The Right Amount of Risk for Your Retirement

8.25.22: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

8.25.22: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Producer:
Any examples used are for illustrative purposes only and do not take into account your particular investment objectives, financial situation or needs and may not be suitable for all investors. It is not intended to predict the performance of any specific investment and is not a solicitation or recommendation of any investment strategy.

Producer:
Welcome to The Buckeye Advisor with your host, Woody Bowling. Woody is a fiduciary licensed financial advisor and Medicare expert who always places your needs first. Woody works hard each day to educate Americans like you on how to reach the financial freedom they've worked so hard for. And he can help you, too. So now let's start the show. Here's Woody Bowling.

Woody Bowling:
Greetings and welcome from Woody Bowling. Yours truly. I am the host of today's show and it is entitled The Buckeye Advisor. We hope that you know that because hopefully you're tuning in from your car radio or perhaps online at 94.5 FM in Dayton, Ohio, and all the surrounding areas like Inglewood, Springboro, Brookville, Franklin Carlisle, where I live, all these great areas around the Dayton area. Welcome aboard. Thank you for joining us for today's show. If you're catching it on the radio this weekend, it is Saturday, April or I'm sorry, not April. Saturday, August 26th, Sunday, August 27th. Both shows, 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. And we are so glad that you made it your choice to join us. And listen, we think we have a great show ready for you to go today. Lots of really good information of course, here at The Buckeye Advisor as Woody Bowling. I like to help people understand lots of topics that can affect you in retirement, how they can be positive or negative as far as gaining growing spending, retirement funds, also understanding insurance and many ways it can affect you and have good and bad effects on your retirement as well. And look, if you're 50, 60, 70, 80, there's no age in particular that's bad for us really, until you're about 85. And if you're over 85, it's going to be a little tough for me to help a lot. But without further ado, when I say we, I'm referring to my infamous partner in crime. He is our producer and co-host each week, or at least most of the time. And we're glad that he is. It's Matt McClure, Matt coming to us from his home base in Hotlanta, Georgia. And Matt, it has been awfully hot here in southwestern Ohio this week, my friend. How are you?

Producer:
I am doing well. What do you know? Yeah, it's been hot here too. Usually I. I refrain from saying Hotlanta, but the name fits this week and really kind of all summer long. I mean, it has just been awful out there as it kind of has been across a lot of the country, as you said. But, you know, I mean, it's we're keeping we're just two cool guys, so we're keeping everybody cool with our our own coolness Here we are.

Woody Bowling:
And I like that. And I appreciate that point of view. I actually agree with it. And, you know, two cool guys bringing some hot information to our listeners. And, you know, each week it's important the topics that we talk about. You know what I found, Matt, in our 13 plus months of doing this is some people are just not quite ready to call. Some people have already called and some are saying, I'm going to do it one of these days. And I would just say to them, I've got several people that have told me, Woody, I meant to call. I got busy. We know life gets busy. I would encourage you call me (937) 974-6201. That's my cell number. I'm standing by ready to answer questions on a Saturday or Sunday. If I don't answer, I will call you back pretty quickly. I do church on Sundays, so the topics this week are going to be near and dear to everyone's heart. We're going to do what we do, and that's bring good information. And as a Series 65 registered investment advisor rep and also a licensed insurance agent for 14 plus years in Ohio and some other states, our goal as a hybrid advisor is to bring you great information, great advice, help you learn as much as you can so you can come up with good strategies together with me to implement to really make your retirement the most effective, the most long lasting and productive that it can be. Right? Matt That's what we do.

Producer:
That is absolutely correct. And you know, just 100% the goal of the show and the goal of what you do every day, Woody, is to really just help people and help people make their lives better. They can have a retirement that they really enjoy and a retirement that they've dreamed of their entire life. And today, you know, you mentioned a lot of great topics coming up on today's show. The sort of main overall theme has to do with risk. And a lot of times, what do you know? People traditionally have put bonds in their portfolio to protect against the market volatility to to sort of hedge some of the risk that is inherent with the markets, with the stock market. So, you know, people look at that as as sort of mitigating their risk. But in 2022, Bonds actually had their worst year in more than four decades. So, yeah, I mean, actually, the Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond index says last year was the worst year for bonds since they started measuring back in 1976. So I know that you meet with a lot of people who don't know how. Any fees they're paying for the bonds in their portfolio don't really you know, it doesn't really register how much that's costing them. And so we are so glad to offer this free report on bond replacement. And that can be just a really great resource for people. Woody And provide a lot of great information as well.

Woody Bowling:
Yeah, I agree. And you know, that's one of the things that we do and I appreciate all those behind the scenes that support you and I, you know, the organization behind all this that helps us, you know, put this show together. Each week they come up with the the outlines. They come in, they ask for input from us. You know, we believe in what we do. And I'm proud to be part of the organizations that I do a lot of business with. And, you know, we are concerned that people be educated in the ways that it makes sense. I don't care if you've got a college degree or an MD or a J.D. at the end of the day, you know, you need to be well educated about things like fees and what you're paying. Where should you put your money, depending on how old you are, how much risk? As you mentioned, we're going to talk about risk a lot in this show. How much risk is appropriate for you while at age 50, that number is going to be a lot different than at age 60 and way different than when you're 67 approaching full retirement age or 70 way different because each age group is going to be accomplishing certain different things. And I can tell you, I work with clients in all those age ranges and the diversity of answers that I get, the diversity of situations that I get, the amounts of money that people have saved for retirement, they're all different. So that's the fun part about what I do. And every case is different. It makes me have a lot of fun getting to know people, their own situations. What kind of jobs are you doing in your career? What do you want to do afterwards? Do you want to do anything other than travel and hang out with the grandkids? Do you want to go to France and Europe for ten days and 20 days? World cruises, all those things happen.

Woody Bowling:
And people in those early active years in retirement, I see people do all those that are my clients. So and that's all good. And Matt. We have one goal help people and we just want to help them be as effective as they can. And they won't know unless they take advantage of it. And you can go to the website TheBuckeyeAdvisor.com and that's advisor with an or TheBuckeyeAdvisor.com or call me (937) 974-6201. And let's chat doesn't cost you a nickel I'll come to you if that's the way you prefer it And we're going to have a conversation and just get to know each other the background and then I'm going to do some homework and I'll basically give you their honest opinion on what your goals are and are they compatible with a plan that we can put together to work. And in most cases that is totally possible. But I'll freely admit it's not possible on every case. So that's what we do. But people are surprised by the amount of retirement income that we can help them generate based on amounts of money that they didn't think could generate nearly as much income. And people want guarantees. We're going to talk about risk. But part of that is, is having part of your portfolio without any risk and without any fees necessarily and still be able to grow your money and produce some guaranteed income off of it that can offset and supplement that Social Security that people are going to get one of these days or some of our listeners are already getting.

Producer:
Yeah, that's absolutely right. And we're going to talk about Social Security as well a little bit later on as we kind of describe what at least used to be and still is for some people, but used to be the the three legged stool of retirement, Social Security being one of those legs. Right. But we'll also define some financial terms for you. And, you know, you hear a lot of financial terminology. Sometimes it may sound complicated, but we'll kind of break it down for you. A couple of really important terms to know when it comes to your money and of course, balancing risk in your savings and do your investments align with your financial needs, like what he was just talking about there. First, though, let's get things kicked off in kind of the meat of the show here with our Quote of the week.

Producer:
And now wholesome financial wisdom. It's time for the quote of the Week.

Producer:
And our words of wisdom this time around come from Earl Nightingale, who was an American radio speaker and author, died back in 1989 and dealt mostly with subjects of human character development. Motivation, success actually wrote the strangest secret, which is considered by many to be one of the great motivational books ever written. So someone who knew something about motivation and some words of positivity and encouragement here. And so Earl Nightingale said this, quote, Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway. I love that. That's very true.

Woody Bowling:
Very true. And I think most of our listeners, we probably don't have a lot of 20 year olds or 20 somethings or maybe even some 30 somethings, you know, at that stage of life. You don't see you think about retirement as being in this far distant galaxy. You see these goals of saving money for retirement as a journey that's going to take a gazillion years and you'll never get there. But you know, the next thing you know, you'll be knocking on 30, 40, 50, 60, and then retirement. So, you know, we want people to have dreams. We know a lot of people have them. I have them. The problem for most people is the society of today in America and other places in the world is we all want things today and people aren't willing to have the time, the patience that's involved in building things over time because the time does go away each day. Somebody told me a couple of years ago, they said each day goes slow, but the years go fast. And I think that's so true because it seems like during the day sometimes it just crawls and then you look back and go, Wow, it's August 26th. Where did the year go so far? And I'm sure some of our listeners can exactly verify what I just said. They feel the same way. So great quote. I love it. It gives people an idea that they do need to take hold. They do need to throw those dreams out there and don't be afraid to go for it. And it's never too late. We've talked about that in other shows before. It's never too late to jump down and hunker down and really focus. If it's a last few years situation where you really need to pour it on, do it. I can still help you figure out a way to get there.

Producer:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, we talked a few weeks back about how Gen X was not prepared for retirement and how to catch up, you know, get a lot of really great tips there about how to catch up. That same sort of logic is true for, you know, the baby boomer generation as well. There are ways for you to catch up if you feel like you've fallen behind. So go to The Buckeye Advisor dot com folks that's advisor with an or TheBuckeyeAdvisor.com and Woody Bowling can help you out there and so Woody you know a lot of what we do here and most of what we do here on the show has to do with educating folks about different, you know, strategies for retirement, about different terminology that they might hear when it comes to, you know, different financial products or different aspects of finance. And so one of the things that we wanted to do this week was kind of take a couple of terms that might seem a little complicated and not wouldn't say dumb them down, but that's what I would need to do for myself, but make them, you know, sort of make sense, pull back the curtain a little bit and explain a couple of these terms that people might otherwise have their eyes glaze over a little bit. Yeah, I.

Woody Bowling:
Think a lot of people that are listening today are not financial advisors. They don't work in the industry, they're not stockbrokers, they're not hedge fund managers. They have different careers. And that's what I do as a financial advisor and as somebody who has been in the business a long time now, 14 plus years. And even before that, I did my own investing in mutual funds and some of the other things. So yeah, we just want to kind of make it we want to make it real for people, the jargon that people use in their own industries really. I think a lot of times people get turned off by that, to be brutally honest. I mean, you can talk expense ratio, you can talk strategical asset tactical asset allocation, which we're going to talk about that in an episode coming up very shortly. Will segue into that. But, you know, people don't care how fancy things are at the end of the day, they want to know is can you help them? Do you have a track record? Where are you going to put my money? Do I understand why it's going there? And do I have a clue about what the goal is? And that's the most important thing that I, as an advisor, can have with a relationship with my clients is covering those areas. And that, I can tell you, is a resounding yes answer for those things with my clients.

Woody Bowling:
But yeah, you know, one of the terms we want to talk about is beta. Beta. It's. A charm that will get thrown around by people in the financial world. But ultimately, all it's talking about is the it's a measurement of the investment volatility in a particular item of financial interest. Okay? And that can be the beta of an individual stock, a mutual fund, many different types of investment vehicles, but also compared to usually the S&P 500. So when you go back many, many decades in the S&P, the Standard Poor's 500, which consists of 500 medium to large sized companies, for the most part in 10 to 12 different segments of our economy. That is considered to be a well-diversified. Portfolio to really rank other investment vehicles against as far as how much volatility they change, how much movement up and down does the price have in those vehicles and the earnings growth and earnings losses drops in their prices compared to the S&P 500? And I think hearing it in those terms makes sense for a lot of people because. Not every investment vehicle is going to be as volatile. They're not going to be as up and down as roller coaster ish as the S&P 500 is going to be. Matt, we saw in 2022, the S&P 500 was down.

Woody Bowling:
I believe the number was 22%, if I remember correctly, pretty close. The Nasdaq was off 30 to 35%. And you can correct me if I'm wrong on that, because I always have numbers running through my head. But. At the base of one move means it's going to be perfectly moving up and down with the S&P 500 or the overall market of the basket of stocks. If it's below one, it's less volatile, it's more stable. And if it's above one, you'll see beta of 1.3, 1.35. That just means it's more volatile. It's more the tendency is to go up and down at a higher pace and a higher movement amount in particular than the S&P 500. So beta is something you want to watch. It's all about as an advisor, I want to understand and we're going to do a risk profile questionnaire and we keep that on file because we need to understand how much risk you're okay with over a certain amount of time. How much are you okay with over a three month time if the market really doesn't do well and we know that happens in Covid in 2020, in March, April, May of Covid, the market really went in the tank over 30% drop. And I've talked to people, Matt, that manage their own money that became clients of mine and a couple of them didn't.

Woody Bowling:
And they told me, Woody, I got emotional. The market dropped 30%. I went to cash, I got out of the market and when the market turned on a dime, like it does sometimes and it starts going back up, they missed it. They missed that 20, 30, 40% increase that came later the rest of the year. For the end of the year of 2020, the market was up over 20% and that was after the dip in March, April, May. So, man, people lost a lot of money. And then because they got emotional, they were doing it themselves. They were already upset that they stayed in the market that long because I know when the market started dropping, their mind started turning and do I want to tell my spouse we're down 5% now? We're down 10% now we're down 15. I didn't pull the trigger. I didn't jump out. Okay. We're down 25. I'm going to get out now. Nope. Stuck around. They got out when it was 30% off. Then they were they were afraid and they were trying to time the market. And we've told our listeners before, do not try to time the market. It will not go well for you. So you need somebody on the ride to help you talk to you, make sure you're diversified enough that part of your holdings are experiencing risk.

Woody Bowling:
But the other part of your holdings, especially the older you get and closer to retirement you get. We want a percentage of your holdings for retirement to not have risk. We don't want you to carry risk. And some of them, we want those bonds out of the way. We're going to replace those bonds. You're not going to pay fees on them and we're going to get you in to what's appropriate for very, very many of my clients. And that's a fixed index annuity, principal protection, possibly guaranteed income for life if that's something you want. And many of my clients do want that. And also the other feature that gets underestimated is you can potentially grow very, very well your money. When the index that you follow, it does well. And when the market goes up, you're going to go up and you're getting interest credited once every year or once every two years, depending on how the index is set up. So we're going to protect that bond portion and we're going to update it with a fixed indexed annuity for most of my clients because it makes more sense today. Things have changed. They're different. This is not 1980 or 90 or early 2000 anymore. So bonds completely different. We're back in that inflationary high interest rate environment. That doesn't bode well for bonds overall.

Producer:
Yeah, it's you know, we often say that the annuities that are around today are not your grandfather's annuity as well. The the bond market that that we know today is not your grandfather's bond market either. So so there you go. And you were you were just spot on, by the way, a few minutes ago when you mentioned the Nasdaq last year, it's 2022 performance, down about 33%. So that was awful slight, only slightly overestimated the drop in the S&P 500. It was down just nearly 20%. So not too far off on that one either. And so that's why it's important, you know, to know some of these terms. Beta, of course, being the one that you just talked about. Also, before we go to the break, just about four minutes here in this half of the show, Woody, but just before we go to the break, let's talk about this next term, which is standard deviation.

Woody Bowling:
Yeah, it's another good one. It really helps people understand how, you know, how predictable are really unpredictable the investment or the portfolio might be. I mean, it's really based on statistical dispersion of a data set relative to its mean. It's a it's a little bit complicated in the calculation itself, but really what you as a listener need to understand about standard deviation is it's basically going to see how spread out the returns of an investment are. Statistically, the higher the standard deviation means that the returns can vary, vary a lot and mean vary. They can vary dramatically. But if your standard deviation on what your investment you're looking at is low, that means it's going to stay closer to the average. So if the average long term is 8%, but it's a it's got a high standard deviation, it could be up 30% or it could be down 30%. Or if it has a lower standard deviation, it can be up 15% and it can be down, you know, 12 or 14 or 16%. So you look at things that are not as volatile. And it is important when you look at the standard deviation, it's not only important to look at the rate of return long term of a vehicle that you're looking at to put your money because each one should be evaluated and you want to look at historical performance. But also the standard deviation is important because it really tells you and Matt, I want to tell people, you know, how much Pepto-Bismol do you need on this ride towards retirement? Because a lot of people, man, their stomachs start getting really churning when they are down 10%.

Woody Bowling:
And when they get down 15, they're ready to jump off that roller coaster, especially as they're getting closer to retirement. So that's the challenge. That's the part where you as a listener are unique. You might have lots of relatives and friends and co-workers that are in the market in their 401. K or retirement, just investment plans. But everybody's different in how they feel about when the market's going down. And it does go down as we've been witnessing this last year and a half. And it's going to continue to be volatile in the future. We're not out of the woods yet with inflation. We're not done with rate hikes. We don't that's not done. We're going to find that out again here in a couple of weeks. So. The markets had a good ride, but it's also been very choppy these last two, three weeks, and we're experiencing that choppiness. We're not having that upswing that we had earlier this year. So, look, all of those things are important and I care about all of them. And I just want to make sure that the plan that we talk about is appropriate for how you feel as an investor.

Producer:
Yeah. And it all has to do with, you know, that that measure of safety versus risk, how well your retirement plan, your retirement portfolio is diversified. And diversification really is key in that to, you know, sort of offset any potential losses. Because if you have something that that has a high standard deviation, for example, your chances of losses can be greater than if you have a lower standard deviation because it's going to deviate farther from that. That mean. Right. That that sort of average. And so you can potentially have bigger losses. So that's one of the reasons why it's important to kind of know some of these terms. Now, here's what we're going to do. It's time for our first break of the show. But we when we come back, it'll be everybody's favorite part of the show. Yes, that'll be our dad. Joke of the week as we return. And then also, we're going to have a cost cutter tip when we come back. And I know saving money is right up everybody's alley. So we'll talk about that in just a moment when The Buckeye Advisor continues. Stick around. Young.

Producer:
Thanks for listening to The Buckeye Advisor. If you like what you're hearing, subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch videos from this program and other recent episodes.

Producer:
Welcome back to The Buckeye Advisor. I'm Matt McClure here alongside Woody Bowling. He's The Buckeye Advisor. And. And you're not? No, he is The Buckeye Advisor. And I'm just the the producer and co-host of the show here. But Woody is the one who is here to help you achieve the retirement of your dreams. That is what the show is all about. You can go online to The Buckeye Advisor with an or.com that's TheBuckeyeAdvisor.com or call Woody at (937) 974-6201.

Producer:
Oh, sure, you can handle ghost peppers. You choose scorpions like Skittles. But can you stomach the dad joke of the week?

Producer:
All right, Woody, it is that time, so lay it on us, please.

Woody Bowling:
I don't feel any pressure because I think we're always going to come back with something good. I'd like to say it's new and improved, but that may not always be the case. We're going to change the format to one that we've used once or twice in the past. We're going to do a blonde joke, and as I've said before, it is wifey approved because she is a blonde, a very attractive lady and a very smart lady. So she gets a kick out of these jokes as well because she listens to The Buckeye Advisor, which I like. Matt, what do you what do you do when a blonde throws a grenade at you? Oh, well.

Producer:
I'd probably run, but what do you do when a blonde throws a grenade at you?

Woody Bowling:
Actually, you pull the pin and throw it back at her.

Producer:
Oh, I love it.

Producer:
It's like the quintessential blonde joke there. I love.

Producer:
That.

Woody Bowling:
It is. And there's more where that came from. There's also plenty of good dad jokes, so keep tuning in. 14 months into this, we're always going to find fresh material. But you know, back to our regularly programmed information and that's what we do. The financial and insurance stuff.

Producer:
That's right.

Producer:
Absolutely is. And we have some fun along the way, which is what I love about working with The Buckeye Advisor. And hey, you'll have some fun too, if you work with The Buckeye Advisor. Once again, the website is of course TheBuckeyeAdvisor.com. Well, you know, so before the break we were talking about some financial terms. Very important to, to understand. We we talked about beta, we also talked about standard deviation. If you just tuned in to the show on the air or on the live stream, you can go back to the website, TheBuckeyeAdvisor.com. Anywhere you get your podcasts, listen to that first half of the show because it really informational stuff and think breaking it down in a way that you can understand some some potentially complicated terms there. So that's that's some good good stuff. But also now we want to move here to a cost cutter tip, which is how people can save money with ETFs. Exchange traded funds is what those are. Woody Now talk about ETFs. People think if they just sort of look at an ETF on the surface, they look at it and say, Oh, well, that sounds a lot like a mutual fund. And, you know, which is kind of true. They do have some similarities, but they got a lot of differences, too.

Woody Bowling:
They do. And mutual funds have dominated the industry in the early parts of over the last several decades. But then, you know, being the creative folks that they are, these financial gurus came up with ETFs and you exchange traded funds. And all that really is is a type of a pooled investment security that holds a multiple underlying assets rather than only one. So there's advantages. And some of these advantages are very important to you as an investor. You as a saver, as a future retiree. And I'm going to start with a lower expense ratios. And that's very important because as an advisor, I do have part of the way that I do business, number one, on the investment side of my business, the fee is structured so that as you do better as my client, I do better. Okay, So that's fair. People feel that, that's fair. Hey, if my assets are growing, then what? I get the fee that I charge, which is a flat annual fee, is going to go up as well. So that's a fair trade. But on the other side, if it's going down, then my fee is less on the dollar side of it as well. So ETFs, we use them a lot within some of our strategies On the investment advisory side and the tactical money management, we feel that ETFs can be more cost effective, cost efficient, the expense ratios can be lower. And that's important because in the long run, even if someone is working with an advisor that says, Oh well, my annual fee as an advisor is only this much if they're not being fee efficient with the investment strategies and the mutual funds or the ETFs, and if they're charging transactional fees and annual fees, all these things add up.

Woody Bowling:
So it really becomes not so true because if people were able to take the time and add up all those different fees, they actually wind up paying more in the long run. And if you pay more on an annual basis for your money to be managed and you're also paying management fees on those bond funds and on bonds that we talked about earlier, you know, we advocate really evaluating whether bonds should be appropriate for you today. There's more tax efficient, there's more fee efficient ways to do it. That's what we do on the insurance side of my business. And so ETFs are very good. Transparency is another feature that we like. We want to keep money in people's pocket. And you also can see in the ETF what it holds. And most of the time the ETFs that we use don't have any annual fee or load any of those things. A load can be a sales commission on mutual funds. You know, a category mutual fund would be an. A share, and that would consist typically of a load of 5% up front.

Woody Bowling:
People aren't aware of that. There's B shares that can have a back end load if you don't hold them for a certain amount of time and you do sell those mutual funds, you're going to pay a fee based on what the fee is at that point as the length of holding time. And then C shares can be they're really going to manipulate those just because they don't want the return to be as attractive necessarily as an A or a B share because that C doesn't have any fund any fund fees at all. So there's different ways. Different ways. So people have a 401. K with their employer. If you're 59.5 in, most employers will allow you to roll that out, do what's called an in-service withdrawal. I do that for folks on a regular basis. We set up an IRA account and then we look at finding effective ways and strategies to manage that money. Usually you have, I can assure you, with the Brookstone management group that I use for the investment advisory side of my business, we have so many options that can be so much tailored to what you're looking for. It's so different than a 401 K plan, which usually only has maybe a dozen, maybe two dozen options at the most. And those options are never explained to people. So they just set it, they forget it, they keep rolling on the company throws in their match.

Woody Bowling:
But people are surprised to learn at age 59.5, you can take that withdrawal. It's called in-service withdrawal. You can roll it to an IRA and you still can keep contributing to your 401. K, and the company's going to keep matching. There's no penalties, no tax consequences for rolling it into an IRA. We can look at whether a Roth IRA might be appropriate. All those things can happen when you have an advisor that understands how the system can work for you and actually personalize your service because that 401. K company, whoever they are, they don't know you from Adam. They don't have a face to face relationship with you. They're going to have a different advisor answer the phone every time you call their 800 number. That's not personal service. And people today deserve and they like it and they also deserve it. And they deserve to talk to somebody that they can get on the phone every time, have a consistent strategy, have updated regular meetings and conversations about how things are going, can help with things like Medicare, life insurance, long term care, help them do other things that are protect those assets over the long run. So, you know, that's the value in working with an advisor on a one on one basis and that's why I like what I do. It's just it's exciting to bring value to people and to have those relationships.

Producer:
Yeah. And you know, speaking of value, I mean, that is exactly what you just talked about. What he is, why you provide these free no obligation consultations to people, just absolutely at no cost. If you're a listener of the show, you can you can get that consultation absolutely free of any cost and any obligation. And that's really where that journey all begins toward making your retirement much more solid. Right? I mean, you know, we've been talking, of course, a lot about the fees that you might be paying today. We've been talking a lot about these potentially complicated terms that people might have heard but didn't maybe quite know what they meant. Well, I got news for you folks. Woody Bowling knows all about them because that's what he does for a living. And so if you need help, kind of navigating this is a great opportunity, I believe, for this full retirement plan. Consultation, absolutely. Free of cost.

Woody Bowling:
You know, it's been funny lately. I've run into a few people where they're looking for Medicare information because I lead with Medicare with a lot of people get referred to by Medicare clients. I've got then I find in sitting down with them on that first conversation and first meeting where I'm taking notes, you know, I found several people that have left jobs for a number of years. They're still working and they really want to figure out, do I want to go on Medicare right now? Do I want to stick to my employer health coverage? Do you have a spouse? Do you not? How is your health overall? What is your deductible and what is your maximum out of pocket along with your monthly premium of your current employer health coverage? Once I have that information and I know if you're on any medicine, which doctors you like to use, I'm going to be able to tell you pretty darn quickly how much more of an advantage or not so much to go into a Medicare plan. But I'm finding people that have 401. K's, they're like, oh, yeah, I have a 401 K plan. I left there ten years ago or eight years ago. I just didn't do anything with it. I didn't think about it.

Woody Bowling:
You know, my new employer, I'm contributing. I've got another 401 K with them. Well, certainly we're in most cases, we may or may not be moving that depending on how far away they are before they want to retire. And it may just not make sense to move it quite yet until they're ready to completely step out. But that prior 401 K and I call a stray 401 K, it makes complete sense. Let's get more options. Can we tactically manage some of it? Can we put some of it into a fixed indexed annuity? No risk. Look at building growth over time to look at potential guaranteed income later on to supplement that Social Security. Great ways to work at 401 403, RBS, Sep, IRAs, all those things. I can look at them. I can help you. We can roll them, we can evaluate them and really understand, you know, how that's helping today versus how it might help if we do make some changes. And that's the part about it. We can give you good information, the results that you currently have versus, you know, what those could be and also the value of a one on one on one relationship with me as your advisor in the future. Yeah.

Producer:
And you know, folks, to get started on that journey just go to TheBuckeyeAdvisor.com that's The Buckeye Advisor with an or at the end there.com or you can call Woody at (937) 974-6201. That's (937) 974-6201. I mean remember folks it is your money so if it matters to you it matters to The Buckeye Advisor as well. Well okay, Woody teed this up at the beginning, so I guess it's time. I know people have been waiting with bated breath for our discussion about the three legged stool here. And, you know, if you've got a stool and it's got two legs, it's probably going to be pretty wobbly. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, they have a two legged stool that they're dealing with when planning for their retirement because one of those legs for most people is just gone these days. Talk about the three legged stool and kind of what that means and what we mean when we say it.

Woody Bowling:
Yeah. Thanks for teeing that up. You did a great job on that, you know, basically for many, many years. That's a term that's been used a lot in the financial industry and it refers to one leg of the stool is Social Security. That one is can be a little shaky in the future for some. I'm not sure. Hopefully not. Personal savings. A lot of people are fortunate enough to have personal savings. I've got clients that have a lot of money in the bank and they've got no money in the stock market. They got no money in an IRA. They just have been able to squirrel away a lot of money. But it's all not working very well for them because the bank doesn't want to pay them very much. And then the third leg is pension and the pension is almost the way of the bigfoot slash Sasquatch. Pensions are just not around that much anymore, right? That's unfortunate, but companies a couple of decades ago were given the option to create those 401. K plans. And what they did was they removed their own liability that they had to create that pension. Hey, work for us for 30 years, 25, 30, 35 years, and you're guaranteed this pension. Or and, you know, most people today don't do that anymore. And and what it did is it put the worker in the driver's seat, the responsibility seat where they have to be big boys and girls. They have to save their own money in their 401. K, They have to figure out which plan options will make the most sense for them. And then do they ever change them? Usually not. Then they are 20, 25 years later. I've got this 401 K plan now that's going to fall under personal savings, but I don't have that pension stool leg anymore. So what the fun part about what I do is once I know your Social Security benefit amount.

Producer:
We know how much.

Woody Bowling:
Personal savings you've got. What I love doing and I've helped dozens of clients do this over the last few years is we do that third leg. We create a pension from those personal savings. Because look, at the end of the day, you at age 65, you could live another 20 years, you could live another 25 years, 30 years. My mom's grandmother died 4 or 5 years ago at age 97, 98. Had another relative die recently. She was 89, an aunt. So it happens. People from church, 91, 92 all the time. So, look, if you're 65, you might need to survive another 25 years on your savings. So if you're getting paid 2% or 1% from your bank, I'm going to be honest with you, that's not a great return. I mean, sure, you can walk in and grab it, but at the end of the day, banks are now to the point. If you've been to your bank lately, as a listener and you saw a sign I was in my bank the other day, I saw a sign without prior notice, maximum withdrawal amount. $1,000. Back 20 years ago, ten, 15 years ago, you never saw that you could walk in and pull out 20, 30, 50,000. No big deal today just because it's a bank and a brick and mortar building in your area where you live, you have the feeling that, oh, it's my money, it's liquid.

Woody Bowling:
I could walk in and get it tomorrow. Well, you might want to rethink that because that's not the case any longer. So that retirement stool, three legs, we can add the pension leg to it if you don't have it. I've got a few clients that already have a pension. They have Social Security and they have savings. And we've added to their personal pension because they wanted to even get a little bit more with this high inflation that's been going on and the cost of living. So that's the fun part. We want to create that stool that's right for you. Everybody's different. Everybody's amount that they've saved is different and everybody's lifestyle is different as well. Everybody's budget. Just because you live near somebody or you're relative to someone doesn't mean your lifestyle is going to be exactly the same. I've seen people live in modest homes that have a lot of money saved and vice versa. I've seen people in fancy houses that don't have nearly as much money saved. So, you know, there's a dichotomy there that happens. And, you know, so it's don't feel bad if you've got 100,000 or 1 million or 10 million. You know, I'm here to talk to people and really put together strategies that are going to help them out when it comes to blending it all together, coming up with a cohesive plan that's holistic in its approach.

Producer:
And it's going to take.

Woody Bowling:
You to that.

Producer:
Stool.

Woody Bowling:
We're going to get all three legs of those. For most people, it's very few and far between, Matt, that I run into somebody who doesn't want some sort of income, you know, added on to what they're getting already. And I'll tell you a good example. I had a lady in a variable annuity recently. We moved her from one variable annuity, which was 4.7% annual fees, which is horrendous.

Producer:
To a fixed indexed annuity.

Woody Bowling:
That cannot go down in value other than her withdrawals. She wanted to keep her income coming. We increased her withdrawals from 1800 to 2100 and some change per month on a 300,000 was just under 300,000 amount that we moved. And she was so happy and ecstatic because she was already getting a good income from it. And she's got other assets. But I mean, just to make the move, we reduced her fees from 4.7% to 1%. She can't go down in value. The variable annuity was completely subject to the fluctuation of those mutual funds that were making that making that sub account up.

Producer:
That's a win win situation.

Woody Bowling:
And I love win win situations for my clients.

Producer:
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, when you hear people speaking negatively about annuities, most of the time they are speaking about those variable annuities, like you said, that are at risk in the market. They have really high fees. The vast majority of them. And so it's really something to watch out for. And don't you know anybody who just says blanket statement annuities are bad. Don't listen to that because there are some annuities. Yeah. That are that are bad and there are some annuities that might be good for somebody else that are bad for you in your situation. It all has to do with your individual situation and that's really kind of the main message that we try to get across every episode. Woody, I know that that you emphasize this a lot because you work with people one on 1 or 1 on two or whatever the situation might be by saying, Look, I'm going to tailor this to your specific situation. This is not anything like one size fits all that, you know, okay, well, maybe it's it actually did fit because even one size fits all clothing that's not one size fits all. It may be one size fits a few people, but that's kind of it. This is not that kind of type of situation when it comes to planning your future.

Producer:
Yeah, you got it.

Woody Bowling:
Exactly. I mean, that. That hits the nail on the head. I couldn't have said it better. All situations are different. They all require different research. I work with multiple, very highly ranked insurance companies when it comes to the annuity side. And I like to think about this. If you have a variable annuity and I know a lot of people do and some of our listeners they know Woody, I have a variable annuity. I just haven't done anything with it. If that thing is over five years old, you can probably move it with no surrender charge on that current annuity you have. Or it could be low enough that we can put you into a different fixed indexed annuity and dramatically lower your annual fees. We can look at future income considerations if you need guaranteed income and you're going to still get potentially good growth out of it. But I work with multiple great companies that are highly rated, and I like to think if you're if you're in a race to retirement and you've got a variable annuity and you're paying four and a half to 5.5% annual fees, I mean, it's like you're running the race with a lead weight tied onto your ankle and it makes it very difficult to make that journey and do it effectively and do it in the best fashion you can. And and we'll also remember this life and retirement is not a sprint. It's a marathon. Most people don't create enough wealth in a two or 3 or 4 year period, you know, unless they're starting a brand new company from scratch and it blows up and goes public or something or gets bought by another company.

Producer:
I'm talking about.

Woody Bowling:
The normal person working self-employed. They create wealth. They create their savings over a period of years. And that's what it's about. It's a marathon. And you've worked hard and the adviser that you may be used to get you there in those growing years might not be the right adviser for you. Now, that's why a lot of people contact me and say, I want you to give me a second opinion. I'm not sure I want to be in Bonds anymore. I'm not sure I want to be 100% invested in the stock market with mutual funds because when the years that the market turns and goes south and if you're drawing income from that portfolio, it makes it very difficult because you don't have the time to recover, especially you compounding that concern when you're retiring and starting withdrawals right away. And I've run into people like that in the last couple of years. It's a big concern. That's why my business continues to grow as I continue to counsel people on. It's not all about the market. You need you do need some market like growth on the investment side of your portfolio, but maybe that should only be 50% or 60% of your accumulated savings. And that's the message most stockbrokers or other types of advisors will never give their clients. They will never give them that. And we know today things are different than they used to be, and it takes people to be forward thinking and understand that. And I can show people proof of how it works and how it can really benefit them in their own situation.

Producer:
And go to TheBuckeyeAdvisor.com folks for more information and to reach out to Woody Bowling. That's The Buckeye Advisor with an o r.com. Or you can call Woody at (937) 974-6201. Well Woody we are running up here on the end of the show. We don't have time quite for the the full this week in History segment. But I wanted to highlight one thing here that I know is very exciting to folks in Ohio, particularly central Ohio and farther south. And that would be on August 26th, 1939, the very first baseball game was televised and it was narrated by Red Barber. It pitted the Cincinnati Reds against the Brooklyn Dodgers, and it was broadcast from Ebbets Field in New York. A historic moment. And hey, Cincinnati Reds got us started with baseball on TV.

Woody Bowling:
Huge, big Red Machine.

Producer:
Fan.

Woody Bowling:
Huge fan of the 1990 team and just as big a fan as this good young Cincinnati Reds team this year with all these young prospects, I don't know if we can play as well as those darn Atlanta Braves, but I think they're going to give it a shot. And I know we're running out of time and we are grateful to everybody. That takes time to listen either on the podcast. Don't forget about our YouTube channel, The Buckeye Advisor with an or subscribe. And like our YouTube videos, we get 1 to 2 minute clips from the when we're recording this fine show. And Matt, I can't say it. I can't do it without you. And most of all, we can't do it without our listeners and we look forward to everybody having a blessed week and another good episode that's flown by, and I think we'll be back at it again next week.

Producer:
We will. And we'll see you then. Everybody.

Producer:
Thanks for listening to The Buckeye Advisor. You deserve to work with an experienced and licensed expert who will strategically work to protect and grow your hard earned assets to schedule your free no obligation consultation with Woody, visit TheBuckeyeAdvisor.com or pick up the phone and call (937) 974-6201. That's (937) 974-6201.

Investment Advisory Services offered through Brookstone Capital Management, LLC, BCM, a registered investment advisor, BCM and The Buckeye Advisor are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM, but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Past performance cannot be used as an indicator to determine future results.

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