Victor & Mark begin the show talking about how are current political environment could impact your retirement. U.S. debt, low interest rates, household goods prices rising, & a change in taxes are just a couple things that could affect your finances and retirement plan.
The marginal gains theory, you might have heard of it, is concerned with small incremental improvements in any process, which, when added together, make a significant improvement. How does this apply to your retirement?
Then Victor & Mark give 5 ways to stay active, mentally & physically, in retirement.
If you call their number 856-506-8300, for a free copy of ANY of Victor’s 5 books in the Make It Last series. View the books & their description here:
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Make It Last with Victor Medina is hosted by Victor J. Medina, an estate planning and Certified Elder Law Attorney (CELA) and Certified Financial Planner professional (CFP). Through his law firm and independent registered investment advisory company, Victor provides 360º Wealth Protection Strategies for individuals in or nearing retirement.
For more information, visit Medina Law Group or Palante Wealth Advisors.
Full Transcription Below
Mark Elliot: Welcome to “Make It Last,” with Victor Medina. I’m Mark Elliot. Victor has two companies that are here to help you, Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. Victor, the team, focuses on traditional estate planning, asset protection, retirement distribution and proactive income tax planning.
Victor has been featured on national television, “The Wall Street Journal,” “The Huffington Post,” “US News,” and “World Report.” If here’s something on the show today that you’ve got questions about or concerns about, feel free to give the team a call. The number is 856‑506‑8300, 856‑506‑8300. There’s no cost, there’s no obligation, there’s no pressure, and there’s no judgment.
Here’s the deal. Victor’s teams at Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth want to help. They just don’t know if they can help until they hear your situation. Again, they always give you the opportunity to give them a call, 856‑506‑8300.
Victor, how are you? Ready to go today?
Victor Medina: I am ready to go, Mark. How are you?
Mark: I’m doing well. You think about a lot of moving parts in our world today. There’s a lot of discourse, and it’s sad. We should be going together. We don’t have to have the same opinions, but we should get along. That’s not really how it plays out. That’s not what we’re going to talk about. We’re not talking politics.
Here’s the deal. We’ve got stimuluses going out, infrastructure plan of Joe Biden and the team. We understand there’s a need for those types of things, but it definitely adds to our US debt.
Is debt the end of the world? No. There’s ways they can handle it. We’re going to be at $30 trillion in debt as a nation by the end of the year. By 2025, that’s going to be close to $50 trillion.
We know we can print the money, and interest rates are low. It’s not a terrible thing. It’s what you basically use your money for. Is there value in it? We certainly hope infrastructure, and the stimulus we know was invaluable to a ton of families.
Victor, I want to give you a couple sound bites, one from Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve Chairman, and one from the former Fed Chairman Janet Yellen, who is now the Treasury Secretary for Biden’s administration. Here’s what they told the House Committee on Financial Services. Here’s Jerome Powell.
Jerome Powell: Household spending on goods has risen notably so far this year, although spending on services remains low, especially in sectors that typically require in‑person gatherings. The housing sector has more than fully recovered from the downturn, while business investment and manufacturing production have also picked up.
Mark: Before I play you Janet Yellen’s, any response to what Jerome Powell was talking about there? There are some interesting things going on in the housing market now, that’s for sure. Are you on board with that, that we understand…
[crosstalk]
Victor: It really is an interesting comment. It’s probably commonly accepted. The people are thinking through what’s been going on with the pandemic that there is a return. We had this big shut down for a period of time. Then, life reopened over a slower period of time, especially up in the northeast.
We had the biggest hit of the coronavirus earlier in that process. We had the recovery over the summer. Then had it hit again. By that second time around, people were back into the regular routine of what it was that they were spending on.
As long as it wasn’t in‑person gathering, as Paul was saying, as long as we’re not talking about movie theaters, concerts, and those larger groups. We saw people reliving their life or re‑entering their life. It sounds to me consistent with even the anecdotal of things that people are doing when they’re living day to day.
Mark: Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, told the same committee, the House Committee on Financial Services, she says, “She is hopeful recovery is on the horizon, but the task is daunting.”
“Where we’re seeing signs of recovery, we should be clear‑eyed about the hole we’re digging out of. The country is still down nearly 10 million jobs from its pre‑pandemic peak.
“When Congress passed the CARES and consolidated the Appropriations Act last year, it gave the government some powerful tools to address the crisis. But upon taking office, I worried they weren’t powerful enough. After all, there were, and still are, some very deep pockets of pain in the data.”
Janet Yellen is saying, “Hey, maybe we haven’t done enough yet. Maybe we still need to do more.” Should we be concerned, Victor, that the US debt clock is at almost 28 trillion and climbing? Do we need to be worried about that if we’re headed into retirement?
Victor: Look, you always have to be worried about a bill that’s increasing in terms of when it gets serviced, and how it gets paid off. The federal government is slightly different in the way that it can pay this off in normal individuals. We don’t think about it in a normal budgeting cycle.
One of the things that President Biden was held for saying, initially coming into office in January, is that there was going to be a time for this reckoning of the debt. It wasn’t right now. That’s the part that’s important for retirees. It’s not necessarily that the debt itself is climbing, or even that the investments may increase with the debt.
There’s no point in submarining an economy even for retirees if there’s nothing for them [laughs] to spend it on themselves. If there’s nothing that’s up and running. They have to go hand in hand. The more crucial question is not necessarily that it is a debt that’s rising, but when is it going to come to, and how is it going come to.
The federal government is your retirement business partner. They are the person that takes a larger share of your earnings. If you’re going to run your business in retirement, you got a business plan to get through 25 to 30 years that it takes to make this money last all the way through that process.
The federal government taking anywhere between 20 to 35 percent of that money is a significant portion of what you have available left to spend and here comes the debt satisfaction component into that which is they gets to set the terms of their sharing of that money going forward.
If they’re going to change the laws, or they’re going to increase the taxation, that’s going to happen if they’re going to take a larger share of it, that’s going to impact your path to retirement. What we can do as planners, as people who are facing retirement head on with their eyes open is take the rules that we have currently in front of us and use it to our advantage.
The biggest question that we’ve got to answer is, do we think that tax rates are going to go up in the future now as we’re looking at this large spending pattern, it’s in place to come due on the prior stimulus plans that were already passed if we’re going to be in a situation where we’ve got to pay those bills?
Do we believe that our taxes are going to go up in the future? Or are they going to stay the same or go down and most people believe that in order to satisfy that they’re going to go up.
If we take that mindset, and we want to plan against what would happen if taxes go up, then we have to steer into the skid that’s coming in and say, “Look at where it’s going to take our tax bite now, but we’re going to take it at numbers, that we feel comfortable numbers that are lower than they’re going to potentially be in the future.”
That will help us navigate it going forward. In fact, if you can get to a point in time, we do this with a lot of our retiree plantings, if we can get to a point in time where we’ve largely eliminated the federal government as a partner that we paid all of the taxes that could potentially land on our head.
It doesn’t matter what they do, doesn’t matter how they change those rules, they are going to have to come up with that money, but it won’t be coming from us, it won’t be coming from our clients in the way that we’ve set them up.
That’s something that’s certainly achievable, but we have to do that planning before the changes come into place. We can’t wait for them to happen, and then have this entire window expire, and just fade into the ether behind this and just didn’t give us the opportunity.
Once it’s gone, once that tax money’s gone, it’s gone forever. Mark, you can’t get that money back yet. Now knowing the way those rules are, I wish if they’ve gone back in 2021 and done that planning that was being recommended.
Mark: Here’s the deal. Volante wealth is all about holistic planning for your retirement income, how much do you need? How are you going to replace paychecks that are no longer coming in. Investments? Probably not going to invest at 60 like you did at 30? You might everybody’s situation is different about investments.
Are you taking the right amount of risk for your situation taxes that Victor was just talking about? That’s a part of the holistic planning at Palante Wealth and then you throw in the estate planning that Medina Law Group can help you with. The two companies work together for you.
If you would like sit down with a team and talk about where you are, hey, taxes, I know, the Trump tax law that went into play is going to expire December 31 of 2025. But obviously, Biden and his team are talking about changing taxes in certain areas right now. That window to maybe make some moves that could benefit you in the long term is shrinking.
The best time to talk with the team would be right now. Let’s get started. Let’s find out where you are. Can we do some things to help you especially in this tax area? 856‑506‑8300 is a number. No cost, no obligation for this teamster to help, just don’t know if they can till they chat with you, 856‑506‑8300.
Glad you’re with us today for Make it Last with Victor Medina of the Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. I’m Mark Elliot. Now we’re talking about our headline segment right now, about some of the things going on with our national debt with the infrastructure plan, the stimulus packages and all of that.
We have heard Victor’s, I want a little true or false here for you. “Forbes” says there are several smart ways to get tax free income in retirement, can we really do that? Or is that just a gimmick?
Victor: I hate agreeing with somebody else, didn’t say something that I wasn’t the person to say at first, but sure I can definitely agree with Forbes there. There are a lot of great strategies for people to create tax free income in retirement.
What you have to understand is the way things are owned. It changes because you don’t get pre‑retirement Mark, people are in all this accumulation phase. They’re doing these things where they’re putting money aside, they’re hoping that it grows, and they’re maybe even not understanding what the taxes are going to be in the future.
They’re going to have an opportunity to look at multiple different accounts, that is going to give them an opportunity to get tax free income in retirement, the one that most people know about are Roth’s and they think about them as Roth IRAs. But you can also have a Roth 401(k) or 403(b) if your employer offered it during that period of time.
If you’re still working, if you’re at that tail end of your career, and you have the opportunity to contribute to a Roth 401(k), you want to switch over to doing that, because that actually gives you the opportunity to save much more than you could in a Roth IRA as a post‑tax [inaudible 10:15] . You can get up to almost $26,000 per year if you’re over the age of 50 in terms of your contributions that you can make.
That would be a great way to start to accumulate money in a Roth 401(k), but this does give me an opportunity, Mark, to talk a little bit about some misconceptions because there’s a lot of people that say, “Well, I can’t contribute to a Roth 401(k)” or “I can’t even think about it in my planning, because I make too much money.”
Then, I said, “Well, look, that there’s a different between your contribution limits, and whether or not you can convert money into that Roth IRA.” You always have the opportunity to convert your money into a Roth IRA. Once you’ve paid the tax, once you’ve paid that freight going out the door, you never have to pay it again.
In fact, the Roth gives you the additional opportunity to delay or even not take any money at all, because Roth have no required minimum distributions. That amount that you’re supposed to take out at 72, those are only for traditional IRAs. They do not apply a Roth. That really gives you a lot of flexibility, but when and how you use that money.
There are other kinds of investments as well. You can participate in municipal bonds. Municipal bonds are always going to be income tax‑free on a federal level, and whether or not their income tax‑free on a state level has to do with the issuing state.
If you have a big portfolio where you’re owning municipal bonds from lots of different states, but you’re probably going to play some state taxes on that, but you’ll never pay federal taxes. You may get a lot of tax‑free retirement income with the biggest tax rate at the federal level, and maybe a little bit smaller on the state amount depending on the way that you do that.
Then, the last component of it. This is not applying to everybody, but we often use some specially designed life insurance products that will allow us to accumulate value and then take withdrawals from there that are income tax‑free, because actually loans against the policy value.
You could choose to take a little bit. You could take a lot. You could leave the amount as a death benefit. That’s also income tax‑free. Really, really powerful planning tool, but there are a lot of limitations to that. You have to be insurable, has to be right for you.
As we’re talking about, there’s five different categories here of different kinds of tax‑free income. Not only was Forbes right, but Forbes is right five times over, I guess, I’m sorry to say.
Mark: Yeah. That’s interesting, maybe Forbes stole it from Victor Medina. How about that, Victor? We could go with that.
Victor: I like that. I like it.
Mark: You think about it. “Fox Business News” says the national debt is on track to pass 30 trillion by the end of the year, kind of get that. The Biden administration has big spending plans to contribute to the federal debt and plans for tax increases on corporations and the wealthy to try to offset federal spending, Victor.
Victor: Imagine how fast your life savings could go if you don’t have a strategy in place to help protect against these risks like the higher taxes. They could change these rules at any time and take more money from you. There’s just too many people who don’t really fully understand how much of their hard‑earned savings could go to taxes.
What I’m going to do is, for the listeners of today’s show and today’s show only, I want to help you. I want to help you understand the potential impacts that taxes can have in your retirement savings, learn about ways you can reduce or possibly even eliminate taxes in retirement. Create a strategy and a plan, so that your retirement income last as long as you do.
We call it Make It Last for a reason. For listeners to today’s show, if you’ve saved at least $400,000 in retirement, I want you to call 866‑506‑8300. What we’re going to do is we’re going to go over your retirement accounts and uncover what potential lax liabilities could be there in the future, both for you, maybe even for your beneficiaries as you die.
We’re going to talk about some of the strategies that can help you reduce your taxes down the road. Now, this could be tens of thousand of dollars back in your pocket. It’s really important for you to explore this, because this is going to give you the opportunity to spend it the way you want in retirement.
There’s no cost. There’s no obligation, but it’s only for listeners today’s show. You’ve got to call 866‑506‑8300. Call our team and we’ll help you out on this.
Mark: Absolutely. No cost, no obligation for doing so. You’re going to gain a lot of knowledge about your own specific situation.
Mark: Hey, glad you’re with us today for Make It Last with Victor Medina of the Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. We’re just getting started on today’s program. We got a lot to get to. Stay with us. We’re back right after this.
Mark: Welcome back to Make It Last with Victor Medina. Victor’s got two companies we talk about every week on the program. Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. Victor is a practicing estate planning and Certified Elder Law Attorney. There’s a website. You want to find out more. It’s medinalawgroup.com. It’s about flat fees in the estate planning world and it’s about client care.
We’re trying to help you. We know some estate laws are getting ready to be changing, it sounds like, in the near future. medinalawgroup.com. Now, Victor also has Palante Wealth which is about holistic planning for your retirement. Income planning, investment strategies, tax planning. That is a part of Palante Wealth.
Victor is a certified financial planner professional. He’s a registered investment advisor, works under the fiduciary standard in the investment world morally, legally, ethically obligated to do what is in the client’s best interest. You don’t have a plan.
You got all the tools in your retirement toolbox, but you’re not really sure you have a plan? “Hey, I think, Victor, I’ve done enough. I think I’m going to be OK, but I don’t really know how it’s all going to work.” Well, that’s a great opportunity. Call Victor in the team of Palante Wealth.
You can find out more about the company just by going to palantewealth.com. That’s P‑A‑L‑A‑N‑T‑E, palantewealth.com. Glad you’re with us today. I’m Mark Elliot. Victor, are you a bike rider?
Mark: I know yours. You got a son that’s a soccer player and son that’s swimmer.
Victor: It hurts. It hurts after a while, Mark. I can’t sit on the seat long enough, so no, I’m not a bike rider at all.
Mark: I figured you jumped on the bike every weekend, and flipped over to Philly and back just for exercise purposes.
[laughter]
Victor: Not a chance. I drive very carefully around them on the weekend when I see them biking.
Mark: All right. Well, the Tour de France is the most outstanding and highly respected bike riding competition in the world. I’ve watched some of that, probably not really those since Lance Armstrong days. That was crazy how those guys do this, because this bike race held in France and neighboring countries every year takes place over 21 days, so three weeks. They cover approximately 2,156 miles.
I would say it’s not flat bike riding. [laughs] We’re going up into the mountains and all of that. To compete in this bicycle race, you need to be in tip‑top physical and mental shape because it’s a grind. Over an eight‑year period, Victor, the British cycling team won 16 gold medals and seven Tour de France wins. Before that, they were terrible.
This success they credit is a team use of theory of marginal gains. Is there the Tour de France theory of the British Cycling Team shooting for just marginal gains? Can we use that in the retirement role?
The theory goes like this, Victor, “If you make a one percent improvement in a host of tiny areas, the cumulative benefits would be extra ordinary. You think about retirement. We’ve heard coaches say, “Hey, we just want to be better next week than we were this week.”
What a better and tomorrow’s practice and we were in today’s we want to make a little bit of improvement every day. That’s marginal gains. There areas in retirement planning that if we could just make a marginal gain, we’d be better off by a mile down the line?
Victor: Absolutely. I’d say one of the ones that’s most often overlooked, because it’s a part of the industry, it’s swept underneath the rug, which is the cost of investments. A lot of people are unaware about how expensive investments can be. Especially when we’re looking at mutual funds or variable annuities where a lot of the cost can be embedded or hidden in there.
We really don’t understand why they are so expensive, or even that they are at these higher levels of maybe even two to three percent per year.
If you think about marginal gains, if you are able to reduce the amount that you’re paying for your investments. Making everything else equal. Making their performance of them be equal, making the dollar amount that you start, the time horizon that you’re invested.
If all you do is change the cost of those investments, you see that marginal change allows you to make these incredible gains sometime in the future. I ran the numbers and the average at one point in time ‑‑ the average for mutual fund ‑‑ is almost like 1.44 percent. That was the average. There’s a DALBAR study.
It had all of that information behind it and if you brought that back down by one percent ‑‑ it meant that over a 10‑year period, same gain, same period of time, in terms of the invested in there ‑‑ you saved over 20 percent of your own money. It was yours, and it didn’t go to fees.
Definitely looking at the cost of your investments is one of those ways that you can make these part of marginal improvements that allows you to have much bigger gains down the road.
Another area is in taxes, because if you start to think about the cumulative value of paying lower taxes or locking in tax rates, as that money continues to grow, then you’re able to make a lot more off of it than the savings that you have and they’re starts to compound over time.
We might look at it in taxes as well, and I think the final area that I would be focused on in terms of making marginal gains is on lowering your overall risk. Now that sounds a little bit weird, because we’re talking about gains.
What happens if I lower my risk, how does that relates to gains? What we’re talking about there is that if you start to de‑risk your portfolio, so that events in the future that could potentially reduce the value like a recession, like a market correction, if you reduce the impact of that then what you’re able to do is in terms of the use of that money and having that grow in the future, it actually lasts longer.
It has a more secure for its retirement. Those little marginal changes, marginal improvements that you can make in your retirement planning, they’re going to have much bigger gains, maybe even allowing you to bike up and down the Pyrenees for 2,100 miles, if you were going to be running the Tour de France, of your own retirement.
Mark: There you go. 856‑506‑8300, to make sure you’re in shape enough to go up and down the Pyrenees. Victor and the team are here to help you. When it comes to all of this planning, that’s what is such a challenge.
If you don’t work in the financial world, you certainly have done some good things, obviously, to get to that point where you’re getting closer to retirement, but you actually have a plan for income investments, for taxes, for estate planning, all of that.
The team is here to help you get started. The best time to do it is now. Why not give them a call? 856‑506‑8300. There’s no cost, no obligation for this. 856‑506‑8300. I want to take this marginal gains a little different direction.
I know I’ve got friends, I’m 61. I’ve got friends that are retiring right around me. I know that I played way too much golf younger. That means I need to keep working. They were working while I was playing kind of a thing. I get that.
They’re retiring now. You think about when people are working, they’re thinking about the rate of return. What am I making on my money? When we get to retirement, are there times you have to sit down with somebody and say, “Look, I know you’re getting 8, 10, 12 percent during your working years, but you do realize if you only get an average of 3 or 4 percent, you’ve won the game?”
Marginal gains sometimes can be a positive, rather than going backwards. Sometimes people maybe still have that idea of being in their 30s and 40s, and we need huge gains all the time. Marginal gains can win the game sometimes, can’t they?
Victor: Absolutely. The shift down in so that we’re not having to swing for the fences every time. Is it allowed to make a mixed metaphor in sports [laughs] on this? I know we’re on ESPN channel now, but it’s just shifting on where you’re swinging for is often a smart strategy in the way you’re going forward. Here’s the reason why.
If you start to look at the nest egg that you’ve created in retirement as being these last dollars that you have to have managed, you start to change your perspective on what’s really important for you to be successful.
If you don’t need to take on additional risk, even if that has paid off over some period of time, it’s been 2009 to 2019 sort of the longest bull market in the economic cycle. We saw all those increase, we got a little bit loads to sleep. I think that’s always going to be the case. There’s, of course, a cycle for a reason.
They are up and down. If you don’t have to take risk in retirement and you lower the chances that these market corrections, even if they’re way out there in terms of probability that it doesn’t affect retirement, of course it’s smarter to do that.
When you think about the way that your retirement is set up, what you want is complete peace of mind. You want a return on your investments while you’re accumulating wealth. You want a return on your retirement when you get on there. That’s not coming from riding the roller coaster or whatever the news cycle is with whatever’s going on in the economic conditions.
You want to know that your plan is set up to withstand all levels of economic condition. One of the best ways you can do that, of course, is to de‑risk or lower the risk that’s in there. You lower your expected returns.
This is what we do when we put a plan together. We say, “What’s the minimum amount of risk that we need to take to make this be successful? Why don’t we go and do that? Why don’t we go figure out what the minimum amount is and only expose ourself to that?” That’s probably the smartest thing.
Mark, coming into this, my whole journey of starting as an estate planning attorney and then moving into the financial services and then doing them both for clients at the same time, holistically, all along the same spectrum, I never lost that attorney’s mindset.
I don’t believe anybody, when I’m walking around there, saying I don’t trust that. I don’t trust that. I don’t trust the other. When somebody says to me, “This is going to work as long as you make seven percent.” He’s like, “Hold on a second. I don’t want to have to make seven percent. Is there any way that I can do that where that’s not a risk?”
I’m thinking through that with the same legal strategy that I would do for legal clients that are going into litigation. I’m doing the same thing in retirement, say, “Hold on a second. How do we increase the chances of success in a retirement? If that means that we have to lower our expected return, why don’t we go ahead and do that.”
It makes it a lot easier to get to a successful end and be sleeping peacefully at night knowing it doesn’t matter what’s going to be coming on. I got a great plan in place, and I’m going to make it to the end.
Mark: That makes a lot of sense, obviously, is having that plan in place. Everybody’s plan is going to be different because everybody’s hopes and dreams for retirement is different. Their needs are different.
Don’t forget, the Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth serve the Pennington, greater Mercer County, as well as Bucks County. Victor’s got clients in New Jersey, clients in Pennsylvania. They’re here to help. You want to learn more, 856‑506‑8300. No cost for this chat on the phone, 856‑506‑8300.
We were talking about the Tour de France, British Cycling Team, over an eight‑year period won 16 gold medals and 7 Tour de France wins. Before making tweaks to the team, the way the team trained, the way the team prepared, the cyclists were stuck in mediocrity. They weren’t very good for the better part of a century.
Then came along Sir Dave Brailsford, who revolutionized the sport using this theory of marginal gains. This guy, obviously a stickler for the details, hard to deny his role, but here’s a few small things he did.
He had the floors of the team truck painted pristine white to spot dust on the floor. The smallest amount of dust could potentially impair bike maintenance. He tested different types of massage gels to see which one led to the fastest muscle recovery. Remember, it’s a three‑week, 2,156‑mile bike ride up and down the mountains.
They also hired a surgeon to teach each rider the best way to wash their hands to reduce the chances of catching a cold. Don’t want to be sick on that ride. The healthier you are, the better chance you have of doing well.
I think of the Wizard of Westwood, John Wooden, with Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton, all those great UCLA teams. He spent time showing them how to put their socks on so they would not get blisters. We think about it. Sometimes the small things are big things over in the big scheme of things.
How important is it maybe to be that coach for your clients at Medina Law Group, at Palante Wealth. Those that are getting ready to retire and already are retired, how important is it for you to be their financial coach?
Victor: Let’s take them in order. You used great analogies that speak to the way that a coach or a retirement planner would help off of it. You think about the floors on the truck that are painted, looking for anything that might cause a problem in the future.
We think about that and our plan in the way that we help clients is our proactive income tax planning. We’re modeling what a 1040 would look like when they file their taxes. It’s not after the taxes are already done but pre the end of the year.
It’s a discussion that we have with our clients in the beginning of the year to try to help and make sure that we don’t inadvertently pick up a speck of dust that might cause us to have a higher Medicare premium or somehow go into the next tax bracket.
It’s attention to the small details with the proactiveness that helps us avoid some of that. When we think about testing the different kinds of massage gels, it speaks to me, Mark, about the level of independence that a financial coach has.
For us, having a registered investment advisory firm and working independently, where we can choose from any of the products that are out there, any of the solutions that are out there, being held to a fiduciary standard I have to find the best one, allows us to go to the marketplace and figure out exactly what is the right solution for that client.
We don’t have to answer to anybody who says, “You’ve got to push this product,” “You have to sell the other one,” or “Here’s the sales grid,” which happens. A lot of the bigger broker‑dealers, but our independence and our ability to focus on retirement‑based solutions allow us to go pick out exactly what is the right solution for a particular client and get the best‑in‑class for what they need.
Finally, when we think about hiring a surgeon to teach each writer what the best way it is, or tell us how to bring on our stock. That’s when we bring in experts out there that have a multidisciplinary approach to what they’re doing because a coach might be really good in one of these areas, but you may need help, for example, in some higher‑level tax planning.
You might need help on an estate tax matter. Or you might be somebody that needs help, for example, on choosing the best Medicare plan. That’s something we don’t have our best expertise. That would be our surgeon out there.
We would go in and bring the best Medicare broker to help us select what are the plans that we should be doing. What’s our best choice on a prescription plan, on the open enrollment season, and offer that as a value add to the service that we have for all of our clients.
Again, because a good coach should be thinking about the overall health of their team and what’s going to help them perform the best in the same way with that our clients. We want to stand with them alongside them.
They’re the hero of their own journey. We want to help them be successful. This success for them is going to make sure that it makes it all the way through retirement with peace of mind and being able to accomplish all their dreams.
Mark: If you think about it, most of us have done a nice job of saving for retirement, we’ve got IRAs, 401(k)s, might have some real estate. We got stocks bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, all the things you can throw into the investment world.
Might have some life insurance, might have some annuities, we’ve got a lot of different tools we can throw. We might have stock paying dividends. There’s a lot of things we can throw into our portfolio. The question is, do you understand how each item in there is helping you have a successful retirement?
Now if you’re not sure how it all meshes together, this is a perfect time to sit down with the team at Medina Law Group for your state planning, for Palante Wealth with all the retirement planning that goes into that because it both worlds are tied together.
You don’t want to have a retirement plan that just focuses on investments, because where’s your income coming from? How do you know where it’s coming from? What about taxes? That can certainly have a bigger play even down the road.
Then what about estate planning? You don’t want to leave your loved ones in the lurch and not fond that you’re not here anymore, because you didn’t do what you should have done beforehand. All of this goes together.
856‑506‑8300 is the number to chat with Victor and the team. 856‑506‑8300, there’s no cost, there’s no obligation, there’s no pressure, there’s no judgment. Why wouldn’t you? You’ve got the tools, you may not have the plan. Why not find out? 856‑506‑8300.
We’re comparing the Tour de France to retirement planning, but we’re going to change and tweak a little bit because we do know that marginal gains goes to show that every little detail counts.
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It’s still at the end of the day falls on us to make sure we stay mentally strong and commit to the long‑term goals. That’s where we’re going next. 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.
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Mark: Remember that first paycheck when you started working all those years ago? You looked at the net amount and thought, “Whoa, what happened here?” It could be this way with your retirement accounts.
You know how much you’ve saved, but if you haven’t planned for Uncle Sam, you could come up short in retirement. With tax laws constantly changing, there’s a lot you need to know to make sure you’re not paying more than your fair share. The Palante Wealth Advisors team can help. They’ll help you create a retirement plan that shows you how taxes could affect you now and in the future.
Set up a visit with the Palante Wealth Advisors team today. Call 856‑506‑8300. That’s 856‑506‑8300. Make sure you know how these changes could affect you so you can avoid those whoa moments in retirement. Call 856‑506‑8300.
Firm offers insurance services and may not give tax advice. Investment advisory services offered through Palante Wealth Advisors LLC, a New Jersey and Pennsylvania‑registered investment advisor.
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Mark: Welcome back to Make It Last with Victor Medina. Victor has got two companies as I’ve mentioned, Medina Law Group, estate planning is where they’re here to help. Victor is also a Certified Elder Law Attorney, and the website is medinalawgroup.com, to find out more.
Victor also has Palante Wealth which is about holistic planning for your retirement. Victor is a certified financial planner professionally, registered investment advisor, operates under the fiduciary standard in the investment world. Morally, ethically, legally obligated to do what is in the client’s best interest. That’s important. Their website is palantewealth.com.
Victor is also the author of three books on retirement planning under his acclaimed Make It Last series. Any chance if somebody called…Let’s say somebody calls the next 15 minutes. Could they get a copy of your book or is that something that’s priceless, and that if I got a copy, my retirement would be taken care of?
Victor: It’s a twisted wire, Mark, let’s do that. Let’s go ahead. Anybody who makes a call in there, they’re going to get their choice out of any of the books that we’ve published in there, whether we’re talking about empowering women in retirement or getting your nest egg secure, or making sure that you’ve got your legal ducks in a row.
If you call and you make reference to the show, we will send you a free copy. It is priceless by the way.
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Victor: It is priceless, but we will send it to you because you asked for it, Mark, in the show so that you can thank Mark.
Mark: I like this Make It Last series, because it’s not just all about money. It’s about women and the challenges they might have in retirement because you think about 80 percent of men die married. 80 percent of women die widowed, divorced, or single. At the end of our lives, it’s different, I think.
That’s cool you do have a book on the women’s challenges, but there’s a lot of information that we need to know because we’ve never retired before. We want to get it right.
856‑506‑8300 and say, “Hey, Mark said I could get a copy of one of Victor’s books. Can I do that?” ” Yes, Victor just gave us permission.” 856‑506‑8300, and it’s the Make It Last series and they’ll give you the options, you need to choose the one you want. Great deal. Thank you, Victor, for doing that.
We’re talking about the benefits of marginal gains. We’ve heard the coaches always say ‑‑ in the NFL ‑‑ “Hey, we want to be better week two than we were week one.” “Better in week five than we were in week four,” and so forth.
We want to make a little bit of improvement every single week we go along. Same thing happens all over. I think employers want their employees to be just a little bit better today than they were yesterday.
We’re talking marginal gains and making small tweaks to help improve your overall situation. To make marginal gains, that needs equal commitment on your part. If you set a goal to get in shape, you have to do more than just exercise.
You can’t go eat at a fast‑food joint every day. You didn’t get overweight because you had one cheeseburger. You have to eat right as well. Eating healthy requires mental toughness because we love our cheeseburgers and stuff to give up.
Bestselling author Amy Morin writes about things that mentally strong people always say. We’re going to go over some of these. Victor’s going to give us his thoughts on how they leans into retirement planning. Before I give you the first one, I’m going to give you this and tell me if you can find a similarity between a parachute and a human brain.
Victor: You’re actually asking me or no?
Mark: Yeah, I’m asking you. Do you know what the similarity between a parachute and a human brain would be?
Victor: I have no idea, but if it’s not open, it doesn’t work.
Mark: Yes. Absolutely. Here’s what Amy says that mentally strong people always say. The first one is this, “I’ll consider whether that’s right for me.” How does that relate to retirement planning?
Victor: That’s good. It dovetails to the clients that we love working with mentally strong people, aren’t going to follow other people’s guidance. If it worked for them, that is going to end up working for me, they want to make their own decisions off of that. They want to evaluate it from their own perspectives.
I tell you, one of the things that we pride ourselves on is empowerment through education. We’re known for taking the time to walk everybody through all of the principles about their planning. We never asked somebody for blind faith, and said, ” Well, look, we’ve done planning for thousands of people.” We’ve seen it here, are all the success stories off of it.
Why don’t you just go ahead and do business with us, and let us help you with your planning. We walk them through each of the principles that we think are important for them and their plan. We encourage them to have open communication so that they are again getting to a point in time where they’ve tested this idea in their own head.
They’ve considered whether it’s right for them, they’ve made a decision that they think that’s in their best interest. I’m into this sort autonomy of our clients to make decisions.
We’re their guide, we’re not asking for the full‑on power to do whatever we want. We’re guiding them in the right direction and we’re empowering to make those decisions, ultimately.
They’re choosing to go down a path that we’re suggesting because they’ve determined that it’s the right direction for them. It relates not just to retirement planning in general, but the kind of clients that we love working with are the ones that come in with that attitude.
Mark: Victor, how do you make each retirement plan feel unique to the couple or the individual? You could have five people come in or five couples come in one day. My guess is that out of those five plans, none of them are the same. There might be areas maybe, but overall, there are different plans because it’s different needs, right?
Victor: Here we get into that little balance, because generally speaking, the principles about what would make a good retirement are “universal.” You want to make sure that you’ve got the minimum amount of risk, you have to make sure that you make success in retirement. You want to navigate income taxes.
You want to know what happens when you die, when a good, solid state plan. You have principles that are guiding principles that are things that are mile markers on your journey. You want to make sure that you’re hitting those along the way. But the way that we make sure that every plan is unique to the clients is we spend a lot of time our goal setting with them, having a conversation.
It’s not as formal as a what are your goals, but talking through with them and those initial meetings, “What is your dream for what a great retirement looks like?” for you is the most important elements and what you would consider to be success? Because we all have different ideas about what that looks like. For that reason, we’re going to have different paths on how we’re going to arrive there.
Some people are very invested in making sure that they are leaving behind a great inheritance for their grandkids. Or they want to make sure that they’re setting up and creating experiences during their retirement for their family. Or they may be looking at a special needs child that they have to care for, that they have an obligation to fulfill.
Everyone’s going to come in with a slightly different set of needs off of that. Once you start spending time, and this is really where we pride ourselves, in the amount of time that we spend with clients, getting them to really get clear on what would a great retirement look like. How are we going to meet those needs?
Then we can start to craft the plan to them. That’s where we get to that uniqueness. The plan itself is custom tailored. That’s why we deliver this eight‑page planning document. It is long and robust enough to go into each one of the elements that’s important for them.
We talk about what their goals are and what need’s addressing and how we’re going to do that. It’s also short enough or it’s simple enough for it to be actionable. The worst thing that we want to do is produce a 50‑page action plan that we’re never going to get off of the ground to get done.
If we can streamline how we’re going to get successful, there’s an elegance to being able to create a plan that is something that they can use in retirement, be successful in that, and that is custom‑tailored to their particular needs. We’re not talking about a cookie‑cutter portfolio and buy these things and you’ll be all set. It is, at any point in time, what is in the plan that we need?
By the way, in addition to that, Mark, not only are we setting up that plan, but the relationship that develops out of that is one in which we are constantly evaluating that plan against those needs.
If those needs and those goals and those dreams change over time, then we’re going to tweak the plan to make sure that we’ve got a chance of success on that new plan.
We’re constantly evaluating that to make sure that we’re within that well‑established tolerance or guidance to be able to be successful. Are we still on target for what we need? Is the piano still playing in tune? Do we really love the music that we’re hearing?
Mark: Absolutely. It’s about whomever you’re sitting down with. I look at it like this. If you come in and sit down with Victor and the team, whether it’s Medina Law Group, because you’re really focusing on estate planning, got some issues. I understand that.
That’s why Victor has that company. He started that company back in 2006. Then he had so many clients going, “What about the rest of my retirement planning. Why don’t you help me?” In 2014, Victor started Palante Wealth to help people with that side of it.
They all go together, but it is about you. You’re the CEO. It’s your retirement. It’s your hopes and dreams for retirement. Victor’s teams understand some of the challenges and some of the what ifs you need to be prepared for in retirement. You need a plan. The plan’s not written in stone, plan’s going to change when life happens.
856‑506‑8300 is the number if you’d like to chat with the team about your situation, 856‑506‑8300. We’re talking today about what mentally strong people say to themselves. Another one certainly is this, “This will be hard, but I’m going to do it anyway.”
I’m sure that’s part of the things you teach your kids. They’re 17, 14, and 8. Aiden, you’re telling your 17‑year‑old different things than your 8‑year‑old, to a degree.
At the end of the day, we’ve got to work hard to get where we want to go. Not a lot is given to us. It’s going to be hard, but I’m going to do it anyway. How do people stay focused on the long term, and not get emotional about the ups and downs of the market or this political thing or that? How do we stay focused long term?
Victor: I love that you referenced Aiden, because right now we’re going through a journey of him prepping for the ACTs. He’s been investing a lot of time. It is one of these things that his work in there is going to be hard, but we’re going to do it anyway.
What he’s seeing at the end of that process, and I’m going to bring it back to retirement planning in a second, is he’s making all of these strides and these gains in what his score is so that he is in the best position to be successful even long term beyond taking the ACTs, but going into college and where he’s going to have options for where he’s going to go.
What we see is that this discipline approach, this long‑term view, this ability to not be impacted by the noise that’s being generated on short‑term news channels about what’s going on here, because not only do you have faith in the plan that you have executed, but you got the discipline to stay the course because you’ve been taught.
As we were talking about earlier in the segment about how we went spend time with everybody and really transparent about the strategies we’re putting forward, you really understood the underpinnings about why this is going to be successful and that difficulty of staying disciplined will pay dividends over time.
For our best clients, of course, are seeing that because they’re going to have that space and time between when they first set up the plan and when they are there enjoying retirement and seeing it. I will tell you, where it came to bear was when we had that big change over in the pandemic, where everything slowed down.
We had this 20 to 30 percent correction in that March. Everybody was panicking on the news, because we saw these accounts price go up, except for our clients. We had a long series of conversations. We scheduled time. “How are you doing?” Most of the time we spent of, “Do you have enough toilet paper?”
Their concerns really wasn’t about the market or their accounts, because we had already built in the plan. They’re disciplined of following that plan before the pandemic hit. Made it easy to stay disciplined [laughs] when it did hit, because they were seeing the fruits of all of that work come to bear where they didn’t have to be worried.
Where maybe the people who weren’t following such a disciplined approach may have been very worried, and so that really is where we see that value of doing something difficult, but doing it anyway and staying committed and focused on the long term is where we’re going to see the benefit of putting that plan together.
Being able to have that piece of mind to shrug off the news that’s coming off at any particular moment, because we know we have a great plan. We know that we’re going to be successful, because we’ve gone ahead and tested it and we know all about it.
Mark: Well said. You think about it. The great tennis player, Venus Williams, said, “Make realistic goals, keep reevaluating, and be consistent.” That would work in everyday lives. That would work in retirement. If you’d like to chat with Victor and the teams, when it comes to your retirement.
“Boy, I think I’ve done enough. I’m not sure if my money is going to last as long as I do, though.” That’s a question. “I wonder if my loved ones would be OK if something happens to me. Hey Victor, when can I retire? How much do I need?” Those are big questions.
“Really, we just want to know, are we going to be OK if we pull the plug on our working years, right? Is our retirement going to be OK? Can we make adjustments along the way because we want to travel more? We want to stay at home.” Whatever you want to do.
Mark: 856‑506‑8300 is the number. No cost, no obligation for this phone call. 856‑506‑8300. Glad you’re with us today for Make it Last with Victor Medina. We’re headed to our final segment right after this. Stay with us.
Mark: Glad you’re with us today for Make it Last with Victor Medina. Now, Victor has two companies. Victor is a practicing estate planning and Certified Elder Law Attorney. He’s got the Medina Law Group. He started that company back in 2006.
Then, those clients are going, “Well, Victor, how come you don’t help us with the other parts of retirement? You know, income planning, investment strategies, taxes? How come you’re not helping us with that?”
“Well, why can’t I do that, I guess?” Victor went, got all his licensing to do that. That led to Palante Wealth. Palante Wealth is about holistic planning for your retirement. Victor is a certified financial planner professional.
He’s a registered investment advisor. That means he can help you in the Wall Street world, the investment world. He can also help you in the insurance world, life insurance and annuities. Do you need them? Don’t know, maybe, maybe not. I don’t know.
We don’t want all of our money in the bank. We don’t want all of our money in the insurance world. Probably don’t want all of our money in the stock market world. It’s about a blending of the world. Palante Wealth can help you in the insurance world, they can help you in the investment world.
I think that is so important because in the investment world, Victor operates under the fiduciary standard morally, legally, ethically, obligated to do what is in the clients’ best interest. Such a very small percentage of financial advisors around the country operate under that fiduciary standard.
If you’d like to find out more about Victor’s estate planning group, medinalawgroup.com or the holistic planning retirement side palantewealth.com. Medina, M‑E‑D‑I‑N‑A, medinalawgroup.com. Palante, P‑A‑L‑A‑N‑T‑E, palantewealth.com.
I’m Mark Elliot. Glad you’re with us today for Make It Last with Victor Medina. Victor, we’re picturing our retirement, we’re sitting on the front porch, drinking some lemonade, enjoying life in retirement. It’s a nice and relaxing thought. Don’t you think?
Victor: It sounds relaxing. It sounds a little boring, though. Don’t you think?
Mark: There’s no way you could do it every day. I’m going to be with you on that because you would. You’re absolutely right, you get bored with it. That really includes any routine in life. Now that you get into retirement, every day is going to feel like a Saturday.
What are you going to do? Here’s the deal, we’re going to talk about some ways to stay active in retirement, because staying active can help you live a long and prosperous retirement. We’re going to talk about the five ways to stay active in retirement, both mentally and physically. Before we get into our list, what are the things, Victor, we should strive for to live a healthy retirement?
Victor: It’s interesting, Mark, because when you make that shift from working to not working, it can be very jarring. If people are afraid of loss of identity, they’ve been so closely associated with what it is that they did, because not only do they…
Many of them do it for such a long time especially if you get people to spend entire career maybe as a teacher in a company, and working up the ladder for it, but it was occupied, the majority part of their day and their week. They’re 8, 9, 10 hours a day, five days a week.
It’s a vast majority of their waking hours. When that split happens, there’s a lot of shifts that people have to make be able to maintain a good identity. They got to look around and find the right community for them, the right surroundings, because they were previously defined by their work.
Many of them have to stay mobile and active. One of the things that happens is, you don’t use it, then you’re going to lose it. That’s a pretty good maximum for your physical health as well, especially when talking about your mental health.
So many people start to lose their ability to process information as they get older, tons of studies off that. You definitely want to exercise your body as well as exercising your mind.
Then that set of things that people want to do is they want to be able to help with finding a new purpose and being able to create a way to get connection into a community that’s greater than themselves and not just be looking at what serves them, but what serves the greater community.
Mark: We’re going to talk about the top five ways to stay active in retirement, both mentally and physically. We’re going to go through. We’ll see if we get to all five, but what’s the first way, Victor, that we can stay active in retirement?
Victor: It’s probably one of the last things I said in there, which is about purpose. I have experiences not just within the clients that we serve, for helping them retire, but even my own family and watching people who retire, lead different lives if they were inwardly focused versus outwardly focused.
If we start to find opportunities to volunteer and look for ways to establish purpose or gratitude that is outside ourselves, it could be that you’re volunteering at a charity. Or my mom for a period of time, volunteered to hold babies in the neonatal unit.
My dad was volunteering the hospital to be a liaison between the patients that were going through the surgery and their family who was waiting for them.
Whatever it is, you have to figure out ways that you can contribute to in cause, to a set of values, to a purpose that’s greater than yourself. The reason why you want to do that, Mark, is because that will help propel you to have a nudge to live long but live longer for a reason.
Really enjoy the time that you’re there because you’re seeing the fruits of your volunteerism, hear the fruits of your contributions, and really finding those ways to help people around us. It’s so rewarding, such a rewarding thing to do.
Mark: I like it. It’s like a new purpose. I think that we do need something to motivate us, to get up out of bed and get going, do something. There’s got to be something driving you. Otherwise, you will be just sitting on your front porch forever.
I’m not sure you’re going to last very long doing that. You got to have a new purpose. A lot of people see retirement as the final destination. That’s not really accurate. It’s just a new phase of life.
That change can be so drastic on those who focus so much time and effort on their careers. When I retire, they’re going to say, “Well, what did you do?” “I was a radio host for Victor Medina.” “Wow, that’s surely had a lot of pressure,” but it’s really not my identity.
Now you on the other hand, “What did you do, Victor?” “Well, I had the Medina Law Group, I have Palante Wealth. I help people come up with plans and strategies for their estate planning and retirement.” That’s a pretty big deal. For me, I’m not identified by my job.
You, on the other hand, maybe identified more by your job. I think that’s really important. Do you ever have clients go, “You know what, Victor? I love working, but I really am ready to retire. I want to cut back…” I don’t know. Do they do the still work when they get into retirement?
Victor: I have a lot of people that do exactly that. Sometimes it’s a continuation of their old jobs. Sometimes it’s a brand new area that they’re going into, but you said it best. That retirement’s not a destination, it’s on arrival point.
It’s the beginning of a new part of a journey. Whether or not you want to spend that doing nothing, or spend that doing something or doing something brand new, it’s entirely up to you. You really want to have the options for that.
One of the reasons why you would work with somebody like the people in our office and to do a plan to see what options are on the table, because some people may have been forced to work. Some people may have the option of working, but you really want the answers to those types of questions.
I’ll tell you that, in the way that you view the retirement, if you view it as a journey, as part of what you’re doing, now, you can start to get excited for what might be coming up. We do have people that work part time. They do that on their terms, as opposed to terms that are being dictated to them.
Someone continue on for their old company in a row where they don’t have to feel any of the pressure of the administrative nonsense. That there’s a reason that maybe they wanted to get retired in the first place, they’re only doing the stuff that they love, but they’re doing it on their terms.
Again, it’s a lot of reason of why you’re going to put a plan together to know what are your options? Do you have the opportunity to work on maybe a low‑paying job or a no‑paying job, but it is working and get up, you’re going to go and you’re going to contribute, may volunteer like my parents were doing at a hospital, something like that.
Can you make it through retirement in that scenario? Those are good answers to get to questions.
Mark: When you get retired, you’ve never retired before. You don’t want to be forced to go back to work. If you would like to go volunteer, or find a part‑time job, or be the starter at the local golf course, so you get some free golf with it or something.
You’ve got to have a plan for that. 856‑506‑8300. The teams are here to help you come up with your plan for your specific situation. 856‑506‑8300, glad you’re with us today for Make It Last with Victor Medina, of the Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth.
I’m Mark Elliot. We’re talking about top five ways to stay active when it comes to your retirement. What’s another way? We got to find our purpose, we can volunteer in the like. What’s another way we can stay active?
Victor: We were talking about making sure that you exercise your mind. It’s a really important thing to do to keep your mind active and there are so many opportunities for people to take classes.
Before the pandemic, people can go and audit classes at a university. After the shift of that a lot of the classes including classes at great universities across the country. Ones that you could never attend because you’re not even geographically close to them are now available online.
You can take a lecture series at MIT. You also have things like masterclass, which is an app that you can sign on to that you can learn from lots of different things. You can learn writing and gardening and cooking. You can learn magic from Penn and Teller if you wanted to.
Victor: [laughs]
Mark: What we’re doing here is we’re trying to figure out ways to exercise your mind in states socially connected. Because a lot of these things are going to link back into current events and things that are current going on. Maybe you want to pick up a new skill in an area like photography, or you want to pick up something, let’s talk about gardening.
You want to be outside and get some of that physical element of it. But definitely, for sure, you want to make sure that you’re exercising your mind using it. You don’t lose it as we get through retirement.
Victor: Yeah, maybe you want to sign up for class, learn how to use the computer more since everything’s now in the computer. Is there an iPhone class? I’ve to ask my daughter, “What am I supposed to be doing now [laughs] this iPhone?”
So there’s [laughs] a lot of things to keep ourselves mentally active. You mentioned working on your mind and how important that is.
There was an article I read the other day it’s called, “Video games aren’t just for teenagers.” It says according to an AARP survey, 44 percent of adults over 50 years old played video games in 2019 at least once a month, and the average is 5 hours a week, compared with only 38 percent in 2016.
This is before COVID‑19 hits. What of that numbers increased more since then? I’m not a big video game guy at all, but do you find clients maybe wanting to play some games, bridge and the like. Do you find that they want to play some games during retirement to enjoy themselves?
Victor: I think they do, and I got to say I go to confess during the COVID, I started playing games. My kids had the gaming machines. It was a great way for me to connect with them, but also connect with the people on the outside. A friend of mine, who’s another lawyer across the country, and we would get on it. We’d play games together.
Is it the fact that nobody plays video games? I’m not over 50 yet, but is it that chance now? There are definitely some people that do it.
Am I advocating to go out and buy a new Nintendo Switch or a PlayStation 5? If you don’t know what neither of those are, talk to your grandkids about it because they certainly want one for Christmas.
It does have benefits to playing games your retirement, whether you’re thinking about using your iPads to play Solitaire, Sudoku, or crossword puzzles whatever it is. There are tons of studies that show how playing challenging games tend to improve your cognitive abilities.
It’s one of the ways to stay off the effects of dementia, Alzheimer’s, or just age‑related cognitive issues to come up there. Again, it’s really important, it’s a way that you’re going to really enjoy retirement if you’re feeling cognitively fit. Playing games is definitely a good way to do that.
Mark: I like to read, so I’m going to hope that my reading takes care of my game‑playing. I’m hoping that. Top five ways to stay active in retirement, the final way is staying active.
What you got for us to wrap it up? We’re down to our final couple minutes.
Victor: I’d say the simplest activity is walking. By the way, it’s one of the healthiest ones that you can do. You can buy an Apple Watch and make sure you get your 10,000 steps or a Fitbit and get your 7,500 steps in.
Getting outside and having the opportunity to get your body in motion is one of the best ways that you can stay active. It’s a super‑simple exercise plan. You don’t need anything more robust than that but is a great way to boost your physical health.
You’re going to get your endorphins running. It’ll help you lose some weight. It’s going to improve your eyesight. It’s going to ward off depression. Tons of benefits to simple walking. If you get started with that, you’re going to go really far in an exercise activity plan.
Mark: A lot of great information, Victor, really appreciate all the information and the insight you gave us today on the program. Again, if you’re like me, maybe you’re going, “I wonder. 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?”
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Mark: At the end of the day, you want to know, when you retire, will you and your family be OK? Can you do the things you’ve always dreamed of doing? Can you do them now? Do you have to put them off? Where are you on that road?
The Palante Wealth team, the Medina Law Group team, they’re here to help. 856‑506‑8300 is the number. Again, no cost, no obligation, no pressure for this phone call. They’re here to help, just don’t know if they can help till they hear from you.
856‑506‑8300, and did you hear the part I said, there’s no cost? Why wouldn’t you? Find out more about your specific situation? 856‑506‑8300.
Glad you’re with us today for Make it Last with Victor Medina of the Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. I’m Mark Elliot. Have a great week. We’ll be back with you again next week.
Announcer: Palante Wealth Advisors are an independent financial services firm that utilizes a variety of investment and insurance products. Medina Law Group is an independent estate planning and elder law firm.
Investment advisory services offered through Palante Wealth Advisors, LLC, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania‑registered investment advisor.
Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. Any references to protection, safety, or lifetime income generally refer to fixed insurance products, never securities or investments.
Insurance guarantees are backed by the financial strength and claims‑paying abilities of the issuing carrier.
This radio show is intended for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be used as 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, and no statement made during this 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.