Make It Last with Victor Medina - Legal & Financial Retirement Planning

When interest rates are high, bonds are great to own because they’ll pay out a healthy amount. However, is there a better alternative in a low-interest environment?

Make It Last with Victor Medina is hosted by Victor J. Medina, an estate planning and certified elder law attorney and Certified Financial Planner™. Through his law firm and independent registered investment advisory company, Victor provides 360º Wealth Protection Strategies for individuals in or nearing retirement.

For more information, visit Medina Law Group or Private Client Capital Group.

Click below to read the full transcript..

Victor Medina:  Everybody, welcome back to Make It Last. I’m your host, Victor Medina. I’m so glad that you could join us here this Saturday morning for a rip‑rousing, another episode of Make It Last where we help you keep your legal ducks in a row, and your financial nest egg secure.

I’ve got three topics for you here today. I’m really excited to share them with you. We’re going to talk a little bit about why this next generation of millennials is counting on you, their parents, dying in order to help them solve their debt.

We’re also going to go over why in this low interest rate environment it might be a good idea to own an alternative to bonds, and some of the research behind what makes that so. Finally, we’re going to talk to you a bit about why you should hire a financial planner even if you are not rich, especially if you’re not rich.

Before we get started with that, I do want to issue a little bit of an apology, I suppose. I listened back to last week’s show. I think I was way disconnected to what was going on, in terms of the episode.

I shared with you that I am still going through a major health crisis with a family member, and I think that has me largely distracted. Still has me distracted, but I feel a little bit more involved in today’s show than I was last week.

Listening back to it, I might have rambled for a little bit. Anyway, thanks for listening. Thanks for coming back. [laughs] We’re going to do a little bit better this time around for this week. Interesting research coming out. There’s this host of millennials. These millennials are basically the people aged 20 to 34 right about now.

Those are the millennials, and there is all kinds of craziness going on with them. One in four of them are still living with their parents, that’s up to the age of 34. This job market is very, very challenging. People are coming out with four‑year degrees and tons of debt.

There is even an article that came out in “The New York Times” about a dentist that had amassed over a million dollars in student debt and it was increasing by $130 per day. Even though the gentleman was earning $130,000 a year, he essentially wasn’t going to make paying this back.

Between student loan debt and the sort of craziness that’s going on with either the housing market or how people are coming out with jobs and whatnot, situation is such that the millennials are really counting on one thing to help them eliminate their debt, and that is essentially you, their parents, dying.

This research came out. It basically said that two‑thirds of millennials ‑‑ two‑thirds ‑‑ expect to inherit something financially from their parents. They’re banking on this windfall to help pay off the debts, according to the student loans company that basically did this study.

They think that the average inheritance is going to be around $80,000. I’m not really sure what they’re basing that on. What I mean by that is that, they’re projections about how much people will have but that is all tied to what stock market might look like when people die, actuarials.

There are 9,500 mutual funds for you to buy. Which ones are best for you to own in retirement? We explore that and the death of the DOL “fiduciary” rule.

Make It Last with Victor Medina is hosted by Victor J. Medina, an estate planning and certified elder law attorney and Certified Financial Planner™. Through his law firm and independent registered investment advisory company, Victor provides 360º Wealth Protection Strategies for individuals in or nearing retirement.

For more information, visit Medina Law Group or Private Client Capital Group.

Click below to read the full transcript..

Victor Medina:  Everybody, welcome back to Make It Last. I’m your host Victor Medina. A happy Memorial Day weekend to you all. I’m so glad you could join us here this Saturday morning. First thing, I’ve got to apologize. Those of you that tuned in last week on the radio show unfortunately heard a rebroadcast, and the reason isn’t great.

I had a bit of a family emergency. I’m fine. My immediate family is fine, namely my children. I did have one of my parents run into a health issue that has caused me to be out of the office to help them with that. I may go into detail about that in the future but for now just know that I appreciate your listenership and the fact that you joined us here.

Please accept my apology for not sending out a new show. We are back with a new show for this fine Memorial Day weekend. I’m excited personally because it’s a big long soccer weekend. I’ve always thought about Memorial Day weekend as a soccer weekend.

My middle child’s got a soccer tournament and we’re going to be excited to go over to Manalapan and watch him play. Hopefully, the weather cooperates and hopefully the record reflects the hard play that I know he’s capable of putting in as well as the rest of the team. Go NLSA Knights. What can I tell you?

Lots of things in the news related to my favorite subject, which is, you need a fiduciary helping you in your financial life. Since the last time I’ve been on the air, we had the death knell of the DOL Fiduciary Rule.

As of May 7th, that thing is gonesers. It’s not a chance it’s coming back. This administration will not challenge a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said basically that law was overbroad and not enforceable. Therefore, we are back to old status quo.

What does that mean? It means that, the people that are not fiduciaries, have no obligation to work in your best interest. Why is this such a big deal? Even recently in the news? One of the reasons it’s such big news is that there’s been a quote from the Pope.

The Pope has weighed in on the debate over the need for a universal standard of fiduciary, for financial advisers. [laughs] Issued inside of the Vatican, there was a “Bulletin” that took aim at broad targets, such as selfishness in the financial industry, to more specific points including things like the credit default swaps.

Those things that got us in so much trouble. The derivative has been criticized in the past by people like Warren Buffet. Anyway, the Pope himself scrutinized financial advisers and how they manage the savings of their clients.

The savings, I’m quoting now from the Vatican Bulletin, “The saving itself, when entrusted in the expert hands of financial advisers, needs to be administered well and not just managed.” That came from a section entitled, “Considerations for the Ethical Discernment Regarding some Aspects of the Present Economic Financial System.”

The Bulletin is really focused on the practice called churning. If you’re not familiar with that, that’s basically the unnecessary actions that take place to generate commissions wi...

If you are approaching retirement and you don’t have enough money, there are a few things you can do to make up your retirement shortfall. Also, having your attorney be a Certified Elder Law Attorney (CELA) can be a major advantage. Why? Listen to this show to learn why.

Make It Last with Victor Medina is hosted by Victor J. Medina, an estate planning and certified elder law attorney and Certified Financial Planner™. Through his law firm and independent registered investment advisory company, Victor provides 360º Wealth Protection Strategies for individuals in or nearing retirement.

For more information, visit Medina Law Group or Private Client Capital Group.

Click below to read the full transcript..

Victor Medina:  Everybody, welcome back to Make It Last. I’m your host, Victor Medina. I’m so glad you could join us this Saturday morning as we’re discussing one of these topics that it really has me excited, which is how to avoid mistakes, especially money mistakes, the closer you get to retirement. I’m going to go over that.

I just wanted to highlight a couple of things that are coming up. If you’d like to see me come and speak, I’ve got two opportunities for that. One of them is professional in nature and the other is personal and a little bit more fun. I am going to be at the East Windsor Senior Center on May 17th at 10:30 in the morning.

You have to be an East Windsor residents to sign up for that. In fact, you have to pre‑register for it, I think, because they’re a little bit pressed for time. If you’re interested in the topic, the topic happens to be three ways…three reasons… Let’s try that all over again. [laughs]

Three reasons why you should never, ever, ever buy an annuity, and three real life scenarios in which you may want to think about buying an annuity. If you’re interested in that topic, you can join us on May 17th at 10:30 in the morning at the East Windsor Senior Center.

The other thing ‑‑ that’s the professional one, the more fun one is ‑‑ this morning, I don’t know. Are you a fan of a cappella music? I now happen to be, because I’m part of an a cappella group. This morning, starting at 9:30 in the morning, at the Kingston Presbyterian Church, if you got nothing to do and you want to come listen to a free a cappella concert, you can do so.

We’re going to start at 9:30 in the morning. My group, which is called Jersey Transit, of which I’m one of the musical directors, we’re going to be performing along with 10 other groups. I’ll tell you, the groups are all different kinds, lot of fun. All men’s groups, all women’s groups, mixed groups like Jersey Transit, which is a coed group.

We even have a four‑part quartet that sings a lot of really cool jazz harmonies. If you’re interested in that, we’re going to go from 9:30 to 4:00 today, May 5th. In fact, Jersey Transit is the host of this conference that goes on every year. It’s called Spring Sing.

It’s in its 60‑something year, might be 61st year, and we’re hosting. We’re welcoming all these great groups from across the country, Chicago, Detroit, Boulder, Philadelphia, Boston area. It’s going to be a lot of fun, so I hope you’ll join us.

Let me go right into it. I am really excited about this topic. This topic is really about how to make sure that you don’t make mistakes. It’s interesting for me, because part of what we do is to go ahead and make sure that people who are nearing retirement don’t make mistakes.

We started out in that world, largely thinking about that from the context of legal planning. That’s where we began our career. After some time,

Mistakes are a part of life. When it comes to money and time, mistakes near retirement can have catastrophic consequences. This week, Victor discusses the 10 worst money mistakes for near retirees.

Make It Last with Victor Medina is hosted by Victor J. Medina, an estate planning and elder law attorney and Certified Financial Planner™. Through his law firm and independent registered investment advisory company, Victor provides 360º Wealth Protection Strategies for individuals in or nearing retirement.

For more information, visit Medina Law Group or Private Client Capital Group.

Click below to read the full transcript..

Victor Medina:  Everybody, welcome back to Make It Last. I’m your host, Victor Medina. I’m so glad you could join us this Saturday morning as we’re discussing one of these topics that it really has me excited which is how to avoid mistakes, especially money mistakes, the closer you get to retirement. I’m going to go over that.

I just wanted to highlight a couple of things that are coming up. If you’d like to see me come and speak, I’ve got two opportunities for that. One of them is professional in nature. The other is personal and a little bit more fun. I’m going to be at the East Windsor Senior Center on May 17th at 10:30 in the morning.

You have to be an East Windsor resident to sign up for that. In fact, you have to pre‑register for it because they’re a little bit pressed for time. If you’re interested in the topic, the topic happens to be three reasons…

Let’s try that all over again. [laughs] Three reasons why you should never, ever, ever buy an annuity and three real‑life scenarios in which you may want to think about buying an annuity.

If you’re interested in that topic, you can join us on May 17th at 10:30 in the morning at the East Windsor Senior Center. That’s the professional one.

The more fun one is, this morning…I don’t know. Are you a fan of a cappella music? I know I happen to be, because I’m a part of an a cappella group. This morning, starting at 9:30 in the morning at the Kingston Presbyterian Church, if you’ve got nothing to do and you want to come listen to a free a cappella concert, you can do so.

We’re going to start at 9:30 in the morning. My group, which is called Jersey Transit, of which I’m one of the musical directors, we’re going to be performing along with 10 other groups.

I’ll tell you, the groups are all different kinds, lot of fun, all men’s groups, all women’s groups, mixed groups like Jersey Transit, which is a co‑ed group. We even have a four‑part quartet that sings a lot of really cool jazz harmonies.

If you’re interested in that, we’re going to go from 9:30 to 4:00 today, May 5th. In fact, Jersey Transit is the host of this conference that goes on every year. It’s called Spring Sing. It’s in its 60‑something year. It might be 61st year.

We’re hosting. We’re welcoming all these great groups from across the country, Chicago, Detroit, Boulder, Philadelphia, Boston area. It’s going to be a lot of fun, so I hope you’ll join us. Let me go right into it, because I am excited about this topic. This topic is about how to make sure that you don’t make mistakes.

It’s interesting for me, because part of what we do is to go ahead and make sure that people who are nearing retirement don’t make mistakes. We started out in that world largely thinking about that from the context of legal planning. That’s where we began our career.

After some time, we started adding some financial services planning to that and helping people think about money in that same area. The idea’s all the same.

Three topics for this show: How to select a great executor or power of attorney agent. Then Victor talks about how to plan for getting older if you’re single, with or without kids. Finally, Victor discusses the real cost of not working with a “best-interests” financial advisor.

Make It Last with Victor Medina is hosted by Victor J. Medina, an estate planning and elder law attorney and Certified Financial Planner™. Through his law firm and independent registered investment advisory company, Victor provides 360º Wealth Protection Strategies for individuals in or nearing retirement.

For more information, visit Medina Law Group or Private Client Capital Group.

Click below to read the full transcript…

Announcer:  Welcome to “Make it Last.” Helping you keep your legal ducks in a row, and your nest eggs secure. With your host Victor Medina, an estate planning and elder law attorney, and certified financial planner.

Victor J. Medina:  Everybody, welcome back to Make It Last. I’m your host, Victor Medina. I’m so glad that you could join us here. This is April 28th. It’s 7:30 in the morning.

I am pleased to be your host, and share with you some great information today. I’m going to talk about three different topics.

I’m going to cover, essentially, how to select the best executor and/or power of attorney agent. I’m going to cover what to do if you are single, with or without kids and getting older, how to plan for your care in those circumstances. Finally, I’m going to talk to you a little bit about the real cost of not having a best interest advisor working with you. We’re going to try to hit all of those today.

First, a couple of public service announcements. I have some speaking engagements coming up and I want to let you know about them in case you’d like to join me. These are absolutely free. I’ve got two things coming up that are professional in nature, and one of them, that’s a little bit fun and personal.

I’m going to be speaking at the Roosevelt Senior Center on, this is May the 1st, at 12 o’clock in the middle of the day at their Municipal Building, which is located at 33 North Rockdale Avenue, which is also known as Route 571 in Roosevelt, New Jersey.

If you are interested in attending the best thing you can do is, first of all, you can just show up. But if you want to make sure that you’ve got all the details straight, you call the Borough Hall at 609‑448‑0539. That’s 609‑448‑0539. It’s going to consist of some senior citizens. It’s part of the senior citizens club that they have out there.

I will be discussing things about all kinds of legal planning, legal state planning, like powers of attorney, advanced health care directives, health care proxies wills and estate planning, all that fun, fun stuff, including Medicaid planning. If you are interested in hearing a little bit about that, you can show up and attend that talk.

Then also coming up a little bit later, I’m going to be at the East Windsor Senior Center. It’s going to be on May 17th again in the morning about 10:30 in the morning. They are also located off 571 in East Windsor. If you’re interested in coming and see that I got a completely different topic there.

I’m going to talk about three reasons why you should never ever, ever buy an annuity and three life scenarios in which you might want to consider buying an annuity. If you’re interested in learning a little bit more about those financial planning topics go ahead and attend these Windsor Senior Center.

They do require pre‑registration, so you have to contact them about coming in and seeing me talk there, but those are two opportunities.

Tax rates are at their lowest in three decades, and the law is set to revert back to the old numbers in a few years. So, does that mean that it’s the perfect time to consider a Roth IRA conversion?

Make It Last with Victor Medina is hosted by Victor J. Medina, an estate planning and elder law attorney and Certified Financial Planner™. Through his law firm and independent registered investment advisory company, Victor provides 360º Wealth Protection Strategies for individuals in or nearing retirement.

For more information, visit Medina Law Group or Private Client Capital Group.

Click below to read the full transcript…

Announcer:  Welcome to “Make It Last,” helping you keep your legal ducks in a row and your nest egg secure, with your host, Victor Medina, an estate planning and elder law attorney and Certified Financial Planner.

Victor J. Medina:  Everybody, welcome back to Make It Last. This is episode 52. This is the full deck of cards of the [laughs] Make It Last show. This is the ace of spades of episodes. I’m your host Victor Medina. I’m so happy you can join us here this Saturday morning.

I’m excited about today’s show in large part because we’re going to be talking about a topic near and dear to my heart, it’s Roth IRA conversions and taxes. I know I try my very best to make this topic as entertaining as I can for you. Sometimes you all hear the word “taxes” and then you start to tune out.

No, we’re going to actually talk about taxes in a way that will be enticing because of all of the great benefits of Roth IRAs. Now, if you’re brand new to this, I’m going to help dispel some of the myths that are associated with how you create a Roth IRA and whether or not you can convert money out there.

Then, obviously, talk to you about why today’s climate might actually be the perfect climate to be thinking about making a Roth conversion. It has a lot to do with the newest tax laws that are in place. We’re going to get to that a little bit later in the show.

As you all know, the focus of this show is really on people who are entering retirement and facing those issues. We blend in all of the expertise that I can bring to bear on things like legal and financial planning, as well as tax‑related matters.

Every time we see something that is new and exciting for a senior or a retiree, we almost feel it’s our obligation to start to talk about that a little bit. We have a new piece of news on this. I don’t know whether or not you’ve come across it, but there’s some new news on Medicare cards in terms of what is being provided to seniors.

If you already have a Medicare card, one from the past, you’ll remember that one of the things that’s on there to help identify that it’s your card is your Social Security number. That can be a dangerous thing, especially if it gets into the wrong hands.

If there’s so much identity fraud that centers around getting access to somebody’s Social Security number. More and more, of course, this is happening for people who are seniors. The financial abuse for elders is one of those growing areas.

People taking advantage of a lot of the diminished capacity that can come from getting older. Jeez, the moment that you get a social security number, it’s almost as though left the door wide open with a big neon sign saying, “Come in and rob me.”

The federal government has seen this as a problem, understood that elder specifically are people who are a little bit more at risk and are doing their part to try to help protect that.

One of the ways that they’re doing it is by mailing out a new Medicare card.

When you’re in retirement, one of the biggest bites out of your spending money is income tax. What you are invested in, and where that investment is, can make a huge difference in whether your money will last as long as you need it. In this episode, we cover 10 ways your retirement income is taxed.

Make It Last with Victor Medina is hosted by Victor J. Medina, an estate planning and elder law attorney and Certified Financial Planner™. Through his law firm and independent registered investment advisory company, Victor provides 360º Wealth Protection Strategies for individuals in or nearing retirement.

For more information, visit Medina Law Group or Private Client Capital Group.

Click below to read the full transcript…

Announcer:  Welcome to “Make It Last.” Helping you keep your legal ducks in a row and your nest egg secure. With your host, Victor Medina, an estate planning and elder law attorney and Certified Financial Planner.

Victor J. Medina:  Everybody, welcome back to Make It Last. I’m your host, Victor Medina. I’m so happy you can join us this Saturday morning. This is episode 51 of Make It Last and it is April 14th. Which means it’s getting close to Tax Day. So we’re going to talk a little bit about taxes today.

Even though it’s April 14th, you’ve got a little extra time. While the tax filing season began on January 29th, in fact, you have until April 17th, which is Tuesday to file your taxes. All those taxes that were due April 15th are due April 17th.

You might be wondering why that’s the case. I mean, April 15th is Sunday. You know you’re not going to mail anything out that day. All right? But why isn’t it on Monday?

Well, it turns out that there is a legal holiday in the District of Columbia called Emancipation Day, and so, because that falls on Monday the 16th, it pushes the entire nation’s deadline to April 17th.

If you didn’t like the District of Columbia before, you can certainly thank them now, because under the tax law, legal holidays in the District of Columbia affect the filing deadline across the country.

You now have two days. Now look, I don’t know about the size of your tax bill, but if it’s considerable, I don’t know whether two days is going to help you with paying the taxes. Do remember that there is a steep penalty for failing to file and a smaller penalty for failing to pay.

You’ll run some interest if you don’t give them all of the money that they’re due, OK? But you would owe them a lot more in penalties and interest if you didn’t file at all, so get that filing in.

This is Saturday the 14th so you have, like, three extra days. Get going. Get going. This is also my annual reminder that free tax preparation is never free. Never free.

Even though you are really happy that you don’t have to pay for TurboTax or Credit Karma or whoever else, remember ‑‑ if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.

They’re reselling your information, and they are salivating at the opportunity of selling you some sort of financial product along the way. They could sell you investment stuff. They could sell you banking credit cards, whatever.

That’s what they’re doing with your information. I always recommend using a qualified tax preparation professional. It’s early business, not that early. You ought to be working with somebody that actually focuses their time on return preparation as opposed to somebody that’s doing it on the side for you.

It’s important to get the right information. It is taxes. We should spend some time talking about some tax related subjects for this show. Spent enough time on the last show being self‑promo...

Episode 50 is a milestone because it’s also the 1-year anniversary of the show. In this episode, Victor goes behind the scenes to share some of his origin story. It’s like Spiderman’s story, except without the super powers.

Make It Last with Victor Medina is hosted by Victor J. Medina, an estate planning and elder law attorney and Certified Financial Planner™. Through his law firm and independent registered investment advisory company, Victor provides 360º Wealth Protection Strategies for individuals in or nearing retirement.

For more information, visit Medina Law Group or Private Client Capital Group.

Click below to read the full transcript…

Announcer:  Welcome to “Make It Last”. Helping you keep your legal ducks in a row, and your nest eggs secure. With your host Victor Medina, an estate planning and elder law attorney, and certified financial planner.

Victor J. Medina:  Everybody, welcome back to Make It Last. I am your host Victor Medina. I can’t tell you how excited I am. In fact, this is show number 50. In addition to it being the 50th show, it is our one year anniversary. Man, what a rollercoaster it’s been.

I want to do something a little bit different for this show. I hope you’re up for it, as well. I have spent the last part of the year trying to put together a show every week that hit on something new ‑‑ a new topic, maybe there’s something in the news, maybe there’s something that’s going on in my practice that I thought I wanted to share with the group ‑‑ I was putting together this show about education.

I wanted to educate people along the way. I thought that was probably the best use of the 30 minutes. I didn’t spend a lot of time talking about myself, my firm, what it is I do, how I got here.

If you will indulge me for the next 30 minutes or so. I think what I would like to do in this show is because it is a special anniversary show. Break the fourth wall a little bit and talk to you now a little bit about myself, talk to you a little bit about the practice, how I arrived here.

We’re going to call this little behind the scenes with Victor, and it’s always nice when I talk about myself in the third person, I guess, but I’m here to share that information.

I hope you find it interesting along the way. If you don’t, after 30 minutes, it’s OK. We’re going to come back next week with another show because I’m pleased to announce that in fact, we are continuing on for at least another six months.

We’ll be on the radio and we’ll be on the podcast, and we’ll be producing these. You have an opportunity to get back into the regular swing of things. If you only attend for the education say, “What the heck is this guy doing talking about himself.” Let me do that.

I want to give you some background into how I arrived here, because I think unless you’re a client of mine, you really don’t know the story. What’s been interesting as I’ve been doing this show over the last year or so is that people have arrived at the show in different ways.

People will show up and there’ll be clients of mine and they’ll tune in, because I’m promoting the show. We’ll have people that listen on the radio. We’ll have people that were made aware of the show because of a talk that I’ve done out in the community work, one of the books that I’ve written.

I never quite know who’s listening in at any particular time. I always assumed that, coming into this show, I didn’t want to use it as a platform to always be promoting me, our practice and what it is that we do. Truth of the matter is that we have a good practice.

A Fifth Circuit court has ruled that the DOL “Fiduciary” rule is illegal, and it may go away as soon as May 7th. What does that mean for you? Also, New Jersey was often mention as one of the worst places to retire. Is that still true?

Make It Last with Victor Medina is hosted by Victor J. Medina, an estate planning and elder law attorney and Certified Financial Planner™. Through his law firm and independent registered investment advisory company, Victor provides 360º Wealth Protection Strategies for individuals in or nearing retirement.

For more information, visit Medina Law Group or Private Client Capital Group.

Click below to read the full transcript…

Announcer:  Welcome to “Make It Last,” helping you keep your legal ducks in a row and your nest egg secure with your host, Victor Medina, an estate planning and elder law attorney, and certified financial planner.

Victor J. Medina:  Hey everybody, welcome back to Make It Last. I’m your host, Victor Medina I’m so happy you could join us this Saturday morning. It is 7:30 in the morning after a nasty snowstorm that rocked New Jersey.

I will tell you something. I am tired, and absolutely sick and tired of the winter. I don’t know what the groundhog saw, didn’t see, in like a lion out like a lamb. Whatever it is, I’m done with it. I’m ready for spring full‑stop.

Listen, I’m excited for today’s show because we’re going to be talking about two new pieces of news that had come up. We want to cover that. One of them having to do with the fiduciary rule. We’re going to cover that first, new court case on that.

We’re also going to cover whether or not you should move out of New Jersey when you retire. There’s a lot of talk about taxes, property taxes. Should you stay here, should you leave? What are the rules about that? We’re going to cover that in today’s show.

Before we get to that, I want to relay a quick personal story. World got rocked a little bit this week because my wife had a medical episode. Essentially, it was minor. She’s fine. We had to make sure that she was OK ‑‑ take her to the hospital. We did a lot of other planning in our lives to make sure that this wasn’t going to be a major problem.

What did I have with me when we went to the hospital? I had my advance healthcare directives on a thumb drive in case we need it. I had it accessible online in the Cloud in case I needed to send somebody a link. We had people covering for childcare and the business was covered.

As I had to leave, we still had enough. If I was there day, two, three days in terms of all the systems and processes in here. It highlighted for me what happens when planning works out the way that you mean for it to work out.

If it turns out you’ll stress test this in the moment of crisis, and you don’t have the parts that you need, you’re going to learn very quickly that you should have had it. The crisis moment, the stuff that is causing all of these problems, it’s hard to come back from.

It’s usually very expensive and a lot of time involved in that. Anyway, it was that nice reminder. I’m very thankful, of course, that nothing major happened and my wife is fine. It was really nice to see the way the planning had come together so that even in a minor crisis like this, we had no issues. It’s a good reminder to make sure that we have planning in place.

Just a quick note for you, guys, if you don’t know whether or not your life is ready to be stressed as in this way, whether or not you’d come out successful forward, I think it’s time to revisit that issue. Again, we had a personal reminder. That’s what I do for a living.

In this episode, Victor explores some basics like: Why is estate planning important anyways? In the second half of the episode, Victor discusses how to select an asset manager, and why it’s important to select one aligned with your investment beliefs.

Make It Last with Victor Medina is hosted by Victor J. Medina, an estate planning and elder law attorney and Certified Financial Planner™. Through his law firm and independent registered investment advisory company, Victor provides 360º Wealth Protection Strategies for individuals in or nearing retirement.

For more information, visit Medina Law Group or Private Client Capital Group.

Click below to read the full transcript…

Announcer:  Welcome to “Make It Last.” Helping you keep your legal ducks in a row and your nest egg secure, with your host Victor Medina, an estate planning, elder law attorney, and certified financial planner.

Victor Medina:  Hello everybody. Welcome back to Make It Last. I’m your host, Victor Medina. I’m so happy you can join us this Saturday morning. I am pleased to be bringing you two topics today that I think are just really super important.

One of them has to do with whether or not estate planning is important. Want to cover that as a base level question, because I actually had a client come in and ask me that question. Have me ask, “Well, hey, should I even be doing this? What would happen if I didn’t do this?”

I thought, “Oh my God, I’ve got to answer this question on the radio show.” Just so that we don’t run into a situation where people are thinking about this, and thinking “Maybe I shouldn’t do estate planning.”

Then I’m going to talk a little bit about hiring an asset manager, because I think that’s a really interesting topic as well. Before I get going with that, a little great personal news to share. I had one of my children, my middle child get into school that he was looking to get into. Now he’s off taking his first travel soccer weekend.

We’re going to be heading off to Maryland and participating in a soccer tournament. Really excited about that, parents getting together having their fun, the kids having their fun. The only thing I’m worried about though, is the weather at Maryland does not look warm at all. This is a spring tournament and the weather says anything but spring.

We’ve gotten together a little sign up list to make sure that we’ve brought enough stuff in there, and I can’t tell you, there is not enough blankets, tents, windbreakers, anything else in there, hand warmers, things like that, because it could be really, really chilling. I am excited to watch my kid play soccer, because I love doing that.

In any event, let’s go right into the topic of estate planning. I’ll tell you something, in order to cover this, what we’re going to have to do, is set up what estate planning is. Then we can make an argument about why it’s important.

Essentially estate planning is the process of determining, typically through legal guidance and documents that get drafted, who is going to receive your stuff, when you pass away. Estate planning also goes into what happens when you become incapacitated, and you’re unable to take care of your own affairs.

Part of the discussion isn’t just what happens when you die, but the term of estate planning, if it’s really being used to cover everything, is about trying to figure out what happens, not only when you pass away, but also if you become incapacitated.

When you start to think about it, that’s a pretty important thing to take care of, there is that whole concept, “It’s time to become adults,