Make It Last – Ep 149 – The Tour de France

Make It Last – Ep 149 – The Tour de France
October 16, 2021 Site Admin Uncategorized 0 Comments

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This week on Make It Last, Mark and Victor will be discussing the Tour de France! How the Marginal Gains Theory helped France win, and if you can use the same theory to plan a successful retirement.

They’ll also be discussing the importance of getting to know your attorney, and why it’s important to discuss your goals with someone you know and trust.

There is power through education. It’s one of many keys that helps you create a unique and customized retirement plan.

Going through the motions? They’ll also be discussing the identity crisis that can come with the end of your career.

CLAIM YOUR FREE COPY of any book in the Make It Last Series by calling (856) 506-8300.

To access additional information, please visit Are You Paying Too Much In Taxes In Retirement?

Also available on SpotifyApple Podcasts, & Google Podcasts

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.

Full Transcription Below

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

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

Mark:  Now, well, I will say, those people might have seen you, as the local director of the a cappella group.

Victor:  Oh, my goodness, you didn’t warn me that you’re going to embarrass me this way off of it. Yeah, one of the things that I do for fun is I’m the musical director of a local a cappella group, which is great, because I’ll tell you, what we do for that for fun, is every Wednesday we start singing at 7:30 at somebody’s house in the area, everyone’s from general Mercer County, New Jersey area.

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

Mark:  I would tell you that one of my favorite movies of all time, and there’s like three of them, Pitch Perfect. Anna Kendrick. That’s what she do, ain’t it? [laughs]

Victor:  …what she’s singing, that the musical director that was on is this guy named Dick Sheeran, who actually went to my college at Towson University in New England Conservatory of Music, and somebody that I knew personally. He’s somebody that sent arrangements to my a capella group called Jersey Transit.

We have that cool connection that that music made it to Hollywood movie level. They had TV shows called “The Sing off.” It’s cool to watch somebody that I went to college with turn that into something that is almost mainstream accepted.

Mark:  Absolutely. That’s cool. That’s what we’re going to talk about. We’re going to get to know Victor little bit. I think it’s important that we do a radio show, we’re talking about retirement. We’re talking about some of the challenges, some of the “what ifs.” What if this happens? What if that happens? How we’re going to handle it? What about the fun stuff we’re going to do. How do we do all this?

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

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

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

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

Victor:  Yes, I did exactly that. After going to college, I worked for a little while, had a job working in the pharmaceutical industry and then I went back to law school.

I was mostly driven by my wife, who’s wonderful, because what she said to me is, “Look, you’re reasonably intelligent, but if you don’t get an advanced degree, people are going to think that you’re full of it for the rest of your life.” I owe her thanks for pushing me to go to professional school.

I went and got a law degree, did what, I think, traditional people do going into law school meaning that, I went to go clerk for a judge and work for a large law firm, doing corporate related work. That’s where the money was. Then there’s something deeply unsatisfying about that, because I was working for corporations and not for people.

In a fit of entrepreneurial spirit I left that job and started a firm where we were going to focus on estate planning. I did that mostly because I had a family member who suffered an untimely death. It was early and they’d done some estate planning, really thought they had everything in order, and it turns out it was a big disaster.

It was not malpractice, it was just a common practice the way the estate planning was done. It gave me an opportunity in the way that we were going to do estate planning, whether we’re going to be partners with people all the way through the rest of their lives, and we’d made sure that plans work when we needed them. We tested them along the way.

We completely changed the way that estate planning was practiced, based on the fact that I had this family member have something that I knew that he wouldn’t want to happen to his family. We started doing that differently, but because of that, what we were doing with people on an annual basis, we were establishing deep and long‑term relationships.

It wasn’t around the paper, but around the plan. It gave me an opportunity to start to be in a position of trust with them, where they would seek my opinion on things. Lots of different things. Not just because I was a lawyer, but because they knew that I cared about them and I was invested in their family’s success, and one of those areas was about finances.

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

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

I looked at myself in the mirror and said, “You know what, you’re just not meeting the expectations of your clients. You’re letting them down. They came to you to make sure that they were going to be OK.” Then what we did is then go ahead and create this sister company that just handles retirement planning.

I own that completely. It’s not a relationship where we send you to somebody that we have a relationship with. It’s here. It’s all in‑house. It’s exactly the same team that you’re dealing with when you’re estate‑planning, you’re dealing with when you’re retirement planning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark:  You think about now as a parent. You and Jennifer have three boys. Aiden’s 17, Lucas 14, Dylan 8. They’re at different stages. Aiden’s getting ready. One more year of high school then go off to college, if that’s what his choice is.

Lucas’ getting ready for high school. Dylan’s just graduated from middle school, or no? Lucas just graduated.

Victor:  Elementary. Yes. Second grade still for him.

Mark:  Yeah. Lucas just got out of middle school, as he moves on into the junior high level. Think about them. Your wife’s a school psychologist. You’re an attorney, but you’re a certified financial planner as well.

Finances were always something hard to talk about, it seemed to me growing up. I never really heard much about money. My dad was a college coach. My mom was a school teacher then worked for a bank. We really didn’t talk. I knew I got all the sporting stuff because my dad was a coach at a college. I got new footballs, new basketballs, new baseballs.

It was perfect for me growing up, but it wasn’t like we had a lot of money. We didn’t take a lot of trips, or anything. How important is teaching your kids about finances?

Victor:  It’s one of those areas that they probably ought to be adding into school‑related topics, much more than physics.

Mark:  Wouldn’t it be cool if they taught what you talk about, to actually have classes like that? The how to think about finances, because I don’t think…

Victor:  It never happened for me, right?

Mark:  Yeah.

Victor:  Did it happen for you?

Mark:  No. No. Not at all.

Victor:  It’s really important to do it. To your point, even if you have some level of money that’s in there, it’s very difficult conversation to have with your kids. You go back and forth which one of these two positions, Mark.

Either you don’t have a lot and the last thing you want to do to your kids is make them be the worriers about where security is going to be coming from in the future. That’s not anything you want to saddle them with.

Or you have a ton and the last thing you want them to do is become complacent about either work ethic or what it took to get there. You’re in this no man’s land for trying to figure out how to have these discussions.

They’re important discussions to have. They’re discussions that I’ve had with each of my kids, specifically the two older ones. The youngest one is always listening and always offering comments from the peanut gallery, but the older two are interesting examples for me because I’ve learned two things from each of them, or how successful I’ve had these financial conversations.

Aiden’s got a job as a lifeguard. By the way, great job for a high school kid to be sitting at the pool, getting a tan and swimming and looking good. He works, and he gets his paycheck. He’s now driving. He is responsible for his own gas.

We got a lot of stuff in there, but he tells me after I’m trying to…”Hey, listen. Your savings rate’s important. If you want to retire, if you want to have a nest egg, the more that you put aside…”

He’s the guy that comes to me and says, “Look, this is what I want you to do. Help me manage this. Dad, help me manage…” which is great, “I’m going to take everything in the hundreds‑level off of that paycheck. I’m going to give it to you to invest. I’m going to spend what’s in the tens and the twenties.”

I thought, my goodness that’s a lesson really well‑landed on this kid. Instead of giving me the tens and the ones spot, he was giving me the hundreds spot off of it because he understood the value of a savings rate and why that was important for him.

I knew that I had landed that one. That one was successful. Then with Lucas, the middle one is 14, is now of age to work. The first thing he’s thinking about is, how and where do I get a job? He’s thinking about getting his working papers.

It’s not that we’re sending him off to the fields to get working early. What’s important about discussing finances is the value of what labor is to generate money. That’s such an important lesson to know.

There is a spectrum on this, about what you’re going to work at, how much you’re going to get compensated for it, what the value of your effort is off of that. Eventually, how you increase that over time.

The one that has got his designs on following in dad’s footsteps, the clearest, at least the way he’s communicating it, is my middle son, Lucas. He wants to go to Tufts the way I went to Tufts. He wants to go to law school. He wants to have a financial degree. He wants to come and work in the business.

I think what he sees in that is a road that he wants to emulate because we’ve been able to show him that it’s got a lot of benefits for him. The lesson on finances is work hard and understand what the value of your labor is.

Hopefully, this other part of it, I hope he gets it. I know it to be true for what we do. I hope that he understands that we’re delivering an immense value to families. What we do for a living is transform their lives and give them security in retirement. He wants to be a part of that. I like those elements.

With the eight‑year‑old, Mark, we’re not sure. We’ll see how how he turns out. The first two, I’ve gotten a Hall of Fame number so far.

Mark:  Absolutely. The financial retirement business is important because Victor and the teams at Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth are not only working to improve your retirement life, but they’re also assisting with important decisions about the family as well.

Whether that’s estate and legacy plan, helping you to establish trust with an attorney or long‑term care planning, there are a lot of things that impact the other members of the family. When you work with Medina Law Group, with Palante Wealth, it’s a big family. They are all here to help support.

We know that there are challenges. There’s going to be some of those what‑if situations that happen. “How do we handle this? Holy cow, we are getting ready to start our beautiful retirement. Now, all of a sudden, my spouse has Alzheimer’s. We’ve got cancer.” We can think of all those things. We don’t want to, but it’s life, right?

The important thing is you have a plan that really is built for the what‑ifs. It’s also there in place where you put your head on the pillow at night and say, “You know what? When I wake up tomorrow, I’m going to be fine. We’re thinking we got things moving in the right direction.”

How do you do that if you’ve never worked in the retirement world? That’s where Victor’s companies come in, to help you do that. It’s about you. You’re the CEO. It’s your retirement. It’s your hopes and dreams.

Victor’s team is basically your CFO, your chief financial officer to help you understand the things that you don’t and to make sure that you make the right decision according to you. At the end of the day, it’s your final decision. Victor can help walk you down this path.

I don’t know why you wouldn’t take advantage. There’s no costs. There’s no obligation. There’s no pressure. To chat with the team, it’s 856‑506‑8300, 856‑506‑8300. Great opportunity, take advantage, 856 506‑8300.

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 if 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.

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’s in the client’s best interest.

If you don’t have a plan, you got all the tools in your retirement toolbox, but you’re not really sure if you have plan, “Hey, Victor, I think I’ve done enough. I think I’m going to be OK, but I don’t know how it’s all going to work.”

Well, that’s a great opportunity. Call Victor and the team at 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.

I’m glad you’re with us today. I’m Mark Elliott. Victor, are you a bike rider? I know you got a son that’s a soccer player and a son who’s a swimmer.

Victor:  It hurts after a while, Mark. I can’t sit on the seat long enough. 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.

Victor:  Not a chance. I drive very carefully around them on the weekend when I see them biking.

Mark:  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 though since Lance Armstrong days.

That was crazy, how those guys do this. 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 if 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 the team use the theory of marginal gains. We’re going to see, is there the Tour de France theory of the British cycling team shooting for just marginal gains? Can we use that in the retirement world?

The theory goes like this, Victor. If you make a one percent improvement in a host of tiny areas, the cumulative benefits would be extraordinary. You think about retirement.

We’ve heard coaches say, “Hey, we just want to be better next week than we were this week. We’re going to be better in tomorrow’s practice than we were today. We just want to make a little bit of improvement every day.”

That’s marginal gains. Are 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 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 with 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 in.

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 funds was almost 1.44 percent. That was the average.

There’s a DALBAR study, it had all of that information behind it.

If you just brought that back down by one percent, it meant that over a 10‑year period, same gains, same period of time in terms of being invested in there, if you just brought them down by 1 percent, 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 investment is one of those ways that you can make these sort of marginal improvements that allows you to have much bigger gains down the road.

Another area is definitely 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, the savings that you have in there starts to compound over time. We might look at it in taxes as well.

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, but what happens if I lower my risk? How does that relate 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 in terms of the use of that money and having that grow in the future, it actually lasts longer and it has a more secure for its retirement.

Those are little marginal changes, marginal improvements that you can make in your retirement planning that are going to have much bigger gains, maybe even allowing you to bike up and down the Pyrenees for 2,100 miles if you were 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, I think. 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.

Do 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 in a little different direction because I know I’ve got friends. I’m 61, so 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, but they’re retiring now and you think about when people are working they’re thinking about the rate of return, right? 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 do you realize if you only get an average of three or four percent, you’ve won the game?”

Marginal gains sometimes can be a positive rather than going backwards, but 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 so that we’re not having to swing for the fences every time. Is it allowed to make a mixed metaphor in sports on this? [laughs]

I mean I know we’re on ESPN channel and all, but just shifting on where you’re swinging for is often a smart strategy in a way that you’re going forward. Here’s a reason why.

If you start to look at the nest egg that you’ve created in retirement as being sort of 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.

You don’t need to take on additional risk, even if that has paid off over some period of time as in 2009 and 2019 the longest bull market in the economic cycle, and we saw all those increases.

We got a little bit lulled to sleep to think that this is always going to be the case. This course, a cycle for a reason, they’re up and down.

If you don’t have to take risks in retirement, and you lower the chances that these market corrections, even if their 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 investment while you’re accumulating wealth.

You want a return on your retirement when you get on there and that’s not coming from riding the roller coaster, or whatever the new cycle is with whatever is going on in the economic conditions.

You want to know that your plan is set up to withstand all levels of economic condition, and one of the best ways you could do that, of course, is to de‑risk or lower the risk that’s in there.

You lower your expected return because what happens…This is what we do when we put a plan together is, 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 ourselves to that because that’s probably the smartest thing?”

Mark, coming into this, my whole journey of starting as an estate‑planning attorney, then moving into the financial services, then doing both for clients at the same time holistically all on the same spectrum. I never lost that attorney’s mindset that I don’t believe anybody when everything is walking around there saying, “I don’t trust that, I don’t trust that, I don’t trust the other.”

If somebody says to me, “Well, 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?”

When I’m thinking through that in the same legal strategy that I would do for legal clients that are going into litigation, we’re doing the same thing in retirement and saying, “Well, hold on a second. How do we increase the chances of a success in 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 going, “No matter what’s going to be coming on, I’ve 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, so 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 are talking about the Tour de France. British cycling team over an eight‑year period won 16 gold medals and seven 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 he’s wrong, 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 because 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, and all those great UCLA teams, he actually 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 really big things over in the big scheme of things.

How important is it to, 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 because I think you used great analogies that speak to the way that a retirement coach/retirement planner would help all of this. 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 the clients is our proactive income tax planning, where our modeling what a 1040 would look like when they file their taxes, is not after the taxes are already done but pre‑ the end of the year.

This is a discussion that we have with our clients in the beginning of the year to try to help 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’ll help us avoid some of that.

When we think about testing the different 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 that 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 because you got to push this product. You have to sell the other one, or here’s the sales grid, which happens to a lot of the bigger broker‑dealers.

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, we think about hiring a surgeon to teach each rider what the best way it is, or tell us how to bring on our stocks. That’s when we bring in experts out there that have a multidisciplinary approach to what they’re doing.

A coach might be really good in one of these areas, but you may need help, for example, in some higher‑level tax planning, or you might need help on an estate tax matter, or you might be somebody that needs help on choosing the best Medicare plan.

That’s something that 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, a good coach should be thinking about the overall health of their team and what’s going to help them perform the best. The same thing with 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.

The success for them is going to make sure they make it all the way through retirement with peace of mind of 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. We’ve got 401(k)s, might have some real estate. We’ve 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, might have stock‑paying dividends, right? 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 the perfect time to sit down with the team at Medina Law Group for your estate planning, for Palante Wealth with all the retirement planning that goes into that.

Both worlds are tied together. You don’t want to have a retirement plan that just focuses on investments. Where is your income coming from? How do you know where it’s coming from? What about taxes? That can 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 really 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 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 or tweak just a little bit because we do know that marginal gains just goes to show that every little detail counts…

Mark:  …but it 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:  Welcome back to Make It Last with Victor Medina. Victor’s 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. 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 of the investment world, morally, ethically, legally obligated to do what is in the client’s best interest. That’s really important. Their website is palantewealth.com.

Victor is also the author of three books on retirement planning under his acclaimed Make It Last series. Let’s say somebody calls in the next 15 minutes. Could they get a copy of your book, or is that something that’s really priceless in that if I got a copy, my retirement would be taken care of?

Victor:  I’ll tell you, you twisted my arm, 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 have published in there, whether we’re talking about empowering women for 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 a reference to this show, we will send you a free copy. It is priceless, by the way.

Mark:  That’s what I figured.

Victor:  It is priceless, but we will send it to you because you asked for it, Mark, in the show. You can thank Mark.

Mark:  Yeah, but 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. You think about it. 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 a book on the women’s challenges, but there’s just a lot of information that we need to know because you’re never retired before. You 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. It’s just the Make It Last series. They’ll give you the option to choose one you want, a 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. 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, right? 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. It’s tough to give them up. Best‑selling author, Amy Morin, writes about things that mentally strong people always say. We’re going to go over some of these. Victor is going to give us his thoughts on how that leans into retirement planning.

Before I give you the first one, I’m going to give you this. Tell me if you can find a similarity between a parachute and a human brain.

Victor:  Are you 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. If it’s not open, it doesn’t work. How about that one?

Mark:  Yes, absolutely.

Victor:  Yes! I got it.

Mark:  Here’s what Amy says 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:  It dovetails the kind of clients that we love working with. Mentally strong people just aren’t going to follow other people’s guidance. “If it worked for them, this 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’ll 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 ask somebody for blind faith.

We say, “Look, we’ve done planning for thousands of people. 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 our 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 getting to that 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 it’s in their best interest. I’m really into this autonomy of our clients to make decisions. We’re their guide, and we’re not asking for the just full‑on power to do whatever we want. We’re guiding them in the right direction, and we’re empowering them to make those decisions.

Ultimately, they’re choosing to go down a path that we’re suggesting because they’ve determined that is the right direction for them. I think it relates not just to that we’re empowering [indecipherable 36:15] in general, but really the kind of clients that we love working with 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, 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, they’re different plans because it’s different needs, right?

Victor:  Yeah. 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 to make sure that you make success in retirement.

You want to navigate income taxes. You don’t want to have a mess when you die, you want a good solid estate plan. You have principles that are guiding principles that are things that are just mile markers on your journey. You want to make sure that you’re hitting those along the way.

The way that we make sure that every plan is unique to the clients is we spent a lot of time, Mark, goal setting with them. Having a conversation. Maybe it’s not as formal as what are your goals, but talking through with them and those initial meetings.

What is your dream for what a great retirement looks like? What for you is the most important elements from 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. They want to make sure that they’re setting up and creating experiences during their retirement for their family where 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 get clear on what would a great retirement look like and how are we going to meet those needs.

Then we can start to craft the plan to them and that’s where we get to that uniqueness of the plan itself is custom tailored. That’s what 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 needs addressing and how we’re going to do that, but it’s also short enough or it’s simple enough for it to be actionable.

Because 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.

Where they were not talking about a cookie cutter portfolio and just buy these things you’ll be all set, but it really is at any point in time what is it the plan that we need?

By the way in addition to that Mark, not only 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 got a chance of success on that new plan.

We’re always constantly evaluating that to make sure that we were within that 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, understand that, that’s why Victor has that company. He started that company back in 2006.

Then he had so many clients who wonder, “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 is not written in stone. Plan is 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 probably than your 8‑year‑old to 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 to Aiden because right now we’re going through a journey of him prepping for the ACTs is and he’s been really investing a lot of time.

One of these things that his work in there definitely meets the, “This 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 ‑‑ but what he’s seeing at the end of this 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 going into college and where he’s going to have options for where he’s going to go. What we see is that this disciplined approach, this long‑term view, his 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’ve got the discipline to stay the course, because you’ve been taught ‑‑ as we were talking about earlier in this segment ‑‑ about how we went and spent time with everybody and be transparent about the strategies that we’re putting forth.

You’ve understood the underpinnings about why this is going to be successful in that difficulty of staying disciplined will pay dividends over time. For our best clients, of course, they’re seeing that because they’re going to have that space in 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 really slowed down. We had this 20 or 30 percent correction in that March, and everybody was panicking on the news because we saw these account values go up, except for our clients.

We had a long series of conversations. We scheduled time, how are you doing? Most of the time was spent on, do you have enough toilet paper? Because their concerns wasn’t about the markets or their accounts, because we had already built in the plan.

Their discipline of filing that plan before the pandemic hit, made it easy to stay disciplined 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, or maybe the people who weren’t following such a disciplined approach, they had been very, very worried.

That really is where we see that value where 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, and 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 re‑evaluating, and then be consistent.” That would work in our everyday lives, that would work in retirement.

If you’d like to chat with Victor and the teams when it comes to your retirement. “Oh, I think I’ve done enough. I’m not sure if my money’s going to last as long as I do, though?” That’s a question. “I wonder if my loved ones will 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 some adjustments along the way, because we want to travel more? We want to stay at home.

Whatever you want to do, 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, so he’s got the Medina Law Group. He started that company back in 2006.

Then those clients were going, “Well, Victor. How come you don’t help us with the other parts of retirement? Income planning, investment strategies, taxes. How come you’re not helping us with that?” “Well, why can’t I do that? I guess.” So, Victor went and 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. We probably don’t want all of our money in the stock market world, right? It’s about a blending or the worlds.

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 client’s best interest. That’s a very small percentage of financial advisors around the country that operate under that fiduciary standard.

If you’d like 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 everyday. I’m going to be with you on that because you would, you’re absolutely right. You’d get bored with it. That 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. People are afraid of that loss of identity.

They’ve been so closely associated with what it is that they did because, not only do many of them do it for such a long time, especially if you got people who spend an entire career, maybe as a teacher or in a company and kind of working up the ladder for it, but it was occupying the majority part of their day and their week.

Their 8, 9, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. That’s the vast majority of their waking hours. When that split happens, there’s a lot of shifts that people have to make to be able to maintain a good identity.

Got to look around and find the right community for them, the rights 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 if you don’t use it, then you’re going to lose it. That’s a pretty good maxim for your physical health, as well, especially when you talk about your mental health. So many people starting 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.

The second 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 5. 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 experienced this, not just within the clients that we serve for helping them with retirement, 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. My mom, for a period of time, volunteered to hold babies in the neonatal unit.

My dad was volunteering in the hospital to be a liaison between the patients that were going through the surgery and their family was waiting for them. Whatever it is, you have to figure out ways that you can contribute to a 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 not just live longer, but live longer for a reason and really enjoy the time that you’re there because you’re seeing the fruits of your volunteerism, the fruits of your contributions, and really finding those ways to help people around us. That’s so rewarding, such a rewarding thing to do.

Mark:  I like that. It’s like a new purpose. I think that we do need something to motivate us to get up and 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 accurate, right? It’s 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, “What did you do?” “I was a radio host for Victor Medina.” Wow, surely had a lot of pressure, but it’s not my identity. Now you on the other hand, “What did you do, Victor?” “I had the Medina Law Group. I had 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 may be identified more by your job. I think that’s really important. Do you ever have clients that 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 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. You said it best. Retirement’s not a destination, it’s not an arrival point, it’s the beginning of a new part of your journey.

Whether or not you want to spend that doing nothing or spend that doing something, or doing something brand‑new, is entirely up to you. You want to have the options for them.

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 be forced to work, and some people may have the option of working. You want the answers to those types of questions.

I’ll tell you that in the way that you view the retirement view, if you view it as a journey as part of what you’re doing, 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. Some of them continue on for their old company in a role where they don’t have to deal with 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 they love, but they’re doing it on their terms. It’s a lot of the reason of why you’re going to put a plan together. What are your options? Do you have the opportunity to work, maybe, a really low‑paying job or a no‑paying job? But it is work.

You’re going to get up, you’re going to go, and you’re going to contribute, maybe volunteer. Like my parents were doing at the 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, but if you would like to go volunteer, or find a part‑time job, or be the starter at the local golf course, and 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 could volunteer, and 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. There are so many opportunities for people to take classes.

Before the pandemic, people can go an 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 onto 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.

What we’re doing here is we’re trying to figure out ways to exercise your mind and stay socially connected. A lot of these things are going to link back into sort of current events and things that are 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 so you don’t lose it as we get through retirement.

Mark:  Maybe you want to sign up for class to learn how to use the computer more since everything is now on the computer, or is there an iPhone class? I have to ask my daughter. What do I supposed to be doing now with this iPhone? So there’s a lot of things to keep ourselves mentally active. You mention 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 five hours a week compared with only 38 percent in 2016.” This is before COVID‑19 hits. I wonder if that number is increased more since then.

I’m not a big video game guy at all, but do you find clients may be 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:  They do. I got to confess during the COVID, I started playing game. My kids had the gaming machines. It was a great way for me to connect with them and also connect with the people on the outside. A friend of mine is a another lawyer across the country, we would get on and we would play games together.

Is it the fact that nobody plays video games? I’m not over 50 yet, but is there that chance now? There’s definitely some people that do it.

Am I advocating that you go out and buy a new Nintendo Switch or PlayStation 5…If you don’t know, but neither of those are talk to your grandkids about it because they certainly want one for Christmas.

It does have benefits to playing games in retirement. Whether you’re thinking about using your iPads to play that Solitaire, Sudoku or a crossword puzzle, whatever it is, they’re tons of studies that show how playing challenging games tend to improve your cognitive abilities. It is one of the ways we stave off the effects of dementia or Alzheimer’s are or age‑related cognitive issues that come up there.

Again, it’s really important. It’s a way that you’re going to enjoy retirement if you feeling cognitively fit and playing games is a 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 am hoping that. The final way, top five ways to stay active in retirement. The final way is staying active, what do you got for us to wrap it up? We’re down to our final couple minutes.

Victor:  I’ll tell you the simplest activity is walking and by the way it’s one of the healthiest ones 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, getting an opportunity to get your body in motion is one of the best ways that you can stay active. A really super simple exercise playing.

You don’t need anything more robust than that, but it’s a great way to boost your physical health. You’re going to get your endorphins running or help you lose some weight, it’s going to improve your eyesight, it’s going to ward off depression, tons of benefits to just a simply walking. I think if you get started with that, you’re going to go really far in exercise/activity plan.

Mark:  A lot a 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?”

At the end of the day, you just 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?

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Woman:  Taxes are just a fact of life. You can’t avoid it even in retirement, but what if I told you there are ways to minimize what you pay in taxes.

Victor Medina and his team can help. To learn more visit, 920taxes.com to get your free copy of Victor Medina’s tax guide. 920taxes.com that’s the numbers 920taxes.com.

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. Insurance guarantees are back 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 a sole basis for financial decisions nor should it be construed as a advice designed to meet the particular need of an individual situation.

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 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.