TPWM 10-30-21 FINAL.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

TPWM 10-30-21 FINAL.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Producer:
The following paid program is prerecorded and sponsored by Take Point Wealth Management on the Nature Coast of Florida. Erick Arnett is an investment adviser, representative of Retirement and Wealth Advisors Inc., an SEC registered advisor. Take Point Wealth Management This station and RWA are not affiliated. Exposure to ideals and financial vehicles discussed should not be considered investment advice or recommendation to buy or sell any financial vehicle. This information should not be considered tax or legal advice, and individuals should consult with professionals specialized in fields of tax, legal, accounting or investments regarding the applicability of this information for their situation. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Investments will fluctuate and, when redeemed, may be worth more or less than when originally invested. Well, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning to you, and thanks for tuning in because it's another Saturday morning, bright and early. We appreciate you being with us spending your time with ask the experts a weekend and we've got some professionals in the studio with us once again from Take Point Wealth and Management. Listen up. If you're looking for somebody to Take Point and take the lead on your wealth management, then we're looking at the right people here this morning in our studios called Take Point Wealth Management, a prerecorded show. By the way, it's Take Point on Retirement, and we want to Take Point from Lead Advisor Retirement Planner Erick Arnett in the studio. And he brought once again with him a well-rounded team of individuals, including Randy Woodruff. We're going to address the important information that you need to know anything and everything to do with your financial situation. It is found right here for the next hour on Take Point on Retirement brought to you by Take Wealth Management. Without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to once again lead advisor retirement planner Erick Arnett.

Erick Arnett:
Welcome. Hey, thanks, J.W. Good morning. It's great to be back. So I'm pretty pumped up today and excited. So if I get too excited, just, you know, hey, you're back.

Producer:
Well, you know, you've been busy with clients as well, which is a good thing.

Erick Arnett:
An advisor never truly gets away from his job, so even get those nice text messages and phone calls on a nine o'clock on a Sunday. That's all good. But yeah, I'm excited. Got some really awesome topics that I want to address today, and the reason that we're really kind of hammering this home this time of year because it's that time of year to reevaluate your plan and we're going to get into some details there. We got Randy here beside us on our esteemed panel as well. It's going to help us with some of the strategizing and taxation questions that we have when we're doing this planning. And then I like to talk about things that I encounter daily or weekly when I'm talking to clients and prospects. You know, a lot of folks out there doing these shows will have writers and kind of canned shows, and they'll rehearse and all that. I want to always talk about relevant information that we're seeing in the in the marketplace or in the environment and talking to clients. And so a few things that hopefully J.W. helped me stay on track today I want to get to. Let's talk about the Medicare and the supplements. I'm getting a ton of questions every day. Should I do this? Should I make a move or should I just stay? Still, I'm concerned.

Erick Arnett:
We're going to talk a little bit about that today. And then a question that I'm getting all the time recently, and I think it might have to do with maybe the drop in rates or people concerned about putting their money into traditional investments, as should I pay off my home when I enter into retirement. So I want to talk about that too. We have an interesting kind of opinion on that. I think that's a little bit different than most people may expect. So I want to talk about those topics today. But first, let's get into Medicare and supplements and some strategies and some differences and some advantages that one may have in working with an independent Medicare advisor as opposed to a captive. We're talking about pricing and all those kind of things, and let's also talk about it seems that the cost are rising a little bit. And how do people how do people pay for that? What are some strategies that they can utilize to pay for that? So let's jump into it. I see this. It's the same thing on the investment advisor side. Being independent advisors, I think there's sometimes it's a trade off or there's sometimes a concern that, oh, you're an independent, you're not a part of big, that big safe company that I've heard and seen on TV.

Erick Arnett:
And but the trade off is that we have much more tools in the tool chest. We're not beholden to any one company. We can go out there and search the entire marketplace for what's best for you. So in a sense, I look at it like this. We're on the same side of the table as the client. We're on their side looking out at the world and helping them guide them into the right products, as opposed to somebody just on the other side of the table trying to sell them something, pitch something to them, just like any job out there, any career. We kind of start out with a big company. We get that hire on and we train under that. We're we're drinking the corporate Kool-Aid and then we start to grow and learn and get a little wiser. And we start looking outside of that corporate world and your eyes kind of light up like, Oh, I love that. So bringing Randy into the conversation, a little bit more chit chat and quite a bit before the show started. And I thought you had a great topic and I was talking about and analyzing costs and how do we potentially maybe save costs?

Randy Woodruff:
And one of the questions I get from my or, as I say, my clients come in for their taxes and we're doing taxes every year. And one of the questions I've had pets the last few years is, are my Medicare premiums going to be going to be going up in the future? And as I've been reading, I stay. I read every day what's going on in the economy, what's going on with the stock market, health care, Medicare, Social Security is a common topic. Big and what we're constantly hearing is that and of course, the year varies, but you know, we hear quite often that these programs are going to be going basically become going to become insolvent in terms of people planning for the future in terms of their Medicare expenditures, thinking, planning, expecting to have to pay more in the future for Medicare coverage. I've got clients that businesses and want to retire and there may be in their late 50s or early 60s and they can't really sell their business or they're they're hesitant to because once they sell their business, they their their retirement or health insurance or retirement before they get on. Medicare is going to be eight hundred nine hundred and twelve hundred and fifteen hundred dollars a month.

Randy Woodruff:
And that's if they got really no significant preexisting conditions sometimes there. We're talking about cash flow and things in retirement, and they've talked about their health and health care costs going up in general, and Medicare is one of them. So I think I agree. I definitely agree that we're going to have to see some rate increases to keep the system solvent. If I'm wrong, correct me. But it seems like someone can pick a plan between October 15th and December 7th, and then it goes into effect January 1st and they've got to March 31st to test drive the plan to make sure exactly what they want is going to fit their needs. So someone's definitely if they have a change in income or change in status. Instead of changing from a supplement to an advance plan, they definitely need to try to find a way to stay in their supplement plan, whether it be talking to their financial advisor and really looked at their portfolio investment to try to gain some more income to keep it in the supplement.

Producer:
We're talking supplements, talking about health, we're talking about wealth and insurance, most importantly, Medicare. You just heard the voice of certified public accountant Randy Woodruff here with us and lead advisor retirement planner Erick Arnett, a well-rounded team in our studio once again this Saturday morning, and I want to thank you for being with us. Take point wealth management. You can look them up online and just Google. Take Point Wealth. It will take you to Take Point Wealth Management. This is a show called Take Point on Retirement, so we're glad you're with us and we're going to continue in just a bit now. We've got about five minutes till we take a quick break, so I'm going to turn it back over to Erick Arnett once again. Lead Advisor, Retirement Planner In one question. Before we go into that break, maybe we can address household income taxation penalties. Is there a way through wealth management that we can bring this household income down, maybe for the fit of plan for insurance purposes and Medicare or what?

Randy Woodruff:
What a question.

Erick Arnett:
That's an awesome question. I mean, this guy?

Randy Woodruff:
Go ahead.

Erick Arnett:
No, no, no. This guy is right on

Producer:
Your hand with it within five minutes.

Randy Woodruff:
That was a good question.

Erick Arnett:
That's a great question. I think that's an awesome one to wrap up with. And I'm just going to emphasize one thing, obviously, and this is all demonstrating how important it is to just come in and sit down and do a great overall plan that covers all these bases for your retirement, getting you to and through retirement successfully. But bam, I mean, Randy, we've talked about this before and often and some of our educational seminars is there's different ways of calculating income. There's different formulas that the IRS looks, looks at and how those impact taxation on Social Security, et cetera, et cetera. So to answer your question, J.W. Absolutely. There's a big impact and we talk about it every day in our practice and with our software planning and talking, sitting down with people trying to lower their taxation on these type of benefits. So what you know, with that being said, I'll kind of leave it to the CPA here,

Randy Woodruff:
And that's a great, great great question again. Jay Debbie, one of the questions I had before we started the show, Sean and I were talking and I had this happen to some of my clients. From time to time is just to just to dovetail back on to the Medicare conversation. I have a client that may have a big, significant gain, whether they sell some stock, that's how they appreciated, sell some rental property, whatever, and their income goes up a quarter million or half million dollars and that one particular year and they get hit with a big increase in Medicare the following year. Now, the next year, it goes back down, but that's something I want to make sure our audience is aware of that if you're going to have a significant tax event for one particular year just playing on, don't be surprised. Then the following year, your Medicare premiums are going to adjust significantly upwards building for one year that people do begin to reallocate, reallocate their portfolios to something more passive and they say they've got it. I have clients right now. We're doing a plan with them and they've got a significant number of rental properties. They're already in retirement several years into it, but we're basically transitioning their assets to a more passive portfolio that they don't have to actively manage like they do with real estate. So I think that's the first time I've heard that mentioned that when you first initially go on Medicare, that they have a two year look back, so that's great for our audience to be aware of.

Producer:
So if you want to start making your plans, you know you're going to be reaching that age, you're going to be going into this Medicare program. You want to plan two years previous to that, probably three or four years ahead of time. Sure. Okay. So I'm going to take this time to remind our listeners that you're listening to Take Point on Retirement brought to you by TrackPoint Wealth Management. Erick Arnett, Lead Advisor, Retirement Planner is always available for you. And lead you into retirement, along with a well-rounded team of professionals, including Randy Woodruff in our studios with us this morning. It is a prerecorded program that you're listening to, but I can't give you the phone numbers where you can reach takeaway and wealth management at any time. It's (352) 616-0511 and just Google Take Point Wealth Management go to Take Point Wealth Management. They find all that information there and more, including a form that you can fill out, and they will respond as quickly as possible. You can take that risk free analysis. That's that financial analysis, free consultations, evaluations all through Take Point Wealth Management.

Erick Arnett:
Another mistake that we see quite often is not taking your employer's 401K match. Mm hmm. So if your employer offers to match your four one K contributions to a certain percentage and you don't opt in, you're leaving free money on the table. So make sure you're contributing at least the amount your employer matches each month, right? I've seen that quite a bit in some reviews with folks that come in so relying only on Social Security benefits. So Social Security can provide some financial security, but you shouldn't rely only on your Social Security checks to fund your retirement. You know, Social Security benefits represent about 39 percent of elderly people's income, according to the Social Security Administration. So trying to retire only on Social Security has a lot of hidden costs and risks. Got to plan for and who knows, like, you know, they may cut Social Security benefits. Social Security is in trouble. Good, positive things. As far as the market's concerned, the economy is concerned going forward. But once again, like when we build what we call our smart plan, our retirement plan for our clients, we don't just focus on one market the stock market. We bring multiple strategies to the table and smart risk. Smart, safe plans, smart money, safe money.

Erick Arnett:
So interesting stuff. I think in the next segment, we want to jump in and really talk about the. Roth IRA conversion ladders continues to be a hot topic, an important topic to discuss, and we want to just kind of go through that and how that works and how we could do one of those for you very easily. You can go to our website, fill out our financial workbook, you can click on, set an appointment and we'll be happy to take in some data, some information from you and build one of these Roth conversions ladders for you. So you could see it in real time and see the picture and how that would look for you long term and simply what it is is converting those qualified monies, those those IRA accounts to a Roth, which is not taxable in the future when you take the money out so we can avoid taxation, potentially with all the stimulus and all this thing, the high deficit, there's certainly going to be probably an increase in taxes. So I know there's some listeners out there like, Oh, they're going to talk about this again, but we have to talk about it, folks. We have to, because it's so important to your strategic long term planning.

Producer:
Very good. We'll get into that next segment as well as with all this optimism and traveling things opening up. What about our futures? Let's touch on that as well, because I am curious, and if you are to, you need to contact Take Point Wealth Management. They've got the answers, the professionals in our studio each and every Saturday, seven 30 to 8:30. Hold on, folks. We got a lot more to come. In the meantime, check out Take Point Wealth Management, give him a call today and make an appointment. Now they're seeing listeners all up and down the nature coast. You can see them. They'll come to you. A lot of webinars, education information, all at your fingertips because of Take Point Wealth Management, folks. We'll be back with Take Point on Retirement after this. They point Wealth Management is an investment adviser, representative of Retirement Wealth Advisors, Inc., an SEC registered advisor. And taking point for you in an uncertain future is Take Point Wealth Management. Hey, there in the studios there, the professionals, they know what to look for or what to do and how to react. That's Take Point Wealth Management. They're here to lead you into a stress free retirement offices up and down the nature coast, all within our listening area. Reach out to them. Take point Wealth Management Their phone number (352) 616-0511. Make an appointment for their free financial analysis. Get that Take Point. A blueprint on retirement. That's a fifteen hundred dollar value, folks. They've got so many things to give you. And, of course, a stress free retirement. That's the greatest gift of all. So without further ado, let's start this second segment with Elite Advisor Retirement Planner Erick Arnett, Certified Public Accountant Randy Woodruff.

Erick Arnett:
Thank you, J.W.. Thank you. Thank you. So we're going to dove in a little bit into this Roth IRA conversion ladder. So what does that mean? It simply means that you're going to be taking a portion of your retirement account could be a four one K. It could be an IRA and you want to take a portion of that each year and convert it into a Roth IRA. So we do this all the time for our clients. In fact, like I said earlier, we can put together a nice little spreadsheet for you and show you what this would mean for you. But I'm just going to use an example here to some clients that we helped in the past, but we feel pretty strongly that the most tax efficient Roth Ladder Conversion is involved using your investment account or savings, or even your checking account funds to pay the taxes so that every dollar that is converted from your IRA into your Roth IRA goes into your Roth IRA account. So we get this question all the time. Hey, Randy, hey, Erick, you know, I've got one hundred thousand sitting in the bank. I've got fifty thousand sit in the bank. I want to I think I think I want to pay off my home. In fact, we had a gentleman in the other day. I'm going to take all this money and pay off my home.

Erick Arnett:
Well, does that really make sense right now? Why not take that money, convert your IRA to a Roth and use that money to pay the taxes? As an example, we did the same thing for some clients recently there in the twenty two percent tax bracket, and this is over their entire retirement. There were sixty three years old, so we do a projection going out to ninety five and this. This couple had about seven hundred and sixty thousand in their IRA. They made about one hundred and sixty six thousand a year in income. What we found was when we showed this projection to them over the over their retirement years, they were going to save from eight hundred thirty four thousand dollars in taxes, down to three hundred and fifty six thousand dollars in taxes. So it was a four hundred and seventy eight thousand dollars tax savings over the life of their retirement. That's hard to get people to look out into the future. And that crystal ball, I mean, we live for today. We tend to think about tomorrow and that's about it. And some of us even live in the past and think about yesterday, which isn't good either. We look 10, 20, 30 years out. And in fact, I was talking to a client the other day and he was like, Wow,

Producer:
I love that. I love.

Erick Arnett:
I don't want any surprises 10 years from now. So I love how clients are starting to really grab this and forward thinking forward look forward. So. And then what? That what does that mean if you're not paying all those taxes and those taxes are staying invested? This also gave these clients a total retirement and inheritance tax savings of over seven hundred eighteen thousand. Wow, that's massive money is

Randy Woodruff:
It's a big number. Yeah. And you said earlier we started this segment that some of our listeners are like, Oh gosh, not Roth IRA conversions again. And right, and we got to talk. Listen to this again for one more segment. But as you mentioned earlier, tax rates are on sale. We talked about that over many, many shows. Roth conversions have been around for probably as long as Roth IRAs have been out right. And till I think looking at how much debt we've accumulated in the last 10 or 15 years at the government level and then beginning in 2018, tax rates did go down for everybody. Whether you're, you know, making $20000 a year or $2 million a year, everybody's tax rates went down. So as we said before, tax rates are on sale now, is it time to begin considering some of these strategies for the future?

Erick Arnett:
Absolutely. I mean, it's my goal. My goal is to. We've talked about this too, is try to get as much money as we can into in that tax free bubble. Unfortunately, the majority of folks that come to us, they have most of their money in taxable accounts, which you know, is going to create this huge tax bubble. And then if all of a sudden the government says, OK, you're 72 now you have to start taking money out. And oh, by the way, yeah, we feel like we're going to tax that 50 percent now. I mean, they could change the laws. So 50 percent of everything you pull out in retirement, and that has a huge impact. On deteriorating your cash flow and your overall retirement success, so real simple, I mean, if you took $100000 from your IRA, moved it to your off and you happen to be in that twenty two percent tax bracket, you're going to pay twenty two thousand in taxes. Well, a lot of us have twenty two thousand thirty thousand sit around in savings. So pay that tax now and get that money working for you growing tax free. And then when you go to take it out, it's tax free. I know it's tough to write that check and bite the bullet now, but think about the future folks. Think about how happy you're going to be, how happy this couple was when we showed them, Wow, you're going to save on half a million dollars in taxes over the life of your retirement. So it's pretty impactful and we'd love to show you that picture. So just reach out to us and we'll be happy to help you do that for you.

Producer:
Your CDs are with the banks, right? Oh yeah, you're

Erick Arnett:
Sending all your deposit accounts. It's interesting in the small print. When you do hand that money over to the banks, it's really not. It's not necessarily your money. They can do whatever they want with it. Think about loaning your money out, and of all sudden, those loans go bad or the economy crashed or whatever. They have to shut the doors, they can keep your deposit. And the FDIC insurance supposedly kicks in. But we know that there's not enough FDIC out there to cover all the deposits. It's kind of a smoking mirror, the safety of banks. So that's a whole discussion. I've written articles about it and go to our website. Take point wealth management and read up on some of those articles that I've written in the past about the banks. And I remember vividly driving home one day and I think it was, oh, seven ish 08 ish in that time frame and I was driving. There was a bank at that time. I think it was superior bank here in and Spring Hill and I was driving home and I and I saw this line of people out the door and all the way out of the bank, and I was like, What the heck happened there? And did a little investigating me a few phone calls. I mean, they shut the doors, they closed the bank and all those people were lined up in a panic trying to get their money out of the bank. And guess what? The doors were locked. I'm not saying that that's going to happen again, but that was an interesting time. There's better ways for you to control your money, get the money working for you. And and that's why we're here on this show or constantly trying to coach our clients and coach our prospects in our retirement warriors out there to do the right thing.

Randy Woodruff:
And people, I think, have forgotten that's a it's a long way back in the rearview mirror. We have such short memories these days. You know, that was only 08 at 13 years ago. And then I think it kind of let people like you said, you're driving home and it's like, what's going on? So a lot of folks by surprise and so to Erick's point, I don't think it can't happen again. It's just good as you plan, as you analyze your financial plan and make sure that your eggs aren't all in one basket and you're not trusting in the safety of banks.

Erick Arnett:
Yeah, yeah. And that's why we work hard to help educate our retirement warriors like our listeners out there. You know, we're doing seminars. We're inviting people into the office to get their own personal, you know, seminar, really see how their plan is working and what potential pitfalls going forward could be for their plan. We get a lot to battle through these days, all the political and economic craziness that's out there, you know, so we have put together what we think is a solid plan. You know, we recommend that you stay invested in two primary ways are smart risk and are smart safe investing. So we've talked about this on the show many times. The smart risk is investing in an actively. Let me say that again, an actively managed portfolio and smart safe is investing in a fixed index annuity with a highly rated insurance or annuity company where you can get market like gains without market risk. We absolutely have to replace the bonds with that going forward. In fact, folks, if you look at your statements and you look at the principal value of your bonds versus what they're actually worth today, you will see a negative sign. Trust me, I'm looking at these statements all week long. And unfortunately, you know, we've been out there trying to help folks for quite a while and get repositioned out of those for, you know, more than a year or so, and sometimes it takes a while for it to set in. We really need to reposition portfolios in the Smart, Safe Smart Risk Plan. We're recommending that you consider a bond, that bond replacement strategy. If you really need to give us a call, come in, let us put a plan together for you and talk to you about the bond replacement strategy.

Producer:
So now you'll build a new plan for anyone that asks, or you'll test a current plan and you also provide a free financial analysis evaluation. You call the Take Point blueprint on retirement. You got it. And that's a $500 value, by the way.

Erick Arnett:
Yeah, you got it. There's there's a lot of meetings, a lot of hours. There are some professionals out there. They'll sit down with you on time and just try to slam into an investment. We have a disciplined process. It's, you know, a minimum of three appointments, a lot of time involved. We have a financial planning team of certified financial planners that put together the plans for us. We'll take your current. In your current portfolio, and we'll test it, we'll put it through our software and we'll dig out all the metrics and the details and statistics and see if you truly have a market efficient, a fee efficient and a tax efficient portfolio. So those are the three things that we focus on once we take that portfolio or that that plan that you currently have and we morph it into what we think is our super strong strategy going forward, our blueprint, you're going to see the difference and we're reducing fees, reducing risk and we're reducing taxes. So that being said, we've talked about it and of course, everybody else knows a lot of tax increases on the horizon to help pay for all this money that's going out and being printed trillions and trillions of dollars right now, which is causing some inflationary concerns. And that's why we've seen some volatility pick up in the market recently.

Erick Arnett:
And this is why we have stressed for so long that just having a passive portfolio of investments is really not going to do the job anymore more than ever. Today you need an actively managed portfolio. You need a strategy that can duck and move and move with, you know, rotation of all the different asset classes and the sectors that are out there, particularly if your advisor is not calling you and giving you a bond replacement strategy or hasn't been, then it's time to do that. And in fact, it was time to do that yesterday. And so we're willing to jump in and do that for you. Some good things market. The jobless claims are getting better. We had about four hundred seventy three thousand jobless claims, which is a little bit better, and that's the job market's improving. I still think that, you know, the market is poised for reaching new highs. However, it is now a discretionary market. And when I say that it's not a rising tide is going to float all ships like we've seen in the last three, four or five, even 10 years, you could just buy some kind of mutual fund or growth fund and you'd be fine. No, this is this is where it's time to have a professional money manager that can select the right areas of the market to be in.

Erick Arnett:
And that's why you're seeing volatility like today in the market. The market's selling off a little bit because Big Tech, Big Tech had such a huge run over last year, so those stocks got so overvalued. And so now there's profit taking and that money is moving to other sectors of the market, like value stocks, mid-cap companies, mid-cap value, cyclical stocks. And it's time for some sector rotation in your portfolios. And I know that sounds like a big word, but let's keep it simple for you have a professional team that's actively managing it and and looking for opportunities and taking profit where it profit needs to be taken. And if volatility increases in growth and technology, for instance, then it's time to kind of like slowly get out of that and move into areas that don't have volatility. And so there's still a great deal of stocks out there that are going to offer some good returns, but you just can't have one passive strategy. And then we talked about this a week or so ago on our show. If you have a traditional traditional moderate portfolio, 50, 50, 50 percent stocks and bonds, if that 50 percent of your portfolio that's in bonds is negative and dragging down the stock portion, you know you're what you're seeing on a daily basis probably is when the stock market goes up, you're not catching the upside.

Erick Arnett:
But when the stock market goes down, you're catching a lot of the downside. Plus, the bond market is also going down, so it's time to really make some adjustments with our smart safe plan. We're going to talk a little bit about that more later on. A lot of people, you know, let's talk about the gas situation. A lot of people out there have been concerned about getting gas and what's going on in our economy and what's going, what's going to happen to taxes. So anything that you're hearing Randy or you're seeing on the tax side, I know I heard a little bit about there's been some pushback as far as the Democrats, a couple of moderate Democrats saying they're not going to approve Joe's tax hikes. So that might be a good, a good thing, but we just don't know. They might put the squeeze on them and get them to vote the other way. So we talk about this all the time. I mean, taxes are on sale now is the time to make these changes, these shifts and get active in your portfolio and and shake things out a little bit?

Randy Woodruff:
Yeah, good question. I mean, we I remember talking to my, you know, my dad started our accounting business back in 1974. I came on in 94 and after a couple of years in this, I was like, What's going on? You're talking about going to a flat tax. We're going to be out of a job. You know, I make a career mistake here. What's going on? It's like, don't worry, it's not going away. Every time they talk about tax simplification, it becomes more complicated. And then also when it comes to comes to taxes, you know, right now it is a hot topic. There's, you know, different proposals, different bills getting passed. You know, sometimes they've slowed some of these as they passed these big stimulus plans. Recently, they've passed some tax changes in there along with it. But you've heard, as you mentioned, we've been talking. A show for months and months and months, and now they're talking about openly about raising taxes. They're talking about raising it just on folks making over. I've heard you're raising capital gains just on folks making over a million dollars of income. I've also heard taxing people, households making more than $400000. So right now, it's all, it's all just talk. And to your point, there are some moderate Democrats who don't want to do that or they want to.

Randy Woodruff:
I think one of the things I read about Joe Manchin, the senator from West Virginia, is that he's one of the moderate ones that that is his vote right now is very important is when it comes to corporate taxes. You know, right now, they're at twenty one percent for C corporations. Democrats, Joe Biden, we're taking the 28 percent. Joe Manchin is it. You think he thinks it should be 25 percent. He still wants to increase then, but not by as much. So here again, this is all still just talk chatter, different people putting out different proposals. Lots of folks that are putting up proposals have no idea how taxes work or or really have an idea of what the government needs to to to to take it in taxes or to speak their spending requirements. So we'll have to see how this all plays out. But I think as we've been talking for months and months, taxes are going to have to go up. You know, don't get caught up in the in the talking points on on the TV and the radio right now, with somebody putting out some proposal, it's going to take some time to to get through, but just stay tuned. But I think as you go forward, just keep in mind that taxes are going to have to go up.

Erick Arnett:
Well, let's talk about a couple of strategies that might work going forward for that in your next segment.

Producer:
That sounds great. It's here in our studios. The professionals are here every Saturday, 7:30 to 8:30. Take point wealth management fiduciary services up and down the nature coast within our listening area offices. To help serve you. They'll come to you. You go to them. Whatever the case may be, you need to contact them. Now that blueprint. That's right, that Take Point blueprint on retirement that we talked about earlier is free. It's $500 value and that's for our listeners to day. But you've got a call take place and wealth management take advantage of it. (352) 616-0511 Take advantage of that plan to either look at test your plan, you have now make a new plan. Whatever the case may be, the plan is to contact Take Point Wealth Management because they will put that all in place for you in that stress free financial future. Folks, our retirement warriors out there, we will be back after this. And looking for financial peace of mind, simple investment advice, planning, portfolio management, estate trust, retirement look no further than Take Point Wealth management, investment and tax advisers to lead you into retirement and beyond. Protect your assets investments in retirement dreams taking points in your financial future.

Producer:
Take point Wealth management is ready to Take Point on your retirement, leading you every step of the way. Take point wealth. And when you hear the music, you know, it's time for Take Point on Retirement. Your friends at Take Point Wealth Management are standing by to take care of your financial future. That's that stress free future they keep talking about. You keep hearing about and you want it. You need it. You've got to have it. The only way to get it is by calling Take Point Wealth Management (352) 616-0511. That's TakePointWealth.com. Check it out online. It's an easy name to remember. Easy phone number to remember, and it's an easy step to take that first step. But you've got to do it. (352) 616-0511 .It's all about your future in the experts, the professionals, they're in the studios to help us through the rest of the morning through the rest of the year and into retirement. Taking the lead on that retirement taking point is Erick Arnett, lead advisor, retirement planner and of course, certified public accountant Randy Woodruff. Good morning, gentlemen. Once again,

Erick Arnett:
Thank you, sir. So wanted to really kind of focus and dove into eluded to in the first segment and talk about bonds. A lot about bonds today in the bond replacement strategy that we think is is so effective. And also we talked about obviously taxes are going to have to go up in the future. So if you're a young retiree or someone even in retirement and you plan on living to age ninety five, we've still got a lot of planning to do for future taxation and tax free investment. Income is traditionally, if you're sitting down with an advisor or broker, they'll say, Oh, let's go buy some tax free municipal bonds. Every municipal bond portfolio that I've looked at from new folks coming in is underwater, so they're losing money there. The yields aren't very good at all. And so even investing in new bonds at this time is just not the right thing to do. So just

Randy Woodruff:
Because interest rates are so

Erick Arnett:
Low, yes, interest rates are so low. And as inflation sparks up, which we just had record inflation come out this past week, the inflationary numbers. And so inflation has and I know everybody out there listening is feeling at home prices, gas prices, food prices, inflation on our food and everything. It's going through the roof. And so when inflation goes like that, soda interest rates, interest rates are going to go up. And when interest rates go up, your bond values are going to get hammered hard.

Randy Woodruff:
And we should give you our listeners kind of something to think about as relates to bonds. Right now, everybody is rushing to refinance their mortgage because interest rates are at historic lows. So if interest rates are at historic lows for mortgages, they're also at very, very lows for bonds as well. So right. So to give you a kind of a real life perspective on that, you probably you or your friends or your family have been have probably refinance their mortgage in the last year. And that's the reason why because interest rates are so low. So now is not the time to be investing in new bonds.

Erick Arnett:
Yeah, and that's why the value in the price of homes have gone up so much because interest rates are low and so your bond is almost very similar. So that's why we have found ways to consistently generate tax deferred retirement income, for instance, investing in a fixed indexed annuity and earn up to five to 11 percent a year with market like growth without market risk. You can get market growth without market risk, so your money is invested one hundred percent into safe financial products. So I'm going to give you a breakdown of how these things work. What they do is the insurance companies, which we only pick A-rated companies. They invest your money into one hundred percent safe financial products like the 10 year U.S. Treasury bond and the interest that is generated from that investment in the U.S. Treasury. Bond is invested into indexes like, for instance, the Barclays Atlas five. Folks, you can look it up the Barclays Atlas five, one of the best performing indexes inside of an index annuity right now, or the Raven PAC. That's the Credit Suisse Raven PAC. These are indexes that are comprised of equities bonds throughout the world, and so the insurance company and the annuity company take the interest that they earn on those Treasury bonds, and they simply buy options on those indexes so your money is never invested in those indexes.

Erick Arnett:
The insurance company takes all the risk of investing that interest to try to get return on those indexes. And when the indexes go up, you get the you get the money. If the indexes go down, you don't lose anything because your principal is 100 percent safe and protected. So it's just an awesome, awesome strategy. For instance, like we had a client, I pulled up just to want to give an example. They had a seven point five one percent growth rate in twenty twenty in one of our in the Barclays Atlas five index that we have inside of the silly Select Teton Bonus 14 indexed annuity, the Moody's Bond Index, B AAA rated bond and the Moody's Bond Index of the entire, which is a composite of all the bonds in the U.S., was only up three point to two in twenty twenty. So, you know, we're getting that outperformance on the safe money side, the bond side, we're utilizing those. Indexed annuities to to crush those bond returns, and the beauty of is you don't have to worry about your principal going down like you do on a bond.

Randy Woodruff:
Exactly. Let's go back over. Sure. I think people really need to understand because I think it gets it's it's lost. I don't think people really understand this, but talk about how the money's invested against invested into U.S. treasuries.

Erick Arnett:
Yeah. So like, OK, on the ride end today, you and I are talking about the radio show we're going to discuss and you you said a good you made a good point. And that was, hey, we have we have the ability to make money for our clients, whether the markets are going up or going down and sideways or sideways. And that's because of the strategy that we that we put in place. So as an example, if you strip out that bond portion of your portfolio and you allow us to replace it with an index annuity number one, we're getting rid of the fees. Number two are getting ready that all the interest rate risk and no. Number three were protecting your principal one hundred percent. So a lot of people, very sophisticated investors are very sophisticated investment management firms. They do the same thing for their clients every day they buy options on the markets. We don't have to do that. We leave it up to the insurance company. And the beautiful thing is is, you know, you and I know we used to work way back in the old days with some hedge fund guys that used to buy options on the markets and stuff, and you could lose your principal. There was a certain I'm not going to go into an options strategy, but there's a certain point where if the market falls through your option, you lose your principal. Well, the insurance companies do that work for you. They tell you no one. We're going to guarantee your principal. One hundred percent

Randy Woodruff:
Is they're putting they're putting all your principle on US treasuries. Yeah, yeah, that's or some other safe investment, right? So all your money is not in the market, right?

Erick Arnett:
But by law, by regulation. These insurance companies, in order to be in business and do this type of type of investing and offer this type of product, they have to put one hundred percent of the investments into safe investment.

Randy Woodruff:
And it's so important for especially for our seniors out there listening because principal preservation is such an important yeah, yeah, so important for them, because once you as you get older, you can't make it up. There's no time to make it up.

Erick Arnett:
Well, think about it. If you're trying to draw money off your portfolio to live right now and you're in a safe, you know, bond type portfolio that's creating income, you're pulling money off a portfolio that's not getting that very good, good, good of a yield and the principal has gone down. And so you're talking about three swords there. We call about double edged sword. That's like a three edged sword there. You know, I was working with a new client the other day, and big big bond portfolio from some stockbroker guy up in New York doesn't know the guy from Adam just sells them. This is the problem is that people are being sold the wrong things at the wrong times and in his bonds were already drastically underwater, losing money because he told his broker, Oh, I want dividends, I want high interest. Well, guess what, folks? Have you tell a broker that investments that carry high dividends and high interest also carry high risk? That's the only way that they're offering those high dividends and high interest. So be careful if something's something's offering you more than two or three percent dividend or interest rate yields right now. There's some red flags there. These aren't safe investments, folks. In fact, this guy lost like it was six figures on one investment. He got to get these folks in, and I don't care what wealth category you're in. We've got to put this strategy in place for you.

Erick Arnett:
But by law, that money's all safe, 100 percent protected, and then they buy options on those indexes. So if the indexes go up, you make money. If the indexes go down, your principal is protected. So if you're drawing money from a portfolio and you're not going to and you're not getting negative returns in that portfolio, that portfolio is going to last a lot longer because you have the consistency and the returns and the consistency and the income. So and then on the on the on the stock market side, you have to have some in the stock markets, depending on your age. You know, we talk about Rule one hundred as an example, not having too much risk, but you have to have some risk in some equities, but it has to be professionally and actively managed and our smart risk side of the portfolio. We are actively managing that in a tactical portfolio and we're placing the money in the very best money managers and he just discipline out there in the country. And then we monitor that they actively change the allocations based on the volatility that's out there in those particular markets. And so, you know, that's an active, consistent strategy actually replacing the bonds. And it's a it's it's super safe and it's just going to make everything more efficient because if you think you're also paying fees on that bond side of your portfolio,

Randy Woodruff:
It's going down in

Erick Arnett:
Value, going down in value. So this is just a win win win. You've got to educate yourself on it and come in and and we're happy to do that for you. And it's a process, but it's a good process that you need to to to walk through.

Producer:
So I believe if you go to Take Point Wealth, you have a little questionnaire there or a form that you fill out. Yeah, OK, how does that work?

Erick Arnett:
Yeah, so great. I'm glad you brought that up because we spent some money on that. We'd like to have it utilized from side by side marketing, which is an awesome marketing firm in town, little free plug for side by side. But these guys put a financial workbook on our websites, both of our websites. By the way, we have a website Take Point on Retirement radio, which is our radio website, and then we have our Active Wealth management site, Take Point Wealth Management. You can go either one of those sites in the top right hand corner. There's a button you click on it says financial workbook, and it's going to lead you through some basic questions. Some basic information is all highly safe, highly encrypted. It's going to come right directly to us at Take Point and it gets the ball rolling and gets the ball started. We'll look that over for you. And then also, you can. Also right beside that button is set an appointment. You can click and set an appointment right there on the website as well, so you can do this from the comfort of your own home if you want to.

Erick Arnett:
I mean, we've got the technology, the staff, you can sit in your Lay-Z-Boy at home and we can drive you through the process if you want to. But the first thing is you have to take the first step, folks. You know, those listen out that you've got to take the first step, throw conventional wisdom out with the what's that thing called the baby out with the bathwater. I don't know where that came from, but you got to throw that old conventional wisdom that's out the door the day of your grandpa sitting there at the kitchen table, looking through the paper, looking for the best CD rates in town. Or, you know, those days are over, folks. I mean, we've got to implement this strategy for you, and we're so confident and it's been working. I mean, we've seen it now in fruition with our clients where we're crushing those bond rates, protecting the principal, lowering the fees mark, making the portfolio much more efficient. So we're just really excited about it and so passionate about it. We've got to get people out there to get active. Our retirement warrior's need to activate here.

Producer:
We are the activation station. Time to activate is now that active portfolio. You need to take advantage of what Take Point Wealth Management can do for you up and down the nature coast. Fiduciary services waiting to hear from you. All you got to do is take that first step. Like Erick Arnett, Lead Advisor, Retirement Planner (352) 616-0511 is the phone number for Take Point. Well, I'm there now looking at it online. You got a free portfolio analysis, a simple form that you can fill out, and I love the fact that you can actually click or drag a file into an area to upload it there as well. So it's just drag and drop. It's so easy to navigate through this Take Point Wealth Management website and also folks like Randy Woodroffe, certified public accountant. Part of that Take Point Wealth Management team standing by to help you, as well as take care of your needs there. And they've got so many other professionals in their corner that are standing by to help you. Whatever the case may be, just ask. Take advantage of that $500 financial analysis free the Take Point blueprint on retirement years free for the asking our listeners today get that $500 value for free. (352) 616-0511. The first week into the tax season, the tax deadline has come and gone. But if you filed for extension, yeah, thank you. If you filed for an extension, well, so be it. I hear a lot of people have, but we'll talk to Randy Woodruff, certified public accountant here in just a bit about what he's seen this tax season and Erick Arnett, where we can see in the future. And we're looking at that now at Take Point on Retirement every Saturday at this time on this station.

Producer:
Be back, folks. Let's take a pause for station identification. You're listening to ninety nine point nine FM WCBE Homosassa. Past performance is not indicative of future results, which may vary. The value of investments in the income derived from investments can go down as well as up. Future returns are not guaranteed and a loss of principal may occur. Take point on retirement, a well-rounded show from a well-rounded team leading you into retirement. Listen Saturday mornings for an hour of simple retirement advice from your friends at Take Point Wealth Management. Saturday mornings 7:30. Well, we're smack dab in the middle of the program, one hour full of the information and education you need and deserve from your friends and mine and Take Point well to management up and down the nature coast within our listening area offices to serve you. They do a lot of online presentations as well, and of course, they're looking to help lead you into that stress free retirement. That fifteen hundred dollars blueprint on retirement offered by Take Point Wealth Management. Is yours free for listening today? Our listeners need to call, though. (352) 616-0511. Take advantage of it. Tell him you heard it here on Take Point on Retirement, the show brought to you by Doug Point, Wealth Management lead advisor Erick Arnett, Retirement Planner Erick Barnett and, of course, certified public accountant Randy Woodruff. Just two members of that well-rounded team of professionals standing by to assist and Take Point on your financial, stress free future. And you know what? We've played the last few months segments from a certain book that Erick's going to tell you about that he's offering as well for free.

Erick Arnett:
Yeah, Annuity 360. Great. Great book. Super easy. Read everything you need to know about annuities and then some and retirement planning and how it factors into your long term retirement plan. So awesome book. In fact, I was reading through Chapter nine the other day just kind of taking some notes, and Randy and I were discussing that and how important Chapter nine is these days because it talks about Chapter nine is how to generate your own pension. And so, you know, we give a lot of consultations on folks that are trying to decide, should I take this pension and should I take a lump sum? And what is this pension really going to do for me? And how is it going to affect my taxes, my Social Security, my Medicare premiums? It all has ramifications on how you start taking income. It's great to have multiple sources. That's awesome. But sometimes, you know, taking that pension option with your employer is not the best option. You know, we feel pretty strongly that there's a lot more options available to you in this chapter. Nine and annuity three sixty is awesome, so reach out to us. Just request that free copy. We mail it right out to you. I've had quite a few people do that already and and just a super great read. We we believe in educating our clients. The best clients and educated client, first and foremost, is the educational process that we put them through

Randy Woodruff:
Over and over again through the best clients and educated clients.

Erick Arnett:
Yes, yes. I love educated clients because once they're educated and they're comfortable and everything's clear and they're confident about things, they understand things the phone doesn't ring. We do our annual reviews and that's it. And I mean, the phone just doesn't ring once folks are in this smart, safe smart risk plan that we put together for them that that Take Point portfolio is our blueprint. The phone just doesn't ring anymore. And that's nice for us because you can take care of it. We can do our job and take care of other clients. And and so it's an awesome, awesome plan. We love it. But the the thing that is important is you truly understand your pension and how to take it. If you're about to get a pension, it's likely you can do better on your own by taking a lump sum on your pension and then investing that money into a fixed indexed annuity. We've seen up to 10 percent bonuses on the money right up front. There's a company out there right now called Select Teton Bonus Fourteen. They're going to give you a 10 percent bonus. So imagine had a client the other day, a new prospect we were working with, and he had the option of taking a lifetime annuity or taking a lump sum. And we showed him by taking the lump sum where you actually own the asset now and control it.

Erick Arnett:
You could do much better over time. And this actually illustrated about a 10 percent annual return as well. He did a million. He's doing a million dollar pension roll out and he's getting a 10 percent bonus on it. So as a gift from the company right there, $100000 Wow. Free money, that's a lot of money it is, and that immediately goes to your bottom line and starts earning dividends and interest on that amount. So it's hugely powerful and that company is aggressive and it's a great company and they have awesome crediting strategies behind them like Barclays and JPMorgan, Morgan and Raven from BlackRock. So awesome. Awesome products. It's just it's great for us in our industry because things are getting exciting and they're coming out every year with more and more sophisticated and better, better options for our clients. So and it's a way to manage risk. You've got to get that risk off the table, folks. And I really honestly think that going forward here, it's going to be a rocky road. It's going to be kind of a roller coaster ride. It's going to be thrilling. It's going to be a lot of ups and downs. And you might have fun on the ride, but you might not be wanting to be on that ride right now, either, depending on where you're at right in retirement.

Erick Arnett:
So, you know, utilizing these index annuities to replace growth, replace pensions and. Income and also to replace bonds. Imagine in this product just getting an immediate 10 percent growth on your lump sum pension just by choosing the right financial investment path. That would keep your money safe based on the claims paying ability of issuing annuity company versus putting your money at risk in the market or accepting your pension as your company's dictating it to you. So most pensions are single premium, immediate annuities. Those products are very good at paying you your money back. Basically, all you're doing is getting your money back. They are not great at growing your money because the growth is not linked to an actively managed index like, for instance, the Credit Suisse Raven Packet or the Barclays Atlas five indices that we that we love and select right now creating your own pension, taking control of your money. And then also when you're doing your taxes, if you're taking that pension out every year, which might be a large amount of income that goes directly to the bottom line and creates taxes on your Social Security and Medicare can throw you up in another income tax bracket, which have multiple implications in taxes there.

Randy Woodruff:
One thing to keep in mind, too, that I've talked to clients about is we see a lot of people moving down from up north. As we all know those northern states, some of the north, some of the western states have high, high taxes as those states become more and more tax intensive. We just heard New York just raise this tax. It's going to be the highest taxed state in the country now. Unbelievable. The amount of money. A good question to ask is, are those pension plans fully funded? You know, and if you're if you're if you're getting a pension, if you retire and you're retiring from a government system up there, I'm in no way trying to imply that the pension is going to go bankrupt. But are they going to be able to continue to keep up with inflation in terms of the performance if they have a funding problem, taxes going up, if people are moving out of the state, they've already got huge liabilities on the books for pensions and past retirees. Do you want to stay a part of that?

Erick Arnett:
That's that brings up a great point. You know that we have the ability to look up your pension. What is a state pension, government pension or corporate pension? We can. It's public information. We have a reporting tool that can pull up that pension and show us the liabilities that that pension has and how solvent it is, you know, and whether it's going to be able to meet the demands of a growing baby boomer population that's living longer. There are some risk and pensions. I've heard many times I was working with a police officer years and years ago, and they reduced his pension amount and he was about 10 years into retirement. All of a sudden, boom, they're like, Hey, we're reducing your pension. You don't have control over that stuff.

Randy Woodruff:
And sometimes your pension only gets increased by a cost of living allowance so the market could be performing if you rolled your pension out. Put it into one of these annuities that Erick's talking about. You get to participate in. The market increases. Your principle is protected if you leave your pension managed by the government, if you will, or their advisors. Depending upon the liabilities that that pension plan has. You may only wind up with the Indian cost of living increase every year in terms of your pension growth on an annual basis in terms of the income. Whereas if you roll it out, you could be enjoying a much higher annual income every year. So I want to encourage everybody just to think about that. You know, if you're thinking about leaving one of those, I know we're broadcasting here in Florida, but if you've got friends and family are thinking about leaving, or maybe you could still potentially even though you've already retired, maybe you can still opt out and take the rest of your pension plan. I don't know how all that works. We got to take a look at the pension plan and see if they allow for that, but you left those states for a reason. You don't want to leave your retirement at risk by leaving it there. Manage there as well.

Erick Arnett:
Yeah, a great example of a we just met with a couple coming down from New York and they sold their home. They're going to walk away with like one point one million dollars and they're going to invest about four hundred and fifty thousand of that. And that's just initially this will grow. There's seventy four and seventy seven years old and finally downsizing, so they're investing forty point nine percent of the proceeds from the sale of their home into a bond replacement strategy that will begin to pay them real money at the beginning of year two. So their income is going to increase as they age and the growth without their money being at risk in the U.S. stock market. And they've also just sold their home probably close to the height. Or I mean, really a good time to be selling real estate on just an awesome, awesome opportunity strategy for those folks.

Randy Woodruff:
All the more reason to begin looking into other options. There are other options out there. You don't have to just take what they give you. Going back to and educate a client is a great client. You know, educate yourself, look at the options because there are a lot more options out there than there were just 10 or 15 years ago.

Erick Arnett:
Yeah, good stuff. I know we had this other couple in and they're fifty five and they wanted to defer money for ten years till 65 five to where this gentleman retires and then they want to start taking income and. We did an illustration that illustrated at ten point five, three percent average annual growth. And so think about that, you get some money, you put it away for 10 years and it's going to average ten point five three percent increase in income and growth in the future. I mean, that's huge. That's huge and that's that's getting out ahead of the curve. That's planning what do we say? Failure to plan as a plan to fail. So it's never too early. It's never too late. Get to dove in and get active with with that strategy.

Producer:
So there you go. Your friends and professionals that Take Point Wealth Management, giving you the facts right here on Take Point on Retirement, you got to have safe and a risk free retirement. Well, the folks that see about that is Take Point Wealth Management. That's (352) 616-0511, the number to call Take Point. Welcome. Check it out online. If you have a question, we'll address that question in future shows the email for that is info info at ten point wealth. That's info at Take Point Wealth and either way, go to their website. All the information's right there. It's so easy to navigate and it's user friendly, just like the folks that Take Point Wealth Management, and we'll be back to wrap up this segment of Take Point on Retirement.

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