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Welcome to Financially Fluent with Ray Godleski from Southeast Wealth Partners, LLC. Whether you're already retired or planning for the future, navigating financial advice can be overwhelming. This podcast cuts through the noise, bringing real insights from experts who specialize in every aspect of a successful financial plan—including how to adapt when things don’t go as expected. Join us as Ray Godleski answers audience questions and shares actionable strategies—not just empty clichés.
Welcome to Financially Fluent with Ray Godleski of Southeast Wealth Partners. Our goal is to equip you with the knowledge and tools necessary to navigate your financial journey with greater ease and efficiency. Hey, good morning, everyone, and welcome to the next episode of Financially Fluent. I am your host, Ray Godleski of Southeast Wealth Partners. And today we're going to be talking about life insurance because it is Life Insurance Awareness Month.
And life insurance is not just about leaving money behind. It's about a lot of different things. And so we're going to have an expert in that field, Michael Baratta. He is the president and CEO of Fortress Brokerage Solutions. We're going to bring him on to the show to unpack some of these critical aspects of
Michael, welcome to the show. How are you today? I'm doing great, Ray. Thank you for the invitation. Oh, yeah. So glad you're here. Why don't you go ahead, if you don't mind, just tell us a little bit about how you got into the industry. What kind of makes you an expert? Well, I got into the industry almost as a second career about 25 years ago. My father-in-law was a John Hancock general agent for the state of Michigan. And he was a general agent for the state of Michigan.
said you know Mike you you've you've done very very well in your life what is the next iteration of your life mean look to you I said well whatever it is dad it needs to be able to go out and help people I have to be able to add value and I have to feel good about what I end up doing and of course make money for my family so that's that's really what got me engaged in the industry a long time ago
I had gotten all of my securities licenses. I had gotten my designations from the American College, which is our institution of training and knowledge for the insurance industry. I'm getting designations for charter financial consultant, charter life underwriter, and charitable advisor of philanthropy.
So I've been at this for roughly about 25 years ago, about 25 years now, and have helped thousands and thousands of people across the United States to obtain their needs as far as insurance is concerned. Now, that's fantastic. And I kind of knew that about you. And I knew you'd be a great person to come on board here today. So why don't we get right into it? We've got a lot of ground to cover. We probably can't fit
all aspects of life insurance into one episode, but today we'll cover a few aspects. And I think we got to start off with income replacement. You know, that might be the number one reason people buy it. Maybe, maybe not. But, you know, one of the things that I think about is people are always wondering how much. And I think about my own experience about 15 years ago, you know, is that group and life insurance.
I was getting some term life insurance. And to me back then, you know, I thought, Ooh, a million dollars. That's a lot. You know, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm better off dead than alive is, uh,
the phrase I said. And then I think now 15 years later, well, no, a million dollars isn't worth what it was 15 years ago. And I'm pretty sure in another 15 years, a million dollars won't be that much either. But how would you advise someone to kind of calculate their income replacement?
Well, income replacement is kind of a moving target depending upon the individual because we're all at different stages of life. We're all at different, we all have different needs as far as that's concerned. For example, a young family that has children. Okay, just look at the cost of college education today. College education, when I went to school way back in the early 1980s, it cost me $600 for a full credit card.
a full semester for 18 credit hours. Today, that same $600 might end up costing somebody $40,000 or $50,000 today from an institution. So if you need to have money to go out and cover, so for example, your child's education, if something should happen to you, you want your children to end up being well-educated, that's got to come into the equation.
You have to take a look at things like the amount of debt that you go out and you hold in your life. Mortgage, for example, or maybe some other type of debt that you have out there that needs to be covered, like maybe current student loan debts. Maybe it's automobile loans. Maybe it's some other type of loan, like a stock account margin account that's on out there that you want to cover. You don't want to end up leaving your...
your significant other or your family with all of these debts that they have nothing left that's there to go out and have that be a burden to them when the main breadwinner is no longer there. So you really have to go out and take a look at all of your debts. You have to take a look at your lifestyle costs.
Add all that up, do a present value calculation of that, and figure out exactly what you need to have for insurance. And quite honestly, a million dollars isn't a lot today. One other point that I would bring up is people say, well, hey, listen, I have worked through insurance or worked through my company. And the work through your company, although it does provide a small benefit, most companies offer $50,000 plus.
plus a plus a denomination that you can buy above that. Most people, what they don't realize is when they end up leaving their company, that's no longer available to them. It goes away. It's not what we call transportable at that point. And they would have to end up going outside of the market to try to find insurance. At some date past that, it had a higher attained age, a higher cost in order to go out and accomplish that. So I hope that answered the question.
I think it does. I mean, some people want to do rule of thumb, you know, 10 times or 15 times their income. And I think, like you said, it's really, to me, it should be more of an individual conversation based upon what are your goals?
What's your situation, right? Obviously, somebody with one kid might be different than three. So, or if one has special needs, we're not going to get that right the second, but there's quite a, having a, you know, individual conversation does seem to make the most sense. And it's certainly more than just covering funeral costs or something like that. Absolutely. Absolutely.
One of the things we do on our show is we tend to almost every episode we talk about what's trending, right? Whether that's investments, uh,
sure, any number of things. So one of the things that I've seen are these riders, and I'm sure you do too. So why don't we spend a little bit of time going into how there's more than just term insurance, or even term insurance has different riders, and so does permanent life insurance. So let's kind of open it up here and maybe start off with a chronic illness rider or a long-term care rider or even a critical wellness rider. Those are similar but different. So if you could just kind of
get into that a little bit. What are these and how can you get it and when does it make sense? So life insurance is no longer our father's life insurance. It ends up offering things that we called living benefits. Okay. So if somebody should have something like a critical illness,
Some carriers end up offering these embedded riders into these contracts that will go out and allow that death benefit to get accelerated tax-free if you should have a heart attack, if you should have invasive cancers, if you should have renal failure, if you should have all of these other things. It's almost kind of like a supplement to your health insurance that your health insurance doesn't cover that's on out there. And it can end up being...
especially important when somebody ends up not being able to work because they're trying to go out and recuperate, right? You still have mortgages going on. You still have an automobile payment that goes on. You still have children that need to be taken care of. In order to go out and accelerate that death benefit in your moment of need is a huge deal for people. It can save people from bankruptcy.
It can end up helping people to get through those point in times and take that stress off of them when they're in their period of need at that point. And financial stress can really go out and weigh on you when you're trying to recuperate from a major event like that. So critical illness is a rider that can go out and help people on the other side. There's also another one.
that that's trending called a chronic illness rider. And chronic illness really is something where you can't perform two activities of daily living or if dementia or something like that or or or or what's the word that I'm looking for? The other the other dementia item that's out there. Alzheimer's. Alzheimer ends up coming on in. Maybe I have a little Alzheimer right now.
These policies will go out and allow you to accelerate the death benefit tax free to go out and cover for those types of expenses. And it might end up being, you know, if you end up going into a nursing home, Ray, it could end up being two, three hundred dollars a day just to go out and cover yourself for a nursing home at that point. Now, how does a normal family go out and cover that?
When the main breadwinner is taken out of the income phase, they're on disability or maybe they didn't have a job, and they should end up having to go into a care facility like that. It could be devastating on the savings of the family and devastating on the family's lifestyle.
So having these products out there to go out and accelerate that tax-free death benefit for that piece is a big deal as well. In some of the permanent products, we also have something called a long-term care rider in some of the permanent products.
Long-term care riders out there does pretty much the same thing as a chronic illness rider with the exception that you're going to actually end up getting a full value for your dollar.
In the chronic illness rider, what they're going to do is they're going to accelerate that death benefit, but they're going to give you a present value to it. So if you have a $1 million policy, you might only end up getting the present value of maybe $500,000 of that policy to cover for that chronic illness rider. With the long-term care riders in some of these contracts, if you purchase a million dollars, you're going to get that million dollar amount covering that long-term care need if you should need it.
Okay. And I guess one of the things I know that comes up is, well, if I have a chronic illness writer and I can't perform two of the six activities of daily living, I know generally there's a 90 day elimination period, but maybe they don't want to, maybe they had a bad experience with their parent or somebody they know with receipts.
So what would someone need if they had a chronic illness writer to get? Let's just use an example here. $500,000 of death benefit, permanent policy. They know exactly how much they're going to put in, how much benefit they're going to get out. Obviously, if they pass away, it's $500,000 of tax-free death benefit to the person.
beneficiaries. Let's say they want to use it while they're alive. They cannot do those two or six activities of daily living. Or like you said, maybe it's just frontal lobe dementia or Alzheimer's. It could be that as well. And now they're going on claim. How much could they get a month? And what would it require to be approved to get that monthly benefit? So how it kind of walk us through the actual process of receiving money, tax-free money, let's
Keep that in mind, you know, kind of the benefit side, the claim side of that. Well, let's define a term that you ended up starting off with, which is elimination period. The 90-day elimination period for all of those that aren't in our industry is
You have to realize that there's a period of time that the carrier will start to go out and cover you for that benefit. It's kind of like a deductible almost, and that's that 90-day period of time. So it takes 90 days before these things will go out and kick in in most instances. There are some instances where it'll waive the elimination period, but those are in specific products that are on out there.
Um, there's two different types of reimbursement that's, that's out there. It's, uh, in terms of getting money, it's either reimbursement or it's indemnity. Um, you're always going to butt up against what's called the IRS per diem. So the IRS allows you a certain amount of money.
per day to come to you tax-free out of long-term care riders, and that's called the per diem. I believe it's $440 as of this year right now, and it gets indexed for inflation as the cost goes up and up and up. But in long-term care riders, what you'll typically do is they'll allow you either a 2%, 3%, or a 4% of the total death benefit.
to be accelerated on a monthly basis, broken down on a per day basis. So depending upon how much you buy can end up depending upon how much you get in terms of death benefit will depend upon how much you get in terms of long-term care, but it's always going to end up being capped up at that per diem amount that the IRS sets. Now,
If you have an indemnity contract, which means you don't have to go and provide receipts for everything, you can go out and you can accelerate that full per deal each and every day.
That full per diem doesn't necessarily need to end up being for medical purposes. You can use that per diem for your mortgage. You can end up utilizing it for food. You can utilize it for other things. Where if you have an indemnity or a reimbursement contract on the other side, you actually have to provide the bills for medical services. You can't use it for other things that are out there.
I'm wondering if somebody wanted, let's say they wanted to retrofit their shower entry or lower their light switches, something like that. I know the chronic illness rider, that's easy, right? That's going to be fine because you can use the benefit to go around the world if you want to. But on the...
reimbursement plans. Do you think most of them would cover something like that or maybe not? Well, reimbursement is going to end up covering things like people coming in to help you to make your food if you can't make your food. It's going to help you for any type of medical assistance that you might need to have in your home.
or any type of service that you end up having in a certified facility. And that's another thing for reimbursement. Typically, you either need to have certified people to go out and take care of all of those services that you have. You aren't able to end up utilizing, in many instances, a family member and reimburse services to a family member. It would have to be a certified person from
perhaps, I don't know, visiting angels that you might end up seeing on TV or some other type of organization that's registered to do such things. Right, right, right. Okay. Yeah, and I think, you know, that's most of these living benefits, right? So when people think life insurance, they think about death benefit only. What we just talked about the last few minutes is kind of a living benefit, right? You're able to
Use it while you're alive. You're not using other sources of income. You're not using your assets necessarily, right? And so these benefits are usually tax-free, so that's a good thing. But I don't know of too many times you can use it for term insurance. So most of them are on a permanent life insurance chassis. So why don't we kind of transition over to permanent life insurance? Because it gets...
it gets a lot of pub, I guess, and people think different things when they hear that. And, you know, people ask me sometimes, is it good or bad? I'm like, well, it's not good or bad. It's different. You need to know the difference between a term and a perm. So maybe, if you don't mind, let's kind of walk through what is a permanent life insurance policy, probably even evolve into some policy loan discussions, but let's kind of at a high level, we don't get too technical, but
You know, if somebody asked the difference between a permanent and a term policy, what would you say? So for term insurance policies, you might end up seeing that you have a five-year, I'm sorry, a 10-year, a 15-year, a 20-year, a 30-year, or a 40-year term. And that means that you have a level premium for that complete period of time that you purchase.
And of course, the older that you are, the more expensive that level premium is going to end up being for all of those years. So, for example, a 50-year-old that buys a million-dollar policy and does a 10-year term might end up paying $50 a month. Just throw a number out there. Now, that takes him to age 60 years.
at that point in time. So there's not a lot of real mortality cost in that 10%,
10-year period of time for that 50-year-old. Now, if I do a 20-year term and it goes to his age 70, there's a little bit more mortality cost. So that price, instead of it being $50 a month, might be $75 a month at that point in time. If I go a 30-year term for that 50-year-old now, that's getting him up to 80 years old at a level term, right? Right.
So instead of that being $75, it might be $150 a month because you have more mortality costs on the side of the insurance company on the other side.
Now, permanent insurance that we refer to as permanent insurance is insurance that should last you for the rest of your life. It's insurance that I can go out and provide a level premium for myself and pay that to age 100. I can pay it for a shorter, a larger amount for a shorter period of time to take me to age 100 or longer if I want to end up doing that. So I'm
I make sure that it lasts me for the rest of my life. I make sure that I'm going to end up utilizing the insurance. So in the 30-year example on the 50-year-old for the term insurance, if I get past 80 years old, I may not be insurable anymore. I may not be able to get additional insurance. That insurance goes away at that point in time.
If the permanent insurance is still in force and at age 81, a mortality event should hit, my family ends up getting that death benefit. So it's the trade-off of what you need to end up having. And the way that I tell people, term insurance is good for if you should have a debt for a period of time, buy term insurance to cover the debt.
If you should end up having something like a buy-sell with somebody where you need to end up saying, hey, my business is worth this. If I should die, I want my family to get this and my partner will go out and buy me on out. I have this death benefit to go out and cover for that buy-sell. If I have a mortgage, if I have children in college, perfect product is term insurance.
But if you truly want to leave a legacy, if you truly want to end up utilizing that insurance for more than one purpose by having that long-term care embedded in that transaction, then you really should have permanent insurance that lasts you for the rest of your life. Yeah, you know, that's the thing. When I first got into the industry many years ago,
as my training around, they'd say, hey, you're going to, you get to be the guy that's going to help people with death claims. And so, you know, it's an interesting experience, but it was really good because, you know,
And unfortunately, you know, from a benefits standpoint, it was pretty much as simple as prove who you are and that you're a beneficiary on file. And then the insurance money, the insurance company gets you that money pretty quick. Here comes the money, you know, and they give you different ways to get it, but they make, they truly do try to make it easy for folks. And again, it's a tax-free benefit. So, yeah.
The thing to think about with that is, let's say you mentioned a permanent life insurance policy. If somebody has a permanent life insurance policy, then yeah, maybe they get it when they're 50. I don't know. And they're going to try to have it paid up by age 65 or 70, or they want to run it any number of years they want to. There's a lot of design flexibility. Now it's time to decide maybe they have a pension. It could be a teacher, it could be a federal employee, who knows? It could be the military. Now it's time to pick out that pension.
And they got to make a decision. Do you want to get the maximum amount of pension you can so you can enjoy it, especially if you're married? Or do you need that survivor benefit, right? And you're going to take a reduced amount of pension benefit. Well, if you have a permanent life insurance policy in place, you know, you're probably going to pick the larger payout that you can enjoy while you're alive, knowing that you got that permanent life insurance policy in place.
already in place to replace that income. Have you seen that before? Well, what you're referring to is what we call a pension maximization program. And it can be a very viable strategy for a lot of people. So, you know, one of the things that you want to do is you want to make sure that you get as much retirement income as you can for you and your spouse if you have a significant other at that point in time.
So in pensions, they'll allow you to end up taking a survivor benefit or they'll allow you to take an individual benefit that's there. And the individual benefit, there's a higher propensity that they're going to end up paying that out for a shorter period of time. So they'll give you a higher retirement benefit in that payout scheme.
Then if you have two people there, the propensity is for them to go out and pay out for a longer period of time. So they'll lower that denomination of that pension benefit that you're going to end up getting each and every month. What you're referring to is if you can take the higher amount for the individual,
and you can take a portion of that pension dollar and devote it towards a life insurance program on that primary person, that death benefit can supplement that income for that secondary person on the other side and provide both of them more income in retirement on the other side. It's a strategy that we've been utilizing for years. It's helped
hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people throughout the United States to maximize their benefit. But there's another thing that's on out there that we've, that's, uh, that's recently come out that a lot of people don't know about. And a lot of people are very, very worried about their social security.
And there's a product out there that has a rider that if Social Security should end up getting reduced on them. Oh, a young man like you, Ray. I mean, you may have to worry about Social Security. Right. If they should, if the federal government should reduce Social Security by more than 3%.
This policy for a 15-year period of time will cover that gap. So when you retire, now all of a sudden your Social Security is absolutely guaranteed by a rider, actually an endorsement in one of these contracts that we sell out there. I think that that's a huge thing in the marketplace these days to go out and help people to not only maximize their retirement, but also to secure the retirement income on the other side. Yeah, that's good to point out there.
And now a quick message from today's sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Southeast Wealth Partners. If you've been listening to Financially Fluent, you know we're all about making smart money moves, whether it's planning for retirement, protecting your family, or building long-term wealth. But everyone's situation is different, and that's where the team at Southeast Wealth Partners comes in. They take the time to understand your goals, your challenges, and your values. To learn more and connect with their team, visit southeastwealthpartners.com.
Southeast Wealth Partners, your next step toward being financially fluent.
Now, we're talking about permanent life insurance, right? So there's different flavors. I say there's whole life, there's variable, there's index. And some of them is really just for the permanent death benefit or access, you know, the chronic illness, you know, for maybe some long-term care planning, that kind of thing. But of course, cash value gets a lot of pub. And so maybe just walk through high level again, it
if you have any of those flavors and there is cash value in a policy, how do policy loans work and when might someone think about using it? And, and, and I guess also, you know, they do need to be aware of, you can't just take, you know, take out huge loans and never pay it back and not expect there to be some consequences to it. So let's, let's kind of walk through that if you don't mind, Michael. Okay. Um,
Well, cash value life insurance, no matter what flavor that you'd like to go out and look at, whether it's whole life or whether it's universal life, can end up being a really, really good structure to do two things. Number one, it's to go out and accumulate dollars in a tax-deferred environment.
Of course, if you have the non-qualified account, each and every year, if you should roll money into that, roll out stock investments, if you should go out and get interest from whatever it is, whether it be dividends, you're going to pay income taxes on that every single year.
So to be able to go out and accumulate that money in a tax-deferred environment is a big deal, kind of like a Roth, almost. A Roth is a tax-deferred environment. And also a tax-free distribution once you end up getting there. And life insurance can end up doing the same thing, utilizing loans out of the life insurance contract. Congress has bestowed that benefit on life insurance.
One of the benefits I like on the life insurance side is that loan never hits your 1040, where if you end up taking money out of a Roth, that will hit a line item. So I do like taking loans out of the life insurance contract versus other methodologies of getting tax-free income that's out there. As far as the methods to take money out of a life insurance contract,
As long as it's not what we call a modified endowment contract, which resembles an annuity, you can go out and you can take money out of the contract by withdrawing to basis, tax-free, and then after that you can start taking loans out of the contract to take the gains out of the contract going forward. Loans work like this. They can be accrued inside of the life insurance contract.
They will end up costing roughly, in today's environment, about 5.5% of their variable loans. And that value inside of that variable loan right now, a portion of that goes back into your account.
Because you're borrowing the money from yourself, right? Now, the insurance company takes a portion of that as well. But part of that goes back into your account. There's also something called a wash loan. And a wash loan is that you can take a fixed loan out of a life insurance contract where the amount of money that you get into the contract is the same as the loan amount that you're going to end up paying.
paying on that loan actively being a zero percent interest program for yourself it washes on out between the two right we call those fixed loans that are inside of the transaction
There's also other variations that we can end up getting into, Ray, but it's a more elaborate conversation. We'll go over most of that. And we can go out and we can identify what's right for that client at that point when they end up needing to take money out of it. Right. Yeah. And I guess in theory, you know, if someone's looking at like a buffer asset per se, meaning
stocks are down, something like that, bonds are down. Someone could take a loan off the cash value, right? Buy some stocks on the cheap and then they could pay it back and they could kind of rinse and repeat a few times if they wanted to. But I know that gets a little bit, like I said, probably a little too much for today's podcast, but yeah. So you're talking about diversification of assets is what you're really talking about. So let's just
shortly talk about that real quick. Let's say, for example, you have a stock portfolio and you have a 2008 event, okay, where your portfolio goes down by 50%.
let's say that you had a million dollars in your portfolio, it went down to 500,000. Well, you still have a certain amount of living expenses that you have to take out of that money, right? But that living expense, when your account is down at 500,000, is double the percentage as it would have been if it was up at a million, right? So let's say it's $50,000. Let's say you're taking 10% out if it's at 500,000. If it was at a million, that would
that would have only have been 5% at a million dollars, right? So the fact is, is that your account, when it's way down, when the market's there, can't recover as well because the money you're taking out is a larger percentage of the asset when the money is down, when it's down at that $500,000 level. Now, if you had a cash value life insurance contract,
whether it was a whole life contract or whether it's a universal life contract, and you were able to loan the money out of that life insurance contract, let's say it's a 0% floor equity indexed contract or it's a dividend paying whole life contract, the values of those contracts didn't go down. Now, all of a sudden, you can let that investment account recoup because typically we have these V-shaped recoveries in the stock market.
You can let that account recoup so that you can actually start getting more money out of that investment account. I call that investment account immunization by utilizing that other asset that's a protected asset and it has a floor to it versus that account that's going to end up going down. Yeah, no, that's good. That's good. We're going to try to recap a little bit here. You know, we talked about steps to evaluate your income protection need. I think we kind of covered that.
pretty well, but we did talk a little bit about those writers. So what would be maybe a question or two, if somebody is thinking about writers, because there's so many, you know, let's just, what would you say would be a couple of good questions to ask? Like if they're thinking about whether it's chronic illness, I mean, we didn't get into disability waiver writers or child term writers, like what are some good or even accidental ones, right? What would be some good questions to ask before someone should buy
buy a ride on a policy. Well, I think this is all about coming to a financial professional, telling them what your worries are, telling them what your lifestyle is, telling them all of the different things that you have and say, hey, listen, I'm concerned about these things. How can I protect myself? Insurance is about spending a small premium dollar for a large benefit on the other side.
Hi, I'm a attorney and I'm very worried about if I should become disabled.
and still being able to afford my life insurance at that point in time. Well, there's something called a waiver of premium rider that we can go out and we can install into these contracts where if you should become disabled, it waives the premium so that that life insurance stays in force. We also have disability income products that we can end up providing to professionals that are out there.
that go out and cover 60, 65% of whatever their income is in the marketplace. There's these risk management tools that are on out there to go out and stop you from worrying about those events that may end up happening.
We talked a little bit about long-term care. If a family has the propensity for Alzheimer or dementia, you probably want to end up getting some form of policy that has long-term care in it. And there's lots and lots of good programs out there that you can do. So I think that it's important to have
a frank conversation with the financial professional on the other side and let the financial professional identify the risk management tools that we have available to us, what the cost of those are, and whether it fits within your budget or not. Yeah, you kind of recapped it real well there, Michael. Appreciate that. And
you know, what I would say for the listeners that are out there, you know, everybody knows someone that has a family that depends on them, right? Or could, like I said, again, it could, people used to think of life insurance as, you know, oh, you have a family. Well, yeah, that's one of the uses, but we talked today about what about the one that's single, right? And they're getting older, right? We talked about ways that they can kind of almost take care of themselves, right?
by almost paying their future self now and having that peace of mind
So something happens to them. They're not sitting there waiting too long to use their assets, right? To take care of themselves. They got a policy. I guarantee you, somebody has insurance that's already prepaid their, you know, some kind of long-term care type of planning. They want to get their benefit quick, right? They're really quick to go get that benefit. Whereas
you know, if they don't have that in place, they're probably a little slower to, they just don't want to sell their assets, you know? So I think, you know, we've kind of summed that up pretty well. And always for the audience, remember, you know, the tax efficiency of life insurance,
So we do want people to listen to, you know, share this with folks that might be interested in learning more. And like Michael said, you know, whether you're talking to somebody over the phone or Zoom or in person, you know, probably someone that's experienced in life insurance would be a good person to talk to. And Michael, I did kind of give you a heads up that
Most guests do trivia questions, so we're going to do the same for you here today. And I'll give you two choices. One would be state trivia and the other is U.S. history. So what would be your choice for today's question? Let's try U.S. history for one, Alex. All right. Okay. So...
This one's actually pretty good. Matter of fact, my wife and I took a trip this summer, celebrated our anniversary, and we saw it. So U.S. History Tribute question here. What is the name of the U.S. Navy's oldest commissioned warship that is still afloat? I'll give you one. How about, how about, let me think. Now I'm a Star Trek fan, but I'm not going to say the Enterprise. Okay.
How about the USS George Washington? That's a great guess. I'm going to give you a couple of hints until you get one more shot at it. It was launched in 1797. It's still in Boston. And, uh,
has a name USS blank, and it's also got a nickname. So nickname or the real name, either one will, will win you the prize. So you want to give it one more shot? I give up. All right. It's called the USS constitution, also known as old Ironsides. So yeah, but, uh, thank you for playing. I know they're never easy, but, uh, you've been a, a wonderful guest today, uh, for the listeners. Um,
Feel free to subscribe to Financially Fluent. Please share it with others. And then, Michael, do you have a website if people wanted more information about any of the topics we discussed today that people could go to and learn more about? We do. It's www.fortressbrokerage.com. And the reason we have brokerage is because we distribute most products
insurance products from most carriers that are out there. Yeah. Yeah. No, I love that. Anytime it's not captive, I really...
like that. So we'll look, Michael, thanks for being on the show today and to our audience, uh, have a great rest of your day. And if you do have questions and you would like them to be, uh, answered via email or on the show, we do Q and a sessions. Please send that to Ray at se wealth partners.com. Thank you for listening to the financially fluent podcast. Click the subscribe button below to be notified when new episodes become available.
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