Five Fact Friday – February 26, 2021

Five Fact Friday – February 26, 2021
February 26, 2021 Site Admin Five Fact Friday 0 Comments

This week’s links:

Reading – http://bit.ly/2NERN72
Watching – http://bit.ly/2OTTVsh
Tech – http://cnet.co/3ueryoS
Legal – http://bit.ly/2ZqL0R3
Retirement – http://bit.ly/2NFkUXC

Podcast Episode 40: https://www.makeitlastradio.com/ep-40/​

Transcript Below

You may have grown up hating broccoli, but by the time you’re done watching one of the videos in this week’s link, you just may love the broccoli of retirement planning. What am I talking about? Stick with this ’cause I’m Victor Medina, and this is Five Fact Friday.

Everybody welcome back to Five Fact Friday and I tased at the beginning of this video a little bit about broccoli and the broccoli retirement planning. So I know that you’re excited for that, but before I get into the links for this week, I did wanna let you know that we are launching a Champions Club in our practice which is a way of recognizing those people, ambassadors of ours that are out there referring their friends and family to our services. So if you are an existing client of ours, and you’d like to know how to become a member of the Champions Club, we are gonna be releasing those details, and we have good news is that the eligibility period to qualify has already begun. So if you’ve sent a family over in the last few months then you’re already part of that club and we’re gonna tell you what that includes that there is still time to qualify for. So we’re excited to launch that, we’re excited to recognize those people in our client family that are our champions out in the world and we’re just tickled pink about being able to let that news out. So coming up in the next few weeks, but don’t be afraid to send your family now because you will qualify for our Champions Club.

Meanwhile, I do wanna get to the links for this week so let’s jump on that. The first link is what I am reading. And it’s an article about a potentially habitable planet in one of the nearest solar systems to our own Alpha Centauri. They’ve discovered two planets in what they call the habitable zone. Now free to kind of understand what that is, at any point in time, our distance to the sun, let’s just figure out whether or not there is going to be the potential for liquid water or not. Of course, too close to the sun at all, burns off too far, it becomes ice, it’s pretty simple physics off of that. And so there’s entire a habitable zone in terms of the distance of it. Now Alpha Centauri is actually occupied by a red dwarf sun and one of the things about that, is that the habitable zone makes the planets that orbited in the habitable zone actually tidally locked. What does that mean? It means that, you’re always facing the same side to each other. It’s one of the reasons why we say we see the same part of the moon, no matter when we’re looking at it because it is tidally locked to us based on the distance to us. So what does that mean, means that they’re not really sure whether or not a star system in which they’re not rotating around each other and constantly seeing a different face could create an atmosphere long enough for that. The good news is that we’re still identifying places for you to run to when you decide that you don’t like this planet any longer.

The next link is what I am watching. And it’s actually a video on an individual who’s entrepreneur that came up with a pretty novel solution for getting a view into potentially harmful situations and what it is. It’s a ball, the size of a botchy ball that actually has a 360 degree camera already embedded. And so would it allow you to do is throw the ball into the area, roll the ball into the area, shot put the ball if you’d like into the area and be able to see what’s going on. And so he’s got a lot of contracts with first responders a lot of fire and police units that are out there wanting to get a view into potentially harmful scenarios without putting themselves at risk. And by the way, not having that whole kind of robot machine driving in there just kind of throw the ball out pretty neat link and you should check it out.

The next link is what’s new in tech and since the release of the newest version of the Apple operating system that has clamped down on the ability for websites to serve you up advertising and information there has been a brewing war between Facebook and Apple. In fact, Facebook went so far as to announce that they must make Apple pay or feel pain for what they’re doing. So it must be pretty significant if it’s in there. What does it mean for you? Which side should you take? Well, it’s sort of interesting because on the one hand we definitely want our privacy protected. It’s a good thing that people don’t know who we are or at least that there are companies that are watching out for us. On the other hand, most of the services that we enjoy, like Facebook, Instagram and the like are free to us because other people pay for the advertising that makes these companies money. And so even our firm will advertise on Facebook, on Instagram, on YouTube, on LinkedIn on these platforms that are otherwise free because we know that we can serve our message up specifically to the people that wants to watch it. What happens if Facebook tells us that we can no longer serve up a message to people who are potentially retiring or wanting their estate planning done I’m going to stop advertising as a business owner. And that means that there are going to be fewer resources available for service like Facebook in order for them to continue to grow or serve up what it is that they do. So it’s not an easy problem to solve because the advertising as a revenue source as a way to fund a company is a pretty tried and true method for that. We’ve had television being basically subsidized by all the advertisers and it’s free over the airways. There should because the advertisers pay for what we do on that. So it’s really a problem but one that we will see the end of and thankfully you and I neither of us are going to be really in charge of figuring this out. We will be the result effect. We will, the collateral damage as individuals and I’ll be little bit of the collateral damage as a business owner.

The next link is what’s new in legal. And that is a link talking about blended families pretty much like the Brady Bunch where people are getting together, bringing in family members that are already established in what they call planted families. We already know that situation has got the opportunity for a lot of emotional baggage that they have to deal with. It’s a thing you got to blend these families together but it’s also a very important element to getting your state plan correct. I can’t tell you how many times that I will meet with a family and they’ll either tell me, well I’ve got my side and he’s got his side or they’ll tell me they’re all our children. And we want to treat them the same. And we really have to kind of help them navigate through that. Let me give you a good example of it. Here in New Jersey, step children are not subject to inheritance tax even though they are not blood related to the parent that dies second. Right? So you’ve got a blended family. This is the husband. He’s got kids. He dies first. If the wife is leaving money to his kids, that’s not subject to inheritance tax, but if we skip a generation and we leave that money to the step grand children, well those are individuals that are subject to inheritance tax and we would have to plan for that. So it’s very important for you to know that if you’ve got a blended family, a second marriage kids from other marriages, kids, that you didn’t adopt people that you want to handle in your state plan this is not a cut and dry scenario. Then you’d probably benefit from getting a pretty thorough estate plan done. And if you’ve got one, one or two reviewed by our office we’d be happy to do that. And just contact us for that service. Let you know what you’ve got working or not working in that front.

Finally, the last link what’s new in retirement and it is the broccoli of retirement planning. What am I talking about? Well, broccoli is one of those vegetables that nobody really has an appetite for it. They don’t like to eat. The only people that I know that love to eat it either it’s drenched in butter or it’s part of a Chinese food dish and it’s drenched in soy sauce and a bunch of other stuff, but broccoli, just for broccoli not a lot of people like eating it raw. Maybe you’re one of the ones that it’s a little different but the broccoli of their retirement planning world is a deferred income annuity. And the link talks a little bit about that. What is that by the way? It is a fairly boring device where you park money aside and it’s accumulating some value. And at some time in the future, you turn on an income stream that pays you a guaranteed flat rate for the rest of your life, deferred income annuity. And so essentially it is there to help you get some guarantees in retirement that you’ll never go hungry because there will always be a check there no matter how long you live. So the broccoli, a retirement planning ’cause it really isn’t as sexy as talking about what’s going in the S and P or how stocks are rising or GameStop or any of these other things in there. And so it really isn’t the main course for me it’s not the sizzling stake of a retirement plan but you gotta be eating your veggies as well. And here’s the most important element of that. No matter what you do with your investments in retirement is essential for you to have a plan before you go into it. It’s one of the things that we specializes that every one of our clients coming through our process whether they’re just a legal client or they already know that they want us to help with their retirement planning we create a special plan for them. We call it our makeup last checkup. And what it does is it allows us to review their investments, their income, their taxes and their estate and slash legacy planning. Those four pillars help make up the cornerstones of the plan that we designed. And the plan by the way is not static. It’s meant to grow with the client, but at least we don’t take a step forward without understanding all of the impacts that it’s going to have to retirement. It’s not enough just to get an investment strategy. We want to know how it is affected by your taxes. And if that’s something that you’re interested in, we would love an opportunity to talk to you about how we can help you with your retirement and only have to do is contact us.

So let’s review the links for this week the first link, what I’m reading it’s a link about a nearby solar system that might give you an alternative to earth. If it’s habitable, we can start booking tickets for that now. The next link is what I’m watching which is a botchy ball camera that you can throw into a crowd and safely watch from a distance 360 degrees. What’s new in tech is Facebook and Apple two giants going after each other and us the collateral damage of that was new and legal is estate planning for blended families. And what’s new in retirement that broccoli, the broccoli of retirement planning and why you should eat yours. Hey, listen, we’re about to relaunch our radio show. So for those of you that are missing out on that we will let you know the details of it. We expect that it’s going to be a local. We’re in negotiations with the local station that is primarily a sports station but has a programming on the weekend. And they were asking for a little programming like ours. So when it does relaunch, we’ll let you know all about that. So you can subscribe to it online on podcasts or you can listen to it, live on the radio. However you would like to consume that content. And we are excited to get back on the air. Those are links for this week and we’ll catch you in a few. Bye. Bye.