people to say, “Look, if there’s something that I have a question about, it’s a good time to reach out to somebody that has an expertise in that area and we can get good answers from that.”

Now, there’s a very common things where that happens. As you hit for example age 59 and a half and you can do an in‑service rollover from your 401(k) while you’re still working and maybe get better investment options from that, that’s a good time, 59 and a half.

When you hit your Social Security eligibility ages beginning at 62 through age 70, that’s a good time. When you’re at 65 and you’re about to enroll for Medicare and you’re eligible for Medicare, that’s a great time to do that.

Certainly, as you start to approach your RMDs, hopefully a couple years before that, but you’re either 70 and a half or age 72, that’s another great time to do that. It’s looking at those ages or the intersection of when questions come up, those are great times to reach out to our firm.

Give us a call 856‑506‑8300. Get on the calendar, have a conversation with us and we can help guide you in the direction that you need.

Mark:  It’s a team. This is a team situation. Victor and the teams are here to help you your team to live the retirement you’ve always dreamed of if that’s possible. Look at yourself because it’s your retirement, you’re the CEO, it’s your retirement. It’s your hopes and dreams, it’s your bucket list items.

Mark:  Victor and the Palante Wealth & Medina Law Group firms are here to help you in those areas that you don’t really understand maybe or you want to have something written down. You want a plan in place, so you feel less stress heading into retirement.

I’m going to be OK it looks like. Hey, that’s fantastic, enjoy your retirement. It’s about you. Victor and the teams are here to help. 856‑506‑8300. Glad you’re with us today. We’re headed to our final segment right after this. This is Make It Last with Victor Medina of Medina Law Group & Palante Wealth.

Mark:  Glad you’re with us today for Make It Last with Victor Medina of Medina Law Group & Palante Wealth. Medina Law Group’s here to help you with all your legal things that you need, the estate planning, the transfer on death, the powers of attorney. All those things that we need to put in place. How we’re going to leave things.

Then of course, Palante Wealth is all about trying to come up with that plan for you in retirement. You don’t do, “OK, I’m 60, I think I’m going to retire at 63, Victor, so I’m going to come to Palante Wealth. Then when I hit 80, I’ll come to the elder law side of things.” That’s not how it works.

You put the plan in place and it’s like a living breathing document, because we adjust as we go, correct?

Victor:  Yeah, they need to work together. It doesn’t help too much to have one area which short up and another area that is not, and you start to lean on it and then you have a disaster. It really is important to put everything together at once and then do that step that you talked about which is the regular interaction.

I talked about it like tuning a piano, you just can’t tune the lower half of it. You got to make sure the whole thing is in tune and then you check on a regular basis or it all sound terrible. It really is important to do it all at once.

Mark:  856‑506‑8300 is the number if you have any concerns about where you are, when can I retire? Do I have enough? Will my money last as long as I do? Will my loved ones be OK if something happens to me?

Really big questions. 856‑506‑8300. I’m Mark Elliot. Glad you’re with us. We’re going to play a little trivia today. We’re going to play inflation trivia. Victor, are you ready to handle some inflation? Inflation I guess it’s going up.

Victor:  I am. I didn’t do well on this last time. I’m not feeling confident. I don’t know why you choose to humiliate me like this, but let’s go ahead and do it.

Mark:  With Victor’s attitude right now, I’m expecting this…

[buzzer]

Mark:  Sorry you’re wrong. I hope I hear this.

[applause]

Mark:  Inflation, we’re going to go back in time because that’s inflation.

We’re going to work our way around this and it’s one of those things that inflation’s moving and really probably after ’08 Victor we probably less than two percent for quite a while. Would that be fair to say?

Victor:  Yeah, there was a low number for a long period of time. I know that and I was doing modeling for this. I would model inflation at three percent and until recently when I put that on the screen, people yell back like, there’s no way. I read the inflation numbers.

It’s under two and then nowadays, when I put it at three percent they say, what are you crazy? It’s four or five. This is nuts and I said, well look, we got to have perspective on both ends of it. Let’s go ahead and model a real number.

Mark:  Yeah because I think in the spring of 2021 it got up to five percent and then we get to the fall and it got to six and might even get to seven, who knows? Here we go. We’re going to play a little inflation trivia and I think you should have fun with this.

Obviously Victor and I are going to have fun with this. We hope you get something out of this as well. Victor first question, the median home value in 1950 was? The average price of a house in 1950; $3,468, 6,115, $7,354, $9,998.

Victor:  It’s almost like a trick question especially because where we are New Jersey houses there are $300,000 and up, those numbers sound made‑up. I’ll put it with the highest one, weather’s the $9,000 number.

Mark:  Well, you’re close, but it was 7,354, so that’s OK. 1990, so we’re still going back 30 years here. The median home value in the US was 79,100.

In 40 years, it went from 7,354 to 79,000. By 2020, the median home price is now over 330,000 and it does depend on where you live, doesn’t it? You’re on the coast, boy you get super over there.

Victor:  I know and I’m happy with that last one that when I said that the average home value is 300,000 and up that gave me until year 2020, 330, at least I knew that number. No chance it was in 1950, though. Geez, that’s surprising.

Mark:  My parents bought a house when I was in second grade and I’m trying to guess I’m going to go with 1965‑ish. They paid $17,500 for it. In the year 2000, they had an open house of my house that I grew up in and I went to look this, I thought, well, this would be cool and they were asking 100 grand for it. I’m like, you can’t ask that much, it was only 17,500.

[laughter]

Victor:  I’ll do the same thing when I meet with clients and I’ll talk about the value of their home and we’ll talk about capital gains on their home and that kind of stuff. I’ll say, well, would you buy the home for?

If there was something that they bought to raise their kids and having them since it’s always a chuckle because it’s always, at least a tenth of what the value is now, or 10 percent of the value is now. If it’s 400,000, they bought for 40 grand, at least, when they went in there. It’s always a chuckle when we get to that topic.

Mark:  It’s kind of a fun thing to think about inflation. You think, how much was your first car? How much was your first home? Here we go. Health care costs tend to increase at a slightly different pace than inflation.

I think we would all agree with that. The American Medical Association, no, Victor says, Healthcare cost increase by about blank percent per year; 4.5 percent, 5.3, 5.7 or 6.4 percent per year?

Victor:  This one I feel confident about, because I got have to know this number to help people model their costs off of it. I think it might have slightly different number, but I know that it’s in the fours. We’re going to with 4.5 percent.

[applause]

Mark:  Congratulations. These numbers come from the American Medical Association, says, the average is 4.5 percent. 2019, Kaiser Family Foundation study reported that healthcare spending in the US was about 3.8 trillion or about 11,500 per person by 2028, expected to climb to 6.2 trillion nationally or about 18,000 per person.

I think if you asked retirees who do have to go to the doctor and the hospital, they would probably said more like 6.4 percent.

Victor:  Especially when they’re looking at prescription costs because a lot of folks are doing mail order and they have their plans, have Part D, have them paying for some of this above and beyond. I think they would look at the cost of that, especially what they know to be generics and having that increase.

I think that it would go with a bigger number but yeah, I agree with the AMA. Well, it’s their number but I’m saying when we do our planning, we model around four percent that since to be the right number for overall health costs.

Mark:  Well, here’s one that I know you’re super excited about because your three kids, you have a senior in high school, a ninth grader and a third grader, which means college is on the horizon.

Here you go. How much has the cost of college tuition increased since the 1960s? I don’t think we like any of these numbers; 247 percent, 361 percent, 378 percent or 403 percent.

Victor:  I’ll tell you, I look at the cost of college now where my oldest boy, Aidan is looking at. It is almost twice what it is when I went to college just maybe 30 years ago. If we go back another 30 years, so the 1960s, I want to say that it doubled again. I’m going to with 403 percent or whatever that number was.

Mark:  That’s pretty close, but it was 361, actually.

[buzzer]

Mark:  361. Here’s the thing though, in 1963, the annual cost of tuition at a four‑year public college was $243, annual cost of tuition, was 243. When I went to college in the early ’80s, I think I was 90 bucks an hour is what I think I was.

Victor:  Like a credit hour?

Mark:  Right. You take 12 or 15 hours you just added that up. I think it was four grand or something like that.

Victor:  What follows on with that, of course, is the increase in student loans to pay for. I mean, because there’s been almost no checks and balances all that as this is increase. It’s not because the value of college education is so increases.

It’s really because it’s this unregulated market, that just going to allow this. The need for the college degree is an entry‑level ticket to go and do anything else in life is just made it table stakes. That cost is really had to increase in along with it for some people that just can’t pay out of pocket student loans.

I got clients coming in that are helping those start to pay for their kids with student loans because the kids didn’t come out with jobs that could handle it and now they have to carry that costs as part of their plan. It is a real big deal.

Mark:  From 1989 to 2016, college costs increased almost eight times faster than wages. Next question in our inflation trivia with Victor Medina. 1974 President Ford declares inflation as public enemy number one, true or false?

Victor:  I’m going to go with true.

[applause]

Mark:  Now here’s the funny part of this, Victor. President Ford urged the public to wear WIN pins, win and it stood for whip inflation now. People, of course, even back then had a sense of humor, they turned the pins upside down, so they read NIM, meaning need immediate money.

[laughter]

Mark:  I like that.

Victor:  That’s pretty good.

Mark:  I like that. Now they didn’t win the game because inflation only continued to increase during the ’70s, but that’s interesting. Next one, at an average rate of inflation which we’ve talked about historical 100‑year average is about three percent. At an average rate of inflation around three percent, how often will prices double?

Victor:  I can do this. I had to do this math to get the CFP and my series 65. The answer is every 20 years, I could do that right now. Go ahead. Hit the bell.

[applause]

Mark:  I didn’t have to give you the options.

Victor:  No, I could do that.

Mark:  Which means doesn’t it mean that basically most retirees will see the price of everything double during the rest of their life?

Victor:  That is extremely astute for you to say and it’s exactly our point. Well done, Mark. You are representing the social security class, [inaudible 53:45] with your age. Congratulations, but that’s exactly right.

When we talk about inflation, I talked about people about what their budget is and they said, “Well, listen, I want to spend, I don’t know, $5,500 a month or $8,000 a month, whatever that number is.”

What I will tell them is, “Look, 20 years from now, which is still within a reasonable retirement zone. I mean, if you’re going to start retiring, let’s say 67, you’re going to be 87 at that point in time. I just want you to be comfortable that the number that we have to generate there is twice that same number.”

It’s going to end up being exactly the double of that. We do model our inflation at 3 percent, is why I knew the answer to this question backward.

Mark:  It’s crazy. From 1913 to 2020, the US has seen inflation of 2,555 percent. It makes sense, though, what things would have cost in 1913 until today. All right, final one, we got two minutes left. This is the extra credit.

You have done well. Some of the numbers were so close together that it was pretty difficult. You’ve done a very nice job, Victor, congratulation.

Victor:  Thank you.

Mark:  I’m going to give you a little extra credit. After adjusting for inflation, what is the highest grossing movie of all time? “The Wizard of Oz,” “Titanic,” “Gone With the Wind,” or “Jaws?”

Victor:  Adjusting for inflation, I was hoping you put “Avatar” on there because for some reason that always is touted as being in there. I’m going to go with the other James Cameron’s movie. Let’s go with the “Titanic.”

Mark:  Titanic is a good guess.

[buzzer]

Mark:  I got to give you that, but what do you think is the oldest of those? It would not be Titanic. It would not be Jaws. It would be The Wizard of Oz or Gone With the Wind. It would be Gone With the Wind, right?

Victor:  Is that right? I thought it was revised in the1930s. Maybe, maybe.

Mark:  I don’t know. They’re both old.

Victor:  [laughs]

Mark:  Here you go. Adjusted for inflation, and this is back at 2017. The top five highest grossing movies of all time are Gone With the Wind, 1.6 billion, “Star Wars,” 1.4 billion, “Sound of Music,” 1.13 billion, and then Charleston Heston, “The Ten Commandments,” $1 billion.

Victor:  Wow.

Mark:  That’s fun.

Victor:  By the way, our crack team looked this up, and, in fact, it was The Wizard of Oz that was released a brief period of time before Gone With the Wind. They were both films in 1939. Wizard of OZ came out in August of ’39, and Gone with the Wind in January of 1940. It was just a few months apart.

Mark:  I like that. We’ve got just about a minute left, 40 seconds, 45 seconds. Why don’t you wrap this up today and tell people how to get a hold of you. When they got any questions, you’re here to help.

Victor:  Thank you. Listen, we’ve spent this time talking about why you might need help for retirement. If you’re in that position where you could stand to get a second opinion what’s going on, or you just want to be able to sleep well at night, knowing that you have your ducks in a row, then you’ve got everything in place to help make it last.

One of the first things you can do is start a conversation with us. We invite you to do that so that you can get to the point in time where you are comfortable about your retirement. Easiest way to do that is to call us at 856‑506‑8300.

As Mark continually says on the show, if you’re a longtime listener, there’s going to be no cost to this. There’s is going to be no pressure. There’s no obligation to move forward.

What we care about is beginning the conversation with you so that we can get to a point in time where we can look at your income, investments, tax, and estate planning and get you comfortable, that you’re going to be able to make everything last in your retirement.

It might be that we do that in our conversation when we meet. It might be sometime later in the future. The only way that you’ll know whether or not we will be the right planner for you is to take that first step.

If you’ve been a good listener to us, I’d want you to go ahead and pick up the phone, 856‑506‑8300, and start that process. Mark, is if I can wrap up the other part of it, it has been a great show doing it with you today. Thank you so much for being my co‑host and my partner in crime on this radio show.

Mark:  I always enjoy it. Everybody, we hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend. Have a great week, and Victor and I will be back next week with more retirement and financial chatter. Have a great weekend.

Female 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.

Male 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 referred to fixed insurance products, never securities, or investments. Insurance guarantees are backed by the financial strength and claims‑paying ability of the issuing carrier.

This radio show is intended for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be used as the 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 a 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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