Episode 3

February 23, 2024

00:32:51

Unlocking Your Savings: Smart Moves for When Your CD Matures

Unlocking Your Savings: Smart Moves for When Your CD Matures
All Things Financial
Unlocking Your Savings: Smart Moves for When Your CD Matures

Feb 23 2024 | 00:32:51

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Show Notes

Is your Certificate of Deposit (CD) nearing its maturity date? Wondering how to make the most out of your hard-earned savings? In episode three of All Things Financial, Yelisey and Trey dive deep into strategic financial planning to help you maximize the returns on your matured CD. The guys discuss whether reinvesting in a new CD, transitioning to high-yield savings accounts, or exploring alternative investments like stocks and bonds makes the most sense for you.

Nobody cares more about your money than you do. But Yelisey and Trey like to think of themselves as a close second! The guys provide an extensive level of knowledge and service in key areas concerning retirement strategies. This includes tax strategy, investments, estate planning, life and long-term-care insurance, Social Security, and Medicare. They are a one-stop shop for all your retirement needs! Visit ATFPodcast.com to learn more!

Have questions about bank CDs or other financial topics? Send Yelisey, Ryan, and Trey an email and the topic could be featured in future episodes! Don't forget to leave a review and share this podcast with anyone looking to boost their financial knowledge.

 

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About Guardian Wealth Strategies:

Today, Guardian Wealth Strategies serves clients in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, across the upper Midwest and throughout nineteen states nationwide. Their dedicated advisory team provides professional fiduciary advice and services to both individuals, businesses, and nonprofit organizations.

Trey Peterson is a Retirement Planning Specialist with Guardian Wealth Strategies and a Partner of All Things Financial. He and his business partner Yelisey have created a one-stop shop for those in and nearing retirement. Our mission is to help you: Retire once, Retire well. Trey is a graduate of Oral Roberts University with a degree in Corporate Communication. He is currently pursuing his master’s degree in leadership. He is also a graduate of The National Institute of Christian Leadership.

Yelisey Kuts is a Fiduciary Wealth Advisor with Guardian Wealth Strategies and a Partner of All Things Financial. He has a master’s degree in business from Oral Roberts University. Aside from being a financial advisor, Yelisey is also an educator. Since 2015, Yelisey has been teaching evening classes on a wide range of retirement topics.

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Any examples used are for illustrative purposes only and do not take into account your particular investment objectives, financial situation, or needs, and may not be suitable for all investors. It is not intended to predict the performance of any specific investment and is not a solicitation or recommendation of any investment strategy. Welcome to all Things Financial, the show that helps upgrade your financial literacy. Trey Peterson and Yellow Se Coutts are retirement planning specialists here to provide a unique and conservative approach to managing your money. Now, here are your hosts, Trey Peterson and Yellow Se Koots. [00:00:37] Speaker B: Welcome to the show all things financial. I hope your day is going great. Yelase and I are excited for the conversation that we have today. And we actually have a quote. Yellissa, you want to share that? [00:00:51] Speaker A: And now for some financial wisdom. It's time for the quote of the week. Yeah, it's always good to start off with a good quote here. Uh, this one's from Thomas Edison. And it's a good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning. Now, obviously, a big part of what we do is planning. And everybody knows the old adage of failure to plan is plan to fail. Yeah, exactly. Right. So everybody knows that. And I think we, you know, I think growing up, I always. I think I had all these ambitions and dreams and things that I wanted to do, and. And it wasn't until later that I realized it's fun to dream and have all those things. But actually, it takes an incredible amount of planning, dedication, commitment. And that's probably true for everything in life, including financial planning. And we see a lot of people who don't plan, who sometimes they hit the panic button. They're in their fifties, the kids are finally out of the house, and now they need to scramble. They need to start planning for retirement, because you only have so many working years, and it's something that we want to avoid and help people with and something we do absolutely well, a lot. [00:01:58] Speaker B: Of you know who we are, but for those of you. Trey Peterson, Yellow seats. We have a podcast right here shooting out of Burnsville, Minnesota, out of our guardian wealth strategies and all things financial office. Today, we've got some exciting topics. We're going to talk about market volatility in election years. We're going to talk about, if you're over 50, what are some things that you need to be doing to prepare for retirement? You know, we teach over 60 financial classes a year in our community. And what's so interesting about that is the average person that we get to serve is in and nearing retirement. So if you're over 50 years old and you think, I've got 15 years or I've got 17 years. I don't need to attend a class until six months or a year before I retire. I want to encourage you that if you're 50 or older, now is the time to start that income and retirement tax and what I call an investment analysis. And so if you have questions on that and you're in the twin cities or you're outside of that, we serve a lot of families via Zoom, and you can reach us at 612-286-0580 if you've never been exposed to a fiduciary model of financial planning, where it's holistic planning, you get everything from Social Security planning, Medicare planning, tax planning, and what we call retirement income planning in one place. We would love the opportunity to do a complimentary analysis for you. So we have a great show today. Yellowstate. Take the lead. [00:03:26] Speaker A: Yeah. In addition to some of those topics, we're going to talk about multiple income streams, diversifying your income sources in retirement. Also management fees. Fees aren't the most important thing, but a lot of times people don't know what they're paying in fees. They don't know how much they're paying their financial advisor. There's a lot of good resources out there to help you figure that out. You'd be surprised how much of an improvement you could make just by being a little more fee conscious. And really, a lot of times people think, hey, well, I'm paying fees because maybe the fees are worth it. And if you're getting good service and you're getting maybe something more than just an investment plan that's diversified, but you're getting the tax planning and everything else, maybe sometimes the fees are justifiable. Right. But a lot of times people are simply overpaying. They're paying two to three times the going rate. So we're going to talk a little bit about that, too. So a few things to keep in mind this year. Make sure that you're working with a licensed fiduciary, a financial advisor, somebody who's looking out for your best interest. I know a lot of times people think that goes without saying. Right. What does you expect your financial advisor to be looking out for you to be doing what's in your best interest. But surprisingly, that that hasn't always been the case. But that's something that the DOL has been talking about a lot lately, making sure that you're licensed in the fiduciary model. The other thing is we want to make sure you're not tempted to make sudden and emotional decisions with your money. Right. We want to take a step back sometimes. Look to see, is this the best decision for me and my family? So, especially in the last, I would say, year or so, we've obviously had some issues with inflation and also the interest rates going up, and there's been a lot of temptation from folks to take advantage of those rates. Right. For a very, very long time, you couldn't really get a decent rate of return. Cds were paying nothing. Money market funds are paying nothing. But now you can get 5%, 5.5%. You can get a treasury that's paying a decent amount. But what are you going to do when those rates are no longer available? And we've seen that the market has been hitting all time highs, even this year. Last year it was this year. And a lot of that is predicated on the idea that the Fed is going to lower rates in 2024. So just anticipating that the rates would be lowered, I think that's driving a lot of the bullish activity in the market. But what happens when your cd matures and the market's doing great because rates are no longer at the rate that they are today? Are you going to have an opportunity to buy back in or are you going to be buying in when the market is high? So we want to make sure we're aware of that. To bring us to the first topic, election myths. And we're going to debunk a few of those. Trey, do you want to start with myth number one? [00:06:07] Speaker B: Yeah. So myth number one, stocks don't do well in election years. Historically, you look at averages. In non election years, the s and P 500 has averaged about 8%. Actually, my father and I were talking about this as we were reading an article together the other day. But in election years, it's averaged seven and a half percent. So I think a lot of people assume that because theres a lot of volatility, because theres some chaos. And I would probably say that most of us agree that the last eight years weve had a bigger gap between the two parties that we have right here in the United States. The market still historically, on average, makes averages 7.5% a year. So its not the time to be out of the market. Its a time where the market still performs. And one of the things I know, Elsa, you say, and our investment team often talks about is the name of the game is being in the market, staying in and not trying to time the market. I think one of the things that we do well, that we help a lot of people with, is, weve had a lot of conversations recently, I would say the last three years, with people that have said, hey, I was really happy with my advisor. I was really happy with the market with the last three years. What they're doing for safe money investments hasn't been paying off. But you also, what are some of the realities that we've seen in election years? [00:07:30] Speaker A: Well, just like you said, it's not about timing the market, but it's about the time in the market. And we talk about this a lot. There's so many articles and studies that show that if you were to miss out on the ten best days in the previous 20 years, the previous 30 years in the market, you could say goodbye to about half of your return. And a lot of times things like an election year force people. Not force people, but people end up making bad decisions, especially because there's so much volatility, not necessarily in the market, but just in the political conversation. Right. As Trey mentioned, there's so much tension. And really, like, I can't even think of a time, you know, in the past, you could, you know, politics was kind of one of those taboo topics that you wouldn't want to bring up at the dinner table. Right. But especially in the last few years, there's so much tension on the topic itself. And I think people really think that sometimes they assume that the political landscape has so much bearing and so much weight on the market, just like it does in your ordinary conversations, in your day to day life, because it's such a charged topic. So the biggest thing is the economy. And I think that really what has more of an effect, more than just whatever candidate wins, I, the myth that the markets might crash if a particular candidate wins, what we find is that thats not exactly the case. Its more so the underlying economic conditions. And that really has more bearing on the market itself than any specific candidate or any particular party. It doesnt necessarily even matter who holds the House or who holds the Senate. A lot of those things dont have as much bearing on the market as you might expect. Yeah. [00:09:03] Speaker B: Well, I think, too, a big piece of this is managing your risk tolerance and a lot of you know this. But Yellowstone, our office, he manages what I call the risk money and I manage what we call the safe money. And it's been a great marriage and bringing the growth bucket and the safety bucket together. But one of the things that's really important, as I get this out of my eye, is really knowing what your risk tolerance is. So I think one of the big conversations we've had with different families over the last three years is when it comes to risk, there's really a couple things that we look at. So one is how much risk are you willing to take? So when you think about your willingness, I have families that we serve that they're not concerned if the market's down 30%, they sleep great at night because they know that historically the market's going to come back. And then I have clients that if the market and their portfolio is down 10% and they've retired in the last two or three years and they're pulling income from their investments for the first time, they don't want that kind of risk in their portfolio. So number one is what is your willingness? Number two, what is your need? When you think about most of the families that we serve, if they pulled all of their investments out of the market, all of their investments out of any insurance products they use, and they stuck it under the mattress, well, that feels safe. The fact that our inflation has been at 8% two years in a row, this year it's over 3%. Over time, they actually are going to run out of money because they need an investment vehicle that at least keeps pace with inflation. So one of the big things that we talk about is what is your willingness? What is your need? And then, of course, theres things that are going on inside of the room that are important, like how you and your spouse agree on these things. And Yellowstone, I think youd agree most families that we serve, one of the people in that relationship is comfortable with risk and the other person wants safety. And thats why having those different buckets or different pillars of money is so important. So when we look at the market, I think one of the things that we're seeing is we have a lot of people that are more nervous than ever before and they've been so disappointed in the performance of some of their safe money investments and they've never been exposed to things outside of the broker that they're in. And one of the things I tell people is, man, if you're 30 to 55 years old, really your only goal is to save as much as you can. And OPEC rose but now, as you're preparing for retirement, those conversations should shift. Your priorities should shift because you're going to be thinking about things that you've never had to think about before. And so my question for those that are tuning in, that are in and nearing retirement is, do you have a generalist as an advisor or do you have a retirement planning specialist? What we've found is those are two very different things, uh, based on the season of life you're in. [00:11:56] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. Um, and a lot of times, people are generalists because they. They work with 2030, 40 and 50 year olds. But for us, the focus has always been retirement because the conversation just simply has to change. You know, in, prior to retirement, if you introduce some additional income, for most people, it's. What's my marginal tax rate? Am I in the 12% bracket? 22, 24. Uh, if you introduce some additional income, you simply have to calculate the tax. Right, whatever bracket you're in. But in retirement, it's just so much different, especially when you're dealing with Social Security, because not only is that additional income taxed at whatever your rate is, whatever your federal income tax rate is, but now you have to consider how much more my Social Security benefit is taxable. And we're going to have a segment where we really dive into Medicare. But the same thing with Medicare. It's a means tested program. Your Medicare premium is totally dependent on how much income you had two years before. If you introduce more income, that could increase your cost there as well. So let's jump into myth number two. Markets will crash if a particular candidate wins. So the reality is we've seen booms and busts in the market. Excuse me. We've seen booms and busts on both sides of the aisle. Right. The economic backdrop, as I mentioned, that's typically what tends to matter a little bit more. While stocks tend to rally in elections, in the election aftermath, it's true that some election years have seen bigger swings than others. But those instances have been tended to do more with the underlying macroeconomic background than the actual candidate who's winning the election. [00:13:32] Speaker B: I think, too, in jumping into that, I think one of the challenges that we've seen is that we've had years where one party says, if that president gets in, I'm moving everything to cash. Four years later, the other side says, if the other party gets in, I'm moving everything to cash. And I think it's really important, and it's not easy. But one of the things I've found, even with other financial advisors that we know yellow say, is that they do a really good job sticking to a discipline with their clients money or the money that the families that they're serving hold. But I've seen advisors tell people, be long term, stay in the market, don't think short term, and then on their own finances, they move to cash because they're so scared, and then they're the ones that miss out. And I think the big takeaway on that is anytime, when it comes to our own money, nobody cares about our money more than we do, but we tend to get emotional about it. And I think that's why having a partner who is a specialist in retirement planning, that can help you make great decisions. Because we're standing at a different distance and we're looking holistically at the market and a few hundred families that we serve, instead of getting emotionally involved at your level. And so I think that's why having a partner is so important. One of the things I've learned in my life is if you want to be successful, you have to get around people that are where you want to be. And I think it's so easy to help other people, give other people advice, but not follow it. When we get emotional, detached in our own arena. [00:15:09] Speaker A: Yeah, that's very true. I think most of us tend to, when it's on a personal level, we don't always make the best decisions, because we do have emotions that kind of get into it, whether it's fear or greed or any other emotion. Whereas you need somebody who can be objective, who can look at the situation for you and help you determine what the best decision is based on historical evidence, based on what's been happening in the market, just the trajectory, the trajectory in general. And that's important to do. And it's sometimes difficult when you're considering, hey, am I going to have enough for my own retirement? Am I going to have enough if I have some of these, some of these unexpected things that could happen related to my own healthcare? Right? That's kind of the big x factor for a lot of people. Nursing home related costs, long term care, some of those things that we've seen that just simply decimate even large estates, large portfolios. So a lot of times, if we're driven by fear, if we're making decision based decisions based on fear, sometimes we don't make the best decisions. So you need someone who can stand up and make objective decisions for you, or at least help you make those decisions based on good conventional wisdom. [00:16:16] Speaker B: Myth number three, let's transition. The Federal Reserve doesn't change policy in election years. Yellow say, what are we seeing regarding that? [00:16:25] Speaker A: Yeah, so this is an interesting one. Obviously, the Federal Reserve, they're tasked with making monetary decisions, monetary policy for us, and really controlling the money supply that we have. It was interesting. I think it was in 2019. Let me see. I actually have this written now because theres an interesting fact that I found. So in 2019, the economy was booming. The federal tax revenue was at an all time high in 2019. In other words, the amount of money that we were able to generate through taxes, through taxing american citizens was at an all time high. And obviously businesses as well. But the us national debt still managed to increase by more than a trillion dollars that year. Tax revenues at an all time high. We still increase our debt by a trillion dollars that year. But when you look at 2020 and 2021, obviously we had the pandemic. Our debt increased by $6.5 trillion, 6.5 trillion. Obviously that led to the inflationary period that we had, where we had higher inflation than we ever have in the last four decades. So debt is a huge one. And how do we deal with debt? A lot of times when we try to increase money supply, we're hoping that somebody's going to buy us debt. And we've seen that there's been actually a decline in foreign investors interested in buying us debt. And that's been a problem for us. Obviously, what we do is a lot of quantitative easing. And the biggest thing that I wanted to mention that, and this is from, this is, let me actually pull this up so everybody has access to this. Obviously, this is information that's important. But right now, the US, the us national debt over the next nine years is expected to go up by about $20 trillion. 20 trillion. Let me actually get the exact quote here. [00:18:27] Speaker B: Yeah. While you pull up that quote, one of the things that I'll just touch on is we're coming into a big election year. We run into people all the time that are sitting in cash and they're going, what do I do next? I want to get in, but I don't want to lose it all. I just retired in the last six months to three years. If you're looking for a strategy on how to get back in the market and how to invest in a way where you have preservation, but you're not going to miss out on returns when inflation is climbing at an all time high. One of the things that yellows and I do for families that we serve is we do an analysis on, is your portfolio keeping up with inflation? If you have questions on that, feel free to shoot us an email, give us a phone call. We'd be happy to walk through with you what we've done that's been so successful over the last three years with all the volatility, helping people preserve what they have. So my number's at the bottom of the screen. Give us a call. We'd love to help. You have a great strategy during all of the unknown things that are happening coming up in the election season. [00:19:24] Speaker A: Okay, so here's what I was looking for. So according to the Congressional Budget Office, and you can actually go to CBO Dot gov to look this up, the United States will add another $20 trillion to the national debt through 2033. And the reason why that's important because on a weekly basis, daily basis, actually, we're providing Social Security reports for people where we give them a good, better, best scenario on how and when they should file for their Social Security. And anyone who's been following the Social Security news lately, especially in terms of solvency, knows that Social Security has some challenges, right. In terms of solvency. And what are they going to do to fix those challenges, right? Fix some of the problems that Social Security has. And everybody knows that 2033 is a very significant date, right. Every year there's a trustees report that comes out and it looks at the health of the Social Security Administration. And right now, it looks like in 2033, Social Security runs into some problems, right? In 2033, they're expected to go, they're expected to start paying $0.77 on the dollar in addition to this additional $20 trillion that we're expected to accumulate over the next nine years or so. That that number actually doesn't, doesn't include the additional money that we're going to need to bail out the Social Security Administration in 2033. So the reason why that's important, when we look at, historically, when we look at, at least in the last couple of years, look at how much inflation we had just by adding $6.5 trillion during, during COVID during 21 and 22, just by adding $6.5 trillion in debt. Look at how much inflation that we ended up having. If we're going to add an additional 20 trillion and it doesn't consider even the additional cost of Social Security, I think one can make an argument that we might have a little bit more inflation than with the Federal Reserve that a lot of people, a lot of the talking heads in media are letting on. That's actually a huge problem for retirees because a lot of retirees, a lot of the ones that we meet with, a lot of them are on our fixed income, right? They might have a pension that maybe has a small cost of living adjustment, or maybe they're relying only on Social Security, which obviously has a cost of living adjustment. That's announced every October. But is that going to be adequate? Is that going to help them deal with the inflation that we might have going forward based on the additional debt that we're going to accumulate and the problems that we already have that are inherent in the solvency of Social Security? So that's something that we specifically look for. How are you positioned to make sure that you're not making mistakes that are going to cost you in the future in terms of the purchasing power of your dollars, whether its coming from Social Security, a pension, your retirement savings? How are you positioned to make sure that youre not going to be affected in a way that is negative in retirement when it comes to the income sources you have? And later on, were going to talk about why its important to diversify the sources of income that you have in retirement. Trey. [00:22:16] Speaker B: Yeah, thats a good point. Lets move on. Theres actually two things I want to touch on based on what you said, yellow say one of them is Social Security. I think one of the mistakes that we see a lot of people make is they spend so much time trying to figure out when to take that pension, when to touch the IRA, when touch the CD, when to touch their checking savings, when that paycheck stops as a result of retirement. But we don't see people spend a lot of time putting together a strategy for their Social Security benefit. One of the things I can tell you is we've had dozens and dozens of families where their retirement picture completely changed, meaning that it improved by having a strategy that maximize their investments, their goals, and at the end of the day, gave them more tax free income by using their Social Security benefits. So if youve never had an analysis on how to maximize your Social Security, really a pension that youve paid in for decades, thats one of the things that we can help you with. We have Social Security experts right in our office. And if you have a question on that, feel free to reach out to us. The second question that we get a lot of things on is people say, hey, I've had a 401k for 30 years or 40 years. I set up the investments a long time ago. I've never made a change on them or it's been a long time. How does a 401k act different than if I were to roll this money over to an IRA? And I think a lot of people don't realize that when you hit 59 and a half, you have the ability to do something that you've never had before, which is what we would call a rollover, meaning that while you would leave your 401K open, whatever the balance is, you typically can roll all or the majority of that into an IRA. Now, why would you want to take this money that sat the 401k for so long and roll it into a new product? And the reason for that is when you're in an IRA, you have an unlimited menu of options where when you're at a 401k, you actually are very limited. So one of the things I think that we do so well for people is we do what I call an X ray on their four hundred one k, and we can show them how it's performing compared to the investments that we've been using. And I think a lot of people don't realize that if you can average an extra one, one and a half or 2% just by having a more efficient portfolio, that over five years and ten years, you're adding five and six figures to your portfolio just through what we would call investment efficiency. [00:24:50] Speaker A: Number one, we want to know, hey, is your balance fully vested? That's important to find out. What is the vesting schedule, what is your account number, how much are you paying in fees, and what are the options that you have available? Now, sometimes it's not possible to roll over the entire amount. I think nine times out of ten, once you reach the age of 59 and a half, or once there is severance of employment, you can roll the entire amount of the, of the 401K into a traditional IRA nine times out of ten. And by the way, when we say four hundred one k, I think that includes most employer sponsored plans, obviously in the pre tax basis, whether it's a TSP, we're just using 401K as a general term here. So most people can roll their accounts out. And what that does is it gives you access as trace set to everything, right? You now have the ability to structure your account any way you want to. And for us, what that allows us to do is to create efficiency within your investments. We really want to make sure that everything is working together. Sometimes you might have an orphan 401K from a previous employer, and maybe you have an IRA over here, maybe your spouse has a 401K or an IRA in a different spot. And a lot of times those accounts are not communicating. So what happens is a lot of times, maybe you're overexposed in a specific sector, maybe you have, maybe all of your funds are, and we see this a lot, maybe all of your funds are s and P 500 mutual funds. And sometimes people think, hey, I'm diversified. And then when we look at it, we can see, hey, you have, in each of your accounts, you have so much exposure to big tech. Are you comfortable with that? That actually puts you in this risk category. But you've explicitly said that you're not comfortable with this amount of risk. So we want to make sure that there aren't those types of inefficiencies and that we're able to structure your accounts in a way where you can take advantage of the diversification that should be available to everybody, but sometimes isn't in a 401K with your employer. So take advantage of the ray. The biggest thing, too, is looking at what percentage of your 401K is in bonds for stocks. And one thing that we found is that actually happens a lot when folks start to have access to their accounts. Once they reach the age of 59 and a half, they start to do rollovers. And a lot of times you might decide, like in an environment today when interest rates are actually decent, that you're going to take a portion of your money, 30, 40, 50%, whatever that is, and maybe you're going to invest in something that's fixed or guaranteed, maybe a CD, maybe an annuity, maybe some type of money market fund or treasury fund, and then with the remaining portion, if you leave that with a custodian, a lot of times you're accustomed to having a 50 50 split or a 60 40 split. And the problem is, if you don't look at everything holistically, as we're describing, a lot of times you end up with 25% in the market and the rest in fixed or guaranteed assets, where typically you would want your assets to be maybe in a 50 50 or 60 40, you end up in a 75 25 because your assets are not coordinated. Right? Just like your income sources, you need to coordinate your income sources together. Everything has to work together, because in reality, whether you think it does or whether you treat it that way, it does work together. Right. Your sources of income will affect your other sources of income in terms of taxation, just like when you introduce more income in retirement. That could potentially mean more of your Social Security is now taxable. So we want everything working together. Even if you have more than one custodian holding your assets, even if you have some of your accounts in fixed or guaranteed areas and others may be in the market, it's important to coordinate, to work together. And that's really why a lot of times when, when folks eventually reach the age of 59 and a half, and even before they start to consolidate, they start to move things to one place. A lot of times people think that hey, im diversified because I have multiple statements or I have x number of mutual funds or x number of stocks and investments. What we really want to do in the ray, and really the ira x ray is to take a look to see is everything working together. What are you paying in fees, making sure youre not overpaying for anything, comparing your mutual funds. Your ETF's looking to see whats available and making sure that you're taking advantage of everything and not leaving anything on the table. So looking at your Social Security benefits, of course, SSA dot gov comma, we recommend that everybody go online, check your benefit, create an account if you haven't already. In the past, everybody used to receive paper statements. And I know that there's been a lot of cost cutting and obviously there's a lot of talk on Social Security insolvency and ways that they can improve that. But one of the things that they've done is they've got, gotten rid of paper statements, at least they said they have. And we still have clients that come in, I don't know, probably every couple of weeks somebody comes in and they have a paper statement and they've been receiving paper statements and they've never stopped receiving paper statements. So that's not the case for most of us. Most people have to go to SSa Dot gov dot. You have to create an account. It's a very simple process. They've made it a little bit easier. It used to be that they had all these security questions, and if you missed a question, they lock you out for 24 hours. So they've done away with that. So it's a little bit easier to have access to your accounts. But it's important to do that for one of two reasons. One of those is obviously to know what your Social Security benefit is so you can plan accordingly. But the other one is, we've seen a lot of fraud, right? We've seen a lot of things that, especially when it comes to senior fraud, we've seen, unfortunately, people falling for scams that maybe if you were in your fifties, sixties and seventies, maybe you wouldn't fall for those. But eventually all of us get into our seventies and eighties, and sometimes we're susceptible to things that we wouldn't buy otherwise. So you want to make sure that you go to SSA Dot gov dot. We've seen a few accounts where we've had a few of our clients that had years that were missing from their earnings history. I think Jay Leno actually was somebody who was collecting his benefit, right. So if it can happen to somebody prominent like that, make sure that you go online, you go to SSA, dot gov, comma, you check on your benefit. We want to, the biggest thing is we like to talk about this as having a smart vision for your retirement future and whether that's, you know, coordinating everything, looking within your four hundred one k, the four hundred one k x ray, coordinating all of your income sources to looking at Social Security, other fixed and guaranteed sources. We call that a smart vision for your retirement future. So if you want to touch on that, Trey, some of the key questions. [00:31:12] Speaker B: Most people don't have a blueprint or a vision for their finances. And I think you think about it again, the last few decades, it's all been about save as much as you can. Hopefully your advisor, hopefully that 401K is growing it as fast as you can. But now things are changing, meaning that it's not just about saving and growing assets, it's about tax planning, having a tax strategy, having the right alignments, because now you have several different decisions to make. How much money do we pull from the investments? How long does the money last? Where do we pull money from first? And I think one of the things that makes all things financial and guardian wealth strategies unique is we actually are one of the only groups I know of that does holistic planning, which means that we have your Medicare specialist, your Social Security expert and your tax advisor all in one office where most people, they have an advisor over here, they have a tax person over there, and you end up being the middle person. So I think one of the nice things about what we have built is then you don't have to be the expert in those things. You don't have to be the middle person. We're going to help you from start to finish, maximize everything you've worked so hard for. [00:32:23] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to all things financial. You deserve to work with retirement planning specialists who care about your money and take a unique approach to your financial and retirement needs. Visit allthingsfinancial.com and set an appointment today.

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