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Welcome to How to Retire on Time, a show that answers your questions about all things retirement, including income, taxes, Social Security, healthcare, and more. This show is an extension of the book How to Retire on Time, which you can grab today on Amazon or by going to www.howtoretireontime.com.
This show is intended for those within 10 years of their target retirement date or for those are are currently retired and are concerned about their ability to stay retired.
Welcome to how to retire on time, a show that answers your questions about all things retirement, including income, taxes, Social Security, health care, and more. This show is an extension of the book, How to Retire on Time, which you can grab today on Amazon, or you can go to www.how to retire on time.com. My name is Mike Decker. I'm the author of the book, How to Retire on Time, but I'm also a licensed financial adviser, insurance agent, and tax professional, which means when it comes to financial topics, we can pretty much discuss whatever's on your mind. Now that said, please remember this is just a show.
Mike:Everything you hear should be considered informational, not financial advice. With me in the studio today is my colleague, mister David Frandsen. David, thank you for being here.
David:Hello. Thank you.
Mike:David's gonna be reading your questions, and I'm gonna do my best to answer them. Now you can send your questions in two ways. One way is by texting us to 913-363-1234. That's 913-363-1234, or email us your questions to hey mike at how to retire on time.com. Let's begin.
David:Hey, Mike. Your book tells people they can manage their retirement on their own, but also invites them to work with you. That seems like a bait and switch. Which are you promoting? Should people manage their retirement on their own, or are you encouraging them to work with an adviser?
Mike:Yeah. So there's multiple layers to this question, and let's address them all head on. First off, when you consider what is right, you need to understand what you're working within. So what is right, in my opinion, is how do you maximize your growth potential while also fulfilling and supporting your lifestyle and legacy goals. That's typically the goal.
Mike:If we're to put a top goal, that's typically it. So the question becomes, how do you do that? And what's interesting is and this is a cognitive financial distortion. So what's interesting is people will associate an identity with themselves based on how they manage their investments that can handicap them in their decision making abilities. So for example, I'm a DIY investor, and I'm I'm going to manage my assets.
Mike:I have trust issues. I won't work with anyone. I have to understand it myself. I have to have control of everything. I know I can't work with those people from an ongoing relationship.
Mike:So I wrote the book how to retire on time to teach those people how to fish. Even though I know, or at least I believe, that if I were managing their assets, I probably could help them achieve better results. I'm a professional. I have access to more options, more strategies, but I wanna meet people where they are. So I wrote the book How to Retire on Time to teach DIY, do it yourself investors, and D f y done for you investors.
Mike:People who want someone to just take care of it for you, but they wanna understand how the sausage is made, so to speak. So I did it for both, but I also wanted to meet people where they are. So, hopefully, that's the first layer of it. I've had so many people buy the book, you know, email me at the end, hey. Love the book.
Mike:Thank you so much. There's a couple of questions, and that's it. I don't manage anything. I didn't put a plan together for them, but they learned the principles and rules taught within the book, and now they're better off. If that's what happens, then mission accomplished.
Mike:And I'm very open about that in the book. But when you work with a professional, you have multiple advantages that you cannot get on your own. So for example, if you were a DIY investor, you cannot get access to insurance products. You have to go through an agent. If a fixed index annuity can offer you more growth potential than a CD or treasury, then are you willing to pay the opportunity cost of only going with what you have access to versus exploring other options that may offer you more growth potential?
David:Yeah. Right.
Mike:But you see, there there's a cost associated with that. Mhmm. But if you only wanna work within what you can control, there's a price you have to pay for working with everything you have to have control. Absolute control has a price. And that's with everything.
Mike:If you have to have absolute control in working on your car, you have a limit on what cars you can buy. If you have to have absolute control over your medicine, it's really hard to to treat all situations without a doctor.
David:Yeah. Over the counter meds only go so far. Right?
Mike:Yeah. So that there are limitations with certain things, and the financial industry does regulate what the public has access to. Let me continue the list. Delaware statutory trust. If you're a landlord and you want out, yeah, you can sell and pay all the taxes or you can defer it, maintain cash flow, and maintain growth potential with all of that, and defer all of your taxes.
Mike:But you can only get that through a licensed financial professional, qualified opportunity zone. If you're selling a business, my goodness, that may be an option that works wonders for you or for a part of your gains to defer taxes. It may not be, but you can't get that on your own. Real estate investment trust, the privately held ones, where illiquidity actually acts as your friend in the real estate world. And we don't have time to really dive into that.
Mike:Private equity, private debt. I mean, can you see where I'm going with this? Yeah. There are institutional and investment grade investments or products that you cannot get on your own. So to think that you you're at the same plane table is is kind of a misnomer.
Mike:Now I have no problem if a DIY person comes to me and says, well, hey, I wanna explore it with you, but I wanna learn how to manage it on my own. That's fine. I can make sure we create the right plan, or at least do an analysis and say this is the direction we're going and we're in harmony with the ideology there. And then we we move into, okay, here are the investments, here you go. I I make sure it's suitable for you.
Mike:That you understand how to use the investment, and then and then you can maintain on your I have no problem with that. But I'm supposed to make sure that things are done correctly. That's why I have a license. That's why I had to get a license is to prove that I understand that concept. And so that's one of the other detriments of the DIY investor is they kind of need a relationship with a financial professional in some way or another to get access to these other products that they can't get on your own.
Mike:And you might say, oh, well, you know, I if I wanted this, I just ask anyone. They're happy to just give me what I milk. Okay. Mhmm. That's true.
Mike:But do you know how to vet these products? Are you getting the good products? What due diligence is being done? Is it just whatever's available? I mean, that especially when it comes to privately held REITs, a lot of garbage out there.
Mike:Mhmm. A lot of great ones out there.
David:Yeah. And we wouldn't know, like, the the take a guy off the street. Right? What what do we know about it?
Mike:How do you ask questions about things you don't know? How do you vet things you don't fully understand? Right. The so that that's the problem to be aware of. So, yes, in my mind, working with a professional in one capacity or the other does benefit the person as long as the professional is a fiduciary doing their own independent due diligence.
Mike:If they're a a financial professional just selling whatever they've been told to sell, that's probably an issue.
David:Could be.
Mike:Yeah. So you need to make sure they know their stuff and ask them direct questions. I mean, challenge them. My goodness. Put any finance including ourselves, put them through the wringer.
Mike:This is your money. You wanna make sure good decisions are being made. But there are limitations to the DIY investor. At the end of the day, it's doing what is right. And if what is right is maximizing the lifestyle that you want, the legacy you want, and focusing on growth so you have future flexibility, then, yeah, there are some benefits to working with a financial professional, at least in some capacity.
Mike:Maybe some of your assets are managed with them or not. And this is now the things I wanna throw out there. If you think you're a really good investor, if you think, man, I I I can beat the market year over year, I am just I should have been on Wall Street. I should have been a hedge fund manager. I just I know my stuff.
Mike:Great. Challenge a financial adviser. Put some of the assets in your own portfolio and give them a portion of your assets and just see what happens. What's the worst that's gonna happen? I mean, you can't control the market.
Mike:You're comparing 2 strategies, and then you can confirm, yes. This strategy is better than that strategy, whether it was the financial adviser or it's your own, and then you do what is right. I don't think there's any harm with that at all.
David:Fun experiment.
Mike:Yeah. So focusing on what is right. And if you wanna learn more about strategies, the investments, the things that we do at Kedric, our proprietary models, our proprietary planning, our proprietary process on how to help people prepare to retire on time, whether it's on time or even potentially sooner, just grab your wealth analysis today. You can request it by going to your wealth analysis dot com, or text keyword analysis to 913-363-1234. That's keyword analysis to 913-363-1234.
Mike:Doesn't cost you a dime to start exploring your lifestyle and legacy potential. That's all the time we've got for the show today. If you enjoyed the show, consider subscribing to it wherever you get your podcast. Just search for how to retire on time. Discover if your portfolio is built to weather flat market cycles or if you're missing tax minimization opportunities that you may not even know exist.
Mike:Explore strategies that may be able to help you lower your overall risk while potentially increasing your overall growth and lifestyle flexibility. This is not your ordinary financial analysis.
David:Learn more about Your Wealth Analysis and what it
Mike:could do for you regardless of your age, asset, or target retirement date. Go to www.yourwealthanalysis.com today to learn more and get started.