This week on Five Fact Friday, we’ll be getting a blast from 80’s past as we will be discussing Kate Bush’s 1985 Hit “Running Up That Hill.” We’ll also be discussing the steps you need to take if you need to track down old retirement accounts you’ve forgotten about from past employers. Five Fact Friday is every other week. Subscribe so you never miss one!
Reading: https://bit.ly/3O4Zjl2
Watching: https://bit.ly/3O0xzy3
Tech: https://bit.ly/3yvee28
Legal: https://bit.ly/3yDMg4y
Retirement: https://bit.ly/3cieOJg
Transcription Below
There’s a war brewing all around cheese, and it’s Denmark’s fault. Could you have been baying… Baying. It’s buying. There’s a war brewing all around cheese, and it’s Denmark’s fault. Could you have been buying fake feta? Well I’ve got that link and more, because I’m Victor Medina, and this is Five Fact Friday.
Everybody, welcome back to Five Fact Friday. This is the only video newsletter hosted by the Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth Advisors, your one stop shop for retirement planning. Hey, I wanna get to the links for this week, but before I do, I wanted to let you know that I’m actually pre-recording this. My family and I are in Lisbon, Portugal, and then heading on to the south of Spain. It is the last trip as a family before my oldest goes off to college. And yes, I’m quite proud of the fact he’s becoming a Greyhound and going to Loyola of Maryland. Kind of wanted to leave a nice taste in his mouth about what vacations with the family were like, so we wanted to give him a last hurrah so the next time that we’re going off as a family, he might actually wants to join us. I’ll let you know how successful that trap is when I get back. Anyway, let’s get to the links for this week.
The first link is what I am reading, and it’s actually the link that I hinted at the top of the video. There is a war going on. It turns out that Denmark has been creating a *cow’s milk cheese and marketing it as feta. Well, you should know that feta is actually, typically, made from goat or sheep, but it’s not cow’s milk, and Denmark’s in trouble about it. You wanna learn more? Just click on the link and read it.
The next link is what I am watching, and it’s 1985 all over again. The number one song is Kate Bush’s “Running up That Hill,” but it’s not what you think. It’s not like a re-release or anything like that, it’s actually because of the phenomenon known as “Stranger Things”, that show that’s on Netflix. It got released their final fourth season, and the song was featured. If you don’t know anything about the show, it features younger kids in the 1980s battling supernatural things in a United States, American town, any town USA. But, the show has been going on for four seasons. It is a phenomenon, as I mentioned before, but one of the things that people really like is all the cultural reintroductions of the things of the 1980s. Listen, I was born in 1975. These kids are about my age at the same time, so everything that they were doing seems right back what I was doing around the same age, and they’re probably a little bit older than I was, kind of in high school, and I was still kind of coming outta middle school, but we were all nerds together. They dressed up as Ghostbusters, they watch “The Neverending Story,” which I’m a big fan of, and they’re into geeky things, like playing Dungeons and Dragons, which I kind of did as a kid as well. In any event, you want to hear the song again, or get boned up on the show, check out the link for what I’m watching.
The next link is what’s new in tech, and of course I’ve gotta find a reason to talk about Apple again. Apple has actually introduced a new mode on their iOS 16, that’s their latest operating system that’s coming to their mobile devices. It’s right now in beta, but typically comes out in final form around the fall when they release new iPhones, and they’ve got a new thing called a lockdown mode, and that lockdown mode is supposed to be a super encrypted state where nothing is available to anyone that picks up your phone. They can’t hack it. They can’t get into it. They can’t see your private, glorious pictures of your cats. And so for that reason, they’ve actually offered a bounty. There’s up to $2 million available to hackers that can break the lockdown mode. This isn’t the first time, by the way, that they have offered something like this. Apple has been pretty responsive to people that have exploited loopholes or gaps in their security to be able to fix them, and actually rewarded them. So, if you were a budding hacker, if you think that you’ve got the skills to go ahead and break Apple’s encryption mode, then you might have a chance to get some of that $2 million. All you have to do is spend every night and weekend with some Mountain Dew and Doritos, and try to figure out if you can break it.
The next link is what’s new in legal, and it actually is talking about some of the elder law planning related to what we do in Medina Law Group. See, a lot of what we do is focus on making sure that people can protect their assets if they need to go into a nursing home or an assisted living facility. Where there’s a Q&A in the article that we’ve linked about whether or not a Medicaid beneficiaries inheritance can be prepaid to an assisted living facility. Basically, we’re just asking the question, hey if the person that I know is an assisted living facility in Medicaid, and they get some money, can they just spend it all and do a prepayment of three months? Now I’m not gonna spoil the answer for you, but what I will let you know is that every state has got a different set of rules about how to qualify for Medicaid. And while we are licensed in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, when we meet clients that are outside of those areas and they’re asking for help with Medicaid planning, we refer them out or co-counsel with somebody that is local. We’ve had people that have done pre-planning with us, and then moved to another state. And when it comes time to qualify for Medicaid, we go ahead and refer them over there, because although Medicaid is a federal program, the implementation of all of the little rules and kind of nuances is done on a state-by-state basis. So while you should enjoy the length that’s in here, you should also remember that if you or a loved one is ever in a situation where you’re facing the prospect of paying for long-term care, you’re gonna want to consult with an elder law attorney, and let’s make a brief plug for what it is that we do. You have to understand that I’m a certified elder law attorney, or a C-E-L-A, pronounced as CELA. That is the designation that essentially signifies those individuals that have done advanced training and even been recommended by their peers in the area of elder law. If you have an elder law problem, whether you come and see us or not, you should be working with a certified elder law attorney to make sure that you’re getting the absolute highest quality advice from the most experienced people, because this is an area that you don’t wanna get somebody that’s just dabbling in. And anyway, check out the link to see if you wanna learn more about Medicaid and elder law planning. The last link is what’s new in retirement. I need to look at that again. Ah, right.
The last link is what’s new in retirement, and it’s a link that talks about the number of dormant retirement accounts that exist. Turns out the average person’s got about $44,000 in a prior employer’s retirement account, whether they are 401-K, 403-B, tax sheltered annuity. And by the way, I can speak from experience in here. My wife, over the course of following me and my career actually took jobs in different public school districts in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and eventually here in New Jersey. Now, over that time, she contributed to the retirement plan that they had. Not only was she contributing to her pension, but she was also making extra contributions into 403-Bs and tax sheltered annuities. Turns out that when I became a financial advisor, the very first client was me, myself, my family, and it took some convincing, but I got my wife to be able to agree to roll over her retirement account as well. So it took us some time, but we were able to generate almost a hundred thousand dollars from different accounts that she had started in about three different school districts, two in Connecticut and one in New Jersey. And it was important to do that, because I have to tell you that most people end up having a junk drawer of investments. When they come and meet us for us to do retirement planning, they bring all of their statements, and I asked them about it, it turns out there’s nothing really cohesive around their plan. They a little something here, a little something there, a little something over there, but there’s no real thought around that, which gives us an opportunity as we do the planning to be able to put that all on one picture, look at it as one holistic plan to see how do all of these parts work together. Once we have a conversation about how to set goals, we are then in position to be able to use the tools and the money available to help accomplish those goals. So if you’ve got a junk drawer of investments that are in there and you don’t know what to do with them, I’m gonna invite you to contact us. We do a great job, getting everything on one page for you and proposing a plan about how to get through retirement, where we focus on income, investments, taxes, and estate planning. And in that way, it gives us stencil, a template to be able to chart a course through retirement so that you are best served with the tools and the starting base that you have to be able to accomplish your dreams in retirement. If you’d like more information about that, don’t hesitate to contact us. We would love an opportunity to speak with you.
All right, let’s go ahead and recap for this week. The first link, what I am reading is all about the war that Denmark has started about marketing fake cheese as feta. The next link is what I’m watching, and it is the fact that Kate Bush’s song, “Running Up That Hill,” from 1985 is now number one again, and it’s all because of “Stranger Things.” What’s new in tech is Apple’s bounty of up to $2 million available for hackers that can break into their super encrypted lockdown mode coming up with their new iOS in September. What’s new in legal is a link on a Q&A about whether or not a Medicaid beneficiaries inheritance can be paid to an assisted living facility. Remember, if you are in a position where you or a loved one is facing a long-term care state, and you want to know more about protecting assets, you should contact us at Medina Law Group so that we can help you. But if it’s not us, work with the certified elder law attorney. And finally, what’s new in retirement, dormant retirement accounts from prior employers. Hey, listen, don’t get a junk drawer of investments. Or if you do, don’t lose the very best rubber band that you have because you forgot about it someplace. It’s about as extended as I can make that analogy, but if you’d like to know more about how all of the pieces that you’ve acquired in your life might be able to use to create a great retirement plan, go ahead and contact us.
Those are the links for this week. As I mentioned, we are pre-recorded off of this. I actually don’t know if there’s anything that’s happened in the news since the time that I’ve recorded, because my family and I are in Lisbon, and in the south of Spain. Can’t wait to tell you more about that trip, but until, then enjoy the newsletter for this week, and we’ll catch you next time. Bye-bye.