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

This week, Victor addresses some of the risk and expenses of investment platforms like Wealthfront and Fidelity target date funds.

Also, two special guests join the show to discuss some of the innovative ways they are helping seniors suffering from Alzheimer’s and other dementia diseases. Jennifer Garcia and Mary DelValle from Brookdale-Hamilton join us for two segments to introduce the strategies they use to keep seniors dealing with dementia engaged emotionally and mentally.

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…

Bert:  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:  Welcome back to Make It Last. I’m your host Victor Medina. I am excited for today’s show. One of the reasons for that is that I’ve got two special guests on today. They are Jennifer Garcia and Mary DelValle from Brookdale Hamilton. Brookdale is a facility in Hamilton that specializes in dementia care, specifically in the area of Alzheimer’s.

I’m happy to have them on because they’re going to be just shattering some of the myths about Alzheimer’s. Specifically, what is appropriate for people to have as activities and things that they can be doing? They’re doing wonderful work over there. I’m excited to have them on as guests.

We’ll be doing that in segment two and three, coming up later in the show. When it comes down to segment one, one of the things I want to talk about is some of the stuff that’s going in these brokerage houses, investment advisors. These people that are dealing with your retirement money and making this value proposition about what kind of low costs are going on in there.

Let me set the stage for that for everybody. This show’s really about helping people in retirement. One of the things that I’ve been hammering on is how important it is to make sure that there’s a fiduciary in your life.

Somebody who is working towards your best interests and really working to make sure that whatever you have you have secured for your retirement and it’s not taken over by a lot of conflicts of interest and things like that.

As technology has advanced, one of the things that has happened is that these robo‑advisors or these large firms have been able to drive down the costs of investments. They advertise a lot about the costs. We would call that the commoditization of asset management, where it’s trying to make the asset management look like it is interchangeable.

It’s a commodity. A coffee bean is a coffee bean. Asset management is asset management. When you commoditize something, one of the economic principles behind that is you drive down the cost relative to the supply and the demand, so commodities like coffee beans, pork bellies and things like that. We know those from ‑‑‑ maybe you watched the Eddie Murphy movie ‑‑ “Trading Places.”

If you watch commodity prices, it goes on supply and demand. If there’s not a lot frozen orange juice out there, the price is going to go up. One frozen orange juice is interchangeable from another frozen orange juice. This is what the technology is trying to do in ter...

As you enter retirement, one of the biggest concerns is: will you have enough? Well, there are a few things that can happen that would threaten your ability to “make it last” through retirement. In this show, we’ll discuss three of them, and how to avoid the risk.

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 am your host, Victor Medina. I’m so happy that you’re joining us for this episode. I’m really excited to share this information with you. This week, we’re going to be talking about three ways that you might run out of money in retirement.

That’s right. I’m going to be teaching you three ways that you might run out of money in retirement. You might be thinking, “Well, why would I want to listen to this show?” Of course, you’re going to be listening so that you can avoid these three things that we’re talking about.

We’re going to go through that, and I’m going to share to you a quick personal story about a client that came on that I feel is really helpful for everyone else to listen to, a little bit about how that journey happened and, more importantly, what lessons you can take from it.

Now, I do want to start the show by giving a word of thanks to the number of people who have spread the news about the show. As you might know, in addition to the radio show that is broadcast on Saturday morning, we actually simulcast this as a podcast that you can subscribe to on iTunes, or on Spotify, or basically any device that does podcasts and shows like this.

We also simulcast it as a video broadcast if you go to the YouTube channel. If you go to YouTube and you search for Make It Last, you’ll find a channel with just the episodes of this show and, more recently, a video feed of the show so that you can see a little bit of my face, I suppose, while I’m recording it.

That’s grown recently, so we’ve had an opportunity really to see the listenership or the viewership of the show increase over the last couple of weeks. The numbers are coming back on that. That’s really thanks to you all. You all have put yourself in a position where you like the show and you’re sharing the show with other people.

We want to say thank you for that and, please, keep it going. I think the more people that hear about the show and hear the lessons from the show I think the better just because we’re spreading this education so far and wide.

I did say that I was going to be talking to you today about three ways that you might run out of money in retirement and really teaching you the lessons on how to avoid that. Before I get into the subject matter for that, I did want to share with you a story about a client that came on recently. In fact, it just happened this week.

It was something that I thought was good for everyone else to hear. I thought that their struggles were pretty common to people who are entering retirement, trying to review their choices about who an adviser might be and whether or not to listen to the new advice that they were getting because people are often in that struggle.

You may only do it once or twice across your lifetime. So, what’s the secret to selecting a really great estate planning attorney? You need to focus on four areas that Victor covers in this episode of Make It Last.

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 am so glad you could join us this Saturday morning. I’ve got a great show for you today because people go into this situation trying to figure out what to do with an estate planning attorney, where to find one. Often, they are left to their own devices of trying to figure out exactly who to work with.

I’m going to share with you the secret to finding a really great estate planning attorney. I hope that you can take this, and help yourself get set up, make sure all your ducks are in a row.

We’re going to hit that in today’s show, but before we get started, I’m actually trying out some new equipment. Now, those of you that are listening live, or listening on the podcast, are not going to hear any difference. Same microphone, same production value, so on and so forth.

Because we’ve begun to stream this as a video show, you can watch if you wanted to.

I got a little self‑conscious about the earphones that I was using. I was using these old headphones. They were large. I thought, “Well, maybe we can come up with little something better for people to listen to,” and so we did.

We came up with these little earphones that they go directly in to my ear. I stopped looking like Princess Leia with the [inaudible 1:23] on the side of her head, which looked really odd with my closely shaven head.

Now I’ve got these little earphones on. I’m excited to try these out. It’s a new field. It’s a little weird on the recording side of it, but you should hear nothing different. By the same token, you should absolutely see something different if you like to watch again.

By the way, if you are interested in watching the show or sharing a video version of the show, we have a YouTube channel. If you go on to YouTube and search for, “Make It Last Victor Medina,” you will be able to see all of the prior episodes which weren’t really video feeds.

They were just like a static image of our audio feed. Since I think maybe about five or six episodes ago, all of those are available essentially as video broadcast and give me an opportunity to share that with a friend.

Again, YouTube, just go take a look at it. Another way of helping you navigate through this really complicated world of estate planning, legal planning, retirement planning, all the stuff that you are interested in and making sure that you’re doing well.

Anyway, before I get any more off track, [laughs] I already have, let’s talk a little bit about this concept of estate planning attorneys and how to find one.

The reason why it can be difficult is because you don’t…most people aren’t going to do this more than once or twice in their lifetime. If they’re going to go out and do an estate planning, they might do it like major milestones of their...

Whether you handle your own financial advice, or you think you aren’t paying for financial advice (hint: you are), or you’re working with an advisor…the question remains: Is Your Financial Advisor Worth The Cost?

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:  Welcome back, everybody, to Make It Last. I am happy that you can join us. We are back this Saturday morning at 7:30 in morning. Hopefully, you are awake with your cup of coffee and ready to learn. I’m excited to teach you. Actually, we’re going to be covering a subject that I think is going to be super interesting, which is, “Is your financial advisor worth the cost?”

Much of the discussion these days is whether or not you should have a financial advisor. As you hear more and more news about these tools that are available for you to do your own investing or your own planning and software, the question comes out, “Should you be paying a financial advisor, and what is the value of that? How do you test it?”

I’m going to cover that in today’s show. Before I get to that, I’m actually going to cover some news that had come about some interesting developments in the world of millennials, and their saving rates. We’re going to get into that shortly.

Before I do that, I want to remind everybody that if you are interested in watching this show, we’re actually simulcasting this as a video broadcast that you can go and look at. After the show airs, you can go to our YouTube channel.

If you go to YouTube and search for Make It Last with Victor Medina, you’ll come up on a playlist and a channel that will have ‑‑ I think beginning a couple of weeks ago ‑‑ the video broadcast or the feed that was recorded as we recorded the show.

It’s just basically a camera on me, but it’ll give you an opportunity to engage a little bit if you’re the kind of person that you would like to watch the show as opposed to listen to the show.

If you’re an old‑school person and you like to listen to the show, you’re just not sure if you want to be up at 7:30 in the morning on Saturday morning, remember that every episode broadcasts as a podcast that you can download after the show airs at eight o’clock in the morning.

By subscribing, either by going to iTunes, the podcast app and searching for Make It Last, or now we are available on Spotify, which is one of the services that allows you to listen to every song in the world you can listen to.

It’s also got podcasts on there. You can search for Make It Last, subscribe to the feed. Then, not only will you get every episode as it airs on Saturday morning, but you can go back and listen to any old episode.

There’s a whole library of stuff that we essentially have been putting together over the course of this show, 40‑some odd episodes, and it’ll continue to grow. You might want to go back and listen to that, as well.

Getting on to the news for millennials, before we get on to the topic of financial advisers and their value, I wanted to touch upon a new survey that was released by Bank of America.

This week brought quite a roller coaster ride in the stock market. What caused it, and what does it mean? Also, should you keep your company 401k when you leave that job or retire? What about company stock in the 401k? This episode provides the answers.

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…

Bert:  Welcome to “Make it Last,” helping you keep you 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:  Well, welcome back, everybody, to Make it Last. I want to thank you all for joining us this Saturday morning. I’m happy to have you with us because we’re going to discuss the roller coaster that the stock market went on and, importantly, what it means for you. If you want to be up to speed on that, this is the time for this kind of a show.

We’re going to take the first segment on that topic. Then we’re going to take the second segment and talk a little bit more about whether or not you should be in your company 401(k) and, specifically, whether or not you should be holding your own company’s stock in your 401(k). I want to offer some of my thoughts on that.

By full disclosure, we’re recording this on Wednesday, February 7th. The roller coaster of the stock market, basically, was there Friday and there, again, on Monday. We don’t know what’s going to happen today.

I hope that by the time this broadcasts on Saturday, by the time you’re listening to it, we’ve recovered somewhat. It looks like, in some indications, in the Asian markets that we might be doing that. The real question is, “Why did it happen and why is it important for you?” The first thing we need to understand is what occurred.

If you’ve been under a rock, for whatever [laughs] reason, you missed that the Dow Jones, as one indication of the US stock market, went down about 666 points on Friday. Take that for what you will. It was not Friday the 13th, if that’s [laughs] at all important. Then another 1,500 points on Monday.

In fact, it closed a little bit higher than that, but plunged down below 1,500. It was being recorded as the largest single sell‑off of the points on the Dow Jones. That’s not a significant number, right? The Dow Jones was at 24,000 or so, 25,000.

For it to sell‑off 1,100 points over the course of the closing of the day really needs to be expressed as a percentage. It needs to be measured more in the context of what percentage of that number was sold off.

It turns out that it was only about 4.5 or 4.6 percent of the Dow Jones. The S&P, which stands for Standard and Poor’s, tumbled about 1,100 points, or 4.1 percent, so about the same. The S&P representing the 500 largest companies in the US and their stock prices. As a percentage basis, although the numbers are really high, their percentages were not all that impressive.

We saw that the Dow Jones fall ranks as its 100th biggest sell‑off over all. The S&P was about 127 in the indices history. If you were at all paying attention in 1987, the Dow was down 500 points, but that was 22 percent of its value. It was October 19th, 1987. It was commonly referred to as Black Monday. The S&P was down 57 points or 20 percent of their value.

That was a petrifying moment because that was an even...

Credit scores are everywhere these days. How did they get started and what are the important numbers that make them work? Learn what you need to know in this week’s show…

Also, would you like to watch this show instead of listening to it? We have begun to simulcast the show with a video stream that you can watch on YouTube. Here is the link.

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 living 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:  Welcome back to Make It Last. I am your host, Victor Medina. I’m so happy that you can join us here for Saturday, February 2nd or 3rd. Anyway, we’re coming up on the first show of February.

I want to welcome everyone that is watching us here on Facebook Live. We are recording these in the middle of the week. We record them ahead of time, but we do put them up on the air so that you have them.

Not only here on the radio station, as you’re listening live on Saturday morning, but also available as a podcast so that you can go to iTunes at any time and listen to the show. I’m excited about today’s show because we’re going to be talking about credit scores.

We talk often about Equifax and the data breach that it had. A lot of questions have come up about why is it that this organization is one of the three rating organizations that gets to monitor your credit scores and have a history of your information.

Why did it have so much key information about individuals and not do anything about it to protect it? We’re going to go into that in a little bit. Spend the next two segments of the show talking about that. However, one of the things that we’re going to be doing first is talking about some upcoming seminars that I’m actually hosting and invite you to come and attend them.

These are free seminars. These seminars are available to the public, and there are educational opportunities to come and learn a little bit more about different subjects. We’ve got two that are coming up. We are on the heels of the one that’s going to be on Monday, February 5th.

If you are around on February 5th, either at 2:00 PM or at 5:00 PM, we’re going to have a couple of sessions for the Trump tax reform and what it means for you. We’re going to go into detail for that.

That’s actually a session that we’re hosting primarily for our existing clients, but we are opening it up to the public. If you’re interested in attending, I need you to register ahead of time, because we have a limited number of seats.

We can’t just make this like a show up type of deal. What you do is you go to Trumptaxreformtalk.eventbrite, which is E‑V‑E‑N‑T‑B‑R‑I‑T‑E, .com. If you go to that website, you’ll see there’s a place for you to register. Register one, two, three tickets, whatever you think is appropriate.

It’ll give you directions to the College of New Jersey where we’re hosting this in one of its classrooms. One of the actually nicer classrooms that it has. It’s got a whole kind of theater thing and two screens up on the front.

It’s a nice, nice facility, in any event.

Discount brokers will tell you that they don’t work on commission, but that may not be the end of the story. Many discount brokerages pay bonuses based on the products they sell consumers, products that may not be in your best interest. In addition, with tax season comes the additional threat of tax scams. Learn how to protect yourself against both of these in this episode.

Also, would you like to watch this show instead of listening to it? We have begun to simulcast the show with a video stream that you can watch on YouTube. Here is the link.

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 can join us this Saturday, January 27th. I’ve got to welcome a whole bunch of people here in addition to our listeners, because for the first time we are simulcasting this show onto video.

In fact, the recording of this show was done on Facebook Live. Some people were able to watch that as well. It’s interesting for me to branch out in this new area. I don’t know that anyone’s going to want to watch 30 minutes’ worth of me talking. We might chop this up into smaller segments.

If you are the kind of person that is more interested in watching this show, as opposed to listening to this show, we’re going to give you that opportunity to do that and not miss out.

We’re still going to have everything here on the audio. If you’re a podcast listener, you’re going to be able to do it that way. Really trying to reach this content as far out as we possibly can. That’s something new and exciting.

I do have to let everybody in on, I guess, a new change coming up which is that if you were a radio show listener and you tuned in on Saturday morning at 7:30 AM, I, first of all, have to say thank you for doing that.

Second, I’m not here. [laughs] I’ve already prerecorded this show. In large part, because of the number of family obligations that I have. Those things that keep me away from Saturday mornings and sitting in a radio station.

Now that we’re able to do a little bit more with a small studio inside of my office, with both the recording equipment for audio, as well as for video, we’re in a position now to prerecord the show and put it out there. I hope that doesn’t tune anybody off, that I’m not sitting there in the morning. I promise you, I’m already up. I’ve got a four‑year‑old, and he doesn’t sleep in. [laughs]

He’s up and I’ve got my coffee. Listen, on the show today, I’m going to cover a number of topics. We’ve spent the last few weeks covering the issue of tax reform and what that means for retirees.

In fact, I’m proud to say that we will have the opportunity to showcase a seminar on this. We’re going to be hosting it on the campus of The College of New Jersey in Ewing.

We’re going to be doing it on February 5th. There’s going to be two times for that. We’re going to do it at two o’clock in the afternoon and fi...

In this episode, Victor launches a new segment called “Three Concepts, Simply Explained”. He will cover three complicated topics and try to explain them in 8 minutes or less. This week, the three concepts are: Medicaid planning, Annuities, and Trusts.

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 am your host Victor Medina. I am so glad that you could join us here this Saturday morning on another fun episode of Make It Last. In fact, I’m really excited because this week we’re going to be debuting a new feature, a new kind of show.

Once a month what I’m going to do is I’m going to take three concepts and explain them. Three complicated things and do my very best to explain them to you in a simple way in our eight‑minute segments. We’re going to call this “Three Concepts Simply Explained”. This is the first one of those shows.

This week, what we’re going to do is we’re going to take…To give you a little idea, we’re going to take Medicaid planning, we’re going to take trusts, and we’re going to take annuities this week. Those are pretty complicated things. I’m going to do my best to try to explain them to you in just about eight minutes each of a segment. Let me not waste any time.

Let me jump right into Medicaid planning. I’ve got about seven minutes to do this. Medicaid planning, for most people that are unaware, Medicaid isn’t just a system to pay for long‑term care where it’s only for the poor.

Many times, Medicaid planning ends up being a way to help safeguard assets for somebody that becomes in need of care, and they’re looking to keep flexibility on their kinds of care.

They’re trying to keep their spouse in the same kind of position that they were before they got sick because the Medicaid rules are complicated, and they require both parties to essentially become poor, destitute, before they’ll step in and pay for care. When you kind of think about it, that’s not really fair.

If you took two twin brothers and one of them had saved diligently their entire life, owned a home, no debt, nothing wrong financially, did all the right things and you took the other brother, and he had declared bankruptcy three times, and he’d run up huge credit card bills, and didn’t own anything to his name, never was responsible and bought a home, which one gets on Medicaid first?

It turns out that the irresponsible brother is the one that gets Medicaid, gets his care paid for, and the person that acted so well, they’re going to be required to spend down their money first. It’s not really a fair system, especially when we talk about caring for our elderly, and making sure that they have the care that they need.

When you think about how it can impact a surviving spouse or a spouse that’s not sick, requiring them both [laughs] to get poor is not really a great system. It’s the one that we have, but it’s not a great system. The idea here is that we’re trying to proactively plan for the need for long‑term care.

This week, Victor takes a deep dive on the new tax law, especially the way it affects retirees. Only 30 minutes in this show, so if you want more information, register for an upcoming workshop by subscribing to our newsletter at [email protected].

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…

Bert:  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 so glad you could join us here this Saturday morning. I am thrilled to be hosting this show because I’m going to be talking a lot about the new tax reform.

Last week we hit a general overview, just did a little bit of the throat clearing kind of episode, wanted to make sure that we were all on the same page welcoming you back to the new year, but this week, this week we’re going deep, deep, deep on the new tax reform. You might want to call it the Trump tax reform or the Tax Jobs Act. [laughs]

We’ll give you all of the details on it, but I am going to go as deep as I can on what this law means for retirees because there’s a lot of information out there. There’s new rules that are for businesses, so we are definitely counseling some of our clients on that, but when it comes to what it means for retirees, just really what a sweet spot of this show is, you are my audience.

You people that are focusing on retirement and retirement planning. What does it mean for you? That’s going to be an important piece of information for you to have. We’re going to go deep on it in this show, but we only have 30 minutes.

One of the things that I want you to think about is whether or not you want to join me at a workshop that I’m going to be hosting later in the month. It will give you an opportunity to learn a little bit more. I got to be upfront with you and say it’s going to cost a little bit of money, 5 to 10 dollars for you to attend. Just so that I don’t have to pay for the room out of my own pocket.

If you’re interested in learning more, we are going to be advertising these workshops to our clients, and our planning partners, and to those people that are in the community that know us. This could be a good opportunity for you to join us if you’re interested in learning a little bit more detail. It’ll also give you a little bit of a flavor of what it’s like to work with us if you were a client.

If you are somebody that’s interested in legal and retirement planning, investment management, insurance, whatever that is that makes up our client audi, this would give you an opportunity to see whether or not you’d like working with us directly. You get to hear me in person, certainly ask any questions that you’ve got. It’ll give you a nice flavor for that.

As I’m saying, there’s only 30 minutes in the show. In fact, there’s less than that with the commercials, so [laughs] we got to make sure that we get through as much as we can in this short amount of time. We’re going to be focusing on retirees and what we can do with that. Let’s not waste any more time. Let’s jump right in.

This week, Victor covers a news story where a computer model made a 4-year error on a buy-sell stock recommendation. Also, there’s a new tax law…have you heard? This week, Part 1 of our overview.

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…

Bert:  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:  All right, welcome back to Make it Last. I am your host, Victor Medina. It is a brand‑new year, I am so happy that you have joined us on another episode of Make it Last.

Jeez, I’ve got to start out with an apology because those of you that tuned in live last week got an encore presentation. Yes, that’s right, what we like to call a repeat. I was, quite admittedly, vacationing with my family and did not have an opportunity to record a show.

It was too close to Christmas, the New Year, and everything else going on, so I chose to rerun an old episode. Hopefully, if you missed [laughs] the one from the week before, you got a chance to listen to it, or you didn’t mind listening to another episode of the same show.

We’re back with a fresh new episode. It’s a fresh new year. I am excited for what this new year is going to bring. I do have to admit that, at my age, with the number of children that I have, the time that I spent on New Year’s Eve was trying to keep up with my 14‑ and 11‑year‑old making it to midnight, which I barely did.

My wife was asleep by 10:15 as, by the way, was my four‑year‑old son. He was asleep by 10:15. [laughs] After we had celebrated the New Year, went right to bed because everyone was up the next day, and we just went on with life. No big parties for me. Victor Medina is not a partier. That’s not what we do.

Anyway, I am excited for the New Year, and what the New Year is going to bring in. What we’re going to do in this first show of 2018 is we’re going to talk a little bit about what the new income tax law is going to bring, and how you should be thinking about it, how it’s going to impact you.

I’m going to give you the unvarnished truth on that. I think there are a lot of people trying to get out ahead of the story. You might have caught up with some craziness that happened at the end of the year about whether or not you could have prepaid your taxes, and it was a matter of whether it could be assessed.

I’ll clarify that for you once we get into that segment, but it alerted me that there’s a lot of people that are rushing to understand this as opposed to taking the time to really read the law, understand the way that it works, and then sharing that information. I’m going to take my own advice and we’re actually going to do this a little bit slower.

In this first show I am going to cover what we might call some common questions about the tax law. We’ll first approach it from a top‑level way and then, next week, we’ll actually get into some detail. I think next week I’m going to have some information for you about an upcoming seminar that I’m going to be hosting a workshop in the Mercer County area.

Probably at The College of New Jersey, TCNJ, which is right off of 95. I’ll let you know the details about that.