This week on Five Fact Friday, we’ll be doing some spring cleaning with an awesome estate planning checklist to help you review your estate planning documents and make sure everything is up-to-date!
We’ll also be talking about a new anti-procrastination café in Japan dedicated to helping writers complete their manuscripts.
Five Fact Friday is every other week. Subscribe so you never miss one!
Reading: https://cnn.it/3G0Wkrq
Watching: https://engt.co/37YNjT6
Tech: https://bit.ly/3ySqDPH
Legal: https://bit.ly/36dGP1Y
Retirement: https://bit.ly/3xqY8HN
Full Transcription Below
Oh crap. Okay. Could the dinner that you’re eating in 20 years be coming out of a test tube? Well, I’ve got that answer for you and more because I’m Victor Medina, and this is Five Fact Friday. Hey everybody, welcome back to Five Fact Friday. It’s been a hot minute since we’ve put one of these out. We hope that you’ve missed it, but not too much. Actually, we’ve been quite busy here in the office doing other programs that I wanna tell you a little bit about before I get into the links for this week. Well, a couple of weeks ago we hosted a client advisory board dinner where we invited about 20 of our clients to come and share their thoughts about what we’re doing out in the world. Like, how are we doing with our retirement planning, and how are we doing as lawyers? What else could we bring to the table on how could we better serve? So if you are a client already, look forward to some of the changes that are coming up in response to some of the answers that we’ve gotten in that question and answer period with the client advisory board. And if you’re not yet a client, understand that we’re always working harder try to provide more value for you. Now we do have two events coming up that I want to tell you about. The first one is exclusive for CPAs and it’s actually happening the next Tuesday after this video releases. We’re gonna be hosting an all day CPA bootcamp where you’re gonna be able to earn about eight hours’ worth of a credit, absolutely free on us. It’s being hosted at the College of New Jersey on Tuesday, May 24th. So if you’re watching this on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, and you are a CPA or you’re a tax planner and you’d like to attend and you can find yourself a free Tuesday just to show up, register immediately. We do have some open spaces because it’s a large classroom and we would love to welcome to you but we have to get your registration ahead of time. So you wanna reply to this email as soon as possible so that we know we can hold a spot open for you. The next event is actually for the general public. In June, we’re gonna be holding a series of retirement education seminars that are actually hosted by the Prepare Institute where I will be the main educator. They’re gonna held one week part over at a local community college, and we’re interested in having you show up because we’re gonna go through hours’ worth of education. This is actually a longer form session than a normal dinner seminar. So if you wanna do a deep dive on retirement planning, then you should register for this one or at least keep it on your calendar. All you have to do is reply to the email where this video is located and let us know that you’re interested. This event by the way is for clients, their friends, and the general public, so if you’re interested in attending, we do have a limited space, but we are opening this up to the general public because again, we’re going into some deeper education, and that’s being hosted by the Prepare Institute. This is happening in mid to late June. So again, if you’re interested, let us know about that. Let’s get to the links for this week.
The very first link is what I am reading. And it’s an article about a new form of cafe in Japan called an anti procrastination cafe. And it’s set up actually for writers. You know, the truth of the matter is that I coach other attorneys on all kinds of things about their practice, including how to become more productive. I loved this article because one of the things about this cafe, kind of like the Hotel California, is once you check in you can’t check out until you have completed your work. So it’s a little form of, I guess suppose, forced productivity, knowing that once you go into the cafe, you can’t come back out again until your work is done.
The next link is what I’m watching. And it’s actually a trailer for an upcoming series called Prehistoric Planet that’s being debuted on Apple Plus TV, or Apple TV Plus. Now, this is an additional subscription service and if you’ve bought an iPhone or iPad in the recent past, you may have an automatic subscription for the next year or so, but I have found so much value in this service that I’m gonna recommend this show to you. And in fact, subscribing to Apple TV Plus for all of the other great stuff that’s in there. By the way, they’re the folks that host people like Ted Lasso and shows like that. But anyway, this show is a five day series on the prehistoric planet. It’s being what do they say when they’re talking over? It’s being narrated by David Attenborough and it focuses on the planet in prehistoric times. The visuals look fantastic. In fact, just click the link and watch the trailer. And if you’re enticed enough, maybe you can sign up for a free trial. Now they’re gonna be releasing these ones in each of the success of days. So a seven day trial towards the end might actually get you to it. It’s being released on Monday, May 23rd. Check that one out.
The next link is what’s new in tech and it’s actually the link that I handed to you at the beginning of this video. It’s what the food of tomorrow is going to look like. And it’s actually an article that is compiled from input from different people out in the world including food scientists, science fiction writers, so on so forth. And they’re talking about a lot of the challenges that we’re going to be facing, whether they’re talking about production of food or the need to make a lot more food because of population increases, but they have some solutions of what they expect is going to be the future of food. Some of it doesn’t sound all that appetizing but I’ll tell you I was a Star Trek fan, and I do like the idea of the replicator, this device that could just make you whatever you wanted. This looks like we’re kind of going in that direction if they make it taste okay, and because I’m Puerto Rican, if they have a little adobo seasoning on top of it, I could probably get by with most of whatever they’re going to produce.
The next link is what’s new and legal and it is a spring cleaning urge for you to review your legal plan, your estate plan. Truth of the matter is that if you’re a legal client of ours, we are in front of you on a regular basis to be reviewing your estate plan. If you’re part of our client care program, well we’re gonna do that once for you every year. But even if you’re not, we’re out in front of you once every three years reminding you to not only just review your estate plan, but also update some of those crucial documents like your power of attorney and your healthcare directive. Those are two documents that we absolutely love to see updated at least once every three years. Check out the article, but also do yourself a favor and mark on the calendar an opportunity to either come and see us if you’re a client, or to go and just review your estate plan to make sure it’s up to date and it reflects your wishes, and it has the most up to date language. And however these things are supposed to be set up that it’s actually signed that way. So you’re gonna want to do that, and springtime is a great time to be doing all kinds of spring cleaning, including spring cleaning on your estate plan.
The last link is what’s new in retirement. You know, when they passed the most recent set of changes to the way that the retirement accounts are supposed to be managed, one of the things that came out of that is that in your 401k, you’re supposed to start to get a statement about the lifetime income that could be generated by the balance that’s in there. So the first thing I wanna let you know is be on the lookout for that. If you’ve got a 401k it’s now required to or will be shortly, to go ahead and show what the lifetime income is, but I don’t want you to rely on that solely. See the truth of the matter is that as a retirement planner, we often have tools available to us to change that picture for the better. We can draw on different kinds of investment strategies in the way that create a retirement plan to help that income last as long as you need it to last. And sometimes that can look much different than the way those statements are produced. That’s why it’s always helpful to go to a specialist specifically in the area of retirement planning when we start talking about finances and look, this is a perfect time to be thinking about that because as you’ve experienced, the market has been in quite a volatile state for most of this year. Now I have been sending out videos to clients letting people know that this is fairly normal and that this is part of the plan that we’ve developed. But if you created a plan that was solely a reflection of your 401k, and you were relying on that in retirement, then a statement like the one that you’re gonna see is gonna show that all of a sudden your lifetime income has shrunk. Well, not so for our clients, because we have put in place some protections against volatile markets. And you may wanna see a little bit of that as well. And so the best way to do that is to contact us so that we can create for you a make it last plan that will help focus on income, investments, taxes, and estate planning. All four of those things together make up a retirement plan that is forward thinking, forward looking. It may actually become a better statement than the one that you’re gonna start to get in your 401k.
Let’s do a quick review for this week. The links are what I’m reading. It’s a link to the anti procrastination cafe that exists. What I’m watching is a trailer for the Prehistoric Planet on Apple TV Plus. What’s new in tech is the food of tomorrow including maybe it’s coming out of a test tube for you. What’s new in legal is a spring cleaning recommendation for your estate plan. And finally, what’s new in retirement. A new look on your 401k including the lifetime income that you have. Hey, listen, it’s been great coming back to you with this video. Don’t forget if you are interested in our CPA bootcamp on Tuesday, May 24th, respond immediately to this so that we can go ahead and hold a position for you. And if you’re member of the general public and you’d like a deeper education in retirement planning, the Prepare Institute is hosting me as an educator in mid June at a local community college, probably Rider University. And if you’re interested in that, let us know about it so that we can hold a space open for you. That’s it. We are happy to be back. Have a wonderful weekend and we’ll call to you soon. Goodbye.