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Video Transcript
Rebecca Powers 00:23
Welcome to on the money with secure money. I’m Rebecca Powers. So happy to be with you again this week with of course, Brian Quaranta, the CEO and founder of Secure Money Advisors. Good to see you.
Brian Quaranta 00:34
Good to see you. It’s been a while.
Rebecca Powers 00:35
As always, yes, great to see you. So, we’re all watching the news, and we’re seeing our portfolios dip by 20% lately. Secure Money is in the name of your show, Secure Money Advisors is the name of your wonderful firm. I think the word secure is what we’re going to talk about today. How can you protect people’s money? How can you tell them you can sleep at night and your money will still be there?
Brian Quaranta 00:57
Yeah, which is important thing to have it at night, especially in retirement is the ability to be able to sleep, peace of mind security, right when I started secure money advisors, gosh, going on to almost 20 years ago, it was because I had come into the financial industry right in the end of 1999. And that was when the tech bubble had burst it and I saw a lot of people lose a lot of money. Yeah. And then I saw people lose money in 2000, 2001, 2002. And I saw it again in 2007-2008. And I saw people’s lives literally devastated. I mean, people that had to delay retirement, you know, by five or more years, or people worse was they had to come out of retirement, and those devastating things back to work, go back to work because they weren’t going to be able to stay retired. You know, the fundamental problem that we’re dealing with right now in our country, is the fact that the companies, you know, are no longer offering guaranteed pensions, they offer a 401K plan. But that 401K plan is at the mercy of the volatility of the market. So, the question is, what is the market going to be doing when you get ready to retire or when you’re retired, and so too many people today, keep 100% of their life savings, 30-40 years’ worth of work, all in a plan that is at risk. And we don’t believe in that at secure money advisors, we believe that as you approach retirement, and as you enter into retirement, protecting a portion of your money, creating your own pension, being able to create any bit of time with your with your what would I call your risk money, because, you know, if you’re going to take risk, you need time. You can’t people when they retire usually typically need to take money out of their investments. And that becomes a problem, especially if the markets going down because we’re pulling money out. And on top of that the markets going down, you’re compounding those losses, you’re locking into those losses. So, there’s just a much better approach. And we focus on that at secure money advisors. And it’s nothing that we invented, it’s been around for decades. It’s just a lot of firms don’t specialize in what we would call the distribution years where you’re actually paying yourself a paycheck every month. That’s what we do. And there’s very disciplined principles that you’re going to want to follow as you get into that phase of your retirement.
Rebecca Powers 03:10
Because to retire, you have to know “what is my plan?” How do I pay the bills each month? Yeah. So, to know that that income will be there for the rest of your life. It doesn’t have to be a crapshoot like we’re seeing in the market.
Brian Quaranta 03:21
That’s right. And think about the anxiety that that comes with, right. I can’t imagine. No, I mean, and it really is a flip of a coin, whether your retirement is going to last or you’re going to run out of money before you die,
Rebecca Powers 03:33
Or you have to sell your house or sell your car or live with your kids. So fixed indexed annuity. Yeah, let’s talk about that. Sure. annuities have kind of had a bad rap. And you know, you’ve kind of heard, but I looked into it. Once we talked about it. It’s been around since Roman days, they created it for a personal pension for all of their Roman soldiers coming back from war around the world, which is amazing. Let’s talk about the different annuities. They’re not all created equal. Yeah. Which one do you like? And why?
Brian Quaranta 03:58
Yeah, there’s two that I like, I like fixed, and I like index. Now you can even go back to the- Babe Ruth had an annuity.
Rebecca Powers 04:03
Really?
Brian Quaranta 04:04
Matter of fact, I write about it in my book, right track your retirement, which we give people a copy of that book, because it really sets up our philosophy and what we do.
Rebecca Powers 04:13
And it’s complimentary, by the way, complimentary meeting with you, complimentary- and the book.
Brian Quaranta 04:18
You get a copy of the book. This way, you can read ahead of time what the philosophy is. And I will say that, you know, an annuity is not right for everybody. But in retirement, it’s certainly a tool that should be looked at keyword tool, right? Because it is a tool. There’s no bad investment out there. The question is, where’s it going to fit into your life? Right? So, I believe in two annuities, one is fixed and the other one is index. Now fixed is as simple as it gets. I mean, remember the bank CD’s? Yeah, you know, they’re where you could get a five or 6% interest rate on a CD. Heck, I can go back to the early 80s. When I would go to the bank with my grandfather who had a Kirby vacuum cleaner store or Kirby do and he would go he would take me to the bank at the end of the day, and he’d say he’d always lecture me on the way in the bank, he’d say, Brian, you’re going to work really hard for your money. And all you have to do when you earn that money is go down to the bank, and you’re going to invest your principal in this CD and you’re live off the interest for the rest of your life. Well, grandpa didn’t realize that interest rates were going to collapse over time, right? And we went to near zero interest rates to different world. So back then he was getting 10 12% on CDs, right? So, $100,000 or $200,000, you could take it down to the bank, you know, imagine having $200,000 paying a 10% interest every single year, guaranteed FDIC insured, you’re getting $20,000 a year in guaranteed interest, whatever it touches your principal. That’s the fixed annuity. Right. All it is, is a bank CD. The only difference is this. It’s with an insurance company, not a bank. But the banks don’t want our money anymore. Rebecca, they don’t they’ve been funded so much by the governments that that’s why they pay us point 01 0%. On our checking and savings, see back in the day, they needed our money needed the cash, they needed the money, they would use it, so they would take our money. And then they would just they would just put it a little box for us that said, you know, this is Brian’s account, and here’s all his money.
Rebecca Powers 06:10
I think that’s what people kind of think: I’ll walk and take all my money. Guess what, y’all it’s not there.
Brian Quaranta 06:15
It’s not there. It’s lent back out in loans, mortgages, and so on and so forth. So, they’re fixing it today. The great thing about rising interest rates, especially for a company like ours, where we focus on safe money, is that we’re actually seeing good, fixed rates, again, where you’re seeing 4 or 5% Guaranteed rates, right? Imagine getting a 4 to 5% guarantee, and never having to worry about the volatility of market. Now.
Rebecca Powers 06:38
Let me let me ask you why how I guess I should say, how do you never worry, there is no risk with certain annuities? There are zero risk. Yeah.
Brian Quaranta 06:45
So, the only risk you’re going to have with an annuity is the failure of the financial institution itself. But you can protect yourself by making sure that you work with triple A rated companies, right, that have been around for 100 years, or over 100 years. 100 plus years, right? These companies have great trackers, insurance companies were built for times like these, it was built for risky times they know how to manage and mitigate risk better than any company out there. So, the fixed annuity can be a really great solution. I’ll give you a good example. So, I had a lady that had called the office, she said, I was referred to you by a client of yours. She says I’ve never worked with an advisor before. I’ve been retired for 25 years a lot. I was I was a teacher. So, she’s almost 90 years old. She drives into my office from Ohio, which is about a 45-minute drive. Okay, I love it. So, she gets there. And she’s telling me that she’s got this money in the bank. And there’s about $400,000 there. And on that $400,000, by the way, this money that she has in the bank she uses to pay her taxes, she pays her gas bill in the in the wintertime, this is where she gives money to her grandkids uses it for all those miscellaneous things. Yeah, she’s getting $33 a month in interest on $400,000 at the bank $33 a month, you can do the math on that, yeah, it’s about a 10th of a percent that she’s earning. So, we took her from earning about a 10th of a percent $33 a month in interest to taking her to earning over $1,500 a month, just by switching it from the money market account at the bank to a fixed annuity that guaranteed her a fixed rate of 4.2% for five years. That’s incredible. That’s life changing it. So now she’s got an additional $1,500 a month in additional income that if she wants to take it out, she’ll never touch the principal that account. It was life changing for her. So that’s the type of stuff that you can do. And interest rates going up are not always bad. It depends on where you’re at in life. So, for savers and retirees, it’s a good thing right now, I will say this the indexed annuity, right, been around for a long time. Matter of fact, it was created in 1995. I personally liked the account. Myself, I own it myself, I own both fixed and index. But an index annuity is just a way for you to still participate in the market without participating in the losses. And people go well, how do you get the gains without the loss? Yeah, that seems too good to be true exact, right? That’s the first thing people say? Well, it’s not once you understand how it works, because what’s going to happen is, you’re not going to get all of the gains. So, let’s suppose that the market goes up. 10%. Okay, typically, a company, an index annuity company is only going to give you a participation of that gain. So, let’s say they only give you a 50% right participation have the 10% so that means you would earn 5%. So, let’s say you have 100,000, your 100,000 now would go to 105,000. Well, that now becomes your new guaranteed balance. It’s locked in gotcha never be taken away. So that means that the following year the market goes down 20% 25% 50% At the end of the year, guess how much money you still have to run out. 5000. So the indexed annuity is a way for you to get upside potential with no downside risk, but you’re willing to give up some of the upside to protect your downside. Now people will say a lot of times they’ll say, Well, don’t I need 100% of the gains? No, you need to protect yourself from 100% of the losses. And, folks, this is why we do the right track retirement review. Because the number one thing that people will ask me day after day, year after year is, are we doing the right things? Are we on the right track? Let me ask if you were not on the right track? When would you want to know? What if you could be doing better? What if you could be earning better interest without as much risk? What if you could be saving on taxes? What if your investments that you’re currently in are riskier than you think that you’re paying more fees? Wouldn’t you want to know that that’s exactly what we can do on this right track review. It’s a comprehensive review, that’s going to go over five key areas income, taxes, investments, health care and estate planning. But you got to do your part, you’ve got to call us today. And you can call and schedule at 1-888-382-1298. Again, 1-888-382-1298. Call us today and schedule your appointment. Absolutely.
Rebecca Powers 11:09
And stay with us more with Brian Quaranta and on the money with secure money right after this.
Brian Quaranta 11:14
So, everybody can tell you how to invest your money. There’s not a lot of people out there and a lot of firms that can teach you how to use your money. Most people also tell you that they’re scared. And the reason they’re scared is because they’re afraid of running out of money.
Neil Major 11:28
The last thing you want to do is have a really good job and your 60s retire, be looking for work again, in their late 70s.
Brian Quaranta 11:37
The average person might say, well, a good portfolio would be a good mix of stocks, bonds, mutual funds can have a good portfolio is all designed around the five key areas income, taxes, investments, healthcare and legacy planning.
Neil Major 11:51
Because we’re not just product pickers here, what we do best here as we build retirement plans,
Brian Quaranta 11:56
nine out of 10 people, when they walk through the door would ask us, we just want to know if we’re on the right track. And I always say if you’re not on the right track, when would be a good time to know it. Probably now, people
Neil Major 12:07
you know can actually see a vision once we start to really build out their plan.
Brian Quaranta 12:12
This is about you, if you’re not getting what you need. And you feel that when you walk out of the advisor’s office, it’s time to get a second opinion. And you can’t get a second opinion from the person that gave you the first of the difference at secure money advisors. As a fiduciary firm, we help you manage the risk, build the income, and give you the retirement withdrawal.
Rebecca Powers 12:44
Welcome back to On the Money with Secure Money. We were talking about annuities, how two of them can be a very, very good solution. Yeah, you said the word tools, Brian.
Brian Quaranta 12:52
There’re tools.
Rebecca Powers 12:53
There are many, many tools. And I think the beauty of you being an independent fiduciary is that you can pick from anything, and I use this analogy. If you go into the Ford dealership, they’re not going to tell you to go down and buy a Chevy, they’re only able to sell you one type of Ford. You being an independent, you can pick from any of these are there 1000s of products, their products. 1000s. Let’s talk about that. A lot of
Brian Quaranta 13:17
noise in the marketplace. Okay. But you know, that’s a decision you make as an advisor as your career progresses, right? You know, the best thing that an advisor can be, in my opinion, is an independent. Yeah. Because you’re not beholden to anybody. When I first started my career, I was not an independent, you were the big bucks, I was with the big box. And there’s an agenda there. I hate to call these guys out. But there’s an agenda. Yeah, and there’s a very specific menu of services and products to choose from, well, if you want to sit down from across the table from a client, and truly be a consultant and be on the same team, and truly help them solve their problems and the concerns that they have, you got to approach it from a very unbiased standpoint, right, and you can’t have an agenda that you have to choose from. And so going independent was the best decision that we made. Because we truly sit on the same side of the table as our client, we want the very best for the client, as we would want the very best for ourselves the very best for our family, right, the very best for my mom and dad, the same thing for those clients. And it’s been something that I’ve been very proud that we’ve done. And there’s more and more advisors going the independent route, which is really great to see it is because there are, you know, there are limitations for the guys at the big box firms and the big box firms. You know, let’s face it, you know, some of them are publicly traded, they’ve got shareholders, they’ve got to, you know, they’ve got to make sure that their share price is right. And so, at the end of the day, profit is a big thing for them. And I don’t think profit is a dirty word, but at the end of the day, you should be approaching the financial planning, meeting with no agenda. It should be like what are the Concerns were the problems, let’s go find the best products and companies to solve those concerns.
Rebecca Powers 15:05
And that’s where it comes back to the tools if you only have this many tools, right? You’re not getting so the word fiduciary, some people say, what does that even mean? There is a big difference, whether you’re a financial planner, or you’re a fiduciary, let’s talk about the difference and what your philosophy is at work. Yeah,
Brian Quaranta 15:20
well, the fiduciary definition is really we have to do what’s in the client’s best interest, right? At the end of the day, that’s what we’re beholden to. And we’re held to the highest standard there. So, it’s good for the client to know that we sit on the same side of the table, right. Plus, as a fee-based firm, you know, when we’re making it, we’re helping a client make the decision or changes, you know, we’re making those changes because we feel that it’s going to better the plan, not because it’s going to transact some type of commission. So, there is an advantage in working with a fiduciary firm, and more and more people are starting to understand that because, you know, not only do we do the TV show here, but we also do the radio show, we have educational events that we do every single week. And one of the questions that I get every single week in our educational events is, are you a fiduciary? And the answer is yes. So, it’s a great question to ask, because I think people need to understand the difference between, you know, a broker and a fiduciary, a fiduciary is just held at a higher standard. And again, most fiduciary individuals you’re going to find are independent or and are not held, or beholden to any specific company.
Rebecca Powers 16:26
Exactly. Yeah. And I think your philosophy that your whole team serves, every single client is also different than the big box retail store, because they are in competition. When you were with the big box, did you have a quota, and you and the guy in the next cubicle were unfortunately in competition?
Brian Quaranta 16:41
Yeah, it really is kind of a crappy culture at big box firms.
Rebecca Powers 16:46
Write that down! Crappy culture.
Brian Quaranta 16:47
Yeah, it’s a crappy culture, you know, because yeah, you know, I can remember, you know, at the end of the week, you know, you’re having meetings with, you know, managers, and they want to know, how much of XYZ product did you recommend? Well, in my opinion, if XYZ product didn’t really solve Mr. Mrs. Smith’s concern I, why should we be recommending that product, but it was very important to them that that product was being recommended? We don’t have that right. Yeah, secure money advisors. One of the things that I’ve pride ourselves on is the culture and the team effort that we make, when sitting down with a client, you know, you’re not only getting my eyes looking at the plan, but you’re getting multiple advisors looking at it. And you’ve got a team of people approaching your planning now, not just one person, most people just work with one individual, right. And I think that the value proposition that we come to the table with is the fact that you’re going to get an entire team that looks over your plan. And it’s amazing what happens when you’re approaching things as a team, because somebody might have a solution to something, but somebody might bring something else up, that brings up another solution that we didn’t even think about, right. And so that’s the power of working with a team. Plus, when you call into the office, you’re not just looking for your one individual adviser, you got a whole team there that can answer questions for you. And it’s very valuable, people tell us.
Rebecca Powers 17:59
Yeah, you said you do the education, I think so much of it, of what you do. Your phone doesn’t ring very much from your current clients, unless they’re referring someone. Yeah. Because you keep them abreast you keep them educated. Let’s talk about the empowerment from that.
Brian Quaranta 18:13
Yeah, well, you know, the servicing is, is just as important as the plan itself, right. And what we find a lot is people number one don’t have a plan, they don’t have a real written plan. And when I say real written plan, folks, what I’m talking about is a binder that has everything in there, your cash flow plan, which is just basically all of your income sources, minus your taxes minus your expenses. So, you see what’s leftover, right. And then on top of that, you got your insurance policy, your financial statements, your estate, planning documents, your tax statements all in one place, right? That becomes the written plan. But the written plan has also five key areas, its income, taxes, investments, health care, and estate planning. And that is what’s really important is to make sure that you do have a written plan, because most people just don’t, they have what I call the pile of stuff, right. I call it we call it the POS; do they have your POS? That’s the pile of stuff? Yeah, it’s just an unorganized plan. A lot of people think they have a retirement strategy, and they have a 401k. That’s not a retirement strategy. Exactly. Right. There’s so much more that goes into retirement planning than just a diversified portfolio of investments. And that’s what we’re really teaching people at these educational events is, what does it really mean to have a retirement plan? It’s a very, it’s a term thrown around very, very loosely, like what does it even mean? Right? Here’s what it means. It means you make sure you have an income plan, you got to make sure that you got a good tax strategy, you better make sure you own the right investments and retirement because the investments that you’re using while you’re growing your money are not the same investments that you’re going to use when you’re distributing your money or you’re ready to take it right and about 85 to 90% of the people today are going to need to take money out of their retirement plan. Right and then you better have a health strategy in place because somebody’s going to get sick, you know, and the question is, how are you going to handle that? And then I promise you, making sure you got your estate planning documents in place is important, because if you don’t, the state’s gonna have a plan for you. And I promise you, you’re gonna like your plan a lot better than the state’s plan.
Rebecca Powers 20:16
Yes. So, the right track retirement review, it is 100%. Complimentary. You’re not they’re not marrying you when they walk in even if they’re with someone else. You You’re honestly just giving a second opinion. Yes,
Brian Quaranta 20:26
it the great thing about our right track retirement review, folks, is the fact that you are going to get a report and that report is going to be able to tell you what type of fees you’re paying, what type of risk you’re taking, you know what the probability of success of your plan is? So, you know, we call it the right track review, because most people don’t know whether or not they’re doing the right things. It’s the number one question I get all the time. If you weren’t doing the right things, if you weren’t making the right decisions. If you weren’t in the right investments, if you didn’t have the right tax strategy, when would you want to know, now’s your opportunity to find out all you got to do is call 1-888-382-1298. And you can schedule that right track retirement review. Trust me, this is not the time to procrastinate, this is not the time to keep your head in the stand and kick the can down the road, pick up the phone, you’re not going to be sold anything. There’s no high-pressure sales tactics at our office. We’re truly there to help and help you solve problems. So, call today to schedule your right trek retirement review. 1-888-382-1298.
Rebecca Powers 21:29
All right, each week, we save about 10 slots. So have your calendar ready pretty pleased that we can get to that appointment to make Brian and his amazing team. Stay with us more on how to keep your money secure.
Brian Quaranta 21:39
If I could help you increase your income, if I could help you pay less taxes, if I could help you potentially maximize the returns of your investments while reducing risk reducing fees if I can help you prepare for a health event or more importantly, when the good Lord decides to take you home to make sure that the money you’ve accumulated over your lifetime goes to your family and to your charities rather than the IRS. Would that be worth the time to come in and get a second opinion?
Rebecca Powers 22:10
All right, welcome back to on the money with secure money. So, we talked so much we only have about five minutes left in the show. So, we get tons of questions and emails, and we love you at home, thank you so much for sending these in. Someone asked, What does lazy money mean?
Brian Quaranta 22:26
Lazy money.
Rebecca Powers 22:27
I have no clue. So, I thought let’s ask the expert.
Brian Quaranta 22:32
Yeah, well, you know, think about it. You know, most lazy money typically is sitting at the bank, savings, money checking money, which we all need, because that’s emergency cash, but it’s not working for it. It’s not working for you. It’s lazy. So, just think about it. It’s kind of back the chair, what its arm is back with his feet up a cocktail having a little cocktail, and you’re losing money safely with lazy money, especially with inflation, especially with inflation. So, imagine you’re getting a 10th of a percent at the bank, okay? And inflation is that you know, over 9% are worse or worse, right. So now, think about it, if you had $100,000 At the bank, okay, and you got a 9% inflation rate. And now at the end of the year, your purchasing power really is only about $91,000, you still see $100,000 in the bank, and your purchasing power is only about 91,000. And that is the important thing to understand. When it comes to lazy money. It’s more important understand that lazy money loses purchasing power. And the number one thing that retirees have to focus on when they’re building their plan is maintaining their purchasing power over time, because the purchasing power can be eroded so quickly by two things, inflation and taxation. So, think about it like this. Let’s say let’s just use an example. Let’s get away from lazy money for a minute. Let’s just use an example of taking money out of a retirement plan that you’ve done no tax planning on. So, for most people, when you withdraw money from a retirement plan, you’ve got to pay taxes. So, let’s suppose that you’re in a 20% tax bracket, you take $1,000 out for monthly income. Okay, well, you got to pay 20% on that now. So now you’re only going to be netting $800. So that’s what’s going to get deposited into your bank account that you can’t control tax rates, right. Tax Rates can go up or down. Now if you ask most people right now, Rebecca, and I’ll ask you, do you think taxes are going up or down in the future? I think we’d all say up. Most people will say that. So, let’s suppose now your tax rate goes to 30%. That same $1,000 withdrawal from your plan is only good a net 700 hours now. Wow. Now add inflation into that mix too. Right. So now, we call it the stealth tax, right? Because you don’t actually see it come out, but it’s affecting the purchasing power. And this is why when you’re putting together retirement plan, you’ve got to focus on your monthly income and how you’re going to maintain that purchasing power. It is critical to a good retirement plan.
Rebecca Powers 24:55
And you’ve mentioned the word taxes several times. Tax Planning is something I’d never even heard of until I started doing these shows. How can you- and so many of- you told me once hundreds of thousands of dollars we’ll end up paying to Uncle Sam if you don’t plan on this forefront?
Brian Quaranta 25:11
Yeah, Well, tax planning is not something that you do in April. Right?
Rebecca Powers 25:15
That’s a CPA looking at last year.
Brian Quaranta 25:18
Yeah, yeah, they’re looking in hindsight, right? When we’re talking about tax planning, tax planning is stuff that you do right now for the rest of your life for the rest of your life. Like, for example, if you’ve got $100,000, sitting in a retirement account, okay. And you know, it’s in a tax deferred retirement account, that $100,000, I hate to tell you, folks, you don’t own all that money. If you took all that money out, today, you’re going to owe about 30% of it to the IRS. So about $30,000 of the $100,000 belongs to the IRS, the sooner you can get the IRS out of your life, the better off your plan is going to be. So if I’ve got to pay a little bit of taxes now, to get the IRS out of my life, that means under current law, I can do something called a Roth conversion, which means I can convert to a Roth IRA, and I can grow that money tax free now, and every withdrawal that I take out in the future would be tax free. But it also helps impact the next generation because if I’m doing tax planning now, that means when my beneficiaries inherit my money, they’re going to get tax benefits or tax-free benefits from planning like that. And so how to preserve wealth, key word here, right deserving Well, deserving wealth happens in two phases. You got to preserve your wealth, or your purchasing power when you’re retired, so that you don’t run out of money. And there are some scary statistics out there right now. 40%, folks, 40% of the people in retirement will run out of money before they die. That’s a scary statistic. Right? One out of three will get Alzheimer’s,
Rebecca Powers 26:51
Right? And need longevity. Because we’re all living longer.
Brian Quaranta 26:56
One out of two will need some type of long-term care might not mean that you’re in a facility, but you might need care at home. Right? So, these are these are scary numbers. These are the essence of what needs to be planned for. I always say in our planning, when we sit down with you. We always make these bad things happen on paper. Why is that we make bad things happen on paper, because then we have a plan. And then when they happen, we’ll actually know what we’re doing. Call today for your right track retirement review. Again. During that review, we’re gonna go over five key areas income taxes, investments, health care, and estate planning. All you got to do though, to schedule your right track retirement review is called 1-888-382-1298. schedule that right track retirement review with us today.
Rebecca Powers 27:39
And also get a copy of your wonderful book complimentary thank you so much for joining us at home. We’ll see you again next week. Keep those questions coming in. Email us anytime.