Control Your Retirement Destiny

In this episode, podcast host and author of “Control Your Retirement Destiny” covers Chapter 1 of the 2nd edition of the book titled, “Why It’s Different Over 50.” If you want to learn even more than what there is time to cover in the podcast series, you can find the book “Control Your Retirement Destiny” on Amazon. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan for your retirement, visit us at sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help.   Chapter 1 – Podcast Script Hi, I’m Dana Anspach, the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a fee-only financial planning firm that specializes in helping people transition into retirement. I’m also the author of the books Control Your Retirement Destiny, and Social Security Sense. My passion for helping people make the best retirement decisions possible is what led me to write Control Your Retirement Destiny and I’m honored by the incredible 5-star reviews it has received. I wrote it because I wanted people to see what a real retirement plan looks like – and the book spells it all out, step by step. Today, I’m thrilled to bring to you this podcast where we will discuss highlights from the book. In this episode, I’ll be covering Chapter 1 of the 2nd edition of the book titled, “Why It’s Different Over 50.” If you want to learn even more than what we have time to cover in this podcast series, I encourage you go to Amazon.com and search for Control Your Retirement Destiny. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan for your retirement, visit us at sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help. Let’s get started. ---- So, why is it different over 50? Sure, your joints ache more, and you can no longer read menus, but, do the financial aspects of life change too? In many ways, yes, they do. Think of it like this… Imagine you’re planning for a road trip. This road trip has two phases. The first phase is the accumulation phase. This occurs during your working years where your focus is on saving for retirement. You have a set point in time you are saving for – a destination you want to reach by a specific age. The second phase is the decumulation phase of the road trip. This will be the point in time where you will “live off your acorns”. You have a lot more flexibility in this phase, but also, a lot more unknowns. Let’s look at each phase more closely. First, the accumulation road trip. Assume for this portion of the road trip, you’re not going too far, only about 300 miles. Your gas tank holds 18 gallons and you didn’t have an electric car, so you only get about 20 miles per gallon. Taking 18 gallons x 20 miles per gallon, you can estimate you’ll get about 360 miles per tank. Since your destination is 300 miles away, it’s pretty easy to figure out you can get to there on one tank. This type of calculation is simple and easy to do. When you’re young and actively saving for retirement, this type of calculating helps you figure out how much to save. For example, if you’re age 40, and you want to save $1.5 million by age 65, how much do you need to put away each year? The answer is about $24,000 a year – that is assuming you earn about 7% a year on your investments. This type of math is relatively easy to do using a spreadsheet or a financial calculator. It’s easy because you plug in specific data, such as 25 years and a 7% return. Now, let’s start the second part of your road trip – the decumulation phase – and see how the math gets harder. As you start the decumulation phase, here are some of the questions you have. How long is your road trip going to be? What terrain will you be driving over? What will the weather be like? Are they any gas stations along the way? What will the price of gas be? These are all unknowns. Let’s break these unknowns into four risk categories. The first category is called “Longevity Risk”. You don’t know how long you’ll live. So you don’t know how many total miles you’ll be driving. Instead of knowing it is 25 years until you reach age 65, now your road trip could be 20 years, thirty or even 40 years.   The next risk category is called “sequence risk”. This has to do with the unknown market returns. For example, we all know that city driving takes more fuel than highway driving. But with this road trip, you don’t know what conditions you’ll encounter. This risk impacts you when you are accumulating too. But while you are younger you have time to recoup from mistakes, or from a period of time with below average investment returns. As you get closer to retirement, a bad sequence of returns, or several years in a row with poor returns, can cause a result that you didn’t see coming.   This next risk category is “inflation risk”. What will the price of gas be as you travel along? Will prices rise over time, and if so, by how much?   The last challenge you have is rationing your supplies. This is a risk retirees face called “overspending risk.” Suppose you pack your favorite snacks, but you go on a binge early on the trip and gobble them all up? Now, you don’t have enough for the tail end of your trip.   To feel comfortable transitioning into retirement, you need a plan in place to account for these unknowns. In this podcast on Chapter 1 of Control Your Retirement Destiny, I’m going to provide an introduction to each of these four risks; longevity risk, sequence risk, inflation risk, and spending risk. LONGEVITY RISK First, longevity risk. When you run a projection, you must start with an assumption about how long you might live. You can guess, or you can use science… sort of. Science works well for engineering when you’re working with known factors – like gravity. But as we discussed, this road trip has a lot of unknowns, so when it comes to this type of planning, it’s really a scientific guess. Or, the term I love, that one of our clients shared with us, … a SWAG… or Scientific Wild A** Guess. (Can I say that on a podcast?    I sure hope so!) To SWAG longevity risk – the unknown factor of how long your road trip is, it is best to start with mortality tables –– These are the types of tables that insurance companies use and that the government uses when figuring out how much in Social Security they will pay out over time. We’ll start with data from 2014 mortality tables. If you’re curious, you can find these tables and associated research on the Society of Actuaries website. First, let’s look at singles. SINGLES For a single female, age 60, –how likely do you think it is she’ll live to 85? Would you be surprised to know there is a 60% chance? - (64% white collar only) Male – age 60 – A male age 60 has a 51% likelihood of living to 85 - (58% to white collar) Those are high odds. Many people make decisions about money with an off-hand comment such as “well, I might not live that long”. That’s like betting against the odds! Not only do people routinely underestimate how long they’ll live, many married couples make decisions based on their own life expectancy, as if they were single. What they need to do is look at their joint lifespan. If you’re married, how likely is it one of you will live to 85? The odds go up to 80%! 85% when looking at just the white collar data set. What about the likelihood that one of you will live to 90? There’s a 58% chance – which goes up to 65% for white collar folks. ---- I’d play to those odds in Vegas any day. Wouldn’t you? So doesn’t it make sense that you should align your finances to take advantage of those odds? What do you think the 85-year-old… you will wish the 50-year-old you had done? What about the 90-year you? What do you think they’ll wish the 60- year old had thought about? The types of decisions I’m talking about aren’t just “save more and spend less.” There are more complex decisions to make – decisions that help reduce the risk of outliving your money. For example, one decision that can have a big impact on protecting you against the risk of outliving your money is the decision as to when you start Social Security. Your Social Security benefits are inflation adjusted and you get a lot more per month if you start benefits at a later, age rather than as soon as possible. And if you’re married, you must learn how Social Security survivor benefits work. Many couples have one person who made the majority of the income. All too often that person starts Social Security benefits at a young age, and thus severely curtails the survivor benefits available to their spouse. There are many financial tools to consider when looking at how to protect your retirement income for life. You have to be open minded and willing to learn how things really work. This isn’t always easy. The bias against some financial tools can be so strong that when I mention them, you’d think I’d said a four-letter word! What are tools the illicit such strong responses? Things like Reverse mortgages and annuities. These products can be great financial tools when used in the right situation. It’s sad that many of these tools are marketed in such a cheesy way that people refuse to consider them. ---- In conclusion, when it comes to longevity risk, the unknown length of your road trip, be open minded and evaluate financial decisions such as When you begin Social Security Use of a reverse mortgage Purchasing an income annuity To protect the older you, it can also make sense to consider… Working a little longer Using investments that are most likely to keep pace with or outpace inflation   SEQUENCE RISK Next, let’s talk about sequence risk, or to use road trip vernacular, what we’ll call “the gas mileage question.” As we discussed, it would be difficult to calculate how many miles per gallon you were going to get if you didn’t now whether you were going to be driving mostly highway miles, or city miles. When planning for retirement the unknown conditions are your market returns. There’s something called The Retirement Red Zone – considered to be the last 10 years of working and the first 10 years of retirement. What if your Retirement Red Zone occurs during a time where

In this episode, podcast host and author of “Control Your Retirement Destiny” covers Chapter 2 of the 2nd edition of the book titled, “Starting with the Planning Basics.” If you want to learn even more than what there is time to cover in the podcast series, you can find the book “Control Your Retirement Destiny” on Amazon. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan for your retirement, visit us at sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help.   Chapter 2 – Podcast Script Hi, this is Dana Anspach, founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a fee-only financial planning firm that specializes in helping people plan for retirement, and author of Control Your Retirement Destiny. In our previous episode, we discussed highlights from Chapter 1 on the topic of “Why It’s Different Over 50.” In this podcast, I’ll be covering the highlights from Chapter 2 of Control Your Retirement Destiny, titled, “Starting With the Planning Basics.” Before we get into Chapter 2 content, a brief history on the publishing and reception we’ve gotten with the book. Control Your Retirement Destiny was initially published in 2013, out of my passion for helping people navigate their way through retirement and to combat the popular retirement rules of thumb in the media that are hurting people more than helping them. Naturally, I was nervous when it was released. Will people like it? Will it help them? I’m honored at response I’ve received and the feedback on the book – it has incredible 5-stars reviews on Amazon. And it is often the reason clients initially seek us out for assistance. Before we get going, just a reminder that if you like what you hear today, go to Amazon and search for Control Your Retirement Destiny. You won’t be disappointed. And if you are looking for a customized plan that fits your specific retirement needs, visit sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help. Let’s get started. ---- In this Chapter you learn how to use a set of basic schedules to build a financial plan. I’ll be explaining these schedules, but first, a story to illustrate why the basics are so important. I was lucky enough to grow up with a dad who taught me the value of not only smart financial decisions, but also of health and fitness. In my mind, there’s a lot of correlation between the two. As a family, we went to the gym together. To this day, when I visit my parents in Des Moines, Iowa, we still all go to the gym together. This habit of working out has served me well. I don’t have to think about it, it’s just what I do. For me, it’s the same with managing my finances. I’ve made it a habit to track what I spend and to save regularly. I don’t have to think about it, it’s just what I do. Currently I work out at a gym called LA Fitness. They have a slogan that pops up on their TV screens throughout the gym, and a women’s voice exclaims it aloud. This slogan reminds me of how important this chapter is. She says, “What gets measured, gets improved.” I hear this woman’s voice echo in my head all the time… “What gets measured, gets improved.” Whether it be the calories you’re consuming, the number of days a week you work out, or the amount of money you spend, when you measure, things improve. The first time I really experienced how measuring could impact my finances was about a year out of college. I downloaded Quicken, a program that tracks your spending by vendor and category. “Holy cow,” was what I thought, as I realized I was spending $400 a month on what I called the “Walmart and Target” category. Now, that may not seem like much if you are running a household with many family members. But for me, just married, a year out of school, living in a 700 square foot apartment, it was a lot. I started to pay attention to my behavior. Let’s say I needed something basic, like a bottle of Windex. I’d go to WalMart, and come out with $100 worth of items. Most of the time they were decorative knick-knacks that we certainly didn’t need. How was I going to fix this spending leak I wondered? I decided to experiment and only visit these stores once a month. Amazingly enough, I still only spent $100 each time I went. By only going once a month, there was instantly about $300 more a month in the budget – and we still always had what we needed. By measuring, I became aware of what was happening. Then I was able step back and experiment with ways to improve the outcome. Somehow, like so many things that work well in life, what did I do? … I stopped measuring. Several years later, after going through a period of low income and no measuring, I found myself $25,000 in credit card debt and with no savings. I hated opening my credit card statements. It was painful. I would mentally beat myself up. I was working at a CPA firm at the time, and one day one of the managing partners announced he was retiring – at a very young age. “How did he do that?” I wondered. He stopped by my office a few days later, and I was able to find out the answer. He said, “Dana five years ago, I had a negative net worth. I earned an attractive salary, but I realized I wasn’t doing anything with this money but spending it.” “How did you change things?” I asked. He said he had this realization that he was in a hole - and he was determined to dig his way out. He started by regularly measuring his net worth. There was that word again “measuring!” Each month he’d record his debt balances. He quickly paid off his debt. Then, he started looking for investment opportunities. He was lucky enough to catch the real estate market on an upswing and in five years his net worth went from negative to over $10 million. I get that it’s not realistic to think we can all go from negative to $10 million in five years. But we can all make progress. His story inspired me to get my butt in gear. I went home that day and tallied up all my debt balances. Each month, as painful as it was, I tracked the balances and payments. At times it seemed the balances only inched down. I didn’t get out of debt quickly, but I never gave up. Today, there is no credit card debt, and in place of tracking debt, I track my net worth. Tracking your net worth is a simple process of recording total account balances and asset values as of the same date each year, such as at year-end, or at the end of each calendar quarter. Measuring both your spending and your net worth are the starting points for getting a handle on your entire household financial situation. When it comes to planning a transition into retirement, measuring is more important than ever. In Chapter 2, of the 2nd Edition of Control Your Retirement Destiny I cover the 5 basic schedules you can use to measure, and you can see examples of each schedule. These five schedules are a spending plan, a personal balance sheet, an income timeline, an expense timeline, and a deposit/withdrawal timeline. In Chapter 2, we begin to follow a couple, Wally and Sally. Wally and Sally are in their early 60’s and starting to plan their transition into retirement. Let’s take a look at how Wally and Sally use these 5 basic schedules to see if they can afford to retire. Note – for the sake of this podcast, I am rounding all numbers so they won’t match exactly what you see in the schedules in the book. First, they start with a spending plan. A spending plan is an assessment of where your money goes. I prefer the term “spending plan” instead of budget, because a budget sounds so restrictive! A spending plan sounds flexible – and actually it is. By laying out a plan you can make sure you are spending money on things that are most important to you. To build their spending plan, Wally and Sally print an entire year’s worth of checking account statements and credit card statements. They use these to come up with a total of what they spent last year. They categorize everything into both fixed and variable expenses. When all is said and done, their total comes to $62,000, or just over $5,000 a month. This $62,000 does not include taxes or any items that come directly out of their paychecks. But it does include everything else, from property taxes and insurance to groceries and cell phone bills. Wally and Sally recently paid off their home, so last year with $5,000 a month, and no house payment, they felt comfortable. They figure if they can spend about that same amount each year in retirement, then they’ll be comfortable. But they aren’t sure how to figure out if they have enough saved. Wally and Sally’s next step is to make a personal balance sheet. A personal balance sheet helps you assess what you have to work with. Once you list all your assets and accounts, you can organize them into categories. This helps you see which accounts are available for the purpose of retirement, and which are not. For example, if you have a savings account where you put money for upcoming travel, that asset is not available for retirement income. Wally and Sally list all their major assets, and subtract out any debt. When they add everything up they have a net worth of $1.5 Million. Their home, worth $300,000 is included in that total. They realize they don’t want to sell the house, so they take that asset back off their balance sheet so they can see only the amount of savings and investments that are available to fund their retirement. That ends up being about $1.2 million. With $1.2 million of savings and investments, do Wally and Sally have enough to spend $62,000 a year in retirement? In order to answer that, Wally and Sally have three more schedules to complete. This last set of schedules are formatted as a series of timelines. I call them an income timeline, an expense timeline, and a deposit/withdrawal timeline. Let’s briefly go over each of these three timelines and how Wally and Sally use them to lay out version one of their retirement income plan. We’ll start with the Income Timeline. Really, I should call this a fixed income timeline. In planning, the purpose of the income timeline is to layout all the guaranteed sources of income. Th

In this episode, podcast host and author of “Control Your Retirement Destiny” covers Chapter 3 of the 2nd edition of the book titled, “Social Security.” If you want to learn even more than what there is time to cover in the podcast series, you can find the book “Control Your Retirement Destiny” on Amazon. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan for your retirement, visit us at sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help.   Chapter 3 – Podcast Script Hi, this is Dana Anspach, the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a fee-only financial planning firm. I’m also the author of the books Control Your Retirement Destiny and Social Security Sense. CYRD was initially published in 2013, and the 2nd edition came out in 2016. Why a 2nd edition? Well in Nov. 2015, some of the Social Security laws changed. The 2nd edition incorporates all these changes. The good news is that in this podcast, where we cover Chapter 3 on Social Security, everything we’ll talk about uses current rules. And, even better news, the book has incredible 5-stars reviews on Amazon. If you like what you hear today, go to Amazon and search for Control Your Retirement Destiny. And if you are looking for a customized plan, visit sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help. Ok, let’s get started. In this podcast, I’ll be covering the highlights from Chapter 3 on the topic of “Social Security.” ---- I never set out to be an expert on Social Security. So how did it happen? From 2008 to 2017, I wrote an online advice column called MoneyOver55. My most popular topic was Social Security. I had so much content online on this topic that email questions came pouring in, not only from consumers but also from other financial professionals. To this day, many of my colleagues call or email me with Social Security questions. While I was working on revising this chapter for the 2nd Edition of this book, I received one of those calls. It was from a friend of mine, a financial planner in Colorado. She had a client, whom we’ll call Diane. Diane is a widow. Her husband, Paul, had passed away at 57. Diane is now age 62. She is no longer working - but she had worked for most of her life. Here’s how SS works for Diane. She is eligible for either her own Social Security retirement benefit, or a survivor benefit, which will be based on her deceased husband Paul’s work record. Diane wasn’t exactly sure how it all worked, but she heard that she could collect a survivor benefit as early as age 60. Naturally, at 60 she went to the Social Security office to learn more. They told her she could collect this survivor benefit now, but that she would get more if she waited until age 62. Technically this was true. Just before her 62nd birthday she went back to her local Social Security office. They told her now that she was 62 she could collect her own retirement benefit amount, which would be $1,791 a month. But they also said if she waited until 66 she could collect a widow benefit based on Paul’s Social Security, which would be $2,706 per month.  (This higher widow benefit is based on the amount Paul would have received if he had lived and filed at his age 66). Technically this information they provided to her was also true. So, what was the problem with this information given to Diane? If Diane decides not to do anything and to wait and claim a widow benefit at her age 66, she will forfeit up to $200,0000 that she can get over her lifetime.  This $200,000 is measured in today’s dollars. $200,000! How can she get so much more? There are claiming strategies that the workers at the local Social Security office were not aware of. It’s not their fault. It takes years to understand all the claiming choices available - and this is not what your Social Security office worker is trained to do. So what can Diane do to get $200,000 more? Well, normally when you file for Social Security benefits you are deemed to be filing for all benefits you are eligible for. Diane is eligible for her own retirement benefit or a survivor benefit. It makes sense that the Social Security office will check and see which one will pay her more if she files right now. But, widows and widowers have a very special option – they can file something that I call a restricted application. This means they can CHOOSE to apply for only one benefit type – either their own or the survivor benefit – and that preserves their option to later switch to the other benefit type. “Whoa,” you might be thinking. This sounds complicated. It is. Let’s put some numbers to it. At age 60, if Diane would have filed for her survivor benefit she would have gotten $1,767 per month. She didn’t because they told her she could get more by waiting until age 62. At 62, she can get $2,025 per month as a survivor benefit. When she files, if she restricts her application to only that benefit type, her own retirement benefit remains untouched. Now, she collects $2,025 per month, her survivor benefit amount, plus inflation adjustments, all the way to age 70. At age 70, she files for her own benefit which by then, will be $3,674 per month. Now let me clarify. She doesn’t get both her survivor benefit and her retirement benefit at the same time. At age 70, when she begins to receive her $3,674 monthly retirement benefit, her survivor benefit stops. And why is her own benefit so much at age 70? Because you get a lot more per month if you wait until age 70 to start benefits. In her case, it works well, because while she is waiting until she is able to collect on the survivor benefit. Following a claiming plan puts a lot more money in Diane’s pocket over her retirement years. This is just one example of how knowing the rules can increase your retirement income. The rules we just talked through, that apply to Diane’s situation apply to all widows and widowers. In this podcast we’re going to cover more rules for survivors. In addition, we’ll cover the following: something called your Full Retirement Age, a special rule that applies to government workers, rules for ex-spouses, what happens if you continue working while receiving benefits, and last, we’ll look at how Social Security benefits are taxed. And believe it or not, we’re going to cover it all in about 15 – 20 minutes. We’ll start by looking at survivor benefits. In the last podcast on Chapter 2, we introduced a couple, Wally and Sally, whom we follow throughout the book. Wally and Sally have a few Social Security choices that they were not aware of. In version one of their retirement plan, they planned to retire at ages 65 and 63, and each planned to start their own Social Security retirement benefits right away. Can they do better? Yes. Wally and Sally are making a classic mistake in how they look at Social Security. They are each looking at their own benefits independently of each other. They do not understand how survivor benefits work. Because so many married couples don’t understand how survivor benefits work, many older widowed Americans have a monthly income much lower than it could have been. We don’t want that to happen to Wally and Sally. And I don’t want that to happen to you either. Here’s what Wally and Sally need to know. When one of them passes, the survivor continues to receive the larger of either benefit amount. So if Wally passes, and his monthly check was bigger than Sally’s, then Sally can continue to get Wally’s check and her check stops. You don’t receive a survivor benefit in addition to your own benefit. For married couples, this can be very powerful. If you file for benefits early, at age 62, you get a reduced monthly amount for life. This means a reduced survivor benefit also. If you wait and file for benefits at age 70, you get a much larger monthly amount. This larger amount is now  the survivor benefit for either spouse. Wait, you might say, “I can’t afford to wait until age 70.” That’s what Wally and Sally thought. Wally and Sally didn’t know that they could save money in taxes and get more Social Security if they took money out of their IRA starting at age 65 while having Wally wait until age 70 to begin his Social Security retirement benefit. By doing this, the survivor benefit at Wally’s age 85 is projected to be $48,000 a year. If Wally starts his benefits at age 65, as he originally planned, the survivor benefit at age 85 is only $34,000 a year.  That’s a big difference. And, in the meantime, they don’t have to scrape by! They can withdraw a little extra from their IRA – because later they’ll have a larger Social Security benefit later, and need a little less from the IRA later. How much of a difference does this make for Wally and Sally? In the case study in the 2nd Edition of the book, if Wally and Sally each claim benefits the year they retire, over 20 years they estimate they’ll receive about one million four hundred and seventy-five thousand in total Social Security benefits. What happens if they follow a special claiming plan? They get one million seven hundred and thirty-six thousand over that same 29 years. That’s $260,000 more total dollars from Social Security over their projected lifetimes. Granted, that’s $260,000 stretched out over almost thirty years. To be mathematically correct, we must translate that number into today’s dollars. This is a concept called “Present Value”. A dollar twenty years from now is not worth as much as a dollar today – so present value is a math formula that translates dollars in the future back to what they would be worth today. In today’s dollars, following a delayed Social Security plan is worth over $100,000 to Wally and Sally. Wally and Sally’s case, and Diane’s that we went over earlier, are just two examples of how a smart plan can help you get more out of Social Security. There are many rules to consider. And, in November 2015, some of the rules changed. For example, if either you or your spouse, were born on or before January 1, 1954, you need to take a close look at your ability to use something called a res

In this episode, podcast host and author of “Control Your Retirement Destiny” covers Chapter 4 of the 2nd edition of the book titled, “Taxes.” If you want to learn even more than what there is time to cover in the podcast series, you can find the book “Control Your Retirement Destiny” on Amazon. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan for your retirement, visit us at sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help. *In this recording, Ms. Anspach incorrectly stated "At least 12% right? After all, in 2017 that was the lowest tax rate."  The 12% tax rate was implemented in 2018, not 2017. The correct sentence would be "At least 15% right? ...at 15% they would pay just over $31,500 in federal taxes.   Chapter 4 – Podcast Script Hi, this is Dana Anspach. I’m the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a fee-only financial planning firm. I’m also the author of Control Your Retirement Destiny which was initially published in 2013. A 2nd edition was published in 2016, and now, I am working on the 3rd edition. Why a 3rd edition? Well, the tax laws changed - and we want to update Chapter 4, which covers taxes. This podcast covers the material in Chapter 4, and I’ll be discussing both the old tax rules and the new tax rules. We’ll continue to follow the case study of Wally and Sally based on the 2nd edition of the book. The book has incredible 5-stars reviews on Amazon. If you like what you hear today, go to Amazon and search for Control Your Retirement Destiny. You won’t be disappointed. And if you are looking for a customized plan, visit sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help. Ok, let’s get started. In this podcast, I’ll be covering the highlights from Chapter 4 on the topic of “Taxes.” ----- There are very few people I know who enjoy doing their taxes. That includes me. I have actually never done my own tax return. To me, it is worth it to pay someone else to handle this task. Yet, I know a tremendous amount about personal tax rules. So why wouldn’t I do my own tax return? Well, a tax return is a historical account of what happened. Once it is time to file your return, there is nothing you can do to change the outcome. I prefer to use my tax knowledge to figure out how to pay less in taxes. And, to help other people pay less. To me, that is one of the most rewarding parts of my work. To pay less in taxes, you have to plan ahead. How far ahead? The more you want to save, the farther ahead you’ll plan. Think of tax planning in three levels. Level 1 is pretty basic. For example, assume you turn your tax documents in to your tax preparer, and he or she let’s you know you could fund an IRA for the previous year, and thus reduce your tax bill.  That wasn’t really planning ahead, but you did learn a step you could take to reduce current year taxes. But is this really the right step to take to lower your taxes in the long run? Not for everyone. Some people are better off funding a Roth IRA instead of a Traditional Deductible IRA. With a Roth, you make after-tax contributions and from that point on, the money grows tax-free. The Roth IRA has several unique advantages for retirees when they enter the phase where they are regularly withdrawing money. For example, Roth withdrawals do not count in the formula that determines how much of your Social Security is taxable. And Roth IRAs do not have what are called Required Minimum Distributions, which begin at age 70 ½ and require you to take out specified amount each year. These unique advantages of Roth IRAs are often missed by traditional tax preparers. The reality of Level 1 planning is that many tax preparers are so focused on what you can do to reduce this year’s tax bill, that the advice they are giving, with the best of intentions, may not be advice that is ideal for you. Next, we have Level 2 tax planning. You must tackle Level 2 planning in the fall, and run a tax projection. The bummer part of doing this is that you have to gather estimates for every item that will be on your upcoming tax return. We do this for most of our clients each year – and I’ll admit, it’s a lot of work. What do we learn from all this work? We can determine what actions need to be taken before the year is over so that people can save money. There are three items we routinely look for. 1) The opportunity to convert a portion of an IRA to a Roth IRA, 2) the ability to realize capital gains if they will fall into the zero percent tax rate, and 3) the ability to realize capital losses that can be used to offset ordinary income. If you aren’t sure what these things mean, keep listening. I promise, I’ll explain most of them in more detail. With Level 2 tax planning you mock up your tax return, and then see what it would look like if you were to take action before the year is over. One of the most memorable results I have from a tax projection was when we told a client that could sell a significant amount of Apple stock and realize $60,000 of capital gains and pay no tax. They were shocked. How were they able to do this? They had just retired, and their taxable income was going to be quite low for the year. When your taxable income is low, any capital gains you realize are likely to fall into what is called the “zero percent tax rate” – which means you can realize those gains and pay no tax. If they had waited even one more year – their taxable income would not have been as low – and they would have paid taxes on the gain at a 15% tax rate, or $9,000 in tax. Planning ahead saved them $9,000. Pretty cool. Then, we have Level 3 tax planning. With level 3 planning, you plan many years ahead. This type of planning can have a big impact on people who are near retirement. Why? Between the age of 55 and 70 there are a lot of moving parts. Retirement usually happens in this age range, which results in a change in taxable income. And various other types of income start– such as Social Security, pensions, deferred compensation payouts and IRA withdrawals – and they often all start at different times. If married, spouses may have different retirement dates and different years where each of their Social Security begins. With all these moving parts, your tax return can look entirely different from year to year – and lots of opportunities exist – if you’re on the lookout for them. In Chapter 4, we follow the case of Wally and Sally. I show you what Level 3 Tax Planning looks like by going through three potential retirement income plans for Wally and Sally. All three plans are designed so that their lifestyle spending is identical. The difference in the three plans is when they begin Social Security, and how they withdraw from various accounts. These changes impact how much in taxes they pay in each scenario. Let’s see how their three scenarios look using the old tax rates. Then we’ll summarize how it might change under the new 2018 rules. In the 2nd Edition of the book, I describe Wally and Sally’s three retirement income plans as Option A, B, and C. With Option A, Wally and Sally take their Social Security early, and at the same time withdraw from their non-retirement accounts. They know at age 70 ½ that by law they are required to begin taking distributions from retirement accounts and they plan to wait and tap IRAs only when these mandatory distributions begin. Their cumulative taxes over a 29-year projected lifetime add up to $452,000. With Option B, they use their suggested Social Security claiming plan, which has them filing a few years later, and they use the same withdrawal order as Option A. Which means they spend non-retirement savings first, while waiting until required distributions begin. Their cumulative taxes total to $487,000. With Option C, they use their suggested Social Security claiming plan while converting IRA assets to a Roth IRA during low tax years, and they withdraw from IRAs before their required distributions begin. Their cumulative taxes add up to only  $424,000. That’s a $63,000 difference in taxes paid – depending on how they structure their income plan. There is also a big difference in how much money they have left after 29 years. When looking at the estimated after-tax value of accounts, with Option A they have  $816,000 left. With Option B, in 29 years, they have $930,000. And with Option C - $1,153,000. That’s $337,000 more.   Now, if I have any economists listening, they will realize that $337,000 sounds like a lot – but that is $337,000 twenty-nine years in the future. You must discount that back to today’s dollars to do a fair comparison. Assuming a 3% inflation rate, in today’s dollars that is worth $143,000. That’s still a decent chunk of money you get to keep by planning ahead. How does this type of planning work? In the early years in retirement, Wally and Sally will be in a lower tax rate. Later in retirement, a higher tax rate will kick in because of their IRA withdrawals. With Option C, they use this to work to their benefit. They withdraw money from their IRA on purpose when their tax rates are low. They are able to put some of it in a Roth IRA where it grows tax-free. This is called a Roth conversion. The result is that later in retirement their Required IRA distributions are lower, and they have less income taxed at the higher rates. What does a similar case study look like under the new 2018 tax laws? I’m working on that right now for the third edition of the book. Starting in 2018, tax rates are lower than they were in 2017 – but they are set to go back to higher rates in the year 2026. This makes planning a bit of a challenge. I ran similar Wally and Sally scenarios using 2018 tax laws, and assuming those rules stay in place and do not revert back to old rates. Under this scenario, Wally and Sally can still save up to $48,000 in federal taxes by building a tax smart withdrawal plan that delays Social Security while withdrawing from IRAs and using Roth conversions. There is up to a $350,000 difference in after-tax assets at the end of their plan. Which

In this episode, podcast host and author of “Control Your Retirement Destiny” covers Chapter 5 of the 2nd edition of the book titled, “Investing.” If you want to learn even more than what there is time to cover in the podcast series, you can find the book “Control Your Retirement Destiny” on Amazon. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan for your retirement, visit us at sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help.   Chapter 5 – Podcast Script Hi, this is Dana Anspach. I’m the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a fee-only financial planning firm. I’m also the author of "Control Your Retirement Destiny," a book that covers all the decisions you need to make as you plan for a transition into retirement. The book has outstanding 5-stars reviews on Amazon. If you like what you hear today, go to Amazon and search for "Control Your Retirement Destiny." Or, if you are looking for a customized plan, visit sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help. In this podcast, I’ll be covering the material in Chapter 5 on investing. We’ll continue the case study of Wally and Sally, and look at how the plan we created for them in Chapters 2 through 4 becomes the blueprint for how they should invest. Let’s get started. ————— When I meet someone new, almost without fail, the conversation goes something like this. They ask, “What do you do for a living?” “I’m a financial advisor,” I say, or “I own and run a financial planning firm.” From there the typical reply is along the lines of, “Oh, what do you think of the markets right now? What should I be buying? What are your thoughts on Apple stock? What will happen if so and so wins the next election? What should I be investing in?” “You should be investing in a good financial planner,” is what goes through my mind. Investing is like a prescription. It’s what you do after you’ve gone through a thorough exam and diagnosis. This where I think most of the financial services industry gets it wrong. Take a thirty-year-old as an example. They are investing in their 401k. They are nervous about losing money. They either fill out an online risk questionnaire or meet with a financial advisor - and this is supposedly the exam part. They express their concern about losing money if the market goes down. Then the diagnosis part. The computer model or advisor recommends they invest in a balanced fund that maintains an allocation of about 60% stocks and 40% bonds. This is not a terrible recommendation - but to me - it seems like a recommendation made for all the wrong reasons. At age 30, under normal circumstances, the earliest you can withdraw from your 401k is age 59 1/2 - about thirty years in the future. You would think the primary goal would be the investment mix that maximizes the potential for return over a thirty-year time horizon. Yet, almost the entire financial services industry focuses instead on minimizing the downside risk, or volatility, that you might experience in any one year. Why? It makes no sense to me. Why would I structure my investments to reduce short term volatility for an account I’m not going to touch for thirty years? Contrast this with someone who is age 65 and about to retire. One popular rule of thumb says take 100 minus your age and that is what you should have in bonds. I’ve also heard a version of this rule that says take 110 minus your age. Following this type of rule, you come out with a 65 - 75% allocation to stocks and a 25-35% allocation to bonds. In many cases, it is the same recommendation made to the thirty-year-old. Is this recommendation aligned to your goals? It might be. But in many cases it still doesn’t add up. For example, suppose in your plan you are drawing out of a taxable brokerage account first - then your IRA when you reach age 70, then your spouse’s IRA, and he or she is five years younger than you. Suppose you also each have a Roth IRA, but you don’t plan on touching that account at all. Should all of these accounts be invested with the same risk profile, with about 60% in stocks and 40% in bonds? In my mind that makes no sense at all, yet that is the type of investment recommendation most often given. What does make sense to me is to assign each account a job description and invest that account according to the job it needs to do. That means if your spouse is age 60 and won’t be touching their IRA until age 70, which is ten years away, that account can be invested differently than the account you’ll be drawing out of next year. To make better investing choices that are more aligned to your goals, there are a few key things to know. Here are the ones we’ll be covering in this podcast. How to measure risk - And the two most important questions you can ask before making any investment. Something called “The Big Investment Lie” - and why we are so prone to believing it. The importance of tracking results relative to your plan. We’ll start with measuring risk. There are two questions I’d love to hear everyone ask before making an investment. The first question is “Can I lose any money?” If you are retiring next year, and will need to withdraw $50,000 to help cover your living expenses, when it comes to HOW that $50,000 is invested you want the answer to the question “Can I lose any money?” to be NO. In most cases, if it is money you need to use in the next five years, you want it invested safely. On a scale of 1 to 5, I think of this as a Level 1 risk. A Level 1 Risk represents a safe investment. it may not earn much interest. But you also know it won’t go down in value. The next question to ask is “Can I lose all my money?” This question is more difficult to answer. What if you bought 100 shares of a stock? Can you lose all your money? Yes. Many great publicly traded companies have gone bust over the years. I call this a LEVEL 5 RISK. I recommend most retirees avoid taking Level 5 risks. Now, what about a Level 4 risk? This one is trickier. Let’s look at an example. Suppose I told you of an investment that for over 90 years has an average return of 10% a year? Sounds good, doesn’t it. You invest $100,000. A year later it is worth $60,000. You sell it, fearful you’ll incur more losses. You call me a liar, and decide investing doesn’t work. From that day forward, you keep your money in the bank, where it safely earns a few percent a year. Now, instead, suppose I describe an investment that gives you the potential to earn more than double what bank savings accounts are paying. I explain to you that this investment is not something you should use if you need your money in the next few years. I also tell you that in any single year, this investment could be down as much as 40%, or, up as much as 40%. I also explain that your results can vary widely depending on how the next 20 years turns out. I show you that in the past, during the worst 20 years this investment earned a return about the same as safe investments, and over the best 20 years, it earned returns much, much higher. You are now taking a calculated risk with the expectation of volatility. You invest $100,000. A year later it is worth $60,000. You don’t like it, but you knew this could happen and you’re in it for the long term. You hang on, and by the end of ten years it is worth $191,000. Both scenarios reflect the same investment - an investment in an S&P 500 Index Fund. The difference in the results are due to investor behavior - not due to the investment. The S&P 500 measures the performance of the stocks of 500 of the largest companies in the U.S. When you own an S&P 500 Index fund, you own a little piece of each of the 500 stocks. Can you lose all your money in this investment? Hypothetically, yes. All 500 companies would have to go bankrupt at once for this to happen. If that happens, I believe the world as we know it has ended, and we’ve got much worse problems on our hand than how much is in our 401k account. With a risk level 4 investment, like an index fund, you know you’ll experience ups and downs. The primary factor in how well you do, will be your behavior - how you use this investment. When used with reasonable expectations, level 4 investments usually help you achieve your goals. ---- In the earlier chapters of the book we began following a couple, Wally and Sally, who were planning their retirement. Let’s see how this concept of risk levels and aligning investments to a goal works for Wally and Sally. After projecting several potential withdrawal plans, Wally and Sally could see that drawing funds out of their non-retirement account in their first four years of retirement would be the most tax-efficient choice. As they will need these funds soon, they invest this account, about $250,000, all in safe investments. Next, their plan has them withdrawing from Wally’s retirement accounts starting in about year five of retirement. When they get to year five, they don’t want to be concerned about the market being down – instead they want to know the first five full years of planned withdrawals from this account are safe. Those withdrawal amounts add up to $105,000. The total account value is $365,000. They invest the $105,000, or 29% of the account, in safe choices. The remaining 71% of the account is invested to growth, or Risk Level 4 choices. They don’t plan to touch Sally’s retirement account for at least six years. But when they get out to year seven, where they will need to use it, they want her first three years of withdrawals in safe choices, which amounts to $90,000. Her account size is $546,000, so her allocation is 16% to safe choices, and 84% to growth. Notice each account is invested differently, depending on the job it must do. When you look at their entire household, they now enter retirement with the first 8 years of withdrawals 100% covered by safe investments. Their household allocation is 38% to safe choices and 62% to growth. They have the comfort of knowing the growth portion has eight years to work for them - and that during that 8 years when it has good years

In this episode, podcast host and author of “Control Your Retirement Destiny” Dana Anspach covers Chapter 6 of the 2nd edition of the book titled, “Life and Disability Insurance.” If you want to learn even more than what there is time to cover in the podcast series, you can find the book “Control Your Retirement Destiny” on Amazon. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan for your retirement, visit us at sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help.   Chapter 6 – Podcast Script Hi, I’m Dana Anspach. I’m the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a fee-only financial planning firm. I’m also the author of Control Your Retirement Destiny, a book that covers all the decisions you need to make as you plan for a transition into retirement. The book has incredibly thoughtful 5-stars reviews on Amazon. If you like what you hear today, go to Amazon and search for Control Your Retirement Destiny. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan, visit sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help. This podcast covers the material in Chapter 6, on life and disability insurance. Both types of insurance can protect you and your family against risks that can derail your retirement security. Today, I’ll be teaching you how to assess your insurance needs, and how those needs change over time. Let’s get started. ————— As a financial planner, I think of financial products as tools… perhaps in the same way a carpenter might view his or her own toolbox. You look at the job, you look at the tools, and you figure out which ones will help you most effectively do the job. Insurance is a financial tool. Unfortunately, many of us have an instant adverse reaction when we think about insurance, or even hear the word. I believe this happens because most of the time our experience with insurance is associated with either a salesperson trying to get us to buy more, or a benefit selection page where we feel like we are just guessing as to which options to pick. Overall, we don’t have very many positive experiences with insurance. That means you have to do a bit of a mental shift to begin thinking about it as a tool. For example, what if you begin thinking of insurance like a seat belt? Then, you view it as a safety feature. Hopefully you never need it, but, if you do, you’ll be glad you got in the habit of buckling in. Of course, it’s a bit more complicated than that - because the type of insurance you need changes as you age and as your financial situation evolves. Overall, though, both seat belts and insurance are there to protect you against a risk – a risk that you hope never materializes. Let’s discuss how to think about this type of risk. Any conversation about insurance should start by assessing your exposure to a financial hardship, as insurance is all about shifting risk. When you buy insurance, you choose to pay a known premium so that if a devastating event happens, the insurance company bears the bulk of the financial burden. Not all risks are equal. Take the common example of your home burning down. Although unlikely to happen, if it does burn down, the consequences are severe. Therefore, if you own a home, you carry homeowner’s insurance. You choose to pay a reasonable premium to minimize the financial impact of such an event. Contrast that with death. There is no argument that death is a high-probability event. There is no question of “if” it will happen – it’s only a matter of when. The severity of the financial impact, however, depends on where in your life cycle it occurs, and who is financially dependent on you at the time. If you’re young, and have a spouse and children, your premature death is likely to cause a big financial hardship for your family. But, if you are retired, and either single, or your spouse will have the same income and resources regardless of your death, then the financial impact of your death is minimal. Thus, in your younger years, particularly if you have dependents, death is a low probability but high severity event. In retirement, it changes, and becomes a high probability and low severity situation. When we apply this to your need for life insurance, it means when you are younger and still have many high-earning years ahead of you, you need a pretty large amount of life insurance. You buy it to replace the future income you would have earned. Once retired, you don’t have any more future earned income to replace. If you’ve done a decent job of saving, there is likely not a need for life insurance any more. Now, am I saying that no retiree ever needs life insurance? No. It’s not that easy. There are cases where you do continue to need life insurance, and there are cases where you may already own a policy that you bought when you were younger – and it may not make financial sense to cancel it. To understand where you fit in this framework, let’s look at two things. First, I’ll briefly review the two main types of life insurance. Then we’ll look at cases where you may want to keep life insurance even in retirement. Life insurance is sold in two main categories – either term insurance, or permanent insurance. Term insurance works much like car insurance. You pay and if an accident happens, the policy pays out. There is no cash value to your policy with term insurance. If you don’t need the insurance any more, you stop paying the premium, and the policy expires. This type of life insurance allows you to buy a fairly large death benefit for a low cost. It’s a great choice for most people when they are younger and need to protect their family. The terms usually last 20 to 30 years – which means in most cases you pay the same premium for a long time with the intention that you will let the policy expire at the end of the term. Permanent life insurance has two components – an insurance component and a cash value piece. You pay a higher premium and part of that premium is used to buy the insurance – the other portion is deposited into a savings or investment account which is handled by the insurance company. Permanent life insurance comes in many variations such as whole life, universal life, and variable universal life. These types of policies can be useful for high-income earners, business owners, and in other situations where it appears you’ll need a life insurance policy in place for your entire life. So, let’s take a look at five cases where life insurance may be needed for your entire life, or at least well into your retirement years. One such case I came across was a couple whom I’ll call Matt and Tina. Matt was a high-income earner and Tina, who was 28 years younger, stayed at home to care for their three-year-old daughter. Their retirement assets need to last not just for 30 years - but because of the age gap, assets may need to last 60 years or longer. Rather than try to save that much, it was more cost effective for Matt to maintain a whole life policy of about $2 million. That policy is what will make their financial plan work through Matt and Tina’s joint life expectancy. In another case, a woman I’ll call Pat came in and already owned seven whole life insurance policies issued by NorthWestern Mutual. Her father had been a life insurance agent which is how she accumulated so many of them. The policies were in great shape and it made no sense to cancel them. Instead, we were able to change how the policy dividends were used. With most whole life policies, you have choices as to how to use the dividends – for example you can use them to buy more insurance, to reduce your premium, or to accumulate more cash value. In Pat’s case, her dividends were set to buy more insurance; however, she didn’t need more insurance. Instead, she needed to reduce her monthly expenses. We reset the dividends to reduce her premium. This change saved her $3,000 a year. Small business owners are another group who may need to carry life insurance into their later years. If you own an interest in a small business, you usually want to enter into an agreement with a partner who will buy your share of the business upon your death. This type of buy-sell agreement is usually funded with life insurance. Another group that will likely want to maintain a life insurance policy are those with large estates – in this case the insurance helps pay taxes upon your death. Life insurance used to be sold to lots of people to pay estate taxes, but laws have changed, and today estate taxes apply only to individuals with estates in excess of about $5 million, or married couples with estates larger than $10 million. If you fall in that category, you may need to maintain life insurance to provide liquidity for taxes and other expenses that your estate will incur when you pass. The last group who may want to maintain a policy are those who did not save much and are living on Social Security or a small pension. People in this situation may not have much in assets, but they have monthly income. And they don’t want their children or other family to have to pay their final expenses, and so they maintain a small policy to help cover those costs at their death. We’ve talked about five situations where it makes sense to maintain life insurance. What if none of these situations apply to you and you WON’T need insurance in retirement, but you own a policy already? The first thing to do is identify the point in time where the need for life insurance really goes away. If possible you maintain the policy until it is no longer needed. For example, if you are married and one spouse is waiting until age 70 to begin Social Security, then it may make sense to keep any existing life policies in place on that spouse until they reach the age of 70. Your options also depend on the type of insurance you own. If you have life insurance through your employer, in most cases it goes away when you retire so you may not be able to maintain it. Or, perhaps you bought a 30-year term policy at age 45. Even though you may not need insurance past age 70, if the cost is low you may decide t

In this episode, podcast host and author of “Control Your Retirement Destiny” Dana Anspach covers Chapter 7 of the 2nd edition of the book titled, “Company Benefits.” If you want to learn even more than what there is time to cover in the podcast series, you can find the book “Control Your Retirement Destiny” on Amazon. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan for your retirement, visit us at sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help.   Chapter 7 – Podcast Script Hi, this is Dana Anspach. I’m the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a fee-only financial planning firm. I’m also the author of Control Your Retirement Destiny, a book that covers all the decisions you need to make as you plan for a transition into retirement. This podcast covers the material in Chapter 7, on company benefits. If you like what you hear today, go to Amazon and search for Control Your Retirement Destiny. Or, if you are looking for a customized financial plan, visit sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help. Let’s take a look at company benefits, and how you make the most of them. ————— Company benefits used to be simple. Our grandparents, and in some cases our parents, worked for the same company for 25 or 30 years and retired with a gold watch and a pension. Today, instead of pensions, most people have 401(k) plans. Now, you must decide how to invest your money, and when to take it out. In addition, you may have deferred compensation plans, stock options and various insurance benefits – ALL of which require you to make decisions. Company benefits are far more complex than they used to be. There are too many benefit programs out there to cover them all. Today we’re going to focus on the most common benefit option – the 401(k) plan. The goal is to show you how to use this type of retirement plan in a way that BENEFITS you the most. There are four key things I want to cover: The creditor protection rules that apply to your 401(k). The age-related rules that impact when you can access your money and how it is taxed. How to pick investments in your 401(k). What to consider when you are deciding whether you should leave your funds in your 401(k) plan, or roll them over to an IRA. First, creditor rules. Your 401(k) assets cannot be touched by your creditors, even in the event of bankruptcy. Hopefully, you’ll never need these rules. But, let me share with you a few real-life situations and how these rules apply. Suppose you get a great business idea. You are 100% sure it will work out – but in order to get it going you need a little cash. “Hey,” you think, “I’ll just borrow it out of my 401(k) plan.” Or, maybe cash in the 401(k) account. Bad idea. If your business does not work out, your 401(k) money is gone. Instead of using 401(k) money for a start-up business, use credit cards, or a bank loan. If you use a bank loan, and your business doesn’t work out, the worst case is that you file for bankruptcy—your 401(k) assets would then remain protected and still available for your retirement. Another situation that many people found themselves facing in 2008 and 2009 was a job loss. After losing their job, they, of course, didn’t want to lose their home, so many cashed in their 401(k)s to continue making their mortgage payments. Unfortunately, many used up all their retirement funds and then lost their home anyway. Making objective decisions about one’s home can be difficult, but as difficult as it may be, you need to look at the long-term consequences of any financial decision. In a job loss situation, you may spend a substantial amount of retirement money trying to keep a home that you end up losing. One lady I spoke with said, “The stupidest thing I ever did was cash out my 401(k) plan to try to keep that house.” Your 401(k) money is for retirement. That’s it. Don’t use it for any other purpose—particularly if you are in financial trouble. Using your 401(k) money before retirement voids a valuable form of protection that is available to you. You know why pensions worked out so well for prior generations? Because they COULD NOT use them before retirement. You need to treat your 401(k) plan the same way. ————— Next, let’s talk about some of the odd age-related rules that apply to 401(k) plan withdrawals. While you continue to work for a company, most of the time you can’t withdraw money from that 401(k) plan. Some plans offer hardship withdrawals, some offer loans and sometimes there is something available called an in-service withdrawal if you are age 59 ½ or older – but most of the time while you are still working there – you can’t access the funds. But let’s say you change employers and now have money in a 401(k) plan from some place you previously worked. Then what can you do? Usually you have a few options: You can leave it there. You can roll it over to an IRA and there are no taxes when this is done correctly. You can roll it to a new 401(k) plan and there are no taxes when this is done right either. You can withdraw it and pay taxes and possibly penalties. Let’s talk about option 4, withdrawing it. That’s where the age-related rules come in. When you withdraw money from a 401(k) plan you are taxed on it. If you take money out of a 401(k) plan before you reach the age of 59 ½, in addition to regular taxes, a 10% early withdrawal penalty tax also applies. Here’s what many people don’t know. There’s an odd rule about the age of 55. Let’s say you leave your employer AFTER you reach the age of 55, but before age 59 ½. Even though you are not 59 ½ yet, you can now access the money in that old 401(k) plan without paying the early withdrawal penalty tax. This early access rule DOES NOT apply if you roll the funds to an IRA or to a new plan. It also DOES NOT apply if you leave that employer BEFORE you reach the age of 55. Here’s what you need to remember. If you leave an employer after you attain age 55, but before age 59 ½, don’t automatically move the funds to an IRA or to a new employer plan. If you want to preserve your ability to access the funds penalty-free, you’ll leave the funds, or at least a portion of them, in your prior plan. And, if you’re a public safety employee – this early access rule kicks in at age 50 instead of age 55! In general, a public safety employee includes firefighters, police, emergency medical service employees, as well as air traffic controllers and customs and border protection officers. The IRS has a comprehensive list that you can check to see if you qualify for this definition. When you move past the early-access age of 50 or 55, the next important age is 59 ½. Once you attain age 59 ½, the penalty tax on withdrawals goes away. Regular income taxes, however, still apply. And, keep in mind, a rollover or transfer, where you move money from one plan to another, or from a 401(k) to an IRA, does not trigger taxes. I talk to many people who think if they withdraw funds from a plan at all – even in the form of a rollover – that they will have to pay taxes and possibly penalties. A rollover or transfer is a special rule in the IRS code that allows you to move money from one retirement plan to another WITHOUT triggering the taxes or penalties. The last critical age is 70 ½. At this age the IRS requires you to begin withdrawing money from 401(k)s, from IRAs, and from other types of retirement plans. There is a formula you must use each year to calculate the required withdrawal. This formula uses your year-end balance, along with the divisor that is based on your age. Here’s an example: Lynn is retired and reaches age 70½. Her IRA balance on Dec 31st for the previous year is exactly $350,000. Based on her age, the divisor Lynn must use is 27.4. She takes the year-end balance of $350,000 and divides it by 27.4 to calculate the $12,773.72 that she must take out. When she takes it out she will pay taxes on that amount. The distribution period decreases every subsequent year. For example, when Lynn is 88 years old, she will divide her retirement account balance by 12.7 to determine how much she must withdraw. If her account balance is still $350,000 that would be $27,559 that she must take out. You can always withdraw more than the required amount, but if you withdraw less, you could be subject to a 50% excise tax on the amount you did not withdraw in time. Yikes – 50% is a hefty tax. You want to make sure you take your required distributions (RMD). One thing to keep in mind - with a required distribution the money has to come out of the IRA account, but that doesn’t mean you have to spend it. One option is you can distribute investments, shares of a mutual fund or a stock, for example, and just move them out of your IRA account, into your brokerage account. Since the money came out of the IRA, it satisfies the RMD, but the funds remain invested. Another option is to make a charitable distribution. There’s something called a Qualified Charitable Distribution or QCD. You can distribute funds right from your IRA to a charity. There are some tax benefits to this, and it’s beyond the scope of this podcast for me to go into all the details, but if you don’t need the money from your IRA, it’s something you might want to look into. But what do you do if you are still working at 70 ½? Well, if you are not a 5% owner of the company you work for, you may be able to delay your required minimum distributions from your current employer plan until April 1st of the year after you retire. In this situation you are still required to take distributions from other retirement plans, just not from the one from your current employer. Next, let’s talk about how to make better investment decisions in your 401(k). If you are like a lot of people, you collect investment accounts over time. Maybe a 401(k) at one place, but then you leave that employer and leave the 401(k) plan there. You might open an IRA a few years later while you’re self-employed. Then start another 401(k) at a new employer a few years after that. And if you’re married, your spouse

In this episode, podcast host and author of “Control Your Retirement Destiny” Dana Anspach covers additional content from Chapter 7 of the 2nd edition of the book on “Pensions.” If you want to learn even more than what there is time to cover in the podcast series, you can find the book “Control Your Retirement Destiny” on Amazon. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan for your retirement, visit us at sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help.   Chapter 7.5 – Podcast Script Hi, this is Dana Anspach. I’m the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a fee-only financial planning firm. I’m also the author of Control Your Retirement Destiny, a book that covers all the decisions you need to make as you plan for a transition into retirement. This podcast covers a small part of the material in Chapter 7 on “Pensions.” We realize that, today, not everyone has pensions, but for those of you who do, you have some very important decisions to make. Let’s take a look at some of those decisions, and the errors you really must avoid. ————— If you have a pension, count yourself lucky. This is a powerful benefit plan. There are many decisions that you have to make, and I want to talk about three of them today: Whether to take your plan as a lump sum or annuity. What age you should begin your pension. What survivor option to choose. Let’s look at the biggest mistakes people make in each of these areas. First, should you take your pension as a lump sum? Not all pensions offer this choice. Some require you take it out in the form of life-long monthly payments, which is referred to as taking the annuity option. Many pensions also give you the option of a one-time lump sum payment. Which is best for you? There is no way to know for sure without doing a mathematical analysis. You calculate what the monthly payments are worth based on your life expectancy and you compare that to the lump sum. In the majority of cases I see, and I’ve seen a lot of them, the monthly payment option is best. Why does it work that way? There are a lot of risks you take on when taking the lump sum. What if the portfolio earns less? What if someone cons you out of some of the money? What if you live longer than you expected? The pension plan handles these risks for you and there is a company called the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation that insures most pension benefits. When you take the lump sum, these risks are not covered. Many people take the lump sum, make poor investment choices, and run out of money. If they had taken the annuity choice, they would have had income for life. What if you meet an investment person that says they can earn you a much higher rate of return if you take the lump sum? Be skeptical. Be very, very skeptical. If you are tempted to believe them, go back and listen to Chapter 5, the podcast on “Investing”, and specifically, the section on “The Big Investment Lie”. Also consider their motives. Do they have a financial incentive to get you to take the lump sum? Hmmmm. You’ll also need to decide what age to take your pension. If you retire at 55, do you start the pension right away, or wait until age 60 or 65 to take it? This is another scenario that requires analysis. I’ve seen pensions where there was absolutely no benefit to waiting until a later age. And, I’ve seen pensions where it paid off to wait until age 65 to take benefits and in the meantime withdraw funds from other accounts. Another key decision you’ll make is what survivor option to choose. If you’re single, it’s likely you’ll choose the life-only option, which means the pension pays out as long as you are alive. You can often combine this with a ten year term certain option. This means if you were to pass before ten years had gone by, the payments would continue to a beneficiary until the full ten year term was reached. If married, it gets a bit more complicated. You can choose an option that pays 100% of the benefit to your partner when you pass, or 75%, or 50%, or none. The more the pension has to pay out to a survivor, the lower the starting monthly benefit will be. Sadly enough, I’ve seen spouses who are solely focused on getting the most monthly income, so they choose a life-only pension option. They pass a few years later, leaving their partner with little monthly income. If you’re married, talk through your pension options. Think about your joint life expectancy. If you each have a pension of about the same amount, then having each of you choose the life-only option could make a lot of sense. But if only one of you has a pension, most of the time you’ll want to make a choices that continue an income for a long-lived partner. When it comes to pensions, you are making irrevocable decisions. Once the decision is made, you can’t change your mind. In the printed version of Chapter 7 of Control Your Retirement Destiny, I provide several examples of pension decisions, with spreadsheets, and a complete analysis. I’d encourage you to walk through these examples, or consider hiring expert help before you make a decision on a pension plan. ————— Thank you for taking the time to listen today. If you like what you heard, go to amazon.com to get a copy of Control Your Retirement Destiny in either electronic or hard copy format. You can also visit sensiblemoney.com to see how a staff of expert retirement planners can help.

In this episode, podcast host and author of “Control Your Retirement Destiny”, Dana Anspach, covers Chapter 8 of the 2nd edition of the book titled, “Annuities.” If you want to learn even more than what there is time to cover in the podcast series, you can find the book “Control Your Retirement Destiny” on Amazon. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan for your retirement, visit us at sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help.   Chapter 8 – Podcast Script Hi, this is Dana Anspach. I’m the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a fee-only financial planning firm. I’m also the author of Control Your Retirement Destiny, a book that covers all the decisions you need to make to align your finances for a transition into retirement. This podcast covers the material in Chapter 8, on annuities. Are annuities a bad investment? Or a good one? You’re about to find out. If you like what you hear today, go to Amazon and search for Control Your Retirement Destiny. And, if you are looking for a customized plan, visit sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help. ————— There is a lot of conflicting information on annuities. Are they a good investment? A bad one? Are they even an investment at all? The answer depends on what article you happen to be reading at the time you are asking the question. If we boil it down to the basics, an annuity is a contract with an insurance company. The insurance company provides you a set of guarantees. You place your money with them in return for those guarantees. That makes the purchase of an annuity quite a bit different than investing in a stock, where there is no contract and certainly no guarantees. The key to understanding annuities is understanding what the guarantees are, and how they work. That may sound easy; however, there are many types of annuities, and they are not all alike. Let’s start by breaking annuities down into four main categories. An annuity can either be immediate or deferred. And it can be fixed or variable. As we cover each of these four categories, we’ll also discuss a few sub categories like equity-index annuities, and variable annuities with guaranteed income riders. We’re going to start with an immediate annuity. Picture a jar of cookies that represents your money, or a portion of it. Now, imagine you hand the insurance company this jar full of cookies. Starting immediately, they hand you back a cookie each year. If the jar becomes empty, they promise to keep handing you cookies anyway, for as many years as you need them. In return, you agree that once you hand them the jar, you can’t reach in anymore. If one year you want three cookies, you’ll have to get them from somewhere else. No matter how long you live, and no matter how much of your other money you spend early in retirement, you’ll still get a cookie each year. Annuities were designed for this purpose – to make sure you don’t run out of money and to make sure you have income over a potentially very long life. This is what annuities are really good at. When people start comparing annuities to other types of investments and discussing rates of return, they are missing the point. You buy an annuity to provide guaranteed income for life. A mutual fund does not provide guaranteed income for life – so comparing those two options side by side doesn’t make any sense. If you want a portion of your income guaranteed for life, look at an annuity. That’s what they are made for. With an immediate annuity, the income begins right away, and the payout is fixed. This type of annuity is good at two things: 1) protecting you from outliving your money, and 2) protecting you from overspending risk, as you can’t dip into the cookie jar. What if you don’t need the income immediately, but you still want to know you will have guaranteed income in retirement? That’s where a deferred annuity comes in. With a deferred annuity, you put a lump sum into an annuity contract, and the insurance company guarantees a specific payout that begins at a set time in the future. There are many types of deferred annuities. One version, offered inside of retirement plans, is called a “QLAC” or Q-L-A-C which stands for Qualified Longevity Annuity Contract. With a QLAC the maximum amount you can buy is $125,000 and the income is typically contracted to begin at age 80 or 85. Why would you want a product that isn’t going to pay out until your 80’s? Some people like the idea that they could spend everything else they have between now and age 80 or 85, with the security of knowing a guaranteed income will begin at that age. A more common type of deferred annuity is one that is purchased in your 50’s, with the income designed to begin at age 65 or 70. For example, if you are age 55 today and your investments have been doing well, one option is to carve off a lump sum to buy a deferred annuity that will guarantee a monthly income ten years down the road. A portion of your savings must be converted into a stream of cash flow that you can use in retirement, and a deferred annuity does this conversion for you. When discussing annuities, one objection I hear is that people are afraid that they will hand over their cookie jar, pass away, and essentially have given their money right to the insurance company without getting anything back. There are death benefit features that prevent this. One death benefit option is called an installment refund, where any money not paid out to you comes back to your estate. Another way to make sure your principal is paid out is to use a life annuity with a minimum term-certain payout. This means that the annuity is guaranteed to payout for your life, but if you pass early, it must continue to pay for a set time, such as ten years. Keep in mind, every additional guarantee that is provided has a cost. An immediate annuity with no death benefit will usually provide the most guaranteed income per dollar. Why? Because it is simple to administer and the cost to the insurance company is low. As soon as you add death benefit guarantees and deferral periods, the cost to administer the contract increases. The way that cost shows up, is you get slightly less income per dollar than what you might get with a simpler, less complex contract. We’ve covered the basics on immediate and deferred annuities. Next, we’re going to discuss fixed and variable annuities. With a fixed annuity, the insurance company guarantees the interest rate you’ll earn, and the interest accumulates tax-deferred – meaning you won’t get a 1099 tax form each year. You don’t pay taxes until you take the money out. Any interest withdrawn prior to age 59½ is subject to the 10% early-withdrawal penalty tax in addition to regular income taxes. Think of a fixed annuity as a CD, or Certificate of Deposit, but it is tucked inside a tax-deferred wrapper. Instead of the bank guaranteeing your interest rate, the insurance company is providing the guarantee. The interest-rate guarantee typically runs for about one to ten years, at which point you can continue the annuity at whatever rate is then offered, or you can exchange it for a different type of annuity, or (like a CD) you can cash it in and decide to invest the funds elsewhere. If you cash it in, you will owe taxes on the accumulated tax-deferred interest. Fixed annuities are best compared to other safe investments like CDs, agency bonds, or municipal bonds. One thing to watch out for are fixed annuities that lure you in with a high initial rate, but the blended interest rate over the life of the contract may end up being quite low. Look for “yield to surrender” to determine what the rate would be over the life of the annuity. Fixed annuities can also come in many sub-categories. An equity-index annuity, for example, is a form of a fixed annuity. With an equity-index annuity, the insurance company offers a minimum guaranteed return with the potential for additional returns by using a formula that ties the increases in your annuity account to a stock market index. For example, assume you buy an equity-indexed annuity that is tied to the S&P 500 Index. It might allow you to participate in 80% of any increases in the stock market index as measured from January 1 to December 31 each year, with a 10% maximum return in any one year, and a 3% minimum return. Equity-index annuities can sound like the best of both worlds, a minimum return and the ability to earn more?! Watch out though - the participation rate, 80% in the example I just used, and the cap, which was a maximum of 10% return in my example, both limit the upside return potential. When factoring this in, research studies have shown that over various five-year time periods, equity-index annuities can be expected to deliver results much like five-year CDs. This is not a bad thing – just something to be aware of. As long as you understand you are buying something more like a CD and less like an investment in the stock market, these can be solid contracts. Many of these equity index annuities also offer a feature called a guaranteed income rider. This type of rider is an extra guarantee that you purchase which spells out the amount of future cash flow that the insurance contract will payout starting at a specific age. The last type of annuity I want to cover in this podcast is a variable annuity. First, let’s take a step back. Various federal and state licenses are required to sell insurance and investment products. It requires an insurance license to sell an annuity. The fixed annuities we have discussed, both immediate and deferred or equity-index, only require an insurance license. To sell a variable annuity, the agent must also carry a securities license, as a variable annuity has a component that is invested in market-based investments. To put this in perspective, the planners at my firm, Sensible Money, can give advice on how an annuity fits into your plan, and what type might work for you, but they cannot collect a commission from the sale of a product, so no insurance or

In this episode, podcast host and author of “Control Your Retirement Destiny”, Dana Anspach, covers Chapter 9 of the 2nd edition of the book titled, “Real Estate and Mortgages.” If you want to learn even more than what there is time to cover in the podcast series, you can find the book “Control Your Retirement Destiny” on Amazon. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan for your retirement, visit us at sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help.   Chapter 9 – Podcast Script Hi, this is Dana Anspach. I’m the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a fee-only financial planning firm. I’m also the author of Control Your Retirement Destiny, a book that covers the vast array of decisions you need to make as you plan for a transition into retirement. This podcast covers the material in Chapter 9, on real estate and mortgages. If you like what you hear today, go to Amazon and search for Control Your Retirement Destiny. And, if you are looking for a customized plan, visit sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help. ————— It was about 2010, and I was having a conversation with a woman who I considered to be successful and intelligent. Suddenly she says, “Well, stocks are a much better investment than real estate, right? You’re a financial planner, so isn’t that what you tell your clients?” I was speechless. A good planner plans. Planning encompasses all aspects of one’s financial life, including real estate and mortgages. It would be irresponsible for a financial planner to make a statement such as “stocks are better than real estate.” Many financially independent people that I know accumulated their wealth through real estate. On the flip side, many people I know experienced bankruptcy and foreclosure by stretching their real estate investments TOO FAR. Real estate can be a profitable investment if you know what you are doing, and a disaster if you don’t. When nearing retirement, all aspects of your financial situation need to align toward a common goal: generating a reliable source of cash flow. That means real estate and mortgages need to be evaluated just as carefully as other items on your balance sheet. In this podcast, I’m gonna start by talking about your home and mortgage, and address one of the most common questions, which is, “Should you pay off your mortgage before retirement?” Then we’ll talk about home equity lines of credit and how to use them in retirement. And we’ll move on to discussing investment properties, and the last thing we’ll cover will be reverse mortgages. First, let’s talk about your home. Is it an investment? Meaning is it something you hope to make money on? Or is it a lifestyle choice - something you purchase for comfort and pleasure? Everyone has their own opinion on this. For most people, the answer lies somewhere between these two extremes. I rarely see people buy a personal residence solely because they think they can make money on it. Most of the time other factors like location, the type of neighborhood, and other personal lifestyle preferences have a big impact on a home purchase. Yet, when discussions about retirement start to happen, at that point, people often take a fresh look at their home as an asset. For many of you, a portion of the value of your home will need to become a part of your retirement income plan. If you know this ahead of time, you can put more thought into your next home purchase, how you finance it, and figure out how it fits into your plan. When I talk about fitting a home into your plan, I am not talking only about downsizing. There are other creative ways to think about your home and where you live. For example, you can choose a home that has ample access to public transportation, so you would not need a car on a daily basis. With services like Uber and Lyft, this option can work well today and result in a net savings over the cost of auto ownership. You can make your home as energy-efficient as possible, and make sure it has a garden or other area conducive to growing your own food. Another option is to rent a room in your home, or buy a home that has space that can be converted into a rental. For a large portion of my adult life I had roommates. Financially, it helped cover the mortgage. For me, of even more importance, it provided me with a built-in pet sitter. I’m a dog lover. When I traveled for work or to see family, I never had to kennel my pups. This saved me quite a bit of money over the years. And today, online options like AirBnB or VRBO.com (which stands for “vacation rentals by owner”) allow you to rent out your home, or a room in it, on a temporary basis to travelers. Or maybe you’re thinking about moving once you’re retired. Look for states that are tax-friendly for retirees. A simple Google search on “tax friendly states for retirees” will lead you to a few great articles that show you which states might be best. There are many creative ways your home can contribute to your retirement plan. One of the most common questions about a home is whether you should pay off the mortgage before retirement. When I started in the financial planning business in 1995, we were trained to tell people that they could earn a higher rate of return by investing their money rather than paying extra on the mortgage. I was 23 years old and told people what I was trained to tell them. Today, I don’t agree with that one-size-fits-all type of advice. I think most Americans are better off paying off their mortgage by the time they retire, but, not all. The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has done research on this topic and has an online paper available titled, “Should You Carry a Mortgage into Retirement?” In this paper, they also conclude that most retirees are more financially secure by paying off the mortgage before retirement. The research paper rejects the argument that households can earn a higher return in stocks or other risky assets. The paper addresses the practical consideration that folks trying to manage their investments for a higher return can make poor investment choices and easily mismanage their money. Cognitive decline is real, and older Americans also fall for scams. This is something to keep in mind. The money in a paid off home is safe. Paying off the home can also be a way to trick yourself into saving more. Let me tell you about how this worked out for Jackie and Bob, who wanted to retire early. Each time they came in to review their plan I would explain to them that they needed to save more in order to make early retirement happen. A year later, they would come back, and their savings had not increased. They had the income to save more, but it wasn’t happening. Finally, I decided to try a different approach. I suggested they make extra payments on their mortgage and told them as soon as their mortgage was paid off, they could retire. Suddenly they began making progress! Seeing the mortgage balance go down was tangible. They could measure their progress toward a goal that they wanted to achieve. Accumulating money in their investment accounts where the value would fluctuate from month to month just didn’t have the same effect for them. Soon their mortgage was paid off, and today, they are happily retired. Now, this worked for Jackie and Bob, because they were already funding their retirement accounts, and still had extra money each month to apply to their mortgage. Are there some groups of people who may NOT want to focus on paying down the mortgage? Yes, there are. There are four scenarios I see where it may NOT make sense to pay off the mortgage. If you are ten years or more away from retirement and trying to decide whether to pay extra on the mortgage or put more in your 401k plan, the right answer for you may be different than the right answer for Jackie and Bob. For many high-income earners, funding extra into a tax-deductible plan like a 401k will result in a better outcome over ten years than paying extra on the mortgage. If you are a high net worth individual, or a business owner who needs to focus on asset protection, then retaining debt may have some advantages in the event that you are sued. For high net worth folks, there is a great book called The Value of Debt, by Tom Anderson, that explains why higher net worth families may want to focus on retaining the right kind of debt rather than pay everything off. If you are a savvy business person, for example, someone who invests in franchises, or private lending, and routinely expect returns higher than 10%, then maybe you don’t want to pay off your mortgage early. If mortgage rates are super low, keeping the mortgage and investing elsewhere may make sense. When I originally wrote Control Your Retirement Destiny in 2012, mortgage rates were in the 2.5 – 3.5% range. I don’t recommend paying off the mortgage when the rate is that low. Once the mortgage rate goes north of 5%, then I think it makes sense to begin looking at ways to pay it down. Now, if you don’t fit in one of these four categories, and you’re listening to this thinking you ought to run out and cash in an IRA to pay off the mortgage – wait! That is not what I am talking about. There are big tax consequences to cashing in an IRA or retirement account. After factoring in taxes, it rarely makes sense to take a big chunk of money out of a retirement account to pay off a mortgage. On the other hand, what if you inherit money that is not an IRA? Or sell a business or other property and have cash? Then, it may make sense to use that cash to pay off the mortgage, or like Jackie and Bob, create a plan to pay extra each month. Next, let’s talk about home equity lines of credit, which we often abbreviate as “H-E-L-O-C” or HELOC. Unexpected expenses will come up in retirement. If you must take a large unplanned withdrawal out of an account, it may mess up your investment plan and your tax plan. For example, say you have matched up your investments so that bonds and CDs mature in each account to match the amount of your a

In this episode, podcast host and author of “Control Your Retirement Destiny”, Dana Anspach, covers Chapter 10 of the 2nd edition of the book titled, “Health Care.” If you want to learn even more than what there is time to cover in the podcast series, you can find the book “Control Your Retirement Destiny” on Amazon. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan for your retirement, visit us at sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help.   Chapter 10 – Podcast Script Hi, this is Dana Anspach. I’m the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a fee-only financial planning firm. I’m also the author of Control Your Retirement Destiny, a book that provides a step by step plan on what to do as you transition into retirement. This podcast covers the material in Chapter 10, on managing health care costs in retirement. If you like what you hear today, go to Amazon and search for Control Your Retirement Destiny. And, if you are looking for a customized plan, visit sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help. ————— When it comes to health care costs in retirement, the media scares us with big numbers. One common statistic you see is the lump sum cost for health care for a couple age 65 and older. For example, the Fidelity Retiree Health Care Cost Estimate is frequently quoted by the media. It says an average retired couple, age 65 in 2018, will need approximately $280,000 saved (after taxes) to cover health care expenses in retirement. This sounds scary, but it is almost the same price tag that is quoted as the average cost to raise a child. Most parents don’t have $280,000 sitting in an account when they have a baby, yet they still manage. Health care costs are similar. Let’s look at these expenses annually instead of as a lump sum. $280,000 over 25 years is $11,200 per year, or $5,600 each. When you think of it this way, it becomes a manageable expense that you can plan for. However, this expense does not occur evenly, like a car payment. Instead, the expenses vary depending on what phase you are in. The more you understand what to expect, and how the expenses vary, the better of you’ll be. There are four key areas of planning for health care costs that I’ll cover in this podcast. First, Medicare, which begins at age 65 for most people. Second, the gap years, which occur if you retire prior to age 65 and don’t have any employer provided coverage to bridge the gap until age 65. Third, I’ll talk about one of my favorite savings vehicles, the Health Savings Account. And the last thing I’ll cover will be long term care costs. Let’s start with Medicare. If you’ve worked in the U.S. long enough to qualify (which is 10 years or 40 calendar quarters of covered work), then you become eligible for Medicare at age 65. Medicare has four parts; Parts A, B, C and D. Medicare Part A begins at age 65 and is free. Part A is the foundation of the Medicare program and is often referred to as hospital insurance. Medicare Part B is next, and it is not free. It covers additional services, some medical supplies and some preventative services. You pay a monthly premium for Part B. The amount is announced annually. In 2019, the basic Medicare Part B premium is $135 per month. However, this premium is means tested -so if you have a higher income, you may pay more. Those with the highest incomes pay $460 a month instead of the $135. I’ll cover this means testing in more detail in just a few minutes. Medicare Part D refers to prescription drug coverage that you can add to your basic Medicare Part A and B benefits. As with Medicare Part B, high-income folks pay more. In 2019, the base premium is $33 a month, and the highest income households pay $77 a month. If you add up what is covered in Parts A, B and D, you’ll find there are gaps in coverage. On average, Medicare covers about 50% of your total health care costs. Most people purchase what is called a Medigap or Medicare Supplement plan, which wraps around Original Medicare and helps cover these gaps. A few years ago, a second option became available. This is what is sometimes called Medicare Part C or a Medicare Advantage Plan. It is private insurance that provides coverage in a single plan that includes Parts A and B, and may also include Part D. Some Medicare Advantage plans also include extra services like vision, dental, and hearing. Currently, you must choose between either a Medicare Advantage plan or Original Medicare augmented with a Medicare Supplement policy. You will start receiving information about Medicare six months before your 65th birthday. Most people enroll as soon as they are eligible. But what do you do if you are still working at age 65 and have insurance through your employer? Then, it depends on the size of your employer. In general, if your employer has less than 20 employees, Medicare will become your primary insurance, even if you are still working. You will typically enroll in Parts A & B. If you employer has over 20 employees, Medicare is often the secondary insurance. Usually you enroll in Part A, but may be able to delay Part B. And possibly delay Part D depending on the drug coverage provided. It’s important go get this right, because if you were supposed to enroll in Medicare, but don’t do it in time, a penalty can apply. The penalty for not enrolling in Part A on time is temporary, but the penalty for not enrolling in Part B can mean you pay a higher Part B premium for the rest of your life. We encourage people to talk to their current health insurance provider and consult with an independent agent to discuss options as they near age 65. For those of you who with higher incomes, I am going to spend a few more minutes on the Medicare Part B and D means testing. This premium adjustment for higher income tax filers is called IRMAA or the Income Related Monthly Adjustment Amount. Medicare estimates that IRMAA results in increased premiums for about 5% of the population. Means testing begins when your modified adjusted gross income exceeds $85,000 for single filers, or $170,000 for married filers. These limits are fixed and do not adjust up with inflation. The final premium amount is determined based on your income; the more income, the higher the premium. Those with the highest incomes, over $500k for singles or $750k for marrieds, pay $460 a month instead of the $135 base amount. These IRMAA premiums are determined by looking at your tax return two years prior. If you’re age 65 in 2019, they’ll be looking at your 2017 tax return. But what if your income was much higher two years ago than it is now? We come across these situations on a regular basis. I’ll share two of them. The first is a married retired doctor and the second a single veterinarian. In both cases, they are over age 65, and their income is much lower now than it was two years ago. We suggested each person file for a reconsideration of IRMAA. There are seven reasons you can request a lower IRMAA premium and retirement, or working less hours, is one of those seven reasons. For our retired married doctor this may save them over $5,000 this year. For the veterinary, perhaps $1,000 - $2,000 in savings. How do you go about paying your Part B premiums? If you are not yet receiving Social Security, then you receive a quarterly invoice for your Part B & D premiums. Once you begin Social Security, Part B & D premiums are deducted from your monthly Social Security check. I’ve now covered the basics on Medicare. Overall, when you go right from employer provided coverage to Medicare, the transition is not too difficult. But what about those of you who plan to retire before age 65? You need to plan for the gap years. The gap years occur when you retire before age 65 and have no employer sponsored health coverage. Coverage during this time period can be expensive. Take the case of Doug and Beth as an example. Doug worked for a construction firm and had planned on working until age 65. He was forced into retirement a few years early, at 62, when the economy took a dive. His wife, Beth, was about eight years younger, and had no plans to retire in the near future. With a little rearranging, and through Doug’s use of extended unemployment benefits, their plan absorbed the change. To my surprise, a year later they came in to see if they might find a way for Beth to retire as soon as possible. Beth explained that her take-home pay was only about $1,400 a month and that if she started her pension at age 55, the pension would be $1,300 per month. “What is the point of continuing to work?” she asked. On the surface, her logic made sense, until I explained to them the cost of health insurance. Beth was paying only $54 a month for health coverage; her employer was paying the rest of the premium. Once retired, as neither she nor Doug was yet Medicare age, equivalent health insurance for the two of them would run $1,400 a month. When we factored in benefits, Beth’s job was paying her twice what she had thought. If your employer provides health insurance, it is likely subsidizing the cost, and you may have no idea how expensive it can be if you leave the workforce. When you leave your employer, you have COBRA coverage available for up to 18 months, so if you retire at 63 and a half, that will get you to Medicare-age. Premiums in the $700 - $1,000 per person per month range are common on COBRA, so plan for this in your budget. If you are younger, and you’ll need to cover health care without COBRA, you’ll need to buy insurance from the marketplace exchange. Premiums depend on where you are located and what type of plan you choose. There are four plan types; Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum. If you are healthy, the Bronze plan may be your best bet. It offers the lowest monthly premium, but the insurance company pays only 60% of your health care costs. If a health issue shows up, this plan can get expensive quickly. If you have known health issues you can opt for a Platinum plan. You’ll pay a larger monthly premium, but the insurance compan

In this episode, podcast host and author of “Control Your Retirement Destiny”, Dana Anspach, covers Chapter 11 of the 2nd edition of the book titled, “Working Before & During Retirement - Your Human Capital.” If you want to learn even more than what there is time to cover in the podcast series, you can find the book “Control Your Retirement Destiny” on Amazon. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan for your retirement, visit us at sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help.   Chapter 11 – Podcast Script Hi, this is Dana Anspach. I’m the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a fee-only financial planning firm. I’m also the author of Control Your Retirement Destiny, a book that covers the numerous decisions you need to make as you plan for a transition into retirement. This podcast covers the material in Chapter 11, on your human capital - your ability to earn a living. If you like what you hear today, go to Amazon and search for Control Your Retirement Destiny. And, if you are looking for a customized plan, visit sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help. ------------- What is the biggest asset you have? Most of you will likely answer your home, or maybe your IRA or 401k account. If you’re a business owner, perhaps it’s your business that comes to mind. This might be the correct answer, if you are about to retire, but what if you’re still 5 to 10 years away from retirement, or thinking about partial retirement? Your biggest asset could be your ability to earn income. This is what we call your Human Capital. Traditional financial planning often ignores this important and valuable asset. On Twitter, one podcaster who goes by the Twitter handle of “@ferventfinance” wrote that “95% of discussions, books, and articles on the topic of finances concentrate on budgeting, investing, and debt repayment. Yet, the one thing that will probably move the needle the most is increasing income.” People are often surprised when we show them that the value of their future earnings can be in the millions. Even part-time work can be worth a lot. Take the case of Marian, age 59. She works in IT with a stable job and a $140,000 per year salary that goes up with inflation like clockwork. To maintain affordable health care insurance, she plans to work to her 65th birthday. When you factor in the employer contributions to her retirement plan, and the health care benefits for her and her spouse, her remaining 6.5 years of work are worth a million dollars. Their total financial assets are $1.7 million, and their home equity is about $750,000. Her remaining human capital is a big asset. In percentage terms, it’s about 40% of their total net worth. You would not be quick to walk away from a million-dollar account. Yet, some people walk away from a job without realizing the value of that asset. Once you walk away, in many careers, it can be difficult to get back in at the same level. That means you want to give some thought to what retirement really means to you. For example, I have a client who is a CPA, in his mid-50’s, who asked me one day, “Dana, do you have clients who actually retire… and enjoy it?” He loves the business he has built and the challenges that come with growing a business. It’s hard for him to imagine getting up and not going to work each day. I chuckled when he asked this question. Because, yes, I have many clients who retire and enjoy it. And a few who retire and end up back at work within a year because they found it so unenjoyable. Before you retire, you have to give thought to what makes you tick. In this podcast episode, I’ll offer two different views on how you might think about, and use, your human capital. There is the “mercenary approach,” and the “thrive approach”. Then I’ll cover a few stories to help you figure out what retirement means to you. And I’ll wrap up with two tips on what to be aware of if you do work part-time in retirement. I’ll start with the mercenary approach. This is about providing your time to the highest bidder. I took the phrase “mercenary approach” from the book Die Broke, originally written in 1998 by authors Stephen Pollan and Mark Levine. I believe updated versions of the book are available. I read their original book a long time ago, and their concept stuck with me. In the book they suggest you maximize your career potential by going to wherever you can earn the most. Then you save as much as you can. In their book, if you follow their approach you slowly convert your savings into annuities to provide guaranteed income in retirement that replaces your earned income. I think this approach is interesting, and, no doubt, it may work for some. It means potentially choosing work that is not fulfilling, in order to focus your human capital efforts to accomplish a maximum return on time invested. This mercenary-like approach can be combined with an extremely downsized lifestyle to reach retirement far more quickly than you may think. This approach is currently referred to as the “FIRE” movement, F-I-R-E, which stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. Many blogs such as Early Retirement Extreme and Mr. Money Mustache cover this concept. If your goal is to get out of traditional work as quickly as possible, following the FIRE movement makes sense. Financial independence can be achieved in a far shorter time period than you may think, but it requires sacrifice. The advantage is that once you reach financial independence, you then have the freedom to choose what type of work you might want to do—if you want to work at all. Another version of the mercenary approach involves people who take high paying jobs overseas, or high-risk jobs on oil rigs, or in places like Alaska. Some workers choose this as a strategy. They want to make as much as possible as quickly as possible and then later on plan to “settle down” to a more normal life after hitting a specific financial target. Some might take on such a role for a year – others for five to ten years. A more moderate approach is to spend time figuring out what academic programs, credentials, or certifications will help boost your income. Evaluate the financial cost of any program against the potential increase in income you might expect, and make sure you talk to many people in your industry to find out whether they think additional education will actually translate into increased income. I went through this process in considering the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) designation. This is a designation held by many investment analysts, mutual fund managers, and institutional money managers. I am interested in the designation even to this day, but it involves a significant time commitment. The industry leaders I spoke with said that for the career path I was choosing, they did not think it was necessary for me. I listened, and instead, I have chosen other designations, such as the Retirement Management Advisor designation, that more directly correlate with the work that I do and the direction of my firm. Overall, when I consider the mercenary approach and the FIRE movement, I respect it, but I don’t personally resonate with it. I prefer the thought of a life well-worked, which for me, means I need work that I thrive on. That takes us to the thrive approach. The thrive approach is about finding work you love. You start by figuring out what makes you tick and what type of work puts you “in the zone”. When you find a niche you thrive in, it changes everything. If you enjoy what you are doing, you are likely to work longer, and it won’t feel like work. How do you find work you love? I’ve done all kinds of things. Career counseling, coaching, and online assessment tools to name a few. I want to share two big breakthroughs that I had. The first was a coaching process called Rediscover Your Mojo designed by executive coach Lisa Stefan-Martin. Lisa is one of my best friends, and she was my roommate for three years. So I had the benefit of daily executive level coaching conversations. Then, I went through her formal Rediscover Your Mojo process while it was in the design stage. At the time, I was frustrated with the direction of my business. I was looking for answers and hoping she could help me find them. To my surprise, what I got out of the process were valuable insights that have profoundly affected the way I operate on a daily basis. Professional coaching changed the way I make decisions. I didn’t get a nice neat “answer” about a career decision; instead I got tuned in to my internal compass. Now, it is far easier for me to find my own answers to tough decisions. I’ve worked with several coaches over my career, and I highly recommend it. My second huge breakthrough occurred in 2010. I stopped trying to be like other people and started being who I was. And a funny thing happened: work no longer felt like work. Instead, each day it felt like I got to go play. Sure, there were tasks that I had to do that I didn’t love. It wasn’t completely Goldilocks. But it was different. I owe the difference to the Kolbe A Index assessment tool. At the time I discovered Kolbe, I was struggling with one of my associates at work. I always had ideas and wanted to figure out how to do things more efficiently. I liked to follow the latest trends in financial planning and test out new software packages. My associate had more of the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. One day, he said something to me along the lines of, “Why can’t you just be happy and leave well enough alone?” I thought about that for a while and wondered, “Well, why can’t I? Is something wrong with me?” Then I found Kolbe and through their assessment process, I discovered my Natural Advantage was that of an entrepreneur. No, nothing was wrong with me. I am supposed to change things. Instead of fighting myself I went full force ahead into seeing what I could create, and I haven’t stopped since. I love it. Kolbe had such a profound effect on me that, in 2011, I chose to invest in its certification

In this episode, podcast host and author of “Control Your Retirement Destiny”, Dana Anspach, covers part 1 of Chapter 12 of the 2nd edition of the book titled, “Whom To Listen Too.” If you want to learn even more than what there is time to cover in the podcast series, you can find the book “Control Your Retirement Destiny” on Amazon. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan for your retirement, visit us at sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help.   Chapter 12 (Part 1) – Podcast Script Hi, this is Dana Anspach. I’m the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a fee-only financial planning firm. I’m also the author of Control Your Retirement Destiny, a book that covers the numerous decisions you need to make as you plan for a transition into retirement. This podcast covers the material in Chapter 12, on “Whom To Listen To”. Meaning, when you need financial advice, who can you turn to? If you like what you hear today, go to Amazon and search for Control Your Retirement Destiny. And if you are looking for a customized plan, visit sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help. ----- Not everyone needs a financial advisor, but certainly everyone needs reliable financial advice. So where do you find it? That’s what I cover in this episode. There are three main places to find advice – the media, the product manufacturers, and the 250,000 to 350,000 people out there who go by the label “financial advisor.” I’m going to cover all three. First, the media. Early in my career in the mid 90’s, I had an experience that made me realize the impact of the media. A client called up one day, quite excited, and said, “Do you have municipal bonds?” “Yes,” I replied. “Why do you ask?” “Well,” she said, “they told me I need municipal bonds.” I was a bit confused, as I was her financial advisor, so I apprehensively said, “Do you mind telling me who ‘they’ are?” “Oh,” she said, “you know—the people on TV.” Municipal bonds provide interest that in most cases is free from federal taxes, and if the bond is issued by the state you live in, it may be free of state taxes too. That means municipal bonds can be a good choice for investors in high tax brackets who have investment money that is not inside retirement accounts. This client however, was in a low tax bracket and most of her money was inside her IRA. The TV host didn’t provide specifics—only an overview of municipal bonds and the fact that they paid tax-free interest. This woman heard “tax-free” and thought it must be something she should pursue. The media doesn’t know you. I don’t know you either. I get inquiries from strangers on a regular basis asking for advice. Most of the journalists and other media personalities I know experience the same thing. Someone emails us a few pieces of data and wants to know what to do. It’s hard, because we want to help. But we don’t want to guess. To feel comfortable giving financial advice, most of the time I need to do a thorough financial projection. To do it right, I need to know everything about someone’s financial life. Once I see the entire picture, I can answer a question about the particular puzzle piece someone is asking about. Today, the media encompasses both traditional venues, such as TV, radio and magazines, as well as numerous online mediums, like blogs and podcasts. In all forms of media, there are pay-to-play articles, spotlights and links. There is nothing wrong with the pay-to-play model, as long as it is disclosed. As a consumer, you just need to be aware that many things you see, such as certain top advisor lists, are put together because someone paid to be on the list. Many product endorsements in blogs are there because the blogger gets affiliate revenue, or advertising revenue. The other challenge with media advice is that, by nature, it is designed to be mainstream broad content. For eight years, I worked to write articles that fit within a 600-800 word count requirement. For most financial topics, you can’t cover all the rules in 600-800 words. Then I would receive emails from people letting me know which items I missed. For example, I can write about the topic of Roth IRAs and generically say that most people are better off funding after-tax Roth IRAs or 401ks instead of pre-tax IRAs, and as I write that I can instantly think of numerous exceptions. Media advice is not personal. That means you should think of it as education – but not as advice. For it to be good advice, it must be personal. By all means, use the media, books, podcasts, articles and shows as a great resource to learn from. But don’t forget that the person producing that content doesn’t know you. Next, I want to discuss the industry of financial advice. There is a big difference between a product and advice, and as a consumer, you need to be able to identify which is which. In 1995, at age 23, I started my career as a financial advisor. I studied for 60 days and passed an exam. I was granted a Series 6 securities license. I didn’t know much, and I didn’t know that I didn’t know much—but I was a financial advisor. This Series 6 license granted me the right to sell mutual funds. That meant I could legally collect a commission on sales. I went to work. I was lucky enough to have a mentor who taught me to make a financial plan for each client and then recommend products based on the results of the plan. But, I worked for a product company. My job was to sell their proprietary mutual funds and insurance products and I was paid based on what I sold. What if a client wanted advice on their 401(k) plan offered by their employer? I wasn’t supposed to provide that type of advice because it was outside the scope of the company’s offerings and outside the scope of the errors and commissions insurance. What is someone had tax questions? I was supposed to tell them to go talk to their tax advisor. As I learned more about the industry, I decided I wanted to be independent. I wanted to be able to recommend any product that fit the client’s needs. And I wanted to be able to answer questions on all aspects of their finances. Today, 25 years later, many financial advisors are still not independent. They carry an insurance license or securities license and are paid primarily to sell the products their company authorizes them to sell. What do I mean by product? I mean mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, mortgages, annuities and other insurance products. A company must produce it, make sure it complies with current laws, and then have a distribution channel to market the product. Some companies market directly to the public. Vanguard, who’s flagship product is mutual funds, comes to mind when I think of this type of distribution channel. Other companies market both to the public and through a network of advisors. Fidelity and Charles Schwab are two examples of companies who have their own products, and who distribute their products directly to the retail public as well as through a network of advisors. Then you have insurance products, which are generally marketed through a network of either captive or independent agents, or through brokers who also carry an insurance license. As an independent advisor, I receive solicitations almost daily from product manufacturers. I find many of them offensive. For example, although it has been almost 15 years since I have carried an insurance license, I routinely receive email offers explaining how I can make $50,000 or more in commissions next month by putting clients in the latest annuity offering. It is hard for me to believe that that the advisors out there who respond to these offers have their clients’ best interest in mind. In addition to products such as mutual funds and mortgages, you have service packages to choose from. For example, there are now online firms called RoboAdvisors who offer a platform where the investments are selected and managed for you for a fee. This service package is for investment advice. I like these service packages and I think they are better than product-oriented sales people. Yet, investment advice should not to be confused with holistic financial planning. A service that manages a portfolio for you is not the same as a financial planner who looks at your household finances and gives advice on all aspects of your balance sheet. Many financial advisors—and the media—place far too much emphasis on product selection and investment advice and far too little emphasis on financial planning. Think of it this way; you would probably find it odd if you went to the doctor, told them your symptoms, and without any examination they began to write you a prescription. This situation happens regularly with the delivery of financial advice. I hear war stories from consumers who come in to interview us. They tell me about advisors who began the conversation by touting their investment prowess, or talking about a variable annuity that can somehow both grow and protect your money at the same time. These advisors start off by talking about products instead of starting with a household view of the client’s finances. Financial planning is about how much you save, what types of accounts you contribute to, how you track your expenses and net worth, and how to set yourself up for success no matter what happens with the economy or the stock market. There is not a product out there that can solve a financial planning problem. Just as you can’t take a drug that overcomes the effect of a lifestyle of no exercise and unhealthy eating, you can’t find a magic investment answer to a habit of not planning and not updating your plan on a regular basis. Your key take-away is do not confuse a product recommendation with advice. If you can recognize the difference, you’ll be well on your way to being able to know who to pay attention to, and who to ignore. That brings us to the last topic, which is do you need a financial advisor, and if so, how do you find the right one for you? I am clearly biased when it comes to this topic. I am a financia

In this episode, podcast host and author of “Control Your Retirement Destiny”, Dana Anspach, covers part 2 of Chapter 12 of the 2nd edition of the book titled, “Whom To Listen Too.” Part 2 covers "Interviewing Advisors and Avoiding Fraud." If you want to learn even more than what there is time to cover in the podcast series, you can find the book “Control Your Retirement Destiny” on Amazon. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan for your retirement, visit us at sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help.   Chapter 12 (Part 2) – Podcast Script Hi, this is Dana Anspach. I’m the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a fee-only financial planning firm. Fee-only means no commissions. I’m also the author of Control Your Retirement Destiny, a book that shows you how to align your finances for a smooth transition into retirement. This podcast is an extension of the material in Chapter 12, on “Whom To Listen To”. I’ll be covering the topics of avoiding fraud and how to interview potential advisors. If you like what you hear today, go to Amazon and search for Control Your Retirement Destiny. And, if you are looking for a customized plan, visit sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help. ----- We’ve all heard the saying “if it’s too good to be true….” So why do we fall for fraud, over and over? I think I know the answer. To recognize if something is too good to be true, you must know what truth is in the first place. And when it comes to investing, a lot of people have no idea what is realistic and what is a fantasy. By the end of this podcast, you will not be one of those people. I’ve got several real-life stories to tell – stories about fraud and why people fell for it. You are about to learn what to watch out for. And as a side note – for the personal stories I tell I change names and details for privacy reasons. Although details are changed, the substance of each story is true. Let’s start with the biggest financial scam in U.S. history – what is known as the Bernie Madoff scam – a 65 billion-dollar Ponzi scheme. If you haven’t heard of him, Bernie Madoff was the former chairman of the NASDAQ stock market. Naturally when he started his own investment firm, people trusted him. His scheme came unraveled in December 2008 and many families lost their entire life savings. One of the men credited with bringing down Madoff’s scheme is Harry Markopolos. He tells his story with his co-author Frank Casey in their book called No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller. How did Harry Markopolos figure out Madoff’s scheme? Markopolos said, “As we know, markets go up and down, and Madoff’s only went up. He had very few down months. Only four percent of the months were down months. And that would be equivalent to a baseball player in the major leagues batting .960 for a year. Clearly impossible. You would suspect cheating immediately.” Maybe Markopolos would suspect cheating immediately, but would you? Harry Markopolos was in the investment business. He knew what is and is not possible. But what about the average person who walked into Bernie Madoff’s office and was told that they could consistently earn 12% returns each year? Any one of us in the investment business would walk out and head to the authorities. But the average investor? They think that sounds great and that someone has the magic formula to make it happen. They don’t know that they should suspect cheating immediately. How can you assess what is realistic and whether someone is lying? First, you must understand that safe investments earn low returns. If a proposed investment pays more than a money market fund or more than a one-year CD, than there is risk. If someone doesn’t explain those risks and tries to assure you that your money is completely safe, they aren’t telling the whole story. You also must know that volatility, or ups and downs, are a normal part of investing. If someone tells you it will be a smooth ride with great returns, watch out. Something is not right. Despite the publicity that the Madoff scandal received, Ponzi schemes continue and people continue to fall for them. Most recently, a New York Times article chronicles “The Fall of America’s Money Answers Man” which is the story of Jordan Goodman, a well-known finance guru who has books and radio shows. As Goodman’s work became more popular, he began touting all sorts of investments and was being paid to promote these investments. That is not illegal, as long as it disclosed. But he wasn’t disclosing all these relationships. And, on one of his radio shows in about 2014, Goodman began talking about one particular investment where you could safely earn 6% returns. He was quoted as saying “There’s a way of getting 6 percent and not having to worry about capital loss. It’s very safe.” This investment he was promoting turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. How could you recognize that this was a scam? After all, maybe 6% doesn’t sound like a return that is too good to be true? Well, it’s all relative. In 2006, you could earn 6% in a money market fund, but in 2014, you were earning about zero in a money market fund. And in today’s low interest rate environment, you might earn 2.5%. So, if someone is promising a safe, stable 6% no-risk return, you should be skeptical. And if you do decide to go forward with such an investment, you most certainly would not put in more than 5-10% of your money. As a legitimate investment advisor, my job is to provide people with a realistic set of potential outcomes. What happens when I compete with someone who is lying? It’s hard. I can present all the logic in the world, but when some unscrupulous advisor promises bigger returns with no risk, it is often with a sense of helplessness that all I can do is stand by and watch someone lose money. In 2007 I watched one of my clients get sucked in by this kind lie. He came in for our annual meeting about a month before he was supposed to retire. He told me he wasn’t going to need to withdraw money from his IRA as we had planned. “Why?” I asked, intrigued. He replied that he’d invested $100,000 in a currency-trading program that was paying him $5,000 a month. He showed me the checks he had been receiving. I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew the math didn’t add up. At $5,000 a month, that’s $60,000 a year, on a $100,000 investment. No one can deliver those kinds of returns. But how do you explain this to someone who has checks in their hand? Within six months, the currency trading program he invested in was discovered to be a scam, and the perpetrators were arrested. I wasn’t surprised. After netting out the checks he received, and the tax deduction for the fraud loss, he ended up about $50,000 poorer. Luckily, the rest of his retirement money remained invested with me, in a boring balanced portfolio of no-load index funds, so his overall retirement security wasn’t affected. Another thing scam artists do is appeal to your ego or to your religion – or both. I saw one former client of mine lose $4 million to such a scam. After working together for several years, this client sent me a wonderful email letting me know how much they had appreciated working with me, but that they were moving their funds to a firm that shared the same religious affiliation as they did. This firm also told them they would have access to exclusive investments only available to high net worth individuals. There’s the ego appeal. And, the firm told them it would handle everything: legal work, accounting, and investments. In hindsight, this makes sense. It keeps other expert eyes from questioning what is being done. A few years later, this client came back in to see me with a stack of papers in hand, asking me to help figure out what had happened to their money. I read, and I read some more. I turned white as chalk as I kept reading. Four million dollars—nearly all of their money—was gone. I immediately sent them to see an attorney who specialized in these types of cases. How did this firm scam the client out of 4 million? They got them to sign a series of promissory notes. The notes were supposed to pay 10 – 12% returns and the money was going to be used for real estate development. The client signed the notes, wired the money, got a few interest check payments and that was it. They were told the real estate development floundered. I don’t know what really happened or where the money really went. What I do know is the client’s lifestyle was forever changed. How can you avoid such a scam? Well, legitimate advisors won’t ask you to sign a promissory note. Instead your money is placed with a reputable custodian like Charles Schwab, Fidelity, or T.D. Ameritrade. A custodian reports directly to you. For example, my firm uses Charles Schwab as our primary custodian. We can initiate transactions, but Schwab reports those transactions directly to the client. We have no ability to make up what the account statement says. In the cases we have discussed so far there was no third-party custodian. So the advisor could make up what the statements said and what they were reporting to the client. Con artists are skilled at finding people who are trusting and vulnerable. You may be savvy, but what about your spouse? This is another real-life case of mine. The story of Henrietta, who was referred to me by her CPA after her husband passed. Henrietta and her husband Frank had an impressive collection of original art-work worth millions. Frank passed away when Henrietta was about 78 years old. Frank and Henrietta had a long-term friend from the art world named Sam. Sam reached out to Henrietta after Frank’s death and offered to buy her art collection. Henrietta didn’t seek legal counsel because she’d known Sam for a long time. Why would she need an attorney? She trusted him. They negotiated a purchase price of $3 million to be paid to Henrietta on a schedule of $25,000 a month for the next 10 years. The checks arrived for about two years, then they suddenly stopped

In this episode, podcast host and author of “Control Your Retirement Destiny”, Dana Anspach, covers Chapter 13 of the 2nd edition of the book titled, “Estate Planning.” If you want to learn even more than what there is time to cover in the podcast series, you can find the book “Control Your Retirement Destiny” on Amazon. Or, if you are looking for a customized plan for your retirement, visit us at sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help.   Chapter 13 – Podcast Script Hi, this is Dana Anspach. I’m the founder and CEO of Sensible Money, a fee-only financial planning firm. I’m also the author of Control Your Retirement Destiny, a book that shows you how to align your finances for a smooth transition into retirement. In this podcast episode I cover the material in Chapter 13, on “Estate Planning.” If you like what you hear today, go to Amazon and search for Control Your Retirement Destiny. And, if you are looking for a customized plan, visit sensiblemoney.com to see how we can help. ----- Even if you have never been to an attorney or drawn up a will or a trust, you have probably still done some type of estate planning- and not even known that’s what you were doing. How could that be? If you have ever opened a bank account or named a beneficiary on a retirement account or life insurance policy, that’s estate planning. It’s a legal document that specifies where your assets go when you pass. For example, if you open an account titled jointly with a spouse, friend or child, when you pass, that account belongs to them. It doesn’t matter what your will says – the titling of that account overrides any other documentation. The same thing occurs with beneficiary designations on retirement accounts. The financial institution must disburse the funds to the beneficiaries you have listed – it doesn’t matter if you have a trust or will that says something else. Many people don’t know this. And it can get you in trouble. I saw this first-hand with George and Faye. George was referred to me shortly after Faye passed away from pancreatic cancer. This was a second marriage and Faye had two children from a previous marriage. When Faye was diagnosed, they had wisely visited an attorney and had a trust drawn up. Faye wanted 1/3 of her assets to go to each of her two children and 1/3 to George, so that is what the trust said. However, nearly all of Faye’s assets were in her company retirement plan. And Faye never changed the beneficiary designation on this plan to the trust. George was named as the beneficiary. Unfortunately, George and Faye thought the trust document would take care of this. They did not realize the trust has no legal authority over her retirement plan unless she took the next step of filing updated beneficiary paperwork. Now, George was in the awkward position of inheriting the entire account. Luckily, George is a good guy, and continues to honor Faye’s wishes by taking withdrawals and then sending the appropriate after-tax amounts to Faye’s children. However, this has unfortunate tax consequences for George, forcing some of his other income into higher tax rates. Overall though, this case has a happy ending because George is doing the right thing. But not everyone would. The type of estate planning error that happened to George and Faye could have been avoided if the estate planning had been coordinated with the financial planning. Many attorneys don’t ask clients for a detailed net worth statement. I’m not sure why. They should and they should look at the types of accounts that someone has so they can make recommendations that will work. An attorney can draft the best documents in the world, but if they don’t make sure the client follows through on all the other paperwork that is needed, those documents can become pretty ineffective. In this podcast, I’m going to cover a few basic things you need to know about estate planning. However, I am not an attorney. Nothing I say should be considered legal advice. Rules vary by state and you will always want to get advice that is specific to your situation. With that in mind, the four topics I want to cover are titling accounts, setting up beneficiary designations, trusts, and I’ll briefly touch on the topic of estate taxes. First, account titling. You have retirement accounts, and pretty much everything else. When I say retirement accounts, I mean IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401ks, 403bs, SEPS, SIMPLE IRAs and any other type of company sponsored retirement account like a pension or deferred compensation plan. Retirement accounts must be in a single person’s name. We are frequently asked by married couples if they can combine their retirement accounts, or title an IRA in a trust. The answer is no. A retirement account must be owned by one individual. The way you specify where your account goes upon your passing is by the beneficiary designation you put on file. With non-retirement accounts you have more choices. Most people open bank accounts in their name or jointly with a spouse or partner. If an account is titled only in your name, upon your death it will need to go through probate. When you add a person to the title or add a beneficiary to the account, then the account can pass directly and avoid the probate process. One of the first things we do when bringing on a new client is review account titling. Many people are not aware that you can add beneficiaries to a non-retirement account. This is accomplished through something called a P.O.D. or T.O.D. registration. P.O.D. stands for payable on death. T.O.D. stands for transfer on death. And some financial institutions have their own term for this type of account. For example, Schwab calls it a DBA or designated beneficiary account. Let’s look at an example. Assume you add your daughter as a joint tenant on your bank account. Your will (or trust) specifies that your money should be split evenly between your children. At death, what happens? Legally that entire bank account belongs to your daughter regardless of what the will (or trust) says. A financial institution must pass assets along according to how the account is registered or titled. There are three key things to know. First, if the account is registered only in your name, and you have a will, then the will controls how the account is disbursed. However, because there is not a direct beneficiary named or another person on the account title, this account will have to go through probate. Second, if you title an account in the name of a trust, then the terms of the trust control how the account is disbursed. Assets and accounts titled in a trust will avoid the probate process. And third, if you add a joint tenant, or some other formal account registration such as tenants in common, transfer on death, or payable on death, then that account registration takes precedence over the will or trust. Let’s say we have Joe and Mary who have two children. They have a jointly titled account, which means if either Joe or Mary passes the account belongs to the survivor. However, if Joe and Mary both pass, the account will have to go through probate. To avoid this they can add their two children as designated beneficiaries to this account, so if both pass, the account goes seamlessly to the children without all the red tape. This type of titling can be accomplished with real estate also. You can file a transfer on death deed or a beneficiary deed for a minimal filing fee. Now, some people prefer to add their children to an account or to the title of their home while they are alive. Please, don’t do this without understanding the potential consequences. When you add another person to the title, that account is now subject to their creditors. If they get in trouble, your assets could be at risk. It could also cause a tax mess. Particularly when it comes to how capital gains taxes work upon death. On a capital asset (such as a home, a stock, or a mutual fund) you have what is called your cost basis; what you paid for the asset. Upon your death, your heirs get what is called a “step-up” in cost basis, which means their cost basis for tax purposes is the value of the asset at your date of death. Let’s look at an example using your home. Assume you bought your house many years ago for $100,000. You’ve done no major improvements so this $100,000 is your cost basis. Today the home is worth $400,000. Upon death, your heirs inherit the house worth $400,000 and immediately sell it. How much do they have to pay in capital gains taxes? Assuming they sell the home for $400,000, they pay no capital gains taxes on the $300,000 of gain because their cost basis was stepped-up to the date of death value. This step-up in cost basis can be voided by titling your property inefficiently. This happens with the common practice of adding an adult child to the title of the house. For example, let’s say after your spouse passes, you add your son to the title of your home. Technically you have gifted him half the value of your home, and instead of the home passing to him at death, he co-owns it with you now. This means he does not get that entire step-up in cost basis upon your death; only the interest attributed to you gets a step-up. Let’s walk through the numbers. Assume the same facts: you paid $100,000 for the home, and upon your death it is worth $400,000, and your son sells it for that amount. Your half of the asset gets a step-up in cost basis, so your share of the house has a basis of $200,000. Your son’s share, however, would have a basis of $50,000 (half your original basis). He now owes tax on $150,000 of gain. At a potential 20% capital gains tax rate, that is $30,000 in taxes owed. This could have been avoided by having the asset transfer to him on death rather than using joint ownership. This example applies to investment accounts such as stock and mutual funds as well as property. This situation can easily be avoided by titling accounts more effectively. What you can do with a property is either set up a