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PP 7-1-22 FULL SHOW.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Matt McClure:
Any examples used are for illustrative purposes only, and do not take into account your particular investment objectives, financial situation or needs, and may not be suitable for all investors. It is not intended to predict the performance of any specific investment and is not a solicitation or recommendation of any investment strategy.
Matt McClure:
Welcome to Prosperity Principles with your host, Ed Cruz. Each week, Ed and his company seek to educate Americans like you by providing real strategies for protecting and growing their hard earned money. Get it for a full hour of financial information and economic news affecting your bottom line. Ed wants you to reach the financial freedom you've worked so hard for. So now let's start the show. Here's Ed Crews.
Ed Cruz:
Well, welcome, everyone, and thank you for tuning in once again. I'm Edwin Cruz, alongside with my co-host Matt McClure. And I think we have a lot to cover here today. Don't you think so?
Matt McClure:
That's right. Ed, it's a great weekend. It is a great time to be talking money because it's on everybody's mind. And yeah, we're excited. It's also a 4th of July weekend. Do you have any any big plans?
Ed Cruz:
Well, our little town has a 4th of July parade. They have a little train. It's exciting. You know, it really gets the community, community together. And that's what it's all about. And so I think we're going to have a pretty good weekend. How about you?
Matt McClure:
Yeah, that's right. We've got some friends. Come in. We're going to do a little 4th of July cookout. Not anything too complicated or big. And I don't I don't think we're going to set off any fireworks, but. But you never know, because a friend of mine surprised us by bringing fireworks one time. And he's coming this time, too, so he could have a little something in store for us. I have. I have no idea. But there will be no injuries, I hope.
Ed Cruz:
Yeah, well, you know, I can't make that promise that no fireworks will go off on this end. But with everything that's going on economically, we have more than enough fireworks to talk about here today and just a little bit about myself. And I want to thank everyone that's been calling in, listening in, and my clients that have let me know that they've been listening in. So thank you, everyone out there that's tuning in. Retirement planning. That's what I do. Insurance. That's another subject that I like to touch on. You know, there's there's a lot of people out there that deal with these money managers. And, you know, they're always talking about why they go to them. And, you know, when we get to the depth of it, they don't have a whole lot to say. And, you know, I like to remind people that retirement planning and insurance guaranteeing what you have is is so important. So for 24 years, I've been providing my clients and families peace of mind planning. And that goes a long way.
Matt McClure:
Yeah, and that's wonderful. And that's what people need. I think more than anything right now in a time like this editor is peace of mind because they see all of this volatility in the stock market and kind of upheaval of the economy since the COVID pandemic really, you know, threw everything for a loop. And now in the recovery process, things are just getting so much more expensive and they see their dollars don't go as far as they used to. They just they need some assurance that they can have some kind of stability when it comes to their finances.
Ed Cruz:
Right. And risk, you know, that nasty little four letter word. Oh, yeah. You know, from from my perspective, how do we really know what what risk we can take in investments? You know, how can we measure risk? Those are things that, you know, when you speak to clients, they never have a good answer to the subject. And we have to look at risk in multiple ways. You know, we have market risk. You know, what can you afford to lose? You know, how much do you really want to lose? So we talk about red money, green money ways to separate that that thought will help you along that way. Inflation risk. We see what's going on today and we know that that your dollar today doesn't go as far as it went five, ten years ago. So that's important to cover longevity risk. People are not used to to to living the the ripe old ages that we live today. So are you going to run out of money? Have you secured that? You're not going to run out of money. And the one risk that is rarely discussed is the sequence of returns risk. And a recent study was done with the Federal Reserve and that reported by the New York University, and it showed a couple with $1,000,000 withdrawing 65,000 on an annual basis. And the study was done over a 14 year basis.
Ed Cruz:
And when we look at the returns over those 14 years, if you take that same 14 years and just reverse it, looking at the two. And this is why it's so important to look at what's going on today. We took the withdrawals, we took the annual returns. We went down 14 years. And based on the economic conditions that we're looking at today, you could almost look at it this way. That couple ran out of money after 14 years, and that's one risk that you can't afford to take in retirement. And when we took a look at the the other couple and we just inverse the returns, we saw that with the same amount of money, with the same amount of withdrawals, the same returns just a little differently placed. We saw that that couple still had, after 14 years, nearly $1,000,000. So just because you have that nest egg built up doesn't mean that you're that you're not risking yourself in the long run. So how do we help? We help by obviously getting rid of that market risk. And so I think for all the listeners out there, if there's something to keep in mind, is that sequence of returns can surely make a difference in retirement, especially for those that are at or near retirement at this point.
Matt McClure:
Yeah, it sounds like it and absolutely, especially in that that example that was done there in that in that study. And if you folks would like to get in touch with and I want to remind you my prosperity team dot com is the website you can also give them a call 3862285769. That is 3862285769. Or my prosperity team dot com got that free consultation and we're also at I know offering speaking about stability one of the one of the things that we like to talk a lot about here on the show is the investment vehicle for folks called Annuity. And there's a book, Annuity 360 that you are giving folks as well.
Ed Cruz:
That's right. And the Annuity 360 book, learn all you need to know about annuities. That is going to help you to make a choice in which ones will work for you, which ones won't work for you. There are different types of annuities, so just because one may be considered better than another doesn't mean that for your situation that that would be true. So again, risk comes in different fashion and just taking out a deferred annuity versus a direct income annuity, that could be a different risk that you take upfront. So we'll help explain all this. Our process is simple. We just will go through and through a little discovery phase, see what's working for you, what's not working for you. You know, when we do this type of work, we also have to realize that there's a compound effect to everything that we do. And if we take losses upfront, that's going to have a compound effect, you know, three, five years down the road. If we start off on the right foot, this is going to help to eliminate you. Just starting off on a on a on a negative versus starting off on a positive. So these are all important things. And again, the annuity 360 book will will help you go through this process.
Matt McClure:
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, we've been talking a lot about inflation here and even just in the first few minutes of the show, it's such a big thing that's on everybody's minds. And I'll actually we'll have a little bit more coming up in just a just a few more minutes into the show as we take our first break. I actually spoke with an economics professor at George Washington University about how long inflation may last. And so we'll get some insight on that. But one of the big things that keeps driving inflation and people are going to really be feeling it this weekend as they do some traveling like we were just talking about for 4th of July. If you're traveling any stretch in a car, even even if you're getting in a plane and going by buying a plane ticket, they've gotten more expensive because of higher fuel costs. So we've really been paying really close attention to those gas prices because that's been fueling a lot of the inflation that we've been seeing here. Luckily, according to Triple A, anyway, this past week we've come down about $0.15 or so from the record high, which was 501 nationally per gallon for regular unleaded, which was something that we had never seen before, over five bucks a gallon. It's come down here at least a couple of days ago to right around 486. And so that that is at least some good news, but still still way too high. And, you know, I've got a force. I drive I drive a four cylinder Mazda, and it cost me about almost 50 bucks to fill up. I don't even have like, I mean, you know, it's it's turbocharged. It's turbocharged four cylinder. So, you know, it's got a little bit of power going on, but it's not you know, I don't drive some big V8 something and it costs about almost 50 bucks for me to fill up my little car. So I can only imagine if folks are driving a larger vehicle, what they're shelling out, especially if they do a lot of driving.
Ed Cruz:
Well, yeah. I mean, and you're talking again, a four cylinder, obviously, not all of us have that. In fact, I have a six and eight, depending on which car I drive. And and I can tell you that filling up is not pleasant today. But, you know, when we think about everything that's going on with the fuel prices and and we think about the ideas that are being thrown out there, you know, in our federal government talking about. Olivia alleviating the situation with a with a fuel tax holiday. You know, I just can't I can't fathom that idea because, you know, it's if we sit there and we just knock off $0.18 a gallon, I don't think that's going to have a large impact to the American people. And it's like the old saying, you know, you're going to rob Peter to pay Paul. You're basically using a credit card to pay off another. And we surely don't want to do that. And, you know, this goes to the government's planning and here we are talking about planning, right. And risk and the risk of of of what the government wants to do is the trade off to that would be that the roads, the bridges, the funding is not going to make it there. So again, when we make decisions, we want to make sure that we think things through and and that we don't leave any stone unturned because, again, it's going to have a consequence in the future. Like I said earlier, that compound effect, it's going to either help us or hurt us because either way, it's a compound effect.
Matt McClure:
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, the talking about the fuel tax suspension, that might bring some relief, at least a little bit to to people's wallets and pocketbooks for for a little while. But obviously not anything permanent there. And as you say, there could be those long term risks and detrimental effects that that could be associated with that. And so we really need some kind of long term solutions. Yeah, we need relief right now because we're paying so much, but we also need those long term solutions as well. And that kind of, you know, remains to be seen. I literally when when gas prices started going up so much so quickly, I just checked just out of Curiosity online and I went around looking at different like electric vehicle prices just for the heck of it. And I was like, Well, I think I'll just be paying more for the gas for now because they're not cheap. They are not cheap vehicles at this moment.
Ed Cruz:
That's right. I mean, I. Well, and when you think about that, it's you know, I think about the other effects when we talk about electric vehicles, you know, how much can our power grid absorb, for one? But, you know, I think about the batteries when it's time to replace those again, that's not going to be cheap. So it's almost like you're paying for it now or you're going to pay for it later, but one way or the other, you're going to pay for it.
Matt McClure:
Yeah. Now, that's very true. One thing that I did do, as well as just out of curiosity, was check on gas prices over the years. And obviously, we had this, you know, surpassing the $5 a gallon mark for regular unleaded. That was that was unprecedented here recently, something that happened. But if you adjust for inflation over the years, we have kind of been up in this territory before. Like say, you know, even if you go back as far back as 1918, this is from a website inflation data the gas price is the actual price at the pump was somewhere in the neighborhood of like $0.30 a gallon back in 1918. But if you adjust for inflation, so in today's dollars, it was $4.79 a gallon back then. When you look at it, inflation adjusted and even as recently as 2012, 4.47 a gallon in inflation adjusted terms where it was, it was like 350 a gallon on the pump. So, you know, if you take that into account, if you take inflation into account, we have been kind of in this same territory before, but still over $5 a gallon. That was an unprecedented thing.
Ed Cruz:
It sure is. And I would add that. Although we are although we are in this situation right now. I do I do honestly believe that there's a there's a fix to this, but we all have to play in this together and we'll figure it out somewhere or another.
Matt McClure:
Yeah, we will. And and we'll have to, you know, going forward, it's going to be something that will we'll all have to deal with and a solution will usually present itself. At least that's that's what it does in my experience. Well, at just about time here for us to take our very first break of the show. Wanted to remind the listeners, though. This is Prosperity Principles with Ed Crews. I'm Matt McClure here alongside Ed Crews. The phone number once again, 3862285769. That's 386228 5769. The website is My Prosperity Time.com. And you can use either one of those methods of getting in touch with Ed. If you're interested in that free consultation, you can also get a free copy of the book Annuity 360 by our good friend and all around good guy Ford Stokes and tell you all that you need to know about those safe investment vehicles investing in your future through different kinds of annuities. And there are all kinds of different ones. Okay. So it's 4th of July weekend here. Ed, we've been talking about it a little bit here so far, but I wanted to give we usually like to give a financial quote of the week, right. To to share some some good financial wisdom with the listeners. And this week, I thought it would be appropriate to bring in one from Benjamin Franklin, one of our founders here. Yeah. And his quote is this Listen to this. And we'll and we'll kind of get some thoughts on it before we head to our first break. Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship. A small leak will sink a great ship. And that's, I think, very true, Ed, because, you know, those little things, they add up.
Ed Cruz:
They do. And trust me, I think all of our listeners out there know that as you're going through that supermarket, you're picking up those little things. When you get to that checkout line, you you almost do a double take at that appearance. How much did you say if we if we think back and I recently went to the supermarket with my wife and we picked up some items and I saw the cart filling up and I started thinking about inflation and and started thinking about what's this going to cost us. I was already feeling nervous to hear what the what the cashier was going to say. But, you know, when I think back, I say, gosh, not too long ago, I was paying paying about two thirds of of what that person just said. And so, yes, those little things do add up.
Matt McClure:
They really, really do. And I've been there many a time. Get to the cash register and I'm like, wait, that can't be right. Oh, wait, it is right. When I look at everything, I go down the itemized list, you know, and I'm like, Oh, well, I guess I guess that is right. And then you got to fork it up, you know? But there we go. All right. Well, it's time for us to take our first break here. But stick around. Prosperity Principles with Ed Crews will be right back. Remember the website once again, folks, my prosperity team, stick with us. We're going to hear a little bit about inflation during the break and we'll, of course, talk about it more on the other side. You're listening to Prosperity Principles. We'll be right back.
Matt McClure:
Who more than self. There. Country, love. If you've got money questions, you've found the place for answers. This is Prosperity Principles with Ed Crews.
Matt McClure:
How long will inflation last? I'm Matt McClure with a retirement radio network powered by a merrill life. Americans and people around the world are struggling through the worst inflation we've seen in four decades. Everything from a gallon of gas to the food you buy at the grocery store is all more expensive these days.
Tara Sinclair:
We're also seeing it in all sorts of other everyday services. Nail salons, hair salons, you name it, you're seeing difficulties in terms of higher prices.
Matt McClure:
Tara Sinclair is a professor of economics at George Washington University. She says the inflation situation is a bit of a vicious cycle right now.
Tara Sinclair:
Employees are asking for higher raises and then employers are trying to figure out how to pass those costs on into the goods and services that they're selling.
Matt McClure:
Ongoing supply chain issues are a huge factor driving inflation. In an ideal world, Sinclair says, fixing those issues would be a perfect outcome.
Tara Sinclair:
If we could provide all the goods and services that people are demanding at the current prices, then we would be in much better shape and we wouldn't see this competition to buy these goods and services. That's really pushing up the prices, but.
Matt McClure:
It doesn't usually work that way. Instead of increasing supply, the way we usually tamp down inflation is on the other side of the equation.
Tara Sinclair:
And so instead it's about slowing the demand for goods and services. And the way that that happens is through the Federal Reserve, our central bank, raising interest rates.
Matt McClure:
And that means things like car loans, mortgages, home loans and credit cards get more expensive. It's not the most pleasant way to do it, she says. But that is likely how inflation will cool down in the coming months. The Fed's interest rate hikes have also caused a lot of volatility in the markets. But Sinclair says if you're planning for retirement, it's not all bad news.
Tara Sinclair:
It is important to remember that they have seen strong years of growth recently up till now. And so we're seeing a lot of people that have a lot better financial conditions now then, particularly if we think about people that were trying to retire after the global financial crisis.
Matt McClure:
And she says many pre-retirees are looking to move assets into safer investments.
Tara Sinclair:
And there are these higher interest rates from the Fed are good news. So hopefully they can look forward to to that and maybe be able to find a steady annuity that will support them in retirement.
Matt McClure:
So how will you respond as interest rates go up in an effort to bring inflation back down? That's a key question to consider as you plan for your retirement years with the retirement radio network powered by a merrill life. I'm Matt McClure.
Matt McClure:
Methods or many principles are few. Methods always change. Principals never do. You're listening to Prosperity Principles. Once again, here's Ed Kruse.
Matt McClure:
And welcome back. This is Prosperity Principles with Ed Crews. I'm Matt McClure here alongside Ed Crews. My Prosperity Team dot com is the website. And during the break there we heard from a professor from George Washington University talking about inflation, talking about how long it might last. Also talking a lot about this volatility in the markets and people looking for a safe place for their money. And one of the things that she mentioned in there very prominently was annuities and and finding a good annuity to put to put some funds into so that you do have a safe place to put your money so that you have a guaranteed income going into retirement.
Ed Cruz:
Right. And those are the two main commitments that people are looking for. Hey, if I invest with you, is my money going to be safe? Am I going to be able to count on my income? And the one thing that we always have to look at again is that there are different types of annuities. You know, you have single premium deferred annuities, you have immediate annuities, you have multi year guarantee annuities, you have fixed indexed annuities, you have variable annuities. So we can get lost in the world of annuities. But which one is right for you? Well, it depends on what you're looking for. You know, if you're if you're five, ten years out from retirement, you know, why not look at a fixed indexed annuity to give you maximum growth, to give you some deferral time and to maximize your income. Right. If you're looking to retire tomorrow and and you have a pension or a41k, I should say that's due to you. Well, what does that 401. K really mean to you? You can't look at a lump sum and equate it to what your income should be, because most people will misuse and abuse that money. And and it won't be there for 20, 25, 30 years. And believe me, we have clients today that are retiring at 65 and living up to the age of 95. And in fact, I just had a client that just passed away at the age of 98.
Ed Cruz:
So that does happen. People are living longer. We should be concerned. But the big issue that we see right now with this market going down is the variable annuity market. And a lot of people don't understand what they've gotten themselves into. And sometimes they need a little a little reminder. They need a little comparison. And I just ran into this situation just a couple of days ago, sat down with a client of mine, and the wife turns over to her husband and says, you know, you really need to discuss that plan that you made for us. And they were thinking that that their financial plan was not only safe, that she would be guaranteed to get it. They were also thinking that and one of their main drivers was trying to avoid the nursing home. So I said, Well, how does that annuity help you if you if you need the home health care or you need whatever specialized care? So they explained to me that they they they thought that they had an income rider in there that would that would double. And that does exist. That would double if they needed it for long term care. But that's not the case. And there's far more to see. And we're going to go we're going to go do a deeper dive into this annuity.
Ed Cruz:
But the one thing that we realized right off the bat is that there are a million and a half that they invested into this. They've lost principle. And so the gentleman made a call and he asked his broker, well, you know, should should something happen to me today? What does my wife get? And luckily there is a death benefit on there. But, you know, when planning or are we planning for death or are we planning for living benefits? And so, you know, it all comes down to doing doing a comparison. You know, what do you have? Do you do you have a fixed annuity? Do you have a variable annuity? What are your goals? Have your goals changed in the last five or ten years? So whether you have an annuity now or not and if you do, you should get a comparison. You know, annuities have improved vastly over the past three, five, seven years. And they're there. Their fees are lower. If they have a fee, some have no fee. But compared to a to a a securities product, we can we can in general say that our fees are going to. Lower and compared to a security, we can tell you that we will provide you with that safety. And the chances are that we're going to give you also a better return when it comes to lifetime guaranteed income.
Ed Cruz:
So these are reasons for us to sit down and actually do as we call it, the annuity x ray, do a comparison. And you may be either a surprised by what you find out, be enlightened. And but when we're all done, I think you will gain a lot of knowledge. And, you know, when I ask my clients, you know, how long have you been doing this? They said they say, well, far too long and we wish we would have met you five, ten, 15, 20 years ago. My response generally is that they probably weren't ready for me when that happened. They needed to go through those experiences so that they can finally realize what they actually need and what they actually should be looking for. So. I guess that's what I can say about doing a comparison is don't put your head in the sand, take the time, let's dissect it. Let's go over it. Let's find out what your fees are. You know, let's let's lower your fees. Let's get you the the returns. And I'm not afraid to say it. There are some fears out there that that I wouldn't even offer to my to my enemies. So just because you have an FRA, does it mean that you should not get a comparison done because they're not all created equal?
Matt McClure:
It's not a one size fits all thing because what's good for you is different than what's good for, you know, your brother or sister and or uncle or neighbor or whomever. And so you really need to to take a look at your finances and you need to do it with an expert who can really dive in and and break it down. Prosper my prosperity team dot com is the website once again folks for that free consultation my prosperity team and the phone number 3862285769. And yeah, it's really something where people do need to to reach out and have that deep dive taken.
Ed Cruz:
Absolutely. And, you know, earlier we did speak about risk. And, you know, when we when we talk income and we think about clients and their pensions, you know, these pensions, they're full of risk as well. You know, I have a client here just, what, five, seven years ago, the city of Detroit, if I may say that the city of Detroit, they ran into some issues with their with their pensions. And most people don't even realize that today. And a study studies have been done on this over and over. The the Heritage Foundation did a study that spoke about how government pensions state local anyone that you want to look at, you know, there are only funded at $0.35 to every dollar. When you think about that commitment that they've made, it's not a strong commitment. So what happened to my client? Well, he got a letter stating because of their underfunding, they had to cut down on his pension. So can you imagine living a life on a fixed income and down the road here you are retired for ten years and you receive a letter stating that your pension has been reduced. Again, the risk comes in all forms and income isn't excluded from that. And again, there are risks that are not measurable. There are risks that are created by markets, there are risks that are created by governments. And so we should all be concerned at every level, you know, the way that we think about how we're going to create our financial plan. And so that's what we're here to do. We're here to make sure that you're safe. We're here to make sure that you receive that guaranteed income. And the companies that we do use are billion dollar companies, and they're well over funded. You know, more than dollar for dollar. So you don't have to worry about this type of issue costing you in the future.
Matt McClure:
Yeah, absolutely. And when you're talking about, you know, planning for retirement and thinking about that, there are a couple of different ways that you that you need to be smart about it, right? I mean, you need to be, first of all, smart when it comes to thinking about taxes. You're talking about government, government creating risk there. And they say that to, you know, the only two things that are guaranteed in life or death and taxes. And so taxes are a big one. How do people go about being smart when it comes to their tax planning for retirement?
Ed Cruz:
Tax planning. Interesting subject. More and more people are catching on. But although they hear the subject spoken about, many are still afraid to act on it. Because for one, when we think about tax free planning, Roth IRAs are the first thing that come to come to mind. But most people. When they go to invest into an IRA, they still want that tax deduction. They want that tax benefit. But again, they're not thinking long term. You're you're shortsighted when you don't combine a plan. You can do both. You can do a traditional IRA and a Roth IRA. But that Roth IRA, when you're when you need it most in your retirement, when you're on a fixed income and when you reduce your tax exposure, this is when you're going to realize how important this tax free income is to you, what it really means to you at that point. So Roth IRAs are one way and we have life insurance and people look at life insurance as a as a death benefit product. But that's no longer true because in the past, when you had whole life, it probably was more it should should have been looked at more as a death benefit product. But in today's world, you can sit there and take an indexed universal life. And yes, this is after tax money, just like if you did a Roth IRA. And it's ironic how people don't look at the two as the same, but truthfully, it is the same. The difference being in life insurance, you can make larger contributions. And so therefore, in retirement, your your retirement income is going to be larger and it's 100% tax free through the use of of loans out of that policy. And importantly, we have to add to that that after you're done with this income, there's always a death benefit at the end of the at the end of at the end of life. So, you know, it's not just the income you receive there still is whether it's a small legacy or a large one, there still is a legacy that you leave behind. So that's important to note as well.
Matt McClure:
Yeah, that's an important point there because I think a lot of people still have in their minds, they think, okay, maybe there are two different kinds of life insurance. They got whole life and you've got term life and that's kind of it, you know, because a lot of times that's the only thing that may have been there in the past or maybe their employer has offered, say, a term policy. So they have that in their minds. But there are a lot of different options for people these days that they might not have even thought about or known existed.
Ed Cruz:
Yeah, just like annuities. And we mentioned that the various forms of annuities that are out there, it's no different for life insurance. Again, you mentioned the term we have the the index universal life. We have whole life. We have a hybrid. We have a combination of the two. So and you also have variable life insurance. So again, we can get into the the different sorts and types. What's right for you. That's for us to figure out when we sit down and we know what your concerns are, what your what you're looking forward to in the future. And and and again, no two plans are alike, and nor they should be. Can they be at times? Sure, there are similar situations out there, but for the most part, we really do need to sit down, listen to your concerns and and we take it from there.
Matt McClure:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, in that section there sort of covers smart tax planning. What about planning with with income in mind and doing that in a smart way?
Ed Cruz:
Well, when we when we talk about income and this is an interesting way to look at it, you know, there's there's your guaranteed income and that's true income. And then we could talk about if come and I said that with an eye if you didn't you didn't hear me wrong. And so I always say, ask yourself, is there anything about my financial professional, you know, what does he do or doesn't or does not do? Does he ever recommend that my money is guaranteed that my money will not participate in losses? If your answer to that question is no or you're not sure, you know, I think it's time to call and find out. And again, going back to the x ray, we can do all the comparisons. We can do the analysis for you. We have a team that will look at all this for you. So again, the problem with most of you out there is that you've been meeting with financial professionals that specialize in income, and that type of planning is not going to help you. And again, if you caught what I just said, again, I said if come my financial advice is is called income planning because you can count on it coming in. And the safe money accounts that that we offer, again, are based on contractual guarantee. Backed up by large asset companies, A-rated companies. Therefore, you can count on the money coming in to your retirement. And most brokers and financial planners specializing in income planning and I call it that again, because you really can't count on it if come is retirement money that's invested in stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other type of variable accounts. And if planning can be tied to many issues that are out there and we're facing those today like war, our economic downturn and and if we remember the days of Enron, bad accounting, crooked CEOs, you know, those are things that we tend to forget about.
Ed Cruz:
But I think it's important to remember. And the bottom line is, do you want income planning that you can count on or do you want if planning, are you at or near retirement? You know, you cannot afford if planning if you are at or near retirement. So my income planning will show you how to get guaranteed returns without the risk of market loss. I'll also show you how to think about your money. Again, we spoke about earlier the risk, the green money, red money and and again, too many financial professionals teach our clients to think of their retirement as a pile of money. And, you know, you can you can pile up all the assets you want. But if you don't have a true income plan, chances are you're going to fall short, you know, unless you're sitting there with ten, $15 Million in the bank, which most of us aren't. You know, income planning is is what's going to show you the roadmap on on how to look at your money as a as a lifetime benefit, not a pile of money. You know, I want to show you how to guarantee all that money that you've worked so hard for. And and it can be guaranteed not to go down with market losses. So take the if out of your retirement and guarantee yourself the income you deserve. To find out more information again, you can call me at 3862285769. And remember that it's not just the income will also help you remove the high annual fees from your retirement and make sure that you can lock in the market gains so your golden years can be worry free.
Matt McClure:
And that is what it is all about. And that's why that's what people are looking for, especially these days that, you know, guaranteed income, a safe place to put their money as well for retirement. Well, once again, folks, that number 3862285769. The website, My Prosperity Team, you're listening to Prosperity Principles. We'll be right back.
Matt McClure:
So not saying I'm a psychic, but I see a free financial consultation in your future. Just visit my prosperity team dot com.
Matt McClure:
The weather is warm. Are you planning to use some of your hard earned money to get out of town? I'm Matt McClure with a retirement radio network powered by a married life. Whether you prefer a trip to the mountains. Soaking up sun at the beach. For the thrills and chills of a theme park. Here's a destination for pretty much anyone who's looking to travel over the summer. The consumer finance website, Wallethub, recently did a study ranking the top summer travel destinations. Orlando came out on top, followed by Washington, D.C. and Tampa, Florida. Austin, Texas. And Salt Lake City, Utah. Rounded out the top five. Wallethub analyst Jill Gonzalez.
Tara Sinclair:
The study was based on 43 metrics, including cheap flights, number of delays, hotel costs and COVID numbers.
Matt McClure:
In the meantime, inflation probably has you watching your budget more closely than before. So when considering travel costs and hassles, the website says Santa Rosa, California, is your best bet. At the other end of the spectrum, McAllen, Texas has the highest costs and most hassles. But what if you have your heart set on escaping to a specific destination and it's on the pricier side? There are ways to save no matter where you're headed. Travel expert Mark Ellwood recently told The Today show, before.
Ed Cruz:
You do.
Matt McClure:
Anything, if you a member of a warehouse club like Sam's Club or.
Ed Cruz:
Costco, go to.
Matt McClure:
Their websites because they sell travel.
Ed Cruz:
At a big discount. Brilliant.
Matt McClure:
So that's.
Ed Cruz:
Immediately you might.
Matt McClure:
Find you could suddenly cut the price. Of course, there are also travel websites like Expedia, Travelocity and Kayak, just to name a few. But if you're looking for discounts specifically geared toward retirees, the senior list has a pretty extensive directory of them, including which airlines, hotels, cruise lines and rental car companies give discounts to those over a certain age. So how can you head away for a warm weather vacation without breaking the bank? That's a key question to consider as you keep a close eye on your budget with the Retirement Radio Network powered by Emera Life, I'm Matt McClure.
Matt McClure:
High inflation. Got you down. This is your weekend. Pick me up. You're listening to Prosperity Principles.
Matt McClure:
Welcome back. This is Prosperity Principles. I'm Matt McClure here alongside Ed Crews. My Prosperity Team dot com is the website for you to find out more information about all of the things we are talking about today. And those things, of course, include planning for the future and planning for retirement. That is really what we love to focus on here because it's so important, especially to so many folks during these uncertain times. And so, Ed, when you when you talk about planning for the future, when you talk about planning for retirement and people really start to wrap their brain around it, one of the things that you want to do, we talked about being smart right before the break. And another thing that you want to do is be efficient and you can be efficient in a few different ways with your planning because you don't want to to waste money and spend spend money where you don't need to. Right. So so talk about a few of the ways that folks can be efficient in their planning for the future.
Ed Cruz:
Well, the first thing that we that we always like to cover are fees, right? Because if a fee was good for you and your retirement plan, then then I would sit there and just charge you a boatload of fees. But obviously, the more I charge you, the more there is taken away from you. So what we don't want to do is overpay on fees. And when you're talking about income products, you know, a lot of these financial planners, they want to tie you to bonds, bonds and and they're whatever their underlying return is. And and that creates your income. But if your income is is tied to fees, well, then that's not efficient. So we need to be fee efficient. And when people ask me, well, you have fees in your product, right? And I say, Well, that's a yes and no. There are products that have fees, there are products that don't have fees. But the one thing I can tell you is that in any of the income accounts that you generate with us and which, by the way, some of them have six, six and one half, 7% guarantees in those income accounts. There's never a fee. So the the income that's generated, it's truly your income. So in a in a security, if you're if you're paying a fee and you're taking an income, well, you know, you're selling off shares. And if you're selling off shares, well, obviously that can't be good for you. So again, being efficient that way is very important. So yeah, do we have fees? They're optional. But when you talk about securities fees are not optional, they're more mandatory.
Ed Cruz:
They're in there. When we take a look at market efficiency, if we're again, we're sitting there taking an income and the market's taken away from you. Not only is your account going down due to your income, you're actually eroding your principal. Whereas if you have a market efficient product, say like a fixed indexed annuity, when you're taking your income, if the market is not working for you, then what we say is, is your hero. You can't go lower than that base that you're at, minus the income that you take. So at that point, you're not you're not hurting yourself to the tune of instead of just 5% for income or 4% for income, you're not hurting yourself with a 10% drop in your account or a 15% drop in your account. So we want to eliminate that risk by moving some of that money out of the market and and get those market gains. But again, without that market risk and then tax efficiency and we and we spoke about that, obviously, if we have IRAs prior to retiring, but a lot of my clients do, is we start turning over some of those traditional IRAs into Roth IRAs. They may take part of their 401. K, roll it over into a an IRA. And then we take and we and we do a Roth conversion. So therefore, when you are sitting there in your retirement days, you're not sitting there paying a bunch of taxes back to the to the IRS. And again, it's going to make a significant difference in retirement.
Matt McClure:
Yeah, absolutely. And that's, you know, something that people want to we want to pay our fair share. Nobody likes paying taxes. Of course we want to pay our fair share. We just don't want to pay more than that. We don't want to pay more than what we have to. And there are ways that you can you can completely do that that you just spoke about. I think that's that's wonderful. And it's going to mean a whole lot to a lot of people when you're talking about in investing. In your future. We're you're talking about investing for retirement. The thing that we keep coming back to, and I think for good reason in listening to you speak about it, is, you know, investing with income in mind because you don't want to just focus on having, as you said earlier, this big pile of money. Right. That's, you know, maybe going to go into some sort of savings account or something like that. And maybe even if it's an interest bearing savings account, that's only going to grow by just this little tiny, minuscule amount every year. You want something that's really going to going to help that money grow and be guaranteed. So it's not going to just, you know, go somewhere. You're not going to lose that principal amount that you put into it.
Ed Cruz:
Yeah. I mean, when you invest with income in mind, when we look at our multi year guaranteed annuities today, we see some of these annuities offering for 4.25% for five years. That's unheard of. We haven't seen those type of multi year guaranteed rate annuities, I would say, in over a decade. It's been quite a long time since I've since I've seen those. And you know, when we think about income again, there was an article written by Vanguard. Another one written by Fidelity. And they both confirmed and these articles go back about seven years, but nothing's changed. The one thing that they always go back to is, Hey, we can help you grow your money. But the one thing we've never been able to do in a in a market based account is we have never been able to figure out how to create that income. So when you invest with income in mind, then you have to be thinking, well, if Vanguard and Fidelity can't figure it out, nor can the rest of the the securities world, they can't figure out how to create that guaranteed income. Then you should be asking yourself, How do I create that income? Why waste your time with an account that's not going to create any sort of gain for you? Therefore, there's no way to create an income for you. Efficiency comes in many different ways, right? And so with that in mind, that's why we encourage people to budget spend wisely. Many don't want to do that today and consider implementing a fixed indexed annuity to protect and grow your wealth.
Ed Cruz:
So that's what fixed indexed annuities are all about. But you know, a little more today, we can start looking at my guys for some for some short term money that you may want to grow. And five years from now, you may be able to make those adjustments and say, okay, I didn't need it then, and it earned me a good rate of return and maybe now I can turn it over to an fire and there are fixed indexed annuities out there that can provide you with income. Now there are fixed indexed annuities that that you must wait a year for. And again, it depends on your timeline. If you have five or ten years till retirement, we can come up with a plan that would that would blow you away. And yes, we can show you what your guaranteed income would be three, five, seven, ten years down the road. Again, that's something that the stock market or any type of security, they can't show you a guaranteed income down the road. We can actually say, okay, you have $250,000 to set aside for this. Here's what your income would look like guaranteed at the end of that time frame. And that's what peace of mind planning is all about. And so if you're ready for that type of planning, please give me a call. I'd love to talk to you.
Matt McClure:
Well, a few more minutes here to spend on the show for this week, Ed. But if people do call that number or go to the website and get that free consultation with you in that initial conversation, what does that kind of look like? What can people expect when they reach out and talk to you for the very first time?
Ed Cruz:
You know, when people call, obviously they have something that they're calling about, right. So I do like to ask what's triggering the call? What is what's their main concern? And once we cover that and we kind of figure out what they're looking for, what's working for them, what's not working for them, what upset them? Are they getting the service that they deserve? Once we're all once we're done with those simple questions, you know, we like to we like to figure out, you know, what does a successful retirement look like for you? Because people have different ideas. Some people say, well, I've traveled the world already. I just want to be able to enjoy my grandkids, you know, at home and sit and relax. And some people say, well, you know, I've worked all my life and now it's time for me to travel the world. And so what does a successful retirement look like for you? I think it's very different for many. Different people. And then what are you doing and who are you with? Because again, there's the difference between the income planning and the income planning. And and we really do need to make a distinction between the two. So once we get to know these certain things, we can help move along. And again, what are you looking to accomplish? What goals do you have in mind? What hobbies do you have? Because I don't want you to change your lifestyle in retirement. I want you to enjoy your retirement. So we want to make sure that you have a fully funded your retirement. And if you fail to do that, we want to show you how to fund your retirement, how to fully fund that retirement. And at the end of the day, again, it all comes down to, you know, most people don't have pensions today. They only have Social Security and they have that pile of money. So in closing, we definitely want to find out how they plan to create that income each and every month, because without that, you really don't have a comfortable retirement.
Matt McClure:
Yeah, and getting that plan in place is so great and actually is really reassuring, I think, to people because there are there are so few guarantees in life that people are looking for guarantees wherever they can get them, and especially when it comes to money for the future and especially for the retirement years. Once again, folks, 3862285769 is the the number My Prosperity Team, Time.com is the website. For more information and to find out more about the book Annuity 360. And just in our last couple of minutes here, I wanted to share something. It is 4th of July weekend. Of course, we've been talking about it a little bit off and on. And I just wanted to to mention my dad. I couldn't go this 4th of July weekend without mentioning him. He was an Air Force veteran who just just passed away this past year, back in January. And he loved this time of the year. He one of his favorite holidays of the year. I think obviously, I think his favorite was Christmas, of course, because it's like pretty much everybody. But his second favorite, I would think would be 4th of July. Know he was such a patriotic man, volunteered to to serve his country in Vietnam and just, you know, wanted to sort of give a shout out to him because he was such a great dad. He was such a great American and just a really patriotic guy and really, really strong, strong person. And so I just wanted to kind of pay tribute to him a little bit on this 4th of July weekend and say thanks to my dad, thanks to all of our veterans who have served this country so, so well, continuing to fight for our freedoms that we enjoy and that a lot of times we take for granted.
Ed Cruz:
Amen to that. And, you know, to add to that. Yeah, I definitely want to say thank you for all of our service members, everyone that puts themselves in the line of fire. Thank you for your service. All of you that are out there and 4th of July is is like you said, it's a symbol of freedom. And and we should never take it for granted.
Matt McClure:
That's right. Absolutely. And go out and enjoy that freedom this weekend, folks. But do it safely. Please be as as safe as you possibly can out there. We want you to have fun. We want you to to really, really celebrate and have a good time. But just be careful, do it safely and we'll look forward to seeing you or you hearing us anyway once again next weekend, when we are past the fourth and into deeper into the summer, I should say. Ed, thank you so much for guiding us through and explaining a lot of wonderful options for folks for the, you know, planning for their retirement. I really do appreciate all of your your insights each and every week. We'll look forward to doing it again next time around.
Ed Cruz:
All right. Thank you, Matt.
Matt McClure:
Thanks, Ed. We'll see you, everybody.
Ed Cruz:
Bye now.
Matt McClure:
Thanks for listening to Prosperity Principles. You deserve to work with a financial and insurance expert who can offer strategies for protecting and growing your hard earned money to schedule your free no obligation consultation, visit my Prosperity Team dot com or pick up the phone and call 3862285769. That's 3862285769.
Matt McClure:
It's not affiliated with the United States government. Edwin Cruz does not offer tax, legal or investment advice. Consult with your tax advisor or attorney regarding specific situations. Opinions expressed are subject to change without notice. These opinions are not intended as investment advice, nor do they predict future performance of any product. All information provided is believed to be from reliable sources. However, we make no representation or warranty as to the accuracy of any statement. This information is intended to be educational in nature and does not provide a guarantee or a specific result. All copyrights and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. A married life assumes no responsibility or liability for the content of this message. The information contained herein is provided on an as is basis with no guarantees of completeness, accuracy, usefulness, timeliness, or of the results obtained from the use of this information. Fixed annuities, including multiyear guaranteed rate annuities, are not designed for short term investments and may be subject to restrictions, fees and surrender charges as described in the annuity contract. Guarantees are backed by the financial strength and claims paying ability of the issuer.
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