We all want some level of safety and security, firefighters, construction workers, EMT. They’re all there when you need them to help manage life’s chaos in retirement. You want that same level of safety but who was there for you to make sure your money will last? Ryan? Is it just there in case of emergency he’s there so you don’t have an emergency with your money? A safer retirement doesn’t mean a boring retirement, but it prepared what for the things that inspire you. This is safer retirement radio with Brian J. Decker.
Welcome to safer retirement radio with Brian J. Decker of Decker retirement planning. I’m Mark Kelly, glad you’re with us today. You can always find out more about Brian and the team by going to the website Decker retirement planning.com. Also joining us Neil fanning Him and Brian will be chatting about a lot of things retirement related today on the program. But again, you can go to the website Decker retirement planning.com. There are 12 different things you can download no cost to you. No obligation is there for your information, including Brian’s book on retirement, the Decker approach, the three principles of retirement book, the checklist challenge sample income plan, that’s just for the things there. So it’s Decker retirement planning.com. And then under the heading of safer retirement education is where you get to all those you can get them all, or just get one, maybe just Brian’s book on retirement, the Decker approach a lot of opportunities for you to find out, maybe get some answers to the questions you have about retirement. And then maybe you want to reach out, you want to say hey, I got this off the website. I need to know a little bit more. I’m a little confused. 833-707-3030 is the number no cost to chat with the team a 33707 3030. Hey, Brian, Neil. Alright, we’re going to do a little stress testing today on our portfolios, because what they say is our working years, the accumulation phase, versus the retirement years, which now becomes the distribution phase, we’ve saved all that money. Now we’ve got to pay ourselves basically to offset those paychecks are no longer coming in. And what worked when we were saving for retirement our working years. doesn’t exactly work when we’re retired. Right? That’s exactly
right, Mark. So Neil and I we meet with people a lot of the time they intuitively know that the rules have changed. But we we pointed out we’re a specialist in retirement. I want to point out that the people who focus on accumulation, the people that are at brokerages, banks, they had they use the asset allocation pie chart their buy and hold, they’re diversified with different parts of the equity spectrum, Bond spectrum and different alternatives. And those rules apply to grow your assets during your accumulation years. Because if the markets are down 3040 50%, it doesn’t matter because you’re getting your income from your work. And every two weeks, you put money into your 401 K that’s been hammered. So in the three to five years that the market takes to recover, you actually benefit from that recovery. But Neal, the rules change when you no longer are getting your income from work, you’re drawing income from a portfolio that’s down 3040 50%. When you draw income from a fluctuating account, you compromise gains when markets go up, you accentuate losses when markets go down. And if you take income from a portfolio that’s down 330 40 50%, and it takes three to five years to come back that is terminal. And we’ve seen that before. In fact, last year, there were some clients that were very aggressive, a lot of NASDAQ exposure. Neil, they were very concerned you saw that right?
Yeah. And it’s, it’s a different it’s kind of a paradigm shift to go from that accumulation to distribution. So a lot of the times we focus on, you know, how do we approach this? How do you want to kind of change the portfolio, because you really need to make that mindset shift into I’m going to be drawing these assets down. Now. It’s, it’s no longer put the paycheck aside, continue to accumulate. Now you really shift mindsets. And sometimes that’s difficult. But last year is a prime example of really why you want to make that shift.
One of the things that we shift in the rules of distribution is to draw income from laddered principle guaranteed accounts. So when the markets go down, like they did last year, NASDAQ down 33%, s&p down 19%, our diversified ladder principle guaranteed accounts, some were fixed and some were variable. We actually made money for clients. It didn’t make a lot, but we actually made money in retirement. That’s a key focus. So the people that are at banks and brokers as advisors, they’re good people. They’re hardworking people. They’re ethical people. They’re nice people, but they don’t do what we do. We are specialists in retirement. I use this silly example every time and that is to when I needed a knee replacement last year. I didn’t go to it. dentist, dentists are good people. But they didn’t do what I needed done, I went to an orthopedic surgeon. So this is kind of how we operate. We are specialists in retirement. So Neil today with that in mind that the rules have changed. And we are specialists in what we do and working with retirees, and we are fiduciaries to our clients. That’s a whole nother show. Let’s focus today, Neil, on the stress test that we do. So this is one of our meetings where we’ve gone through an initial plan or two different versions. And we want to find out today, Neil, if there’s problems in the plan, we don’t want to find out 1015 years from now we want to stress test it today. So that’s what our focus will be on today. During the show. So Neil, the top of the list is how much income people want in retirement, you would think that that’s intuitive that people just know that number. That’s not always true, is it?
No, it’s It’s actually kind of difficult to anticipate, because you’re going from, you know, working, especially if you go from, you know, 100 to zero, right, like full time, too, all of a sudden, you’re retired. And you can make assumptions about how much you want to spend. But it’s very difficult to really kind of see that tangibly, what you’re going to end up actually spending in the stress test is really important, because there’s a lot of questions in there that you wouldn’t necessarily think about, you know, when you’re doing some retirement planning, but to your point, we want to get all of that detail in place so that we can best build the plan to suit what you’re trying to accomplish.
There’s a few important reasons that makes it important to know what your income number is, what you’re spending during retirement during your accumulation years, while you’re working. A lot of people and Neil, we know that this is a myth, a lot of people think that their spending or their income or their expenses are going to go down during retirement, is that true?
There’s some cases we could point to where that does happen. But yeah, for for the most part, you’re going to stay in line with what you’re already spending. And in some cases, especially if you, you know, really want to enjoy the retirement that you’ve just started, you’re going to be spending more, we often see that as the case.
And we use typically a 20% number, whatever you’re spending now plus 20%, for travel, because when you’re at work for 40 hours a week, you’re, you’re engaged. But when you’re not working anymore, you’re gonna want to do things and doing things cost money. So we need to know if you can retire, and what level you can retire at. So we run the numbers, we’re a math based firm, instead of a pie chart. By the way, Neil, nothing. I know, in 38 years of doing this causes more stress than to have someone look at a pie chart. And they’re asked how much money they can draw from a pie chart for the rest of their lives. No one can do that. So in looking at a pie chart, that’s probably one of the big reasons why the number one fear of people in retirement is running out of money before you die. Our clients don’t have that because they can see how much income they can draw from Social Security from pension from their portfolio from any rental real estate, if they’ve got that we total it up as gross income minus taxes. That gives them annual and monthly income with a cola cost of living adjustment to age 100. Our clients can see how much money they can draw on it. So it takes a lot of the stress off by seeing how much money that they can retire into. And by the way, many times, Neil, we do and we’ll talk about it today we do Roth conversions. And the CPA says, oh, no, let’s wait until you retire because your incomes gonna go down. Like we just talked about data. The CPA doesn’t know that for most of our clients, their income actually goes up when they retire. But so the first off is how much income do you want it retirement, and we focus on making sure that their portfolio is producing that or above that. Now let’s talk about inflation protection. So inflation is a big deal now and there’s five layers of protection that we offer clients as part of their inflation protection. So the five layers of protection for inflation for our clients. Number one, we have cola cost of living adjustments built into the income part of their plan by itself it doesn’t solve inflation exposure, the inflation risk, but that’s one part of five number two, is we look at their any inheritances that they might Have coming from mom and dad. We don’t count on it. But with something that’s going to happen, it’s uncomfortable to talk about, but we try to be conservative on dollars and on timing. But that is coming in. So we account for that. Number three, we look at a very important hedge for inflation, which is hard assets like real estate, real estate, meaning your residence or any of your rental real estate properties. Those Act is a very important hedge to inflation, do we show any of our clients tapping into their real estate as part of their income? No, we show that as separate, we view the house as sacred. And for most, most clients, they don’t even look at any tapping into their property. But if they had to, if they had to that asset is there, and they could tap into it via a HELOC or something like that. But that’s number three. Number four, is the risk bucket, we’re very conservative showing it growing at 6%, when the managers that were that we’re using are averaging over twice that. So we’re being very conservative on the risk bucket that’s growing for more than 20 years, there’s going to be an extra buffer there that grows and is part of their protection. And lastly, number five, that is downsizing. So when they get in their late 70s, early 80s, their knees hurt their hips, hurt their back, hurt the gardens, no fun anymore, the stairs are no fun, yard maintenance is too much. And their friends call and say, Neil, come on down, we’ve got all your friends down here, come on down to the community, the retirement community, we’ve got all the medical facilities here. So you sell your home for X buy a condo for y and y is less than x. And there’s an injection of capital into your plan that we are not showing. So our clients do have risk exposure to inflation. But when all five layers of protection are looked at and reviewed, our clients take a big sigh of relief because they see that their inflation risk is very small. But that’s a big deal right now, with the recent bump up in the CPI and inflation. Anything you’d add to that Neil, on the inflation topic is a checklist for how our clients are protected.
Yeah, I mean, to your point, there’s only so much that we can kind of look at and plan for. So it’s really important to get a kind of a full accounting of where everything is that because things will change your your plans will change over time, the when you start retirement, you kind of go in with one mindset and things can shift. So it’s definitely good to know and be aware of all of those kinds of different intricacies so that we can best accommodate, even if it doesn’t seem like it’s important right now.
So Brian O’Neill talking about the stress test, what all goes into it, what can we learn from it? Are we taking too much risk? Not enough? Were enough risks. We have things lined up in the right places for our situation. everybody’s situation is unique. And that’s how Brian Neil and the team at Decker retirement look at it. Can they help you? Can they put you in a better position? Maybe they don’t know though, until you reach out. It’s a 33707 3030 is a number no cost for this chat. There’s no pressure, there’s no obligation. They’re here to help if they can a 33707 3030 Great time to find out where you are on that road to retirement might be right now. 833-707-3030 more with Brian O’Neill of Decker retirement planning right here on safer retirement radio right after this.
If you only think about taxes once a year, you’re doing it wrong. To get the most out of your retirement nest egg. You shouldn’t just file your taxes. You need to plan for them. Call Brian now to see what tax opportunities you could take advantage of a 33707 3030 That’s a 33707 3030 Decker retirement planning has a question for you. Is your retirement inflation proofed? Here’s what we mean in retirement chances are you’re on a fixed income with variable expenses. So how do you not run out of money when the cost of just about everything continues to go up? You inflation proof it Brian Decker and the team at Decker retirement planning can show you strategies to help combat inflation. So it does it outpace your retirement income. Call Brian Decker today at 833-707-3030. To learn more inflation could take a huge chunk out of your retirement savings, but it doesn’t have to with some simple planning inflation can go from being a major disruption to a minor annoyance. Call Brian and the team at Decker retirement planning now to start inflation proofing your retirement today at 833-707-3033. The 3707 3030 investing involves risk security and insurance services offered by Decker retirement planning and a registered investment advisor with the SEC. You’re listening to safer retirement radio. If you like what you hear on today’s show, or have questions dropped by Decker retirement planning.com or call 833-707-3030 to talk to Brian.
Welcome back to safer retirement radio with Brian J. Decker and Neil finning of Decker retirement planning. You can always go to the website to learn more Decker retirement planning.com Find out about the team find out about the company themselves. They got offices all over the place, got them in California, got them in Washington got them in Utah as well of Decker retirement planning.com. If you go into the heading of safer retirement education, there’s 12 different things you can download, including Brian’s book on retirement the Decker approach. I’m Mark Elliott, glad you’re with us. Any questions? 833-707-3030 833-707-3030. Brian, you just went through the five key areas of inflation protection that you help your clients with a Decker retirement. What about the stock market,
the stock market’s a biggie the two biggest fears of people over 60 in retirement are number one running out of money before they die, which we just addressed last segment. The second one is addressed right here, these big market crashes that roll through typically every seven or eight years. And we’ve entered a new phase in the markets right now there’s been this is kind of interesting market history. Do you know, Mark and Neil, there’s been four times that the s&p 500 has traded above a valuation level of 30 times trailing earnings. And some of these dates are what very well known 1929 was the first time it took 17 years to get your money back. The second time was 1964, it took 18 years to get your money back. The third time was November of 1999, it took 14 years to get your money back. And the last time was November of 2021. If history repeats, we’re looking at 10 to 15 years of a flat market cycle. And that is devastating to retirees. If they’re drawing income from an account that doesn’t make money for 10 to 15 years that is a killer. Neil, our clients with their diversified portfolio of ladder principle, guaranteed accounts and active management. Well, actually, here’s what that means. That means that a passive investment strategy of buying and holding mutual funds ETFs, or stocks will not make money over 10 to 15 years, that’s a killer. We have strategies that can make money in Upper down markets on the risk side, and on the principal guaranteed side. And Neil we’ve got fixed rate investments that make money no matter what the markets, or the economies are doing. When you put all that together, our clients are going to be in pretty good shape. If the worst case scenario unfolds, we hope for the best but plan for the worst, right?
Yeah, it’s really important to have contingencies in there. And that’s primarily what we focus on, right? If if we can keep income consistent. And what I really like about the stress test is that all of this is ultimately connected. We just, we go through an item at a time to make sure that we cover it in detail and then draw back lines to say, Do you see how this is linked. So if we know what your income is, we can plan for your income, we want to make sure that we keep you know inflation as as an important facet of that, so that we factor that in, make sure that your incomes increasing with inflation, and then a stock market crash could just derail the whole thing. So that becomes a very important item to focus on, especially as we build this so that we can keep getting that income consistent and continue to raise that overtime.
Yeah, that’s that’s the market exposure. That remember, I remember in 2008 we had a flat market cycle where people were drawing income and Neil remember in 2000, oh one and o two, the s&p is down 50%. NASDAQ was down 70%. It was brutal. And then you had that 50% drop again from November of oh seven to march of oh nine. And all of a sudden, millions of gray haired people showed up at banks fast food retail because they had to they had to sell their home they had to move in with their kids because they had no downside protection. Want to emphasize to listeners that if you use the same strategies in accumulation years in your 20s 30s 40s and 50s that will hurt you in retirement? We use the example in fact, Neil, you use the example of climbing Everest, there is one strategy to climb and another strategy to descend right.
The most dangerous part is actually the descent That’s, that’s when most climbers end up not making it, because there is a different strategy to get to get to the top, you can continue to push through all the way up until you get to the top, and that’s when your oxygen is running low. And so you have to make sure that you’ve planned accordingly to make the descent and avoided any storm that might get in your way.
Alright, let’s switch to another one, how much income is lost at the death of a spouse? This is important because a lot of people in retirement are worried about the level of insurance that they have. And so Neil, this is a test a stress test item where we virtually just figuratively kill off one spouse at a time and see how how it happens. So or how they’re protected. So today, the worst time for John and Jane to lose each other is today. So we just roleplay what would happen if, and we see how well each other are protected. Many times, we find that they’re both very well protected, don’t need any more life insurance. But that’s a good test to see how well they’ll fare surprisingly, and by the way, for especially for the spouse, that’s not the big wage earner, they want to they feel vulnerable. And this is very valuable information when we kill off one at a time to see how they’re they’re doing now, in fact, you can take it to the bank that if they’re married, and have their Social Security coming in when one spouse dies, their tax brackets going to go up right Neal and their Social Security, the one of the social security is going to disappear. So that’s a very real change that needs to be taken into consideration. And then we look at their income that’s coming from their portfolio that they still have living in a house that they still have. And the ace that they have up their sleeve is if they want to downsize in their house that creates more income to replace the last income from the last Social Security. Then we see if there’s any insurance, we look at that. But most of the time, Neal in my 38 years you chime in. But I just don’t see a lot of people saying I need more insurance at this point. Most of the time, they’re covered except for situations where there’s a large pension that has no survivability. So talk to us about that situation.
Yeah, so if one spouse is receiving, you know, a pension, but has no survivorship on it, then at the death of that particular spouse, the benefit wouldn’t continue. So if we’ve factored in additional income resources to fill that void, then that’s no problem. But you might consider insurance in the case of that being a primary focus or primary income source, you’d want the insurance to fill that role back up. So that is a time that we might incorporate maybe a term policy, a whole life policy, universal life policies, something to maintain that income going forward, if that spouse were to pass. But to Brian’s point, it’s very important to look at the tax implications as well. And that’s something we’ll actually talk about as we keep going through the stress test.
On this next point, this is kind of interesting when we have people that have I don’t know, four or $5 million plus, and they say, and they have income coming from their Social Security, they might even have rentals, and they could potentially take negative tax 18 to 20,000 a month. They say oh, no, no, no, I could never take that. I could never spend that. I’ve taken a lifetime to accumulate, but they don’t give themselves permission to spend what they’ve accumulated. It’s just a mindset. And even though we try to talk them through it, they insist that they could never possibly spend 18 to 20,000 a month so that we bring them down to what they say they want, which is 10 to 12,000 a month, and then we bring this point up, okay. Well, John, and Jane, you if you want to have risk, you can have risk, but that’s going to grow your portfolio and create even more money you’ll never spend in your lifetime, you have the option to have no risk exposure at all. If you want they have that option. So is it necessary to take risks to accomplish your goals? For most people? The answer is yes. It’s part of their inflation protection also, as we’ve talked about, but there’s a small percentage of people out there that just insist on not spending what they’ve accumulated. And for those people, if they want they don’t need to have any stock market exposure for the rest of their lives. Now, Neal, you’ve been salivated for, for tax strategies. This is your, your expertise. Let’s get into this Let’s first talk about placement. Placement is strategically and in a tax efficient way, putting non qualified funds in the front of the plan qualified funds in the back of the plan to create a window so that you can do your favorite, which is Roth conversions. Let’s talk about that. So talk listeners through placement,
there’s, you know, for qualified versus non qualified focusing on what you want to accomplish in knowing what your income are, are really where you want to start, if in the future, your income amount looks like it’s going to be lower than the required minimum distribution, then it really starts to make sense to look at Roth conversions. And right now we’re in a really interesting point in time with the tax cut and Jobs Act, ending at the end of 2025. So for tax year, 2026, taxes will go up about 3%. Across the board, there’s an opportunity to place those non qualified funds early on in the plan, like Brian was saying, so your taxes are reduced. So you can focus on reducing those or converting those qualified funds or pre tax accounts into Roth over time, and take advantage of these relatively low tax rates. There’s a lot more subtlety to it, but basic amount to kind of consider is what will your required minimum distribution be? And what will your income expectations be? And that really makes it kind of simple to work from there.
You know, one of the keys when it comes to the team at Decker retirement, Brian, Neil, all the team at Decker retirement planning is will like the idea of tax free, but should we do it? And how do we do it? What’s the right way? Because don’t forget, so security can be taxed? Medicare premiums can go up if you do everything at the wrong time. So there’s a lot of moving parts here. And that’s where really Brian and the team at Decker retirement and Neal are here to help guide you. Maybe it makes sense for you to do this amount, but not that much. Or maybe it doesn’t make sense for you at all. everybody’s situation is unique. And that’s how the team at Decker retirement certainly looks at it. But tax free. I think we all like the idea. The question is, how do we do it if it makes sense? And if we shouldn’t do it, if it doesn’t make sense, everybody’s situation is unique 833-707-3030 833-707-3030. If you’d like to learn more about this, we’re gonna talk more about this when we come back on safer retirement radio with Brian O’Neill. But again, that number is 833-707-3030. And I’ll let Brian O’Neill touch a little bit more on the Roth conversions. Do they make sense? Do they not stay with us? We’re back with more after this.
As the weather warms, the open roads begin to beckon if you’ve been getting the itch to travel call boy 833-707-2020 to make sure you have enough saved to keep the winds of adventure blowing in retirement.
You with us today for safer retirement radio with Brian J. Decker and Neil finning of Decker retirement planning. Again, you can always go to the website to learn more Decker retirement planning.com a lot of information on that website. There’s a lot of things that you can just download yourself about retirement, just under the heading of safer retirement education. Decker retirement planning.com. Any questions? A 33707 3030 833-707-3030. Mr. Kelly, glad you’re with us. All right, Ryan, you and Neil, we’re getting into the Roth world, the tax free world. And it makes sense for a lot. It doesn’t make sense for some, I suppose. How do you figure all this out?
Well, we look at their tax bracket. Neil, I’m going to talk to over to you but I want to just tee it up what you said in the previous segment, using qualified and non qualified fun non qualified funds are funds that you can pull from, from as income when you go to the bank and pull money from non retirement accounts. There’s no tax on it, you can pull $1,000 out there’s no tax, but when you pull from qualified retirement accounts, and you pull $1,000 out that’s coming out as taxable income. So when we put the non qualified money in the front of your plan, that gives us five to 10 years of having your income dropped way down because the income coming back to you is mostly returned to principal. And that gives us five to 10 years of doing Roth conversions on the back of your plan. So that that money. Roth money is three things. It grows tax free, it distributes income back to you tax free, and it passes to your next generation, tax free. And Neil, I’m going to toss it over to you but I want to just give listeners, my favorite numbers. And that’s the spreadsheet that we ran for are two people side by side, there was a 60 year old that had his Ira growing at 6%. A year, million dollar Ira growing at 6%, a year at age 72. dutifully, they paid their required minimum distribution, the taxes that the IRS wants, starting at age 72, we killed him off at age 90. And in his lifetime, he paid $676,732 in taxes. But wait, there’s more. Because when you according to the secure act, send over an IRA to your beneficiaries, they get to pay the rest of the RMDs. And those taxes added up to 718 496, a total of almost $1.4 million dollars 1,000,000,003 95228, this guy after 30 years of 6% growth only was able to net send over to his heirs 1.2 to 3 million to his kids. If you listen to those numbers, and you understand those numbers, you will see that the IRA account is the most tax efficient account on the planet. The IRS loves it, Congress loves it, they tax, they fatten the calf and they they slaughter it and you’re not the beneficiary of a tax efficient account. So now side by side, let’s do something different. Let’s do the Roth conversion. So here in this case, 60 year old has the same million dollar Ira growing at 6%. But we are converting to an in 25,000 to 25 in the first three years, and then 50,000 a year. So that aged 72 There’s no Ira left, so we are proactively paying taxes now. So that the account can grow tax free. We killed them off at age 90. What are the taxes instead of 1.4 million in taxes, there’s 319,470 4000 owed in taxes are paid in taxes, and instead of 1.2 million net transferring to heirs. There’s 4.1 million that transfers to heirs in the Roth conversion strategy. This is absolutely huge for many reasons. Niall, you jump in?
Yeah, and I like to say for kind of the first example, I wouldn’t scoff at receiving, you know, 1.2 million, that I might have to have paid taxes on to like fully receive but 4 million tax free, especially for you know, if your focus is to leave money for your kids, probably when they get that they’ll be in the highest income bracket anyways. So it’d be perfect for them to have that tax free flexibility. But what I also want to focus on and what I really like about the Roth conversion strategy is that’s flexible spending for you, you as the client can use that money to purchase whatever you want without the tax ramifications. And you know, Brian, I, I know that you love this one. But there’s 32 trillion reasons currently, why taxes will probably go up over the next couple of years. We have to recover some of that deficit we cut spending seems unlikely tax hikes will probably be the solution will already see that happen in 2026. So now’s a really good time, especially to take a look at how can I structure my portfolio? And how can I reduce my tax liability over time.
So the US debt clock and you y’all go there US debt clock.org over 32 trillion in debt as a nation, their project by 2027 will be 43 trillion in debts, our taxes aren’t going backwards. And Brian with the secure act 2.0, the past this year, the RMD age went from 72 to 73. And I’m 63 my RMD age will actually be 75. Because in 2033, it goes to 75. So in theory, we have a little bit more time maybe to make this even more attractive.
Yep. And and it’s we have that countdown, Neil to and mark to January one of 2026. The expectation is that tax brackets are going to jump three to 5% for everybody. But let’s get as much done as we can between now and in the next three years. 2023 2024 2025 are valuable years to do the Roth conversion, Neil. Let’s take listeners through how to do it. Because we’re a math based firm. We’re fiduciaries to our clients, we look at their gross income, we take the standard deduction or atomization number, subtract it, we get an AGI adjusted gross income. And let’s say that that lands them in the 22% bracket. Well the difference between 22 and 24 isn’t that big, but the difference between 24 and 32 is big We try to keep clients out of the 32% bracket doing Roth conversions. So we know per year, how much money we can convert from Ira to Roth, and still keep someone in the same tax bracket or keep them away from 32%. We run the numbers, we see how much can be done. And then there’s a big gasp right Anil because they say cheese, I don’t want to pay the taxes on this conversion. And you say, Wait, we’ll just have the account that generates that tax pay the tax. So through withholding, we have the accounts that generated that tax, pay the tax, and then we do the IRA to Roth conversion, so that all of that growth in the future is tax free, the income coming from that account is tax free, and it passes to beneficiaries tax free. We don’t do Roth conversions in the principal guaranteed side, that’s a waste, you’re taking the money too soon, the growth rates are too low. And, Neil, what else would you add to the Roth conversion discussion before we move on?
Well, what’s really great is when we build out the plan, so that we can make assumptions about the future, because Roth conversions at the end of the day, over time, you have to make a lot of assumptions about it. So there’s a lot of things that can be at play down the road, it’s really good. The plan gives us that direction to actually look at it and say, Hey, we’re going to be withdrawing from this 1015 20 years down the line. So let’s focus on converting this. This is our budget here. This is our expected income in the future. It makes it very easy to actually build out that that clock and that expectation over time, so I strongly recommend having that plan.
I personally believe the Roth is the biggest tax saving strategy left for the Average Joe, the average investor in retirement, but there’s there’s more. Neil, tell us about these others, we’re gonna go and bang out a brief definition of donor advised funds, charitable remainder trusts the Quadro the irrevocable life insurance, trust, net unrealized appreciation, dynasty trust and cost segregation, we’ll stop there. But this is just a sampling of some of the high level tax strategies that we use, how would you use a donor advised fund knew
the the real value of the donor advised fund comes from the fact that you can accelerate those deductions. So in a lot of cases, the standard deduction is probably going to exceed whatever, you’re itemizing. And so let’s say you’re making contributions to a charity of 5000 per year. Well, the charity appreciates that you’re not really seeing the value that you can save and taxes on that. So using a donor advised fund that allows you to fast track those deductions and concentrate them in one year. Let’s say there’s a big income tax here. You could say take 10 years worth of contributions, put those into a donor advised fund, continue to do those $5,000 for a year, for the next 10 years, contributions to that charity, but you will receive that deduction in that year, and if structured correctly, will exceed the standard deduction. So you can itemize and actually take advantage of those charitable contributions,
if it’s an offset for a big spike in income in one year. Right. Exactly. Okay. Now, Neil, I know this next one’s your favorite, you’ve got clients with huge capital gains in Amazon stock in Microsoft in rental real estate, and they don’t want to pay taxes. And Neil says you don’t have to explain how that works.
new strategy is complex. But the ultimate goal is to eliminate capital gains tax and that specific year. So really looking at what your capital gains income will look like going forward is really pivotal to understand the value of it. So if we can eliminate a major capital gains tax and year that doesn’t end up pushing you into that 20% we can structure out payments from that for the rest of your life keeping taxes as low as possible. Usually, the minimum that you can withdraw is something like five to 10% and you can receive that as income for the rest of your life as well as seeing that money grow. So you’re going to see that income grow over time and crease and continue to pay out to you well keeping taxes as low as possible, and will cherry on top that will give you a massive deduction in the year that you make that contribution. So let’s say hypothetically you have a million dollars in Microsoft stock, you know, there’s a $900,000 capital gain because you paid $100,000 to purchase that now million dollar amount of Doc. So you can take a distribution of 5% off that every year, which would be 50,000. If it’s invested in it grows above the 5%, that will continue to increase, you avoid 900,000 in capital gains in that year that you make that contribution. Now you’re paying capital gains on the 50,000. That comes out, as well as receiving somewhere between a 30 to 45% tax deduction, meaning on a million dollars, you could deduct 300,000 to 450,000 off your taxes, which makes it a great opportunity to look at making other accounts through a Roth conversion, tax free.
So if you’d like to learn about any of these things that Brian and Neil have been discussing today on safer retirement radio, the easiest thing to do is give him a call. Let’s talk about he got some questions. We got some how does that work? Donor Advised Fund? I’m not. I’m not real clear on that. I’d like to learn a little bit more. Hey, should I move some this amount or that much into the Roth world? I don’t really know. Great opportunity to talk with the team at Decker retirement a 33707 3030. No cost for this a 33707 3030. The team is here to help you. If they can. They don’t know if they can help until you reach out. There’s no cost. It’s a win win for you. 833-707-3030 back with our final segment of safer retirement radio with Brian J. Decker and Neil finning of Decker retirement planning right after this.
We all want the freedom to do the things that make us happy, especially in retirement to get help with laying the foundation for that for you to call 833-707-2020 to have a chat with Brian. What if you ordered a pizza that when you opened the box, a couple of pieces were missing? That would be upsetting? Right? Now, think about how much you believe you’ve saved for retirement. Do you still owe taxes on that money? Brian Decker and his team at Decker retirement planning understand the importance of tax planning and can help you reduce the impact that Uncle Sam has on your retirement. Give them a call today to start working on your retirement tax plan at 833-707-3030 Bow may be a great time to lower your future tax liability. Create a retirement plan today so that you can get as many slices of your retirement pie as possible. Give Brian Decker a call at 833-707-3030 and schedule a visit that’s 833-707-3035 offers insurance services and may not give tax advice, security and insurance services offered by Decker retirement planning and a registered investment advisor with the SEC. You’re listening to safer retirement radio if you’d like what you hear on today’s show, or have questions dropped by Decker retirement planning.com or call 833-707-3030 to talk to Brian.
Welcome back to save for retirement radio with Brian J. Decker and Neal fanning of Decker retirement planning. Again, you can always go to the website to learn more Decker retirement planning.com. You can go under the heading of safer retirement education. There’s about 12 different things you can download, including Brian’s book on retirement, the Decker approach, three principles of retirement book, the checklist chant challenge and a sample income plan. Those are four of the 12 things you could download no cost to you. It’s just there for your information. And then maybe once you get some of that you might have some questions. You can always call the team. There’s no cost for that either a 33707 3030 833-707-3030. Mark la glad you’re with us today. All right, Brian, you O’Neill, you got a lot of these tax savings opportunities that you’re talking about. You got a lot more to get to, I think yeah, let’s
see if we can finish them up in this last segment. So now what do you do when you see someone that’s 10 years age difference? And they’ve got to they’ve got their 401 K in play still? Is there an opportunity there to help them?
Well, and this is a unique one. And it does require a little bit of legwork? Because you can split those assets between you and your spouse. Now why would that be beneficial? So let’s say you know, spouse, one is approaching required minimum distribution age. Now we have to take required minimum distributions on the amount that they have in pre tax, specifically the 401k. What if we could extend the timeline another 10 years? Well, if we are able to split that move half of the assets to the younger spouse. Now we’ve got 10 years worth of timeframe to actually do Roth conversions. And we’re also minimizing those required minimum distributions right before they start. This one does require a bit of legwork. So it has to be specific to that to the situation that makes the most sense. But that is a great strategy to eliminate a major tax liability and extend that over time.
That is brilliant. Okay, now what if we have some clients that live in states where they have a an a state a state tax and they do not want to pay it? How can you make that go away?
What you can do is Create a trust with a specific insurance benefit. And that insurance benefit will pay out tax free, you can use the gift tax exemption to actually fund that. So that you can put money into that without it affecting your estate tax. And because life insurance as always is tax free, that’ll pay out to your beneficiaries tax free. It’s a great solution, especially if your RMDs got locked in, and you have to continue to make those. That is a great way to increase the the estate benefit, if that’s your ultimate goal.
Now this one, Neil, if it’s structured incorrectly adds to the problem, but if it’s structured correctly, it does make it go away. Right?
It’s very important that you structure it correctly. All of these are very important that you structure correctly.
Okay, Neil, I want to handle this other trust. So I’m going to flip the next one to you. What if you’ve got clients with a lot of rental real estate, can you wave your magic wand and help make their income mostly tax free.
I don’t know if it’s a magic wand, but it’s definitely something that we could incorporate. What you can do is actually accelerate the depreciation schedule on that rental property. Any updates that you make, you have to get assessed, so have a property assessor come in and look at each of those items and start to segregate those costs so that you can increase the speed at which you do depreciation, that’ll usually knock out 20 to 25% of your taxable income, because now you’re depreciating it. It’s valuable, especially if you’re doing a remodel or right after, say, a 1031. Exchange, so that you can get as much kind of that tax free income. And then just rinse and repeat. Once the depreciation is done, replace remodel and 31. And then cycle through another accelerated depreciation schedule. Good,
good. And on this last trust that we’re going to talk about, what it does is you create the trust while you’re alive listed as a beneficiary, it’s per stirpes, meaning it’s bloodline only, it’s a beneficiary of some of the funds. And it pays out per stirpes. To bloodline only. It’s, it lasts for over 100 years. And you can delegate from the grave what kind of behavior you want. And so Neal, you can have this trust, tell, pay for a portion of college education, if you go you get some of this money, if you don’t go to your college education, then you don’t get any money. It can kick out money in first marriages, it can kick out money for to help buy the first house. first baby, whatever, whatever type of behavior, you want to incent this type of trust, passes out and pays out to your children, their children, their children, their children, their children. And it’s a great tool, especially when a lot of clients tell us, Neil, in our meetings, our kids are fine. I’m not sure what I really want to do with these funds. Our kids don’t need it.
Yeah, I always find these trusts really fun to see because you can really write in and whatever contingency one into there. And so it’s I always find it interesting what you know, people actually settled on including,
alright, Neil, let’s talk about people that have in their estate a large amount. And our our advice is not to lump sum those assets when they die in their trust the distribution document. We advise many clients to stagger the distribution 1/3 at death 1/3, five years after data death, and then the final 10 years after data death, so that the first distribution the kids, and by the way, Neal, we’ve seen this Dr. Jekyll becomes Mr. Hyde they spend through the money and they thank the heavens above that you are wise enough to give them two more shots at the distributions. We hope that when you’re talking about seven figure plus distributions per child, that you stagger the distributions, right? Anything nearly you want to add to that?
Yeah, the lottery effect is real. So when when people get a large lump sum of money kind of unexpectedly, it, it can modify behavior. And when we were talking about the dynasty trust before, you know, definitely incorporating some incentive to stay on the right path is really important. So you want to structure that out over time. So to Brian’s point, you don’t turn you know, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Now Neil, there is a cottage industry in some of our markets. We’re in Seattle. We’re in San Francisco. We’re in Salt Lake and it works like this A there’s three people to stand by a traffic light, and one walks up about 30 paces, the light turns yellow, your car’s rolling to a stop and this person jumps out in front of your car rolls across your hood and is writhing on the ground to witnesses, their friends saw that you quote, hit them, and this guy is going to sue you. And now with witnesses in this claim, your attorney shakes his head and says You have no chance but to settle, you just got had. And these people do this all the time. We recommend that our clients have an umbrella policy so that they don’t have this ruin their retirement. Neil explain how the umbrella policy works.
Umbrella policy is great and relatively cost effective for like an additional million in liability coverage. It costs about 250 to $300. Now, what’s really great is that a lot of homeowners and auto liability only reaches a certain point. So the umbrella policy allows you to cover up above that and additional million, or 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, you can kind of keep pushing it. But this definitely protects your assets, especially if somebody sees you driving around town in a nice car or is aware that you have a lot of assets in some capacity, somehow they found out they would target you come after you. And umbrella policy is able to make sure that you’re protected so that it doesn’t end up taking a ton of money out of your, you know, livelihood and retirement
market near let’s end this segment with long term care. Now there’s an interesting statistic that says that 70% of Americans will spend time in long term care facility. However, the US Census says that 14% of people are in long term care how do those numbers reconcile the long term care industry counts when hospice comes to your home. So that number is inflated. And it scares a lot of people into getting that care. But let’s hope for the best and plan for the worst and take people through this. So when you’re with a couple that has their husband and wife, and let’s, I don’t know, let’s throw the man under the bus, let’s say that he’s got the worst combination, which is a healthy body and Alzheimer’s, the first third of that journey, the spouse is taking care of him. The second third of the journey is in home care. And the third third of the journey is usually a couple years of where he is in full care, which is usually about $10,000 per month for about 24 months. But the benefit, the typical benefit is $300,000. So the first thing that we look at being fiduciaries because Neil we’re licensed to sell this care to our clients. But most of the time we don’t because our clients have the 300,000 they have it in two areas, they have the extra money in their risk bucket and they have it in the equity in their home. The reason that we recommend that they self insure is because if the US Census numbers, correct, Neil, then there’s an 86% chance they’ll never need it. And if they get hit by a bus deal, how much long term care benefit do they get? I get zero, they get zero? What are your thoughts take us home with your thoughts on long term care,
there’s kind of two main quandary is with long term care. If you need it, you can’t afford it. And if you can afford it, you don’t need it. I’ve seen a lot of long term care policies that had guaranteed rates premiums that you were meant to pay that, you know, due to insurance companies lobbying Insurance Commissioner, they’re able to increase that over time. So either that pushes down the benefit, you adjust your benefit to keep the premiums the same, or you just walk away, which means you’ve now just spent money on long term care that you’re not going to be able to use if if you can self insure and we can plan accordingly. That is a much better option. You have much more flexibility with that. And to Brian’s point. Most people don’t end up using that policy anyways. So you’ve really paid for something your whole life that you don’t need.
So at the end of the day, there’s a lot of moving pieces in retirement, the accumulation working years much different than the distribution phase of retirement, a lot of moving parts of Team A Decker retirement planning here to help if they can. They’d love to sit down and try to help you with long term care do you need it? Do you not need it? What about the Roth world? Should I move some money there? How much should I do all these challenges are what Brian and Neil and the team at Decker retirement can help you with hopefully a 33707 3030 No cost 833-707-3030 The best time to call them right now. Let’s get started a 33707 3030 Brian Neil thanks for another interesting a lot of information say for retirement radio program you guys enjoy the rest of the weekend Have a great week.
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