Make It Last – Ep. 130 – Getting Clear About Your Retirement Goals and How to Reach Them

Make It Last – Ep. 130 – Getting Clear About Your Retirement Goals and How to Reach Them
May 29, 2021 Site Admin Make It Last Radio 0 Comments

Mark and Victor start the show with the question, “Are your retirement goals as detailed as your summer vacation plans?” and emphasize the importance of preparing for life after work.

Making the most of Social Security benefits is an important part of your retirement plan. Could you pass a basic quiz on current rules and requirements?  Mark and Victor discuss strategies for maximizing your benefits.

Then the guys play a game of “Would You Rather…?” to show how to clearly define your retirement goals.

Listen 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 Transcript Below

Mark Elliot:  Welcome to “Make It Last” with Victor Medina. I’m Mark Elliot. Victor has two companies, Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. Medina Law Group obviously is what you think. Victor is a practicing estate planning attorney and Certified Elder Law Attorney.

Medina Law Group can certainly help you with estate planning and legacy planning and all of that and that’s a big part of retirement planning. The clients at Medina Law Group [inaudible 0:28] , Victor, why can’t you help us with our retirement planning? Why is it just a state and legacy planning and our legal documents that we need in order? Well, “I don’t know, why don’t I?”

Now, Victor is a certified financial planner, professional registered investment advisor. Medina Law Group started in 2006, Palante Wealth in 2014. He’s helped a lot of folks, come up with plans and strategies for retirement.

He’d love to do that for you. He’s featured on national television, “The Wall Street Journal,” “Huffington Post,” “US News,” and “World Report.” If you have questions about anything you hear on the show today, give the team a call. There’s no cost for this at all. The number is 856‑506‑8300. We’ll give you the number throughout the program 856‑506‑8300.

Now, Victor do you and the family, do you guys have big summer travel plans this year?

Victor Medina:  We tried to one big trip, Mark, with the family because we’d like to get the kids involved to get away, be with one another. Then my wife and I like to take a trip of our own. We’d like to reconnect and figure out why we got married in the first place because we’re often running around for the kids. The answer is yes, and maybe even a couple of them during the summer.

Mark:  Yeah. That’s the deal that a lot of Americans are going wild. After a year of being shut in, I would like the opportunity to go out and get out. Enjoy things, more attractions, more destinations are opening up, more people are vaccinated. We’d love the opportunity to get out of the house.

There is a line that bears repeating as we start thinking about our travel plans and that is this, Victor, and I want to know if you still find this to be true. Most of the time people spend more time planning their vacation, then their retirement. Do you still think this is true?

Victor:  It’s absolutely true. I’ve experienced it in my own practice meeting with clients, people come in and what they will have in terms of a plan is not anything that they thought too much about. It’s actually code of a plan of inertia.

They’re just stuck in what they were doing before maybe even having a junk drawer full of investments, but if you ask them about what kind of planning they put into their vacation, they went all out about when they were going to arrive.

What they were going to do while they were there, the flights, the kind of planes that they were going to be in to see what kind of seats they were going to be in. There’s a lot of extra plan that goes into travel. Even much more than I see goes that goes into their retirement.

Mark:  Do you feel like that’s because, summer vacation, for example, is something that’s a little bit closer. Where retirement could be three, five, eight years away?

Victor:  I think that it’s a combination of things. While I do think that this sort of, I think [inaudible 2:49] buys is the wrong term. The idea that something is right there and present, it’s this proximity effect. Where you’re just like, OK, I can do this because its upcoming. Whereas retirement as the retirement is further away. I think that factors into it.

There’s also those elements that you feel like you have an expertise on. Even if you don’t necessarily. We feel like we can make a plane reservation. We like we can get a sense about the hotels and where we’re going stay. Maybe even start to do searches on the Internet about things to do when were in those locations.

When it comes to retirement, the level of sophistication that goes into that planning sometimes could be off‑putting and the risk of being wrong is so much greater. You can kind of get into this analysis paralysis situation. If you screw up your retirement plan, you’re not going to go back to work to do it again.

Maybe you just avoid looking at it. Whereas, if you screw up this vacation, hey you still got on a plane and went somewhere. There will be another vacation coming next year or even later this year. I think it’s those two things in combination.

Mark:  Victor there are tons of articles on travel planning. There are tons of articles on how to save for retirement. Now some of the tips I found on travel planning for example, make a budget, stick to it. Book your trip well in advance.

Let’s say your goal was to take the family to Hawaii, summer of 2022. You create an account that’s called Hawaii 2022. You have the jar of change. This is Hawaii 2022 money. You just start throwing the extra change that you get back from buying a dinner or something like that. You create that and it becomes a little bit more, hey there’s a purpose in that jar or that account. It’s Hawaii 2022.

I think a lot of times in our retirement planning we have a lot of tools in our retirement tool belt, whether it’s stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETS and the like, or it’s life insurance or it’s annuities or it’s real estate or what have you. We really don’t have a purpose, a name for each one of those tools that we have in our retirement tool belt. How do some of these things apply to retirement planning?

Victor:  It’s a good question. It’s a funny thing that you mentioned Hawaii, by the way. My wife and I are, in fact, going to Hawaii for our 20th anniversary this August. I wish we could fund it just by putting loose change into a jar. [laughs] It’s actually a little more expensive to get out there.

Mark:  You might have to start a little early. It might be Hawaii 2030 if you’re doing it that way.

Victor:  You’re right. Exactly. I think that what’s analogous about that purpose discussion is that most people entering retirement will look at their bank of dollars, what they’ve saved, the nest egg. Just see it as one big pot of dollars that they’re going to use in their retirement. It really hasn’t been allocated to a particular purpose.

There is a series of needs that people have for their money in retirement. Some of that money’s got to be, for example used to generate income, some of that money might be there for long‑term care costs, some of them might be there for normal health care expenses, some of them might be a contingency for home repairs that are going to just age themselves into retirement the next 20, 30 years. They know they have to replace a roof or a hot water heater or something along the lines.

People don’t think about purposing those dollars or allocating those dollars towards a particular goal or a purpose. Might even know that they have enough to get to retirement, and therefore your need of purpose around that money might be to leave a legacy or leave it behind to someone.

Once you clarify what the purpose is, it also helps clarify what the right decision around that money is likely going to be, for example, the investment choices, how you’re going to treat taxes, the time horizon for it, all of those things start to crystallize.

As we’re talking about right now, you can see that they’re all going to have different kinds of time horizons. What you’re going to be doing in income today is going to be a different need of income 20 years from now, because inflation will make things more expensive.

The whole idea about putting these things into either different envelopes, jars, accounts, once you clarify what the purpose of that money is, what the need for that money is, it will also help you clarify what you should be doing to reach that goal.

Mark:  Victor and the team at Medina Law Group, and Palante Wealth, have created a specific website for some different reports that they’ve got on whatever topics we’re talking about, and there for you for your education and for your enjoyment, but also to give you some really good information.

You think about planning for retirement, you think about going on a vacation, while that vacation, you’re going to have, “OK, are we flying? Are we driving? If we’re driving, what’s the route? All of that? What’s our hotel? If we’re flying somewhere, do we need a rental car? Where’s our hotel? How long are we staying? What are we going to do and all of that.”

You have a checklist while in retirement, you have a checklist, what do you need to check off? “Hey, I’m good here, I’m good there, whoops, I need a little bit more strengthening up of that area.”

Victor and the team have this and it’s the report on the checklist for retirement. You can get it, no cost. All you have to do is go to the website 920checklist.com, 920checklist.com, and you’ll have the information right there. It’s an easy thing to do. Does this get sent to them Victor? Or do they download it on the website, you know how that plays out?

Victor:  I do. Once they go into there, and they put their information into they can register for it, it takes them to another page that will make it immediately downloadable, and the options get an extra copy by email. It’s going to be one of these things where they’ll have it two different ways. They can immediately access it.

They don’t have to wait for somebody in our office, if you’re listening on a Saturday, and it turns out that you want to get the report right now and you “Hey, he’s probably closed, it turns out that this will be automatically sent to you and be accessible to immediately.

This checklist is really helpful more, because one of the things that we want to know is that we’re OK, this checklist helps us make sure that we’re right in line. As you’re saying it identifies those areas that might need a little bit more time and attention before you’re ready to go.

If you kind of think about a checklist for travel, it’s often a packing checklist. Make sure that you’ve got everything that you need before you leave the house because it’s so much more expensive and cumbersome and can potentially be a problem.

If you end up someplace where you’re not supposed to be and this stuff on the checklist, it’s all important, but there are things that are more important. If you’re going to look at your planning checklist, there’s elements of this about remembering your medication, that’s going to be a lot more important than remembering a hairdryer.

If you’re going to go into a nice, warm location, maybe you just let your hair dry, I have no hair, I don’t know what that’s like, I assume that a hairdryer is important.

The idea is that these things have relative importance off of it and the checklist for retirement’s going to be the same thing, they’re going to be areas of this that are going to be far more crucial for you to make sure that you have in place and other ones that said, “Look, if you had it, it’d be great.” You would be in a better position if you did.

The checklist helps you go through about 30 or so of those items. It’s a really good and powerful tool.

Mark:  You can get it for no cost. There’s no pressure because you did this there’s no obligation. Palante Wealth is not going to badger you because you came and got this, but it’s a great opportunity for you to find out a little bit more about where you are on your road to retirement, all you have to do is go to 920checklist.com, and it’s yours. 920checklist.com.

Glad you’re with us today for Make It Last with Victor Medina, I’m Mark Elliot. We’re talking about comparing travel to retirement.

One of the trends that’s happened and certainly because of the pandemic. You’re talking about, “Hey, I can get a hotel, I can get a rental car, I can do that myself.” After the pandemic and because of the pandemic, to some degree, more and more people are using travel agents, more and more people are using the [inaudible 10:00] , because they don’t want to stay in hotel. They just rent a home for a week or two.

There’s a lot of things that are changing, but also that they’re now using travel agents. “Hey, what if I’m going to travel out of this country to another country? What are the restrictions? What are the things I need to know about doing so? What about if I travel from state to state?” The states sure we know, they have different rules and regulations going on.

More and more people are using travel agents to make sure that those kinds of things and if they get somewhere and they don’t like the hotel. They don’t have to mess with it. They just call the travel agent, say, “Hey, I need a new place, this isn’t going to work.” They’ve pushed off some of those may be stressors on, put it onto into the travel agent.

Do you find that the pandemic and those kinds of things are maybe leading to more and more people going? You know what? I thought I could do this retirement stuff myself but there’s a lot more involved than I thought. Maybe I should talk to the team of Palante Wealth or Medina Law Group.

Victor:  I have seen that Mark. I think the reason why it was really highlighted in the pandemic is for the last 10 years or so, we’ve seen a very robust stock market where you can make a lot of mistakes in what you were doing in your investing, in your accumulating, and still end up OK.

It’s very easy to put together a portfolio that was going to accumulate money. At a time where everyone was making money. Now, you may have lost out on something by not optimizing it, but you never really noticed because your account values went up and up and up. You may have even entered retirement drawing from those funds.

You’ve retired five years ago, you may be feeling like you were doing a great job. Then when the pandemic hit and your account values dipped by about 30 percent, depending on how you were invested in essentially a week, a series of 10 business days that happened over that.

What ended up occurring from that is your whole world got shaken. The whole of the foundation that you were leaning on mentally to make sure that you were going to be OK got rocked. It’s the same thing if you were traveling.

You’re using the agency these days. When you’re talking about making sure where I’m going to go? How do I get a COVID test to get onto that particular plane? What are the things I’m going to need? The questions changed. The questions changed because the ground beneath has shifted. It’s the same thing in retirement.

People, all of a sudden say, wait a second. What if the accounts don’t always go up every single year, the way that they have for the last 10 years? What if I need money in my account values are 30 percent lower than they were when I last look at them? What if, if we had recently inflation ends up coming out at 4 percent and stays that way for a period of time?

Those questions, the introduction of those questions have all underscored the reason why somebody with experience in the area, it also brings objectivity to it because they’re not as close to it as you are, is so valuable in this discussion.

As you enter retirement, or while you’re in retirement, you could already be there. You might make a decision, it’s now time to talk to a professional because I recognize that the questions have shifted.

It’s not something that is as easy as saying what is Google say, should be doing or how much they should be taking out? Not only do the questions for today change, but can this person help me understand what to do if the questions in the future are even more different than the ones that are today?

That kind of planning and the ability to have a plan in place that is flexible is what is so valuable. One of the things that we create for all of our clients is a plan that is tailor‑made to their needs.

They look at their income, investment taxes, and estate planning as one unit of what they’re doing and gives them the flexibility. If stuff has changed in the future, we have a plan to deal with that. That’s what’s so valuable about doing that.

Mark:  Again, if you would like the checklist, the report that Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth have put together for you, the checklist for retirement, just go to 920checklist.com. You can pick it up right there. There’s no cost. You get an email copy as well, 920checklist.com.

If you’d like to sit down with the team though and talk about your situation. How am I doing? Maybe you do that. You get the checklist and you’re going. It looks like I’ve got about a handful of things. I need shored up a little bit. Victor, how do I do it? Call the team 856‑506‑8300. No cost, no obligation for this, 856‑506‑8300.

Mark:  Glad you’re with us today for Make It Last with Victor Medina. We’re going to change topics. When we come back, stay with us. This is Make It Last with Victor Medina of Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth.

Mark:  Welcome back to Make It Last with Victor Medina, Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. If you’d like to find out more about Medina Law Group, go to the website, medinalawgroup.com, M‑E‑D‑I‑N‑A, medinalawgroup.com, palantewealth.com, P‑A‑L‑A‑N‑T‑E, palantewealth.com. There’s a lot of moving parts here, but the teams really are here to serve you.

They serve the Pennington Greater Mercer County areas as well as Bucks County clients in New Jersey and in Pennsylvania. If you’d like to find out more, you can go to medinalawgroup.com, palantewealth.com. You have questions, 856‑506‑8300. 856‑506‑8300.

I’m Mark Elliot, glad you’re with us today. We’re going to spend some time talking about a topic that there’s a lot of moving parts in the decision‑making of using this tool for retirement. There’s a lot of numbers out there that maybe we’re not as efficient making these decisions as we should be.

It’s back to the old saying of you know what? You don’t know what you don’t know. I bring this up because it’s really amazing. This is a study, and it was a Social Security quiz from MassMutual for those that were 55 to 65. They said a third of pre‑retirees failed the basic Social Security quiz.

20 percent got a D on the quiz, meaning more than half of Americans don’t understand the basics of Social Security and the rules. Now here’s the challenge, Victor, I think is that the rules change a little bit.

Remember 1935, FDR put Social Security in play. You had to be 65 to get it, but the average age back then was 62. They didn’t think you were going to get there. If you got there, “Hey, we’ll try to help you out for a few years because you’re not going to last that much longer.”

Now it’s so much different. There’s so much pressure on Social Security because there’s more and more people today hitting the age of 100 than ever before those centenarians out there. But now, instead of your average age of 62, now it’s 80, 85, 90, not unusual, not unheard of. But with all that being said, is Social Security still a cornerstone of our retirement plan?

Victor:  It has to be, by the way, we should stop making people live so long. I think maybe that’s the right decision? [laughs] We’re getting better and better and keeping people around for a longer period of time. But their quality of life of course is increasing with that, too.

There are 80‑year‑olds are probably doing as much as those 6‑year‑olds were doing and probably even more which is fantastic. It’s absolutely a cornerstone, Mark, because one of the things that the study often doesn’t discuss that we as planners understand is that the world’s around where you’re going to get your retirement income has shifted as well.

Over that period of time, most companies did away with pensions. They did away with a guaranteed income source when you retire. That places more emphasis and there’s more weight on getting a guaranteed income source, like Social Security because it’s one of the few that is left out there and people managing that and making smart decisions about that.

It’s crucial that they do that because when you get into retirement, you want to make sure that you’ve maximized the benefit that you’ve been paying into for 30, 35 years as a benefit that comes out of it, so it’s crucially important.

Mark:  Now, here’s the challenge is that there is no Victor Medina, there is no Mark Elliot, Social Security bucket. Our Social Security that we’ve been paying in goes to our family or relatives or friends and people across the country.

You don’t have a Social Security bucket, so that is a little bit of a challenge there. What do you think is the biggest misconception, if any, that people have about Social Security?

Victor:  I think that one of the biggest misconceptions that people have is that there’s no good planning to do around it, and that what you just do is you take it whenever it’s offered to you. I can’t tell you how many times clients have come in, essentially having already made a Social Security election to take it at age 62, at the earliest opportunity, because they thought to themselves, “I’m going to try to get as much money from the government as I possibly can.”

We forget about the other half of the deal, which is, the longer we delay, the bigger that number goes. In fact, you can delay until age 70, and every year that you delay, your benefit increases by 8 percent. That’s a very respectable return on investment, there’s no other guaranteed investment that will increase by 8 percent, and will last for the rest of your life.

Most people have this misconception that the best thing to do is just take it as early as possible, and that there’s no good planning to do and what compounds that misconception and mistake is when we have a married couple.

When there’s more sophisticated planning you can do, because being married to somebody for 10 years, gives you the rights to take a portion of their Social Security can take up to half of that value, which might be bigger than your number for a period of time while you let your number increase.

There’s a lot of these moving parts, we’re getting a good set of eyes on it, somebody who’s experienced in helping you plan around Social Security, the way that we are, might get you a better benefit going forward and maximize what you can do with the planning.

There’s always an opportunity to get a better result as long as you haven’t already declared Social Security. There are some fine wrinkles that if you just started declaring Social Security, you can change your mind about that pay back the benefits and then get the benefit of waiting and doing some other planning but it’s a rare thing. It’s very limited period of time.

If you’ve been collecting for more than a year, it’s been impossible for you to do that, but if you just recently made the election, “Did I do the right thing if that’s the right thing for me to do, and it just happened within the last year.” We can certainly look at that and before we make any decisions and help you understand whether or not that was the best thing for you.

Biggest misconception that there’s nothing to do. To cure out that talk to somebody that can help you do that, like us.

Mark:  All right, let me follow that up with this, because certainly Palante Wealth in the planning process. You have an income plan, investment strategies, tax planning, being tax efficient moving forward, the estate planning as well, with Medina Law Group, you have a lot of moving parts in retirement. Social Security is certainly going to fall into the income planning part.

If somebody calls you and says, “Hey, I would like some guidance on when and how to start Social Security,” because a lot of us, as you said, we look at it as in a vacuum, “Hey, I’m going to get it as soon as I can get it at 62. I know I’m going to get less, but I’m going to get it now while I can. I know if I wait till 70, I get more.”

When I just look at the math part of Social Security waiting makes sense math wise, but you’re not just looking at Social Security. When you have somebody comes in you’re looking at the rest of the portfolio and where and how does it make sense I’m thinking?

Victor:  That’s right. It isn’t in a vacuum in any case. It’s not in a vacuum, when you look at it and say you should take it immediately and it’s not in a vacuum, this is, you should wait to the end, because you can get eight percent.

You have to see it in the totality of everything else that’s involved, because you have to create a paycheck in retirement to live off of no matter what election you make. You take Social Security early or take some Social Security at the very end, you still have those bills you have to pay and you have to create this paycheck.

There’s these other tax components of it that factor into it. Where you get your other money from effects how much of your Social Security is taxed if you’re working at the same time.

As you were hinting at and putting all of these things into one analysis to look at each of the areas of income and investments, in investments as they relate to income and taxes as they relate to investments and income and estate planning as the other three, once you start to bundle all that stuff together, it gets you some ideas about the best way to do that.

The client is in charge the entire time. We’re coming up with these ideas, and then you as a client decide which of these things we’re going to be doing. If it’s an area that you don’t know about, we teach you about it.

That make sure that you’re making informed decisions along the way, but getting a set of eyes like ours, on your retirement picture will help you sometimes see options that you may not have known about before or see the impact of making planning decisions that may cause you to have higher taxes or something like that along the way.

I’ll tell you a quick story about one of the ones I always think is sneaky, and most people overlook, which is the amount of income that is taxable ends up impacting how much of your Social Security is taken for Medicare Part B premiums, and not in this year, but based on your taxable income from almost two years ago.

When people look at doing their planning, it’s sometimes a misconception or too simplistic to look at a top line number and say, “I know that for my Social Security, I’m at $2,500 a month and always going to be $2,500 a month and I always pay Medicare at $135 or something similar to that.”

When in fact that number can change, and it can change based on the fact that you didn’t do planning on where you were going to be taking your income from and sources that cause more taxes, so you can see this spool out of it.

This Medicare tax is Medicare part B premium that you are contributing as part of your healthcare. If you’re taking Medicare, it’s one of these things can sneak up and erode how much purchasing power you have.

Now we see the importance of looking at the total picture, because if we can take somebody and make their tax picture look better then as they get further into retirement, we extrapolate out what the value is of saving on the Medicare Part B premiums that they otherwise would have been paying.

The savings that they get every year that doesn’t get taken from the Social Security, gets added up over the course of 20 or 30 years worth of retirement as a total benefit of what we’re doing.

Sometimes you are not even focusing on that element of it. We also have the perspective of looking at things on a 30‑year horizon for you and understanding what you might take and what it might take for you to get all the way through that.

Those things come together in helping you put together a plan, because we can see turns in the road before they get there. We can help you understand how to jumble all this stuff together. It isn’t a straight line decision, just take it immediately or take it at the end. It is informed by lots of different things from lots of different places.

Mark:  Yeah, there’s a lot of moving parts and social security, widows and widowers eligible at 60, early retirement at 62. That has been around for a long time. Women were allowed to take it at 62 in 1956, men were allowed to take it at 62 in 1961.

Then they changed the laws on taxes. FDR put this into place and said, “This will never be taxed.” That lasted almost 50 years and made it to 1983, then they said, “Hey, we can tax your Social Security up to 50 percent.”

Then 10 years later, 1993, “Hey, we can tax your social security up to 85 percent.” If you have questions about all of this, sit down with a team that understands. Social Security is a part of retirement planning. There’s no question about it. It’s part of your income strategy when and how to take it.

856‑506‑8300 is the number again, no cost for this. This is just a chat and a conversation, and does it make sense for us to move forward? 856‑506‑8300 is the number to talk to the team about Social Security.

It’s really a confusing part of this, because Victor, I think it’s crazy to think you can get taxed on it. Those have been around for a while and they adjust those as we go. One of the areas really gets confusing, our spousal benefits.

I think that that changed in 2014 where you guys could really do some hocus‑pocus and make some things way better for people with Social Security and they did away with that.

Victor:  Yeah, there was a big magic act. Absolutely Mark. What we could do is make it look like one person was claiming, and then their spouse wasn’t going to claim for a while. Then we could switch it around later, filed what was called a restricted application, swap it out.

They really did away with that as one of our planning options. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t something that we can do to maximize what you’re getting, but we lost the ability to get as creative as we were before the law changed.

Mark:  Most people come in. Do they understand that when a spouse passes away that the lower of the two Social Securities actually goes away? You don’t keep getting both, are most people aware of that? Today you think?

Victor:  I’m seeing more and more people understand that. I think because we’ve spread that message out. We as financial advisors, we as retirement planners have let people know there is going to be an impact to what happens when one person dies.

We want you to know about that as often informed how we do tax planning, but what often is not discussed in which should be discussed as the second sentence to that, is what the tax impact of that is. Because when you lose one portion of that Social Security, you are simultaneously shifting your filing status from married to single.

What that means is even though you’re getting less income, you might actually be paying more in taxes because the tax bucket size for single people is about half the size of the amount for married people. There’s fact is a penalty to what happens when one of the spouses die and you change the filing status.

It could be for exactly the same or similar income, you’re going to end up paying a lot more in taxes.

That’s one of those second sentence that should follow the one that lets you know, that you’re going to lower Social Security, you have to say, and you also might be paying more in taxes, because the more that your number goes up, the more that your Social Security gets taxed.

If all of a sudden you went from having two Social Securities down to one, and before it might only have been taxed at zero or 50 percent and now it’s taxed at 85 percent, just because of the filing status changed.

I see a lot more people not understanding the tax impact. I do see more people understanding that they are going to be losing one of the Social Securities. They know it might be one. They may not always know that it’s the lower of them.

That’d be good for us. Let us know it’s actually the bigger number, but they start to understand that they are not going to be able to keep both of those checks.

Mark:  Social Security falls under the income planning part of this process that Victor and the team will walk you through. The income, investment strategies, tax‑efficient strategies, legacy estate planning, Social Security is in the income part.

If you would like a report about income in retirement, because you probably don’t want to just go, “You know what, I’m going to get Social Security so I think I’m good to go. I don’t have anything else but Social Security, I’m good to go.” [laughs] Well, you’re probably not.

Social Security is a big part of this. Victor says it’s still a cornerstone of retirement planning, but it’s not the be‑all. It’s not going to be the one thing to save you. There is no silver bullet anymore. You’ve got to put a lot of things together to create the picture that you want for your retirement.

Victor has a report on income, and it’s 920income.com. 920income.com, you go there, and you get the report. It’s fantastic. Retirement planning starts with income. We’re going to come back, we’re going to talk more about Social Security because there’s some surprising numbers that are out about Social Security.

I already said that a third of retirees or 55‑ to 65‑year‑olds failed their Social Security quiz. It’s amazing how many claim at the wrong time. We’re going to touch on that as well. Again, though, if you have questions, you want to sit down with a team, talk more about Social Security and where you are on your road to retirement, 856‑506‑8300, no cost, no obligation, no pressure.

856‑506‑8300. If you can do it, whether you haven’t started Social Security yet, what a great time to do it. Do some proactive planning, 856‑506‑8300. Back with Victor Medina, this is Make It Last. More about Social Security right up after this.

Mark:  Welcome back to Make It Last with Victor Medina. Victor has Medina Law Group. He has Palante Wealth. He’s the author of five books on retirement planning under his acclaimed Make It Last series. Here’s the deal, the team is here to help you. If you have questions like, “When can I retire?” “Do I have enough?”

“Will my money lasts as long as I do?” “Will my loved ones be OK if something happens to me?” At the end of the day, we just want to know if my wife and I retire, if it’s just me, just I retire, will I be OK? Will my family be OK? That’s the deal.

Victor and the teams at Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth are here to help you figure that out. There’s a lot of moving parts, a lot of people go, “I don’t know, I don’t want to talk to Victor because he just didn’t tell me I have to work five more years.”

Victor, that probably could happen, but it also could be, “I don’t know why you didn’t come in. You could have retired five years ago.” You do get both ends of that spectrum, I would think.

Victor:  We do. I don’t like to have that tone of voice in either of those discussions that you need to work longer, or you should have seen me five years. I’m nobody’s paired off of that. I think that we take the right attitude, Mark, than anybody that comes in and seizes. If you were to reach out, and you come in and say, “Hey, I want to have a conversation with you.”

Our job is not to look backwards. Our job is to take a look at where we are right now and give you the best plan going forward. Sometimes that means if you’re not willing to work, here’s the impact of what’s going on here, or because you’ve made past decisions this is what we’re limited on what we’re doing.

We’ll be very objective, we’ll be honest about what we’re doing. We’re not going to spend a lot of time looking backwards about what you failed to do or decisions that you made that could have been made better. We’re going to take a look at where people are right now and give them the best decision that we can on how to spend the rest of the time that they have to make it last.

Mark:  Absolutely, 856‑506‑8300, no cost, no pressure, no obligation, and no judgment. We’re going forward. 856‑506‑8300. We’re talking about Social Security. We said that there was a quiz by MassMutual of 55‑ to 65‑year‑old Americans, and a third of them failed the Social Security quiz.

Here’s an astounding thing, I think, because Social Security administration had said a few years back, Victor, that 70 to 80 percent of Americans took Social Security the wrong way for their situation. Now, it’s being reported that up to ‑‑ this is a study from United Income ‑‑ 96 percent of retirees are claiming their benefits at the wrong time.

That means four percent of us are getting this right. It doesn’t mean you’re wrong at 62, or you’re wrong at 70, or you’re right at 62 and right at 70, and vice versa. Whatever you decide, you’re wrong. That’s what’s crazy. Are you seeing this when people come in? Do you have to say, “I’m not sure this is the best time for you to do it”?

Are you surprised by that number? 96 percent of retirees claim Social Security at the wrong time.

Victor:  I have to be honest, I think I am very surprised by that number. I would have been comfortable with a number that looked like anywhere between half to three quarters. I do see that people are making the mistakes, but the fact that it’s everybody that is doing it.

I want to be clear by the way, that study is not on the basis of longevity that they died too early or lived too long. It is on the total benefit that they could have gotten for the time that they were there. They are taking exactly where they were, they could have made a better decision.

I am totally surprised by that number, but here’s the reason why it’s so important. This benefit that we have is essentially…I don’t want to call them free dollars, because we’ve paid into the system. They are dollars that are going to be generated to us and we don’t have to do anything else to have earned them.

We’ve already paid into the system, you’ve aged out, you’ve earned your benefit. Whatever that number is, is a function of your working history, how much you’ve contributed for how long. It’s a very clear line discussion on what your benefit is, and what it potentially could be based on planning.

We have that in there, it’s an earned benefit that you have, but by making a mistake around this you could be losing between tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars of money that is already been paid into the system that you’re entitled to, simply because we didn’t get great counseling, or even get great counseling when you made the decision.

We’re talking about real free money that is something that is essential to you having a successful retirement. A mistake here, literally, can be very costly. We’re talking about real money that could potentially be gone because we didn’t think this through or get the best advice for it.

Mark:  I have a lot of friends who are retiring right now and most of them had pensions at their job. I don’t have a pension, so I don’t have that luxury. Social Security is going to be a big decision for me. I can’t do it and work, I don’t think, because it gets too confusing. Do you find that most people when they retire go, “I might as well start Social Security with it”?

Victor:  I do. Most people do elect it. I would consider it to be with the label of too early. We don’t know everybody’s situation. Sometimes when they’ve made the election, they’re stuck with it.

If it’s been more than a year, there’s nothing we can do to change it. I would say, if I were placing chips on red or black roulette table off of that, most people tend to take it too early. They tend to take it at age 62 when it’s immediately available.

I think that the reason for that is that Social Security is a sense of security. What’s going on in there is that they know that they can count on that income, and they want to start a paycheck as soon as possible. What they’re missing in the calculation is not just what that benefit could grow to.

With the tax impact of doing that is how you add money into the bucket with the impact to your overall retirement picture looks like.

In other words, if you’re looking at longevity, if you want to live to 95, or later, if you think you’re going to live to even longer than that, how it affects the entire picture for something like that, and what we’re doing with anything about, what we’re leaving behind for legacy.

Generally speaking, people take it’s too early, and what I mean by too early is that they can get a better benefit, take a look at everything. By the way, sometimes generating income is something that you can do with the investments that you have by reallocating some of that as part of an overall plan.

It’s not that you’re missing out on the fact of getting a guarantee for income, you can figure out a way to get a paycheck, that is a guaranteed amount on the way that you do your retirement planning. It’s just not worth taking it from the Social Security bucket. We might be taking it from a different bucket to get there.

As part of what you would get in getting entire plan made up is that you would understand this is exactly where we’re going to get which dollar from at what time and see that projection out for the entirety of your retirement.

Mark:  Do maybe people take that decision where they just go, “You know what I’m going to start, I’m going to retire at 62, so I’m going to start Social Security at 62, I’m going to retire at 65, I’m going to start social security at 65.”

They know the only person that they can leave Social Security to is a spouse, and the lower Social Security is going away, but the higher of the two stays, can’t leave it to the kids. So why, pull for my retirement accounts, which I’m planning on leaving. Is that a factor in that decision to do you think?

Victor:  It’s a factor, you’ve probably said it a little bit more sophisticated than the clients that I meet with. They’re capable of saying it’s like it’s not an amount they can leave behind, they tend to see it more about the idea that they can leave the other account behind, they don’t want to touch it.

There’s a lot of people that look at their IRAs as a forbidden bucket, because they understand the touch it is to cause taxes, but sometimes it’s right smart planning is to cause taxes to be paid sooner.

The IRS is essentially your business partner in retirement, they’re taking a portion of all of your, “winnings,” what you get out of your IRA, they’re going to take a portion of that, but more importantly, they can change the rules about how much they take from that amount.

They can change the tax rates into because they change the tax rates, they’re changing how much they’re going to take from it. Sometimes what we can do is buy out the IRS, we can say, “OK, listen, we understand that your taxes are at these rates right now, we’re going to take your word, we’re going to cause there to be taxes to be owed.”

That way we pay off the taxes, and we never owe you again, because we put into a Roth IRA. Or perhaps we use some specially designed life insurance to get some income tax free benefits, but the idea is that we don’t have to pay taxes on this again.

The reason why we might do that is because in fact, allows us to take our Social Security tax free in the future, potentially, because it allows our Medicare premiums to stay low.

If we’re taking it from other tax two sources going forward, and now we start to understand how and why getting that “guaranteed money” from Social Security early may not be the smartest overall strategy because well you took from the federal government by essentially claiming your Social Security early. You also gave back to the government because you decided to pay higher taxes over a longer period of time.

In fact, if you’re planning on leaving IRAs behind to kids, they’re essentially going to have to pay those IRAs out as income tax over 10 years at their rates, and you and your retirement probably with a lower tax rates than they do as working individuals. We don’t want to miss the forest for the trees, understanding that it’s about making sure you keep overall the most amount of money.

For you just to take it early, because it’s something that’s guaranteed from the government, and you can’t leave it behind to anybody else, but then yet agree to pay the federal government a whole bunch more in taxes, based on the fact that you didn’t do smart planning on the IRA, we missed the boat off of that. That’s reason why we need to took a look at everything when we create a plan.

Mark:  They’re not just going to look at Social Security, but that’s a big decision, why not get some guidance on how to make the right decision for you, when 96 percent of us take it the wrong way, because we don’t look at all the other factors, we’re just pretty much looking at Social Security in a vacuum.

856‑506‑8300 is the number there’s no cost no obligation for this again, no judgment either. 856‑506‑8300. We know that Social Security started in 1935, FDR started, the average age was 62, you had to be 65 to get it.

They didn’t think very many people would get it, if they did, they wouldn’t be there very long. Then they changed it from 1943 to 1954, or during that time, your full retirement age is 66. Then they changed it again in 1955. Then it went 66 and two months, 1956 66 and four months, 66 and six months is ’57, 1958 66 and eight months.

I’m born in 1959. Everybody is born in 1959. This year is turning 62. But our full retirement age is not 66. It’s 66 and 10 months, and then those that were born in 1960, or later, which means those born in 1960, next year are going to be eligible for Social Security at the age of 62, but they’re not eligible for full benefits until the age of 67.

Full retirement age, that’s got some connotation and meaning, doesn’t it?

Victor:  It does. It really for folks is that period of time where a couple of things happen. First, they get that earned benefit that they’re seeing at the top of their statements, you log into the Social Security, you see what your benefit is going to be, that’s actually a full retirement benefit, so you have to wait to that age to do that.

The other thing about that, that happens is that, if you happen to be still working at the time, it means that that’s the finally the age that if you claimed it at your full retirement age, you wouldn’t have to pay back anything or lose anything based on the fact that you had earnings from somewhere else if you kept working on your job.

There’s a lot of impact to understanding that full retirement age is a term of art, and what it means in your right marking what they’ve done, the federal government done is tries to shrink the pool of people that get money for the smaller period of time by delaying when you can start, and taking a look at how it’s going to be taxed and increasing the taxes on it, kind of funny.

You pay taxes in to get Social Security, then you pay some of it back, because you owe taxes on it, you returning some of that money in there, by changing the variables on that what they’re hoping to do is make sure that this benefit is something that they can continue to offer.

Even though the pool of people that are receiving it is increasing the length of time that they’re receiving it is also increasing. We haven’t even introduced the topic about how they’re funding it, and the whole idea that the Social Security trust fund continues to get rated with different legislation that is passed, and that threatens the viability of that going forward.

There’s all of these things jumbled together, that makes Social Security full retirement age, which you’re going to be receiving how long such a murky area to be waiting around in.

Mark:  A murky area, Social Security, because there’s no question a few years back, it was security ministration, saying, “Hey, I think we’re only going to be able to give you about 77 cents on the dollar in 1934, 1935. Well, then the pandemic hit. Now they say, well, maybe it’s 1931, 1932, we’re talking 10 years away. 2031, 2032, not 19.

I said 1 but 2034, 2035 77 cents on the dollar is pandemic hits, maybe it’s 2031, we’re 10 years away from that may be happening. Here’s my take on this, and then we’re going to move on to another topic is that elected officials want to get elected. Now, for my baby boomer age, we’re not going to let you mess with our Social Security. If you want to get reelected, don’t mess with us.

[crosstalk]

Mark:  That’s all I’m saying. They might have to raise the age. 1983 was when they changed that full retirement age of those born in 1960. They were 23 when they changed that age. They might change it to a full retirement age of 70, and maybe that’s what we’ll do start bouncing everything up. I could see that happening but it’s not going to be happening overnight. They’re going to take a little time with that.

We’ll talk more about this, I’m sure at some point. 856‑506‑8300 if you’d like to talk to Victor, because this is a big decision. They’re saying 96 percent of us get it wrong. You can take it anywhere from 62 to 70. There’s a right time for you and your spouse if that’s the case, to make the right decision.

The team is here to help, 856‑506‑8300. Headed to our final segment right after this. This is Make It Last with Victor Medina.

Mark:  Glad you’re with us today for Make It Last with Victor Medina. 856‑506‑8300. If you have questions about anything, when it pertains to your retirement, pertains to your finances. You need some guidance in the legal world, certainly Medina Law Group can help you, 856‑506‑8300.

Victor, I don’t know, you’ve got three kids 17, 14 and 8. I don’t know if you’ve ever played a little game of Would you rather with them, have you?

Victor:  No, I have not.

Mark:  You’ve never said all right, Aiden, you’re 17, would you rather go to college or just have me fund you traveling around the country and enjoying yourself?

Victor:  I haven’t given him that. Kill me if I gave him that, but I did give him the option says, “Would you rather take a scholarship for college and I will give you a car or go someplace where I have to pay out of pocket?” He understands that one. He’s interested in when I get a car.

Mark:  Absolutely. You think about it when people come in and sit down with you and your companies, Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth, it’s because they have questions or they have concerns or they have a big decision to make. That’s what retirement is all about.

If you’re a married couple, and the husband says, “You know what, I can’t wait to go fishing every day.” The wife’s probably not going to be excited about that opportunity. Maybe or maybe flip flop and maybe the wife loves to fish. You don’t want any part of it.

It’s interesting on how you make some of these decisions. There’s got to be a little give and take, especially if you had a job that traveled all the time. You may not want to travel in retirement, but the other spouse had a job or they were always at home, maybe taking care of the kids or worked at home, and didn’t go much and they’ve can’t wait to travel.

You’ve got to come to middle ground, if you will. We’re going to play a little game of, Would you rather today. Victor, would you say would you rather is one of those minutes what retirees have to decide?

Victor:  You do, you make decisions between two options and say, “I’d rather be this or that I’d rather be right, or this or that.” It’s a good one. I like game shows by the way, Mark, let’s do this one.

Mark:  There you go. Now, we’re going to get into retirement Would you rather, but I always like this one right out of the game. Would you rather, Victor, have unlimited pasta for life or unlimited tacos for life? For me, this is a no brainer. What about you?

Victor:  Was it for you?

Mark:  Tacos undoubtedly.

Victor:  Yeah, I’m with tacos too. I want to make one little caveat to the rule, because me as a lawyer, I always have to put a little parenthetical I’m going to argue the underlying foundation of it. I also need the ability to have different kinds of tacos just in the same way we want different kinds of pastas for there, because tacos are [inaudible 46:42] . I like tacos.

If we go to the tacos, with the caveat that they can be different kinds of tacos, unlimited for life, keep your pasta.

Mark:  OK, yeah. All right. So your one for one. Congratulations.

Victor:  Thank you very much.

Mark:  Now, though, we’re going to get into retirement, and these are the things that I’m pretty confident that a lot of your clients have to make a decision. Some might depend on their age as well. If we get into retirement, let’s say at 65, but now we’re at 85, maybe our views will change. Fair to say?

Victor:  Yeah.

Mark:  OK, here we go. Let’s just go with we’re going into retirement. We’ve got to make some of these decisions. Would you rather spend your retirement living in your own home or would you rather move to a retirement community?

Victor:  That’s a good one. I think that I would prefer to stay in my own home. The reasons for that is because we re‑did our home, we like old home. There’s something about staying in there, because of the pride of what we did to change it. I would prefer to be in my own home.

I would say when we think about it from a perspective of retirement, people need to have flexibility around their decisions, because I don’t know that you can control what that looks like.

What I mean about that is, sometimes it’s as simple as going to retirement community where they got the shuffleboard and the activities, and maybe it’s just a decision between the two, but I see this as the ability to change your retirement picture around living at your choice, rather than it being forced to.

For example, you might have kids that as you’re studying to have grandkids start to move to other parts of the country, and what you need the flexibility to do is have one base of operations, but perhaps maybe rent a home for two or three months or have a second home if you got want kids to be around your grandkids.

That idea of having flexibility around that is probably more important thing to have in place and directly choosing one because even as you get older, and you might need a long term care facility, as part of what your retirement is, you need to plan around that.

You can’t control if you’re going to get sick, you can’t control for example, if you’re going to need some additional care, and there’s a lot of people like for me, I wouldn’t want to be a burden on my children.

I would want at least to have the option to be in a place that could provide me my meals and make sure that I’d have to cut the lawn and take care of me if I got sick, especially if I’d lost my wife and I was by myself or the other way around, I would want my wife to have the ability to have that option.

You think about these things that might be coming and just keep as many doors open for that. This is a tough game Mark, you’re asking a lawyer to make decisions between two things, and our default answer is always it depends. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to keep up with this the whole time.

Mark:  It is interesting, because most would probably prefer to stay in their own home. My mom is 84. She lives in a retirement community, which means everything inside of her gated area, her porch area, there’s yard, but she didn’t deal with that. Everything’s just inside the fence. She deals with that, and it’s a balcony. It’s really nice.

She doesn’t want to do all the landscaping and all the yard work, but she still has her little flower areas, but it’s not as much as it was when she had her own home. There are some benefits to all of this, and it depends.

That’s why I said does it depend if I’m 65 and eager about retirement or am 85, and I’m slowing down a little bit. Maybe I don’t want to take care of everything. We do put this with a grain of salt. We’re not saying look ahead, you’re in retirement, what are you going to do?

Here’s another one. Would you rather rent a house in retirement or be a landlord? I have no handyman skills. If that was my choice, I’d have to be rent but I could also hire a management firm and be a landlord I suppose. Would you rather rent to someone else or rent a house out to others for potential income in retirement? You probably have clients that do have rentals.

Victor:  I was going to say you answer this question. I’m all of a sudden in the Kawasaki book about rich dad poor dad about trying to get to that point of being of somebody who’s a business owner or somebody who’s an investor and they’re getting income from that.

That idea about a landlord just spoke to my quadrants, and I’m looking which quadrant I’m going to be for cash flow. The entrepreneur in me, the guy who started two companies and is handling, taking care of all that stuff with a team and wants to grow. For me, I would default to wanting to be a landlord.

I would say you this for the people that are landlords, or have current properties. If you’re married, or if you think about what would happen if you became incapacitated, you have to think about the impacts to other people.

I had a client of mine who came in and he was very successful in owning different properties. He had a portion of stuff that was in a shopping center, he had different apartments that happen to be right near where BMW had its plant. They were constantly rotating executive into this high‑rise apartment that he had.

He was very successful on getting that, but when he came in, and we talked about what we were going to be doing with his plan, one of the questions that I asked him, I said, “You’re very good at this, and you talked to Mark or you’re not as handy.”

He would show up to the homes and he would hammer things and he would plug things back in, he would do electrical said, “We’re very handy, and you’re very hands on doing this. What would happen if you got sick? Or what you think would be the effect if you died suddenly? What would happen to these?

We know that we’re going to sell them because your wife is not going to take care of them, but what would happen in the interim of that? How would we even manage that as we were getting ready to sell them?

Isn’t that an activity that we should take care of while we still have control over that you were the most knowledgeable person around this property? Wouldn’t it make sense to have you in control of making decisions on how to get rid of it, when and what you were going to ask for it, and then make the burden on the people that leave behind much lower.

You really have to think about if you’re going to be somebody that wants to be a landlord, if you’re fully capable of doing that, as long as you’re, well what happens if you become sick, and if you’re married, what happens if your spouse is not as handy as you are, and the impact of that.

Everybody that we meet with and it’s probably the case for most folks that are thinking about their retirement and how they’re going to manage it, they don’t want to leave the problem behind part of the reason they want to do this planning is that if something happens to them, and they’re chiefly the person who’s most responsible for the finances and doing the planning, they don’t want to leave the person who’s not as involved holding the bag and really in trouble.

One of things you can do with respect to real estate is lower the complexity level of that. You still love real estate, maybe find a real estate fund that often what you’re doing, but really want to get to that passive situation rather than it being something that you’re actively involved in, because you may not always be there to help manage that property.

Mark:  If you’d like some guidance in this, because these are big questions and make decisions that basically every retired couples got to make. They’ve got to make this decision. Would I rather do this? Would I rather do that? You know what if one of us passes away, then what. 856‑506‑8300 is the number to chat with Victor in the team.

There’s no cost, no obligation, no judgment. 856‑506‑8300, great opportunity to be proactive, not reactive. Let’s get started. 856‑506‑8300.

What I want to say though, to wrap this all up, is that to me Victor, a lot of people think, Victor has a wealth company, Palante Wealth. He’s got Medina Law Group, so it’s all about money. I think a great deal of what you do is helping people with questions like these. It’s the relationship stuff. Do I buy that second home? Do I rent a home for a month or two? How do I make those decisions?

Certainly, money plays into this, but your companies are not built just because people have money. You’re trying to help them and it’s more relationship. Are you on board with me, Victor?

Victor:  I am on board. It is an unfortunate byproduct of anytime you talk about estate planning or trust, like I don’t have enough money for that. If we talk about wealth advisement, retirement planning, you must only work with people that are super rich and that’s not me either.

It’s certainly an uphill battle that we fight to make sure that people understand that no matter who they are and how they show up in our lives, we’re going to be helping them, so if you called us we would say, “Hey, listen, where are you right now?”

We’re going to do the very best job for you where you stand. There’s no values, there’s no judgment. Where you are, we always have some ideas on helping you get to a better place.

That’s the case, whether you have $100,000 or $100 million, about what we’re going to be capable to do, but the bigger point that you’re making is that the value of the person in your life is in the relationship that you’re having with them, and the ability that you have someone that you can call and trust to help guide you along the way.

The answers that we’re giving you, when you come into planning are not answers that are static, without change forever and ever. It’s the beginning of a plan that sets you on the right course, probably a better course than you were before we met, and hence you headed in the right direction.

Where the value of the relationship is when you have a question that was not foreseen and what we put together in the plan. That wasn’t something that we knew coming in, that change in the law, and how it impacts your planning, the change in your personal life circumstances and how it affects it.

One of my favorite stories, I had one of my very first clients, and we had a call with them. They were on there, and they spoke with me, and they said, “I don’t know if you know this, but you’re with us a lot of the time during the day.” I said, “I’m not sure what you mean. We’re not talking about spirits or anything like that.”

He’s “No, no, no, no, we sit there and we think to ourselves, what would Victor say about this or how would he guide us in this area?”

That, for me was the highest compliment that I’ve ever been paid in the idea that our clients find so much value in our perspective, that we’re there with them as that voice even when we’re not physically there, or they’re not calling us, that they’re looking for the guidance that we provided, put so much value on what it is that we’re doing.

That comes with it a related obligation, which means that we always have to be there for them. If they’re relying on us, we always have to be there for them.

That’s one of the promises that we make, and one of the commitments that we want back and forth is we say, “Look, we’re going to do this great planning for you, then your obligation is that when you have a question, you contact us.”

When you are worried about what to do or you have a question about it, you don’t hesitate you just contact us. Since we don’t bill by the hour and since we’re not concerned about collecting for every time that we’re talking to you for it.

All we want to do is help you in your time of need and the best part of that interaction is to know that when you’re done with it, you’ll sleep peacefully at night. That relationship aspect, the fact that we are growing a client family is the thing that we look for and happen to get in all of the testimonials that we get for our law firm.

Anytime anybody talks to one of their friends about it they say, “It felt like we were treated like family. If we were his parents, they felt like he was doing that work. We were welcomed in, and we were welcomed with open arms.

“We know that that’s a place that we can turn to and get the advice that’s in our best interest from somebody that cares. We’ll never be made to feel stupid about questions that we were having. We’ll always get the best possible answer they can give us and we’ll always be cared for and welcomed.”

That’s the thing that we’re doing and has almost nothing to do with the dollar amount that’s in your account.

Mark:  So coming soon to Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth, you will be able to get the rubber wristbands that say, WWVD “What Would Victor Do.”

[laughter]

Mark:  There you go. Hey, you want to sit down with Victor and the teams and talk about your situation? We’ve talked about a lot of different things today. You need to have a plan and it starts with the call. 856‑506‑8300 no cost, no obligation, no pressure, no judgment. We’re looking forward. 856‑506‑8300, you know it’s time. Even thinking about it, let’s pick up the phone and get started.

There’s no obligation for this whatsoever. You’re going to find out more about where you are just by picking up the phone and then you decide do you move forward? It’s got to be a good fit for Victor. It’s got to be a good fit for you, 856‑506‑8300.

Thanks for being with us this week for Make It Last with Victor Medina, a Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth, we’ll back with more next week. Have a great week everybody.

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Mark:  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.

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Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth Advisors are not permitted to offer and no statement made during the show shall constitute tax or legal advice. Our firm is not affiliated with or endorsed by the US government or any governmental agency.

The information and opinions contained here and 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.