Month: June 2023

The Retirement Planning Steps

Jason 0 Comments June 28, 2023 Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning Tips for Retiree's

have you ever wondered what does it look like if I were to go and work with a financial planner and how would that whole process work well today we're talking about implementation of the financial planning process in particular the one that we use and our goal is this by the end of the video you're going to have a very clear understanding of what it looks like to work with an advisor like with like us and how you would put all that into practice we hope you enjoy this episode to learn more about how to secure your retirement and all the different elements you need to know please subscribe to our Channel and hit the Bell so you'll be notified when we release episodes every Monday we have helped hundreds of our clients gain Clarity and get on the path to a great retirement now it's your turn let's dive in welcome to secure your retirement podcast we are excited today we are going to continue a conversation that we had last month we have our guests back with us we have Nick heimensen and Taylor Wolverton and we are going to break down the financial planning process part two so Morgan can you kind of bring us up to speed with where what what our episode today is going to be about sure so just to recap our last episode on the retirement planning process which if you didn't catch it it's episode 199 if you want to go back to watch it or you can also read it on the blog page but first of all we we talked about how to prepare for an introduction meeting with our team how you would uh gather the data and the accounts that you'd be submitting in regards to your assets your income information and your expense information to the extent that you're comfortable whatever you're comfortable submitting and that we're able to submit that securely and then in between that first visit and the second visit it's all us we do all the work so we prepare for the second meeting and then there we present you we walk through each step of retirement planning process and at the end of that meeting we can give you that information we can either print it out for you or send it over to you and then on the third visit that would be considered the strategy meeting we take some at the time and we come back for the third meeting which is all about the strategy we talked about the bucket sheet on the last episode and it really breaks everything down into three different buckets cash which is the amount that you that you're going to be holding some people that's going to be on a different Comfort level some people want to have a lot of cash and others don't then there's also the safety bucket which includes a few different products that will include safe and reliable income during retirement and then finally the third bucket is growth money that's in the growth buckets will grow during retirement due just what it says and then the funds in this bucket will be liquid but the goal is to avoid touching this money as much as possible so that will all be discussed during the third visit or the strategy meeting and then at this point of course when you decide to become a client how do we move forward after that Merce yeah so there's there's already been some time spent on both sides of the table the team has done some work to present uh the the client has taken some time out of their schedule to get to know us so now they know everything about us how we operate how do we take care of our clients a uh some form of a recommendation has been met made and now the client says guys I love everything I want to work with you and so Nick um there's obviously there's a bunch of different steps that we Implement especially in the first year to get everything transitioned and transferred over in a comfortable manner so what it what is Step number one after a client says yes I want to work with you guys yeah so step number one for us is is really getting together and figuring out what information do we have and what information white might we need to get all the paperwork together and all the data um to be able to fill in everything that we need to be able to open an account um the first step is putting together beneficiary information dates of birth um addresses phone numbers contact information making sure we have all of that information that pertains to the specific person and um getting that all that information together and creating an account so that process looks like basically us filling in this documentation with your personal information Charles Schwab requires all of the information that we ask for to be able to open that account in in the client's name um so from there once a lot of that paperwork is signed well typically that's when our team will take that paperwork and submit it to Charles Schwab um that process for them to open the account takes typically uh one to three business days depending on um depending on the type of account and how many accounts we're opening up and that's when transfers will take place that's when I will reach out on um on accounts being opened and making sure that everyone is easily able to access the account and figuring out making sure that they have the actual access on the website on the Charles Schwab app and making sure it's all set in stone so that you're comfortable and able to access the new account and what if your account is already with Charles Schwab what if you're already there if you're already with Charles Schwab that makes it um a whole lot easier so in the case that there um there's an already account at Charles Schwab it's a lot less documentation so they already have all that personal information so it's really one form to add peace of mind as being able to access the account um I'm sorry I just wanted to mention here real quick just so everybody who's listening because obviously there's there's people that might have Accounts at multiple locations just so they understand the structure of of this idea of Charles Schwab so Charles Schwab just everyone knows for us and for many people uh many advisors we don't work for Charles Schwab we're not connected to Charles Schwab when it comes to any kind of financial relationship they don't pay us we're not dictated by them they are simply a custodian and a custodian could be Fidelity it could be TD Ameritrade not very much longer because Charles Schwab bought them it could be Charles Schwab it could be Vanguard any place that you have your accounts our relationship though for us to have our custodian is with Charles Schwab so that's why Nick is saying we're going to get the accounts open there uh one other little caveat though that if you could just speak on uh Nick as far as what if somebody says hey I've got all these things do you have to sell everything that I've got over at Vanguard or sell everything I have over at Fidelity to get it to Charles Schwab mm-hmm so if someone asks that question the answer is no we don't have to sell anything um what happens is um that during the transfer process it's called in kind so all of the Securities all of the holding stocks bonds mutual funds or everything that is held at the other firm whether that be a TD Ameritrade a Fidelity a Vanguard that is all going to transfer in kind so exactly what it's currently in over to Charles Schwab and then Charles Schwab will hold those exact funds um over in the new account so nothing there changes until we come up with a strategy around the Investments and so that occurs afterwards yeah and I think that's important uh particularly on uh non-ira accounts where where a sale can result in a taxable impact so it makes it nice and easy for us as the advisor to bring the asset over without any taxable type of impact and then have a good conversation to evaluate a strategy around a potential liquidation strategy or a hold strategy or something like that so um because sometimes people worry about well do I have to sell everything and that's not the case uh Nick another common question that we do get is someone says hey I'm over at Vanguard and I want to work with you guys but I have you know I have a monthly distribution that's set up for a thousand dollars a month every single month or are you guys going to be able to replicate that for me yeah so in that case really it's just one additional form we can do the same exact thing over at Charles Schwab um and what it is is linking the bank account to the new Charles Schwab account um and so one additional form there will be able to have the your bank account linked to your Schwab account and then we'll also be able to set up recurring withdrawals or recurring distributions to your bank account um from your new Schwab account so exactly like it was at the other firm or at the other custodian it can be replicated right at Charles Schwab yeah so we've talked in in this is right here now so far Nick you've kind of explained this idea of somebody moving a brokerage account to a brokerage account meaning same account to same account or moving an IRA or a Roth IRA or anything like that a trust account we're moving all of those things and we talked about being able just to move that money electronically but the steps are just a little bit different for something that is what is called a a company plan make like a 401k 403 b 457 any of those kind of plans how how is that process just a little bit different than moving Ira to Ira yeah so in that scenario um we will have one less form so it won't be a transfer in this case if it's from a 401k what's going on is really we're calling over likely together to the 401K company and they are required they can't send anything electronically so they're required to um cut a check um for the benefit of um Charles Schwab or for two Charles Schwab for the benefit of you as the person who's the account owner um and so that check after the phone call is made is usually cut and sent either to your address um the person's address who's the account owner or we can send it straight to straw Schwab for them to deposit it right into your account and so the process is a little different there and it depends on typically how fast that that 401k company cuts the check um but in that case it's not electronic it's more of a physical check that's going either to your address or as the account owner or straight to Charles Schwab and I think something that's uh important to point out here is that anytime someone hears the word I'm getting a check uh and a lot of times it's 401K money that we're talking about 403b money that's talking we're talking about which is all pre-tax dollars and if it's done right which we always do it right if we're working together it's done as a trustee to trustee transfer transfer which is similar to a rollover all that to say it's that it's not a taxable event so even though there is a physical check that is mailed from your 401k plan if it's done properly it's not a taxable event so I think that's important to point out too so we've covered a lot there as far as the getting the accounts kind of set up and then we understand there's going to be more steps there as well but that process like you gave us a nice timeline there but there's another aspect of things than just the accounts there's kind of the things that we're going to help folks with on tax planning uh so so I'm gonna ask Taylor Taylor could you kind of walk us through what we're going to try to accomplish at least in the first few months uh when and what would be the steps for us to be able to do that analysis when it comes to taxes yeah so we'll want to start by collecting your most recent tax return that you have filed and we'll take a copy of that tax return and look over it for opportunities to do things like potentially Roth conversions if that's beneficial for your situation we'll do an analysis on that and we can have a conversation about the possibility of doing Roth conversions with you if it makes sense and then there's other tax planning strategies that we could use like if you qualify for qualified charitable distributions we can talk about that and help you set those types of transfers up and then also we could talk about in the way of charitable donations we could also set up a donor advice fund if that's something that you're interested in and something that would benefit your situation just looking for any opportunity to lower your taxable income and consequently lower the amount of taxes that you're going to pay in future years as part of your holistic financial plan in retirement yeah I think what's really nice about this this tax um scenario that we run through is that it gives us the ability to start playing around with your your your overall tax situation and and Taylor can go and manipulate the numbers and say Hey what if we did do a Roth conversion of 20 000 this year what's it really going to cost us or even as simple as sometimes and I think it when when we're talking about people that are withdrawing on their their IRAs and having cash flow coming in the door a lot of times we are using withholdings federal and state withholdings uh to start paying the taxes as we take those withdrawals and sometimes we're way off on our guess as to well how much should I withhold I think a lot of times when I'm talking to someone on the phone and setting this up they say well I have no idea just withhold something well with what what Taylor can do in this software is that we can actually kind of look at where are you falling in your tax bracket and then as some and and it gives us a much better idea rather than just taking a you know a guess in the dark as far as how much should I withhold we have numbers behind that again a simple conversation but it's a really nice um uh part of one of the tools that we have in place here yeah and just could you speak a little bit too about the idea because we talked about moving things in kind whether or not we would sell something that maybe had a gain or do a Roth conversion um of of how you look at this idea of especially for somebody who might be affected with any kind of Irma problems and explain what that means I'll let you handle the Irma part yeah so for our clients who are paying medicare premiums currently over the age of 65 or about to be eligible for Medicare that's something that we want to look at because once you're adjusting gross income goes over a certain level then there's possibilities where your medicare premiums can start increasing and so that's something that we're definitely looking for as well you can kind of look at it as an extra tax that you have to pay or extra medicare premiums so when we're looking at using these strategies especially Roth conversions where we're adding in taxable income in a certain year we want to make sure we're not pushing your income into a space where your medicare premiums are going to go up and it's going to negate the benefits of the Roth conversion so we're definitely looking at it's Irma irmaa which stands for income related monthly adjustment amount and that's related to medicare premiums so and I was really hoping I was like I said man if Morgan asked us what Irma stands for I said I'm going to be so nervous I was going to make up something really good but I'm glad you had the right answer there hey real quick uh oh go ahead go ahead sorry I was gonna say another thing I was going to add too just in the way of tax planning is that for our clients who work with us for our tax preparation services then we'll make sure you're onboarded with one of our CPAs that we work with and we can also help you gather the tax forms that you have for the accounts that we manage for you so making sure you're getting all of your 1099s that you need and not leaving out any of those documents so that you can get those over to your CPA and make sure that your return is filed on time so lots of moving parts that I'm just sitting here listening to it and um and it just makes me go wow this is a lot now I'm on this side and I can imagine a client who's on the other side and they're thinking man all this stuff is happening it's their life savings so Nick what is it that you try to do so that the client is not having to sit and worry has this been done yet is this moving where's this at in the whole process like what do you do to make sure that the client is completely understanding everything yeah so um what I try to do is is communicate as much as I can so whenever I have an update whether that's um an account has opened um I'm usually I'm typically sending out an email letting you know that um or giving you a call um so I'm making sure that you have access to that account and then after that I'm also what Charles Schwab does is they give us an estimated completion date for the transfer um and this is when it's going from another custodian to Charles Schwab um so in that case I will let you know when that is uh that transfer is expected to be completed and then when it's actually has been completed sometimes it's a day or two off and so I will let you know that either by phone or email and then answer any questions along the way whether that's personal information that you'd like to get added to the account getting logged in Where to view your accounts um where to see when the funds come in where to look for it um and then from the 401K process it looks a little different because we don't have an estimated completion date for that um but we do see if it the check has been sent straight to Charles Schwab we do see when they deposit it into the account and then I will be basically letting you know exactly when that happens um or if the check is going straight to your address we're typically communicating just to make sure that that gets put straight into your account so during the whole entire process from account opening from really signing the documentation to account opening to getting the funds moved we're communicating pretty frequently just to make sure that everything's in place set up and really helping you go through the process and then answering any questions for you hey merge could you I thank you so much Nick for explaining that and Taylor but so now here we are we've kind of gotten this this process started where the client is pretty much you know we've gotten the counts open we've gotten some tax information that we're looking at and analyzing and then our our next step once we've kind of are moving along this because we're trying to do piece by piece as we have what we have called because it typically works out that we can do it in this time frame we call it a 45-day meeting can you kind of just like maybe take a little bit Mercer and talk a little bit about that 45-day meeting and what that's designed for yeah so the 45-day meeting is ideally by then all the assets have transferred uh and we've got everything back in in-house in the sense of we've we have everything done from the moving part perspective and now we're getting back together for a couple different reasons one uh to answer any questions so just double take uh take a step and take some time to check in and say hey have you been able to log into Schwab are you able to see everything there have you gotten any mail from Schwab that you have questions on and just take some time to answer questions because it's for a lot of our clients it's a new custodian they use Fidelity for years they use Vanguard for years they were very comfortable with that setup and now they're looking at a different one while they are all very similar they all have their tiny little nuances so it's getting used to something different so we take time to do that the other part of what we're going to do is uh finalize if if there has is anything left to talk about on the investment strategy or deliver the rest of the investment strategy to them so Morgan mentioned the uh what we talked about in the last podcast around this topic was a bucket sheet it's not a technical technical term but we call it a little a bucket sheet that breaks down how we have allocated the accounts to cash safety and growth and so we're finalizing that and giving that to the client so they have a nice one-page document that says hey here's how things are laid out and and going over any questions around that another important piece that we do in this visit is at this point we know a lot about you and we know a lot about things that may or may not need to be updated one that is very common in this visit is we're starting the process for updating that estate Plan a state plan typically means we're either going down the path of setting up a brand new will which which comes with power of attorney documents HIPAA documents and and other important pieces there or we could be going down the route of setting up a trust for our clients all just depends on the conversations that we're having there and that that process we set it up uh because of our relationship with the partner firm we actually have the ability to take care of the cost of that for our clients and um and so that I would say is the next big step in a in a year-long process of getting things fully aligned as far as goals go as far as desires go that that setting up the estate plan is the next big step that we talk about in that 45-day meeting yeah so I think that uh you know at this point uh we've spent uh you know 20 minutes or so just kind of walking through all these different events that occur um but what we want to really have come across here is that uh the client the person that's that's doing this they don't they're not having to worry are these things being taken care of we have a great team here that's just really making sure all of these different things all these different moving parts are taken care of now I will tell you kind of as we close out just so you kind of know we understand this is a lot so the first year we're going to meet quite a bit more but then even ongoing we meet with our clients uh in the first part of the year uh we are going to meet uh all the to make sure that the financial plan is working properly that there if there's any tweaks that need to be done second part of the year is all about taxes and making sure that we're making that we are on the tax planning part of things so we want you to know that this process while it sounds a little bit daunting maybe uh it's not that bad it actually works very very smooth but you also get a sense of all the work that's going on behind the scenes so we hope this has been helpful just to kind of help you see how this whole process works um Morgan you did a great job of the opening and I was hoping you would have a lot of questions you guys are so good at explaining things thank you again Taylor and Nick for coming on and then and walking through all the things you do for us again we hope this has been helpful we know we went through a lot there's a Blog that's written on this that kind of lays all of these steps out so you can just go to our website which is pomwealth.net go to the blog page you'll see it all there uh super easy to be able to navigate thank you very much have a great day we'll talk to you again next Monday we hope this video has given you some confidence and clarity as you plan for a worry-free life in retirement but what else do you need we have created a complimentary video course called three keys to secure your retirement this video walks you through step by step what you need to do to get ready for retirement you can also check out our podcast called secure your retirement you can subscribe below for more retirement tips check out these videos also if you find them valuable please subscribe to our YouTube channel and give us a like

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