Make It Last is back and better than ever! Returning on a new station, 920AM at 10:00am, every Saturday morning. Alongside my new co-host, Mark Elliot, I am back covering everything from how current events could affect your savings to strategies to maximize your retirement income. As you know (since you’re here) we save the show and put it out as a podcast each week. Today’s episode we are covering how March Madness is like retirement and what areas of retirement “turbulence” you should fly around.
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Make It Last with Victor Medina is hosted by Victor J. Medina, an estate planning and Certified Elder Law Attorney (CELA) and Certified Financial Planner professional (CFP). Through his law firm and independent registered investment advisory company, Victor provides 360º Wealth Protection Strategies for individuals in or nearing retirement.
For more information, visit Medina Law Group or Palante Wealth Advisors.
Full Transcript Below
Mark Elliot: Welcome to "Make it Last" with Victor Medina. I'm Mark Elliot. Victor now has two companies...not now, he's had them for a while, right? 2006, started the Medina Law Group. That is because Victor is a practicing Estate Planning and Certified Elder Law Attorney. That side of the business is about estate planning, and then that can go into a lot of different areas, obviously. In 2014, Victor had people on the estate planning side going, "Well, what about my investments? How come you can't help me there?" He's going, "Well, I don't know. What if I could answer yes, I can help you in that area. How do I go about doing that?" So, in 2014, he started Palante Wealth, which is about holistic planning for your retirement. We've got two companies. They focus on traditional estate planning, asset protection, retirement distribution, proactive income tax planning. Victor's been featured on "National Television," "The Wall Street Journal," "The Huffington Post," "US News & World Report." The idea is that Victor is here to give you information. Some might pertain to you. Some might not. If there's something that Victor says that you go, "Wow, I didn't know that. I think that's important for me and my retirement," call the team. They're here to help. There's no cost, no obligation, no pressure. There's no judgement. We're moving forward. We're not looking backward. It's 856-506-8300. No cost, no obligation, no pressure, no judgement. 856-506-8300. Victor, we had March Madness. I don't know. Are you a big basketball guy? Victor Medina: I'd tell you, Mark, I grew up in Connecticut, which meant that there was no professional sports team after the Hartford Whalers left. The professional sports the team that we follow was the University of Connecticut Huskies. I'm a big basketball fan, and I was a big basketball fan this March Madness as the Huskies qualified for the first time in seven years to place. This is huge for me. Mark: Well, you had to be then... Victor: It all ended in one night. [laughs] Mark: You had to be the women's basketball fan of UConn. Victor: For sure. Geno, he's the big star in the entire state. Mark: Do you fill out a bracket every year, when it comes to this time? Victor: I took a break when UConn stopped making the tournament because of course my bracket would always look the same, as I would always make UConn go all the way to the finals. Of course, it was never right. It was right in 2002. It was right a couple of times in there, but it wasn't often right. When they took a break after Kim Calhoun had left, and they weren't qualifying, stopped the habit of doing that, Mark. I never could get it right. I loved watching the games, but predicting I hardly knew who the 64, now 68 teams are, never mind to predict them. Mark: There's office pools. There's all kind of things, ESPN, all kinds of groups will have their brackets. They say, "Hey, you get the bracket right, you can win a million dollars." Well the odds of filling out a perfect bracket for March Madness are 1 in 9.2 quintillion. There's just too many variables. The odds are overwhelmingly absurd, for you, but if you think about the UConn teams were phenomenal under coach Calhoun, winning a national championship, those types of things. Those teams that make the run and sometimes you'll have a long shot that makes it into the finals. You can go back to 1983, Jim Valvano and NC State, knocking off the Houston cougars with a camouflage one Clyde Drexler, huge upset and it was 54, 52, the Wolfpack got the tempo, the way they wanted it. There are upsets at that point, but typically, the teams that get to the end, have the most talent. Victor: Interesting. You would see that those people that pick the highest favored teams in there, get the majority of them right, because usually if they've got the most talent they've been ranked well, you see them progress for exactly that reason. Mark: Absolutely. Talent is really important when it comes to March Madness. In the business world and the sports world, talent is important and all those, but you think about the games to win a national championship in basketball, March Madness, it's six games. That means you're playing a different opponent, twice every four days, basically. You play on a Friday, you play on a Sunday, you plan on Sunday, you plan a Monday, and so forth, and so on. You've got to change your strategies for that opponent. There's a game plan for every opponent, endurance, because you're playing those two games over a four-day weekend. Then you're playing those six games in that three-week span. There's a lot of intensity, you've got to be in great shape, and then of course, you need the right coach. If I said, taking that talent, game plan, endurance, and the right coach, for March Madness, are those some of the same key factors, how would you equate those to the game of having a successful retirement? Victor: That's a good question. If I had to line those up, if I was lining them up in order, the talent for me would probably look most like and with the income that you need in retirement. Those are the people that you'd have to count on, and you have to feel the team, you're going to need money getting in through retirement. That talent component of what you have, putting the court on there is most like the income strategy because when you start to face retirement, as you're aware, Mark, you get to that point in time where you're no longer earning a paycheck, you've got to create a paycheck off of where it is. We need to get to the point in time, where we're getting some comfort and peace of mind that the check that we're creating can last as long as we do, can make sure that it covers all of our expenses, that it is smartly thought out. The idea that there is money coming in every week is probably most linked to the idea of income. As you were talking about you move from one opponent to the next opponent. That game plan that you're going from is mostly like your strategy, is what are you going to do to become successful. Sometimes you have to look at that talent and figure out how you're going to put it out on the court and not everything is the same, you don't always run with the same five based on the needs that you have because the opponent you're playing with, they could be a perimeter-shooting team. They could be somebody that plays well down low, people who do high pressure, kind of a really high press coming off the ball. You have to figure out how to get around that. The strategy is going to change from opponent to opponent. This game plan is probably most likely the strategy that you have. In our practice, when we're dealing with clients, it's often manifested in that initial plan that we put together. It's the strategy that we're coming up with to be able to use what they have available to their success. What was the next thing? I think endurance, you told me, right? If we're thinking about having to play games over and over again, what we think about is the grind over time. The more that you play, the more you are susceptible to something happening to you. It's a combination, I would say, probably of two different ideas. The first idea is, how long are you going to live? Just the longevity. The more you go out, the more you're going to need that money to last for you. One of the considerations is the cost of inflation. Things are going to become more expensive over time. That's going to put a strain on the plan you have in place. If you only plan to have $4,000 a month forever and the stuff that you need to buy is $4,500 a month, we need something more from that. That longevity consideration is one half of the endurance component. The other half of the endurance component is, what if something happens along the way? The longer that you play, the higher chances you have somebody might get injured along the way, or you might lose something along one of your talents. That folds into our perspective as elder law attorneys where someone might get sick. God forbid, there's a dementia diagnosis. Humans have to go into assisted living facility. How does that affect what we're doing? We have to plan around the idea that we're going to need these people for a longer period of time. That endurance is about the longevity and the risks that are associated for you going longer and longer. The right coach, oh man, it's almost like you logged up a big softball for me, Mark. Well, of course, the right coach, it probably equates to having the right financial professional. They'll take me necessarily out of the equation, but whoever you have as a trusted professional needs to be the person that can orchestrate all of this stuff together. That's what's the most important part. What you're looking for is you're looking for that guiding force, that mentor, that coach, that person that can come up with a strategy that can take all of these things, jumble them together and end up coming up with something that will give you the best chance of success. This idea of knowing what your talent is, who your opponent is going to be, how to plan for things are not stuff that you know right now, the unmentionables, these changes. Having somebody that can see all of that and help you come up with a plan together for it is the quintessential definition of a trusted advisor, having your number one counselor on your side helping you through retirement. Mark: When you work with Victor and the team, you have a couple coaches, right? You've got the estate planning and the elder law side, Medina Law Group, and the holistic planning side, income, investment, taxes. That's Palante Wealth. They're here to help you. They just don't know if they can help you until you give them a call. This is a great opportunity for you. There's no cost for this. There's no obligation. They're here to help. 856-506-8300 is the number, 856-506-8300. Remember, the Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth serve the Pennington, Greater Mercer County area as well as Bucks County. They've got clients in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey. They're here to help, 856-506-8300. We all know, anything can happen during March Madness. I mean, even in 2021, we didn't play it in 2020. They were all there getting ready, canceled it. This year, we even had a team forfeit. I think Oregon was the beneficiary of that forfeit. I think it was Virginia Commonwealth. You had somebody that just had to bail out of the tournament because they tested positive for COVID. We know that the underdog can come from behind. We had 15-seed beat 2-seed this year. A couple years ago, we had the one seed knocked out in the round 64, 16 beat. That can happen. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Having superior talent, Victor, is not the only thing you need to win, which means being super wealthy certainly helps, but it doesn't guarantee a win because you could also spend too much too quickly. At the end of the day, no matter where you are in that income scale, that financial scale, you need a game plan. You need a strategy. All the strategies are different. How do you go about determining the right strategy, Victor, in a retirement plan with different individuals, different couples? They're not the same plan because everybody's hopes and dreams are different, I imagine. Victor: Yeah, they're not at all. There's no way to have some form of a cookie-cutter answer. There's no way to Google your way through this as though every person can get some form of exactly the same plan and become successful. Now, there are some guiding principles that do apply across different clients no matter how they show up. One of them is you wouldn't keep everything at risk in the market in order for you to be able to become successful in retirement. You give that client maybe an option to doing that. You would warn them against some of the risks that would that include. There are proper things for you to be doing based on time horizons, based on the use of the money. We can't look at something and say it's all one thing, or it's all something else, and then just be able to apply it uniformly to every client. The process of going through planning really needs to include different elements of getting to know your client, really understanding what their goals are. The most important thing that we do in the first part of the process is shut up in the first meeting and listen to clients about what their goals are and asking questions about what they're trying to achieve, have them understand who they are and what they're going to define as being success. Until we have formed that, unless we really understand what that's going to look like for them, we're not going to be aiming in the right direction. Once we've gotten a good understanding of that, then we need to do some due diligence on our side. We have to examine the way things are, try to figure out and answer a question. Are they on the right path for where they want to end up? Some of them never even answered that question. By the way, Mark, it's not much more than simply putting a dollar amount in some form of an online longevity calendar and saying how long this money could last. We have to marry the client's goals with the product strategy they have. You figure out whether or not they're in the right things for where they want to end up. Now look, for most people, the answer is going to be no. It's because the vast majority of people who go through a planning process don't go through a planning process as comprehensive as the one that we do, as holistic and thorough is one that we do. There's often things that are missing. There's often things that we're able to say, look, you're not really going to end up where you need to be with respect to income or leaving money behind for your beneficiaries, or where you want to be in terms of taxes, that you know that this is what you're going to be able to spend. When we walk through our planning process in this due diligence, we come up with four areas that we examine. Then really answer three questions in each of those four areas. The four areas that we examine is we take a look at their income plan. That's a combination of taking a look at what they might available for Social Security. What their expenses are going to be, how much are they going to need to spend from their own assets. You come up with an income plan, so we can get them some guarantees around that. Some of those guarantees are obviously based on the financial strength of the companies that are offering these. We can put together a plan that helps them get there. Then we take a look at their investments. With their investments, we help them understand what's at risk, what's secure, how switching things should be positioned? How much are they paying in fees for what they have invested in? Is there anything that we can do off of this? We look at their investments. Then we take a look at their taxes and their tax planning. This is something that we're really working on as a proactive step for it. It's not something we do in reaction in tax preparation right before we get to the filing of it. We've extended the filing this year, so we've got some extra time. We look at it proactively. What are we going to be doing with our taxes that are coming up? What are the risks there both in terms of income taxes and what you leave behind? Then their last component is the estate or legacy planning. How do we make sure that you don't have any hiccups along the way if you became ill? What does your estate plan look like? How do we set up your beneficiaries and the people that are inheriting, your kids? Each of those four pillars, each of those four prongs of income investment tax and estate planning, each of them has three areas that we go through. In each one of them we look at what's in good order. What is it that is good about it? Maybe somebody has got a great income expectation. Their expenses, their budget in retirement is reasonable. Maybe they've got plenty of time in their planning. Maybe they're like my parents and they have a great pension. Although, that's getting smaller and smaller out in the world. Whatever it is we tell them what's in good order. Then we're going to tell them what needs addressing. Maybe in the investment area, they have a portfolio that's made up of mostly high-fee investments, or everything's at risk and subject to the roller coaster that Wall Street has. In each of those areas, we're going to talk about what it needs addressing. Finally, we're going to end up in this plan or about what our recommendations are. In the tax planning world, we tell them, "Hey listen, take advantage of some of the tax planning that you can do before they change the tax laws in 2025, and do some proactive conversions out of your IRA." We're going to give them suggestions about how we would go about these recommendations to helping with their plan. When we get to that, we've looked at those four areas and we've examined each of what's in good order. What needs addressing in what our recommendations are to address the things that we said that were...It needs addressing. What we'd finally given them is this plan. It's the thing that helps them be the number 15 seat that overcomes the 12 seater. Help them be successful even when the odds might seem stacked against them, and get so much more than what their talent might suggest that they're capable of doing. Mark: The best time to plant a tree 20 years ago, the next best time would be right now. Best time to plan for retirement 20 years ago, but it's hard to think that far ahead for most of us. The next best time is right now. You need a plan in place and the earlier you start, the easier it is. It's not that Victor and the team can't help you a week out, but it's much easier if you're five years out for example. The more time to create that plan that's all about you, and your hopes and dreams. The opportunity is right here. There's no cost to give the team a call at Palante Wealth, Medina Law Group. It's 856-506-8300. 856-506-8300. All right, we've got more to get to. We're just getting started. This is Make it Last with Victor Medina. Back with more right after this. [background music] Announcer: Life is better when you have your legal ducks in a row, and one area attorney can help you get your financial ducks in a row as well. Victor J. Medina fills dual fiduciary rules, an estate planning, and certified elder law attorney, and also a credentialed, certified financial planner professional. Through his law practice and independent registered investment advisory company, Mr. Medina serves high-wealth individuals seeking conservative advice, and a professionally managed approach to retirement wealth management. Learn more about Victor's 360-degree wealth protection strategies. Call 609-818-0068. That's 609-818-0068, or listen to the newest episode of Make it Last radio. Wednesday mornings at 11, and Saturday mornings at 07:30 on 1450 Talk Radio. Investment advisory services offered through Palante Wealth Advisors, LLC, a New Jersey and Pennsylvania registered investment advisor. [background music] Mark: Key Largo, Montego. The Beach Boys. Do you like the Beach Boys, Victor? I saw them... Victor: I like them, of course. Mark: They had some great songs. I saw them later in their career, and they still had the energy though. I appreciated that. Didn't sing quite as good, but hey, Key Largo, Montego. Why aren't we in Jamaica or Bahamas right now? Would it be nice to get away? A lot of people feel that way [laughs] as well, because we'd like to be on the sandy beach at this point. Swimming with dolphins doing whatever. We got a tropical drink in our hand. That's the thing. We're always so focused on the destination, because that's a reason why we're going. There's a whole process to get there. The journey. You think about it, Victor, that the studies are out there that people tend to spend more time planning that week or two-week vacation than they do their 20, 30 plus year retirement. Do you still find that to be the case, or people getting better now about planning for retirement? Victor: I think that [laughs] there's one thing that has changed. Some people think about retirement before they retire. They don't do much in terms of the planning, but at least they're thinking about balances. How much they should have saved. There's enough information out there about accumulating. There's plenty of people that are hosting PBS shows that tell you how much money you should have before you even think about retirement. We can argue about whether or not they're going to be right. There's more information out there that you should do something. The actual planning that they do probably doesn't go as detailed as the plan that they do for vacation. I don't think that that's changed at all. I don't think that it's gotten much better. We've seen that in most of the clients that we see. Most of the clients that we see come in with the proverbial junk drawer of investments that they've accumulated over their career. They say, "Well, this is my retirement." I say, "What are you doing with that?" They say, "This is what I have." I say, "What are you doing with this?" They say, "This is what I have." We don't get anywhere until we say, "Why don't we think about what we might do with that?" They haven't done a lot of planning around there. There's just been accumulation of these different products, these different things that were sold to them. They just jumbled together and they arrived. They don't really think about the planning that needs to go into using that for the rest of the days that they have. Much in the same way that they are definitely spending a lot more time thinking about where they're going to rent a car from. How long are they going to be? Where are they going to go to dinner? Do they have Uber there? Do they have the little scooters that they can ride? They spend a lot more time still on vacation they'd do on retirement even as there is more and more information available to them. What are the things that we've got here is we've got the ability to jump on the Internet and do whatever search we want. We can ask any question that's in there. I think this highlights why we haven't seen much progress in this area because you have a machine that will give you an answer to a question that you ask. You're going to Google X-Y-Z. We're not providing it with the right questions. Many times we don't even know the questions to ask, which is really where you get a professional involved. You get a professional in there and says, look, these are the questions you got to be thinking about answering. Have you thought about something else? That's really where a great coach comes in getting you to understand the things that you should be thinking about that will help you to be successful. I would like it if we didn't have to spend as much time re-educating people about the need to do this planning. You know what, if that's what we're doing here, if this is what we spend the time not just talking about the radio show, but in with our clients just in the books and the communication we have there. If we just raise the awareness level, everyone is going to benefit from that because it's definitely is an area that still needs a ton of attention. Mark: Yeah. You think about it. You took your family, Jennifer and the kids. You do went to the Bahamas. You did all the planning yourself. I went to the Bahamas. I actually used a travel agent and we have issues. Now, it's your headache. Mine, I'm still sitting on the beach calling my travel agents and say, "We got some issues, can you take care of it?" It's the same thing in retirement planning. There are issues that will pop up, and if you're doing it yourself, do you understand all the moving parts? That's the idea. You have a team like Medina Law Group, Palante Wealth. They're here to help you and they have to understand your situation. If you'd like to call them and sit down with them, easy to do. There's no cost for this. 856-506-8300, 856-506-8300. I say, "Hey, Victor and the team can help you a week out." They can help you a month in, a year in, to your retirement, but the best time to start properly planning for your retirement is when, "Victor, when should we start thinking?" It would be great if we thought about it out of college, but I remember being 21 never believing that I would be 61 like I am now. [laughs] Victor: No. You were worried about where you're going to get wing money and where the closest YouPackWeStore was to where you were living, and what did your roommate do with your food this time, so it's unlikely that we're going to do that straight out of the gate from college in our first job. I will say that for most people, there becomes this magic point in time where they've either done raising their kids, they've done paying for college, and they're in that last phase of accumulation where retirement becomes a reality. Sometimes, it's in their mid-50s. Sometimes, it's a little bit earlier than that if they've been great savers and they know that retirement's coming, but as soon as we recognize that our obligations of providing for other people are in the past, and now we have to figure out how to provide for ourselves. If we get into retirement, we have to be the people that we're taking care of going forward. That's the opportune time to start to bring in advice because the sooner that you get advice that puts you on the right course, the better chance that you're going to be on the trajectory that you need to be instead of hundreds of miles off course. The thing about your retirement is it's more like moving an aircraft carrier than a speed boat. While in a speedboat, you can take big sharp turns and it would be OK, when it gets to your retirement, you could be hundreds of miles off course if you haven't taken the proper steps. There's always opportunities to make course corrections, but the effect, the magnitude, the benefit that you could get from the course corrections is going to be much greater if you start sooner. Where do we see people most successful is where they start to hit the early-50s to mid-50s and they're thinking about their retirement mostly as something that's an eventuality and a place that they want to be successful when they arrive at that point in time. We're able to start to give them great advice about how to either stay in the trajectory they are if that's where they're going to be successful or make changes in order to become successful. Then certainly, another opportunity, if that's already blown by, is when you start to make decisions around things like deciding to stop working, deciding to make a pension election, deciding to go ahead and elect for social security, filing for Medicare. All of these event-driven things tend to have consequences that become difficult to navigate around in the future. If I meet somebody that's in their 80s and they've already elected Social Security, elected their pension, and both of those say that when one of them dies, they're going to have a materially less money for the spouse when they're gone, I'm kind of stuck with that picture, right? I didn't meet them when they made that choice, so I couldn't have guided them in a way that would have helped them to have better options. I'm stuck with that. When you think about those decisions, even making a pension election or separating from service, when you're finally going to retire or making an election on Social Security, when you start thinking about those decision-driven things, that's the time to ask for help. I'll tell you, it even goes by on the nonfinancial side when we start thinking about the elder law and estate planning component, is it when people start thinking about putting somebody into assisted living facility, that decision, that becomes something that has significance. You want counseling and help in that area as well. I always think about those events. Before you step out, before we step out into the elevator shaft, make sure there's an elevator there. Get the answers to the questions that you need. Have somebody help you even asking the right questions to make sure that you're getting the best possible advice for your situation. Mark: If you're flying to the Bahamas, for example, you'd love to sit in first class, a drink in your hands, relaxed. You got room to spread out. You're pretty good. Then there are those of us that might have to fly in coach, kids kicking our seat. I mean, it's not as comfortable when there's not as much room. Well, you need money to be able to afford that. Not that everybody that comes and sits down with Victor and the team is going to be first-class flying. That's not how it works. You are where you are, but can you be better off than where you are now by sitting down with a team? Well, you don't know that until you give him a call? It's 856-506-8300. You remember those commercials, Victor? "Hey, what's your number?" You remember they'd hold their numbers under their arms, or they'd go line up in front of the big billboard. "Where's your number?" You remember those commercials? Victor: Yeah, absolutely. Mark: I would imagine when people come in, they probably do have a number. That they get to this, they should be OK, but everybody's number is different. How do you help...? The old saying was, "Well, you need a million dollars to retire." We've got people that have a million dollars, that they need more because of their lifestyle. You have people that have a quarter million dollars that are good to go. It's not all about the money, but money is important. How do we figure out what our number is? Victor: It's a blend of things because everybody has a different needs for those dollars. You have different needs of where that money needs to be. Let me explain a couple different factors that we drive where an answer is going to be. Here's the thing, I'm not going to give you a number and answer because it's going to be different for everybody. I think that anybody that's giving a number is probably giving a number irresponsibly. I mean, it'd be nice to have a target for somebody that's not saving. Whatever it is, whether it's one million or five million, whatever that number is, it's probably irresponsible to give you a number without understanding where your needs or where that money needs to go. Let's consider some factors in there. We have some people that are caring for and need to continue to care for a special needs child, that after they're gone, there's somebody who is vulnerable that needs to be cared for. That's going to add to the number that person needs, completely independent of any expenses that they have, whether they want to travel, or what their grocery bills like, or their property taxes. You think about budgeting as one of those steps, but sometimes there were a needs that go and extend beyond who you are. Then you have this other layer. It depends about where you have that money. A million dollars inside of an IRA is very different from a million dollars sitting in a checking account. I'm not just talking about the investments that they're in but also the tax treatment of where they're going to be. The amount of money that is "necessary" for them is going to change because of the way that the taxes are going to impact that. You have all of these variables that are getting jumbled in together. Put it into the pot, and you do arrive at a number. I'm not as to say that you don't have a calculation that helps people be successful. Whether it's adjusting their strategy based on what their needs are, or understanding their needs are for their budgeting, or figuring out what their legacy needs are and understanding that the product that they need for that is not the same thing as what they've been accumulating and whatever it manifests itself into being, there will be a number that is where someone's going to be successful. And what's incumbent on us as financial professionals, to give them the answer to the question of, "Are they at that number? Is that the right number?" That's what we should be doing. The process of doing that is embedded in this idea of creating a plan. That's where we see the meeting of the client's needs with the financial professional strategy. They're what they can bring to the table, their experience and their brilliance, and how they can bring these things together, and help them guide. We need to have that meeting happen together. That's where that plan is so helpful, because it helps you investigate areas like income investments, taxes, and estate planning, and making sure that you've haven't overlooked anything that would cause you to have a failure point for that planning sometime in the future. It is important that you go through the planning process so that you can get an answer to the question, "What is your number," figure if you're on track for that or if you need to make some adjustments along the way, and whether or not you're going to be successful. Mark: All right, so income is super important. Everybody has different needs, obviously. There is probably a number, but it depends on a lot of different factors, health, and so forth. "Hey, if we lived to be a hundred, which according to the Pew Research Center now, back in, I think it was the year 1920, Victor, do you have any idea how many people in the world were over a hundred years of age? Victor: I have no clue. Mark: 23,000. 23,000 people in the world back in 1920 were over the age of 100, centenarians. In 1990, that number was 95,000. In 2015, that number was 450,000. They're projecting by the year 2050, 3.7 million in the world will be centenarians. That is, they are 100 years of age [laughs] and older. Victor: [laughs] Mark: Longevity is a factor. That is a factor on how much income you need. Let's say that somebody comes in and sits down with you, and you say, "You know what? I think we're a little bit short of where you need to be. Is there anything we can do or you have to work the rest of our lives?" Victor: Usually, we want an answer to say that you don't have to keep working the rest of your life. Probably, it is a function of some of the advice they may have been getting at other places because often when we get an answer to that question of "Are we a little short," it's with some presumptions that don't often acquire when you have a smart retirement strategy. When you're able to use an independence of financial advisor the way we are, you're able to use their menu of options to create a plan. You can often get an answer that's a little bit different from "Am I too short for where it's going to be." What is most important, though, is looking to figure out how we are going to protect against having to answer this question multiple times. We started this segment, or these questions, in and around longevity, and centenarians, and this idea that someone is going to live a very long time. One of the ways that you do that is you start to shift to the risk for living too long onto people that can handle that better than you and your investments. The way you do that is you use insurance companies for that because that's the definition of insurance is. Insurance is when the risk of that happening, and the consequences of that risk are greater than what you could bear, you shift the risk to the insurance company. There are all kinds of caveats to that. You want to make sure that you're a strong insurance company because those financial backing of that, and how strong they are is where all of the guarantees come from. You can start to put together this risk-shifting strategy where you can start to meet some of these needs and control for the fact that you might live, not a little bit longer than you expected, but much longer. You can make up that income gap by insuring against it using different insurance products. Often we call those annuities. We use forms of investments around annuities to do this. Sometimes we even use some specially designed life insurance. Of course, that's going to be very specific to a client about what the right recommendation is. The most important part of the answers to realize that there's often ways of investigating this are coming up and looking at the problem. They can arrive at an answer that's a little bit different than the one that you might be getting there. That's where we get to is this idea that it's probably worth reaching out and getting that second opinion. One of the things that is most helpful about what we do is we offer the opportunity for people to come in and get a second opinion on what they have in place. They can do that by calling our office. They can give us a call at 856-506-8300, and it's like 856-506-8300. If they do that, they're going to be able to have a conversation with us and get down to the calendar and have an examination about whether or not if they're in a situation you're talking about that they might be a little bit short. Whether or not, they're going to be able to make it that way or [laughs] do they have to go back to work. Sometimes the answer is you got to go back to work, and your expectations are unrealistic. Sometimes that is the answer. Sometimes we have to have a hard conversation. I had a conversation with a client this week that wanted to spend over $450,000 in a retirement home, and I said, "I would love to make that happen for you, but here's what happens to your plan when you do that. It would be much better if you only spend $350,000." We did have to answer the questions. They didn't have to go back to work, but they did have to change their expectations. Here's the point is you got an honest review, based on experience of helping tons of people in retirement, about what you should be doing in order to become successful. That's really where the value is, is getting that opinion. Mark: Absolutely. Everybody's situation is different. We need a plan. Victor and the team at Palante Wealth and Medina Law Group can help you do just that. 856-506-8300. As Victor said, we're going to talk a little bit more about this because one of the challenges when you do fly off to that destination of your choice, sometimes there's turbulence when you're in the air. Well, there's turbulence in retirement as well. What are some of those areas we need to be aware of? Victor is going to touch on that when we come back. This is, Make it Last with Victor Medina of the Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. We're back in one minute. [background music] Announcer: Imagine if the attorney you trust to protect your legal interests could also be trusted to protect your retirement wealth. One trusted advisor dual fiduciary roles, Victor J. Medina. Mr. Medina is an estate planning and certified elder law attorney with a national reputation. He is also a certified financial planner professional. Through his law firm and an independent registered investment advisory company, Mr. Medina provides 360-degree wealth protection strategies for individuals in or nearing retirement. His unique approach offers advantages to high-wealth individuals seeking conservative advice and professionally managed approach to their retirement wealth. Learn more. Call 609-818-0068. That's 609-818-0068, or listen to the newest episode of Make it Last Radio Wednesday mornings at 11:00 and Saturday mornings at 07:30 on 1450 talk radio. Investment advisory services offered through Palante Wealth Advisors, LLC, a New Jersey and Pennsylvania-registered investment advisor. Mark: Welcome back to Make it Last with Victor Medina of Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. Medina Law Group side, that's the practicing estate planning, the Certified Elder Law side of the business, medinalawgroup.com. You can find out more. M-E-D-I-N-A, medinalawgroup.com. The holistic retirement planning, income. How much do you need? Where is it coming from? What about my investments? Am I invested the right way? Am I taking too much risk, not enough risk, the right amount of risk? What about taxes, taxes are going to change? What do I need to know? Am I in the right place when it comes to taxes? That is the Palante Wealth side. You can go to that website. P-A-L-A-N-T-E, palantewealth.com. Of course, make it easy. Just call 856-506-8300. We're talking about, what all do we need to think about when it comes to retirement? How do we plan? Boy, I'd love to go on a vacation. People tend to spend more time planning the two-week vacation they do their 20-, 30-year retirement. What are the challenges? When you jump in that plane to fly to your favorite island, for example, there's almost always turbulence. According to an article from "National Geographic," "Turbulence is almost guaranteed on your flight." I'm not too concerned about turbulence on a plane and when I'm on it, but I do have times my stomach goes flying up to my mouth, I think my throat. Do you get anxious in turbulence, Victor? Victor: I am not an anxious flyer at all. I probably pass out as soon as they close the door. I am totally comfortable the entire flight, so, thankfully, I'm at peace. Mark: Which makes Jennifer your wife not happy. Victor: [laughs] I'm awake by the time we get there though. When we're going on vacation, there I'll fully engage. While I'm actually on the flight, probably not anything that she needs to be worried about for me. Mark: All right. You think about it. When you're flying and there's turbulence, typically that comes from flying around the mountains or the jet streams or storms. Certainly, the pilot has the ability to fly around the storms. Kind of the same thing in retirement, there are areas of turbulence that we need to watch out for. If you have a plan, well, it's something that's not written in stone, there are adjustments that can be made. What are some areas that maybe we need to renavigate or we need to steer around in retirement and areas we need to be aware of turbulence in retirement? What would you say those areas are? Victor: Yeah. Before I answer that question too, Mark, I just want to underscore that point, because the idea of turbulence highlights for me the reason why it's important to have a great pilot in place because the financial professional sits in that role. You want to be in the back. You want to be in first class. You want to be in one of the chairs that's flying. You don't want to be flying the plane. You want a competent pilot flying the plane, and the flight plan is not something that they follow, no matter what happens in life. They are skilled enough to do what you said. Navigate around the turbulence that's caused by mountains or to deal with the situation that's in there. That's really where the value of the financial professional is, is that you're in the position of being able to take what was the original plan and make changes to it so that we don't have a disaster and land safely. That's really all the client cares about. That's what our clients care about, so just get me to Hawaii in one piece. I don't care that you've had to take extra turns off of it, just get me there because that's the most important part. There are things that do come up that are changes, that some of them can be anticipated as though it might happen, like we can see it occurring, we just can't say when or that it will definitely happen. Then, some of them, we can have no idea that they are ever going to hit and visit, so let's cover a couple of them. One of the ones that we can see coming, in the sense that it is historically the case, that there are market corrections in the course of a 25 or 30-year investment cycle. That what a cycle is, there are ups and there are downs off of it. We know that, just from a numbers standpoint, we have to be prepared for a series of years in which there may be very little in the way of stock market returns. That's a part of the turbulence that can come up. We just can't determine when. We don't know if it's going to be next year, we don't know if it's going to be 10 years from now, we don't know if it's going to be in the 30th year. But we do know that it's going to be something that we have to plan around and your plan has to take that into consideration. Both, that it's going to happen, as well as the chance that it could happen early, as in happen late and that has to be a part of the plan that's in there. Another thing that we can plan around in terms of thinking that it might could happen, is that one of a couple or a single individual, if you're a single person, you might get sick in the future and need some form of care if you have Alzheimer's or dementia or Parkinson's. That has to get incorporated into your plan. You can't predict it's going to happen, but you can understand the consequences of it happening and do some planning around this a form of turbulence as occurred. In hard terms, Mark, what means is that we're going to draw a lot more money out of your retirement nest egg than we had anticipated, because you gave us one budget, for your normal retirement, there's going to be a completely different budget for your, "I'm sick retirement." We have to make sure that we've accounted for that, in case it happens. We don't know if it's going to happen, but if it does, we need to have a plan around that and try to figure out how we're going to navigate around that particular form of turbulence. Another one can be an untimely or unexpected death. If you've got a couple, it's the death of one of the spouses. If you have somebody who's a single individual, and who is caring for people, or has some form of an inheritance that they want to leave behind, it's longer than what they expect it to be. We've got to think about that form of turbulence that might occur. Another one, we've got a flight path that has all of these things that are certain, and then something changes our tax laws and tax rates. We don't think about that as being turbulence on the journey, but it is a variable that we thought was a constant when we did planning. When it changes, it affects our flight path. It affects our ability to arrive safely where we need to be. Again, this is one of the ones that we can think about, sometimes we can see that coming if there were tax laws, like the ones that are coming up to change in 2025. These are things that we can help navigate around. We want to know exactly when and where they're going to change different administrations, different legislative branches in power while you change states. Now, you have different state laws, because you've changed residence, these are all things that are going to affect how successful your plan is going to be. The whole goal of doing a great retirement plan is to take as many of these things in consideration as possible. Plan for as much flexibility, so that if one of the things happens, it doesn't submariners, it doesn't bring the plane right down. It is an easy course correction for the pilots to engage, because they've already thought about it, we just stick around it and keep on our merry way to our happy destination. Mark: When you think about it, do you want to be the pilot of your retirement? Or do you want to sit back in first class and enjoy the ride? There are people that do want to have every aspect and that's what they love doing the numbers. Engineers, for example, they like knowing a lot of different things. Me, I just want to go play golf, so I'll let Victor handle all of that. That's the question, do you want to handle all of these variables that can come up during your everyday lives and they're still going to come up during your retirement years? Or do you want to have a team that understands all of these variables and how to guide your way through that how they can help you navigate? I would think I would want that? Maybe not. Victor: It's interesting, Mark, because sometimes there are in -- Let's take a married couple -- there may be one person in a married couple that's really great at doing that. The most important question we can ask is how are you going to transfer that knowledge if you're the first person to die out of that? Whether it's the husband or the wife, it's usually one that's a little bit more financially savvy, a little more sophisticated, and if they want to be and love being the pilot, the question they got to ask is, "When are you going to teach this other person to pilot the plane?" What we found is that some of the people, like these hard and fast like, "Oh, I want to do it on my own. I do want to become my own pilot," will make a decision to work with a firm like ours because they understand the risk that would happen if there was an untimely death on the financially savvy person's side. If that spouse is the first one to go, they know that they have left that other person in such a mess, in such a quandary, with so much confusion, they've only added to the grief of the loss of the spouse and trying to navigate this. Look, not everybody makes a decision to do that. Sometimes, we meet somebody, after the recent death of one of their spouses, who were like, "I don't know the first place to go, but I know that I'm supposed to come talk to you because my friend down the street says he's going to be somebody that can help you take care of his team, can help you in this way." It's a lot better if we had the opportunity to have that conversation a little bit earlier. Even the do-it-yourselfers, if you're part of a married couple, truly think about what you want to do to that other spouse and if you want to leave that in position or do you want to start that conversation a little bit earlier. You've done great work. You've got here. Enjoy some of the fruits of your labor, man. Just take some time. Enjoy it. Mark: Because if the spouse that controls the finances and you go on a vacation, and then every morning that person is always looking at the market and making changes [laughs] and adjustments, "Wait, we're on vacation. Can you just let it go? Well, no. I have to handle all that. That's not the way to do it." If you do want to keep your hand in it, there's ways to do that as well as Victor said. The idea is let's start planning. Let's come up with a plan for your situation. Everybody's situation is different. Everybody has different hopes and dreams. At the end of the day, the mental side of retirement is very interesting to me as well, Victor, because you might have somebody that wants to travel and then the other spouse says, "Nah, I've already done all that. My job led me all around the country or the world," or what have you, "I want to stay home." Then you have spenders and savers. "Oh, I don't think we can take that trip. I'm not sure we have enough money to make our money last long as we need to if we take that trip." Sometimes, it's going through a team like you have at Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth saying, "The math says yes, you are good if you take that trip," or, "Hey, put that trip off for a year," but it's math-based, not emotion-based, right? Victor: Exactly. We're actually using this objective measurement off of it so that we can help solidify the subjective feeling in retirement. We want that rational part of our brain to be able to be justified in having some peace of mind and not living in anxiety to be like, "It's going to be OK." We need to test it a couple of different ways to make sure that that's going to be the case, but absolutely, we're going to look for some black and white answers to things when we can get the numbers to help justify that. Mark: When you think about all the moving parts, you need to have an income strategy. What about your investment strategies? It's probably not going to be the same at 65 as it was at 35 or 60 and 30, or 70 and 40. We're going to adjust our investments and how we go about it and how much risk are we taking. Because of the retirement world not being like our grandparents where they had a pension, they had social security, they had double-digit interest rates. Just put money in a CD, ladder those, you get 8, 10, 12, 14 percent, much easier to create income. Today, income is a little bit more challenging to create. There are ways to do so. Social security is still there. A lot of us don't have pensions, and then we don't have high-interest rates at the bank obviously so we can't ladder CDs and we're good to go. There's just a lot of moving parts. Income, investments, taxes. What about estate planning? We need to do all of that before...We can't just wait. There's the go-go years, slow-go years, no-go years in retirement, and we're going to spend money in all those but the money's going to different things. Maybe in the first 10 years, it's all about travel and enjoying and going about and doing the things we've always dreamed of doing in our bucket list items. Then we slow down a little bit, maybe we're starting to go to the doctor a little bit more so we have more medical expenses. Then we get to the end, and now it's about, "Hey, we need to make sure our estate plan is in place," and all that, but we don't wait till those phases to put them in place. Call Victor and the teams. They're here to help. Medina Law Group, Palante Wealth. The number, 856-506-8300. No cost, no obligation, no pressure, and no judgment. We're looking forward. 856-506-8300. [background music] Mark: Glad you're with us today for Make It Last with Victor Medina. We're going to come back. It's our final segment next. We're going to go back in time. Stay with us. This is Make It Last with Victor Medina. [music] Announcer: Life is better when you have your legal ducks in a row. One area attorney can help you get your financial ducks in a row as well. Victor J. Medina fills dual fiduciary roles, an estate planning and certified elder law attorney and also a credentialed certified financial planner professional. Through his law practice and independent-registered investment advisory company, Mr. Medina serves high-wealth individuals seeking conservative advice, and a professionally-managed approach to retirement wealth management. Learn more about Victor's 360-degree wealth protection strategies. Call 609-818-0068. That's 609-818-0068, or listen to the newest episode of Make it Last Radio Wednesday mornings at 11:00 and Saturday mornings at 07:30 on 1450 talk radio. Investment advisory services offered through Palante Wealth Advisors, LLC, a New Jersey and Pennsylvania-registered investment advisor. [countdown] Mark: We're excited. We just did our countdown. Now that is the Time Square countdown, but it could be any year. Well, we're going back in time to the year 2000. You think about it. It makes sense, because typically today's retirements are not like our grandparents that went 5 to 10 years. Now retirements are going 20, 30 plus years. We're going to go back to 2000. We all became Y2K survivors. Do you remember that? The world's ending. The computers are going to end our [laughs] whole world. Remember that, Victor, in the year 2000? Victor: We were waiting for everything to shut off. Mark: [laughs] Victor: We were waiting to see if Paris would shut off first, and then was it going to be LA at the end? Somebody was going to start the apocalypse for everybody else. Mark: Florida brought us the hanging chad on the presidential election. We also had the first episode of "Survivor" which is still going today. There were great movies. "Gladiator," "Erin Brockovich," those hit the big screens. You think about 2000. Well, all of us that are 50s and 60s, 70s right now, we remember the year 2000. A median home value was about $119,000. The Dow end of the year at 10,729. A stamp costs $0.33, and the average rate of a 30-year fixed mortgage back in 2000 was 8.05 percent. Let's go back to 2000. For you, Victor, now you're about six years away at that point of starting the Medina Law Group. Where are you in 2000? Victor: It's interesting. First of all, I'm with my wife which is the most important answer that I can give. I have to be clear that I'm already happily with my wife, which meant that I've already won the lotto. I was in the middle of law school. I was in the process of between the first and the second year of that, and learning a little bit about what kind of lawyer I wanted to be. It's a very different going through law school versus being a lawyer, but I was lucky enough to go to Northeastern which has the same Co-Op for its law school that it has for its undergrad is famous for its experiential learning. I had the opportunity to be working with a federal judge, and doing some work inside of a US Attorney's Office. I got a picture of what it was like to be a lawyer, and in a way that most people don't when they're in law school. It's the fond time. Mark: Do you enjoy the year 2000? You made it through the Y2K, so that was a fantastic thing. You think about it. Going from 1999 to the year 2000. That night, there were a lot of people anxious [laughs] about Y2K. What's going to happen is everything going to turn back on, and we flipped the calendar to the year 2000. We also saw the dotcom bubble inflate, and then it burst all in a matter of months. It was not a good year for the stock market. It ended nine percent lower than where it started the year. Were there lessons that you think that maybe investors or groups like financial advisors learned from the year 2000 dotcom bubble bursting as it came to retirement planning? Do you think it made some changes? Victor: For sure, Mark. People who are planning on retiring within that time period completely re-evaluated their lives. People who had recently retired probably re-evaluated their decision. The reason for that was largely ensconced in this idea that people thought it was easy. They followed a decade of just the dotcoms and the advent of things that were Internet. Internet-based being easy bets for them. You watch people become overnight millionaires on stupid ideas like a company that would ship you pet toys off of it. It was this incredible atmosphere where people thought that it was too good to be true and that they were too smart for what was going on. They were proven right in every respect. What we've seen after that is continuing with the challenges of 2008 and even the backslide that occurred in 2019, beginning with the pandemic after that. What we learned about that is that none of this idea of it being easy or certain is something that we should hang our hat on. What we found is that the people who went through with a plan for retirement that already contemplated this would learn the lessons. Learn the same thing in the '70s, learn the same thing in the mid-'80s. The people were paying attention to that and didn't bank so much on this idea that what happened in the past was absolutely going to happen in the present and going on in the future, probably fared a lot better in the retirement plan that they've had. We've actually seen that come to fruition or be manifested in the way that our clients were able to weather a backslide that occurred after the pandemic. We had a quick adjustment after that because nobody was working everybody was shut down. What we found in that situation is that the people that were with us they had a plan. With a phone calls that we had to check in on people were, did they have enough toilet paper? Not are you worried about retirement? We'd already contemplated what would happen if this were to happen. We happen to be right about that. It was a weird place to be in for two years before that, Mark, because remember that monkeys were making money and betting on the S&P index. All they do is follow that for 10 years, all it did was go up. I was there in the corner saying, "Hey, listen, it's not always going to be that way. Maybe we want to have some money on the side, just in case that we did. That's a little backslide, you never know that it's going to be the case." Here we were putting that plan together. Now thankfully, most of our clients listen to us in that and we put that in place. Then the calls that we had after that were calls of thanks, calls of appreciation. The calls that came from caring was about one another in their health, not anything about the retirement. The important lesson is that you plan for these things happening because the history is already teaching us that it has happened, it's likely going to happen again. If we're relying on things as being the easiest bets in the world and all we have to do is press forward, might be in for a rude awakening we have another one of these coming up. Mark: Yeah, it is crazy to think that the big question in 2000 was will we survive Y2K? The big question in 2020, do you have [laughs] enough toilet paper? That's pretty crazy to think about that. The idea is you need a plan. Things happen. Pullbacks in the market, that's the market going down five to nine percent. Those typically happen three, four times a year. Corrections that's a 10 to 19 percent drop in the market. Those typically happen every year or two. Then the market crashes, the bear markets, that's a 20 percent drop or more. 2000, 2008, that five-week period back in what February, March where we lost 32 percent in the markets in about a five-week span. Those are crashes. Those typically happen every three, four, five, six years. They're not uncommon, but you need to have a plan for that and you don't want to panic and make an emotional decision. You need to make the right decision for you. Sometimes that certainly can be easier when you have a team that understands how the market works. You want to learn more about where you are in that world of risk. 856-506-8300 no cost again for this. The team's here to help this. I don't know if they can help until they hear your situation. 856-506-8300. All right, "Survivor," do you watch Survivor, Victor? I've never... Victor: I did. Mark: I've never watched it. Victor: Oh my goodness. It was a phenomenon. The tribe has spoken. I remember the very first one where...By the way, I'm a little dense, but I didn't think that there were coalitions. They were happening behind the scenes... Mark: [laughs] Victor: ...because they didn't broadcasted that until the very end, but that to me was like, "Somebody is playing the game on a completely different level." Remember Richard Hatch, wasn't he the first winner? Mark: He was. The first season was 2000 of Survivor. CBS reality show, Survivor. 51 million viewers watched that first season finale. Richard Hatch wins a million dollars back in 2000. The problem was, he said, "Well, I won this myself. The IRS had nothing to do with that. I'm not going to put that on my tax return." The IRS, I think it was well known that he'd won a million dollars. [laughter] Mark: He ended up being sentenced to 51 months in prison. The Survivor host, Jeff Probst, advised later contestants this. [recording plays] Jeff Probst: I have one piece of advice. Pay your taxes. [recording ends] Mark: You don't want to go to jail for 51 months because you didn't do that. Victor: [laughs] Mark: Taxes are a big part of retirement planning, and you certainly...That's one of your big areas, is taxes. What impact can taxes have on a retirement? Victor: Look. Thankfully, we don't have any clients that are going to jail for tax evasion. We do have people that before they became clients were paying a little too much in taxes, or not taking advantage of the tax plan that was available to them on a proactive basis. They were filing taxes afterwards, and not getting the optimal result that they could. Here is where that factors in for us, Mark. When we meet with a client, we look at four elements of their retirement success. We look at their income. We look at their investments. We look at their taxes, and we look at their estate planning. One of the reasons why we focus on taxes so much as part of planning, why it's one of the four pillars that we focus on is...In retirement, you've got a business partner. You didn't ask them to be your business partner, and that business partner is the IRS. They get to tell you every year how much of your money that you made, and you lived off of they're keeping. Not only do they get to tell you every year, but they get to change the rules along the way. One of the most important things that we can do in retirement is sometimes buy our partner out. Sometimes we buy the IRS out of certain positions that we have, try to lock in what those taxes look like, because it's advantageous to us to do that. Sometimes we take a look at the landscape and what's coming up in the future and we say, "Look, we have advantages for the next four years that we may not have after that, especially if the current laws are the ones that take effect." Like right now, there is a set of laws that is going to sunset in 2025. We have one set of laws now, and then we have other laws that are going to be different in 2025. I want to be able to take advantage of those, and we've got this window of opportunity. For us, we look at retirement as being the two-headed monster. One monster is this IRS beast that comes and takes from our account money. By the way, it's not just us when we leave money behind. If we're leaving an IRA for our beneficiaries to take it away from there, we want to buy them out. We want to make sure that we pay the least amount to that business partner. The other part about it is that we want to be able to maximize the amount of money that we keep in our pocket. We want to make sure that we have the right plan for having the same amount of spending money. When the biggest factor of how much of what we have we get to keep is the IRS. There's no set of returns in a year that is bigger than what the tax rates are. [background music] Victor: From that perspective, it is reason why it's one of the most important elements for us to focus on, and the other reason for that is that it's often planning that we must do ahead of time. It's not something that we can do after the tax year is closed. We have to do it in the tax year that we were doing. Once that window closes, once we get into a new tax year, what we could have done last year before December 31st that's gone forever. We can't get that back. We do need to do this on a proactive regular basis in order to take advantage of the great rules. I'm really happy with the IRS that they exist with the rules that they have. [crosstalk] Mark: There you go. Hey, we appreciate you being with us for Make it Last with Victor Medina of the Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. If you have questions like, "Hey, 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, we want to know we're going to be OK if we pull the plug on our working years and head off into retirement. Can we actually do those bucket list items? Those are big questions. You want to learn more, give the team a call. There's no cost for this 856-506-8300, 856-506-8300. Back with more next week of Make it Last with Victor Medina. Have a great week, everybody. [music] 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 backed 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 advice designed to meet the particular needs of an individual situation. Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth Advisors are not permitted to offer and no statement made during this 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. Accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed by Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth Advisors.