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

Fixed Indexed Annuities are often promoted as ways for investors to participate in market-like returns with no risk of principal. That sounds good…but is it true? This week I take a deep look at these popular investment products, and how to evaluate whether it’s right for you, and what a great annuity looks like.

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:  Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Make It Last. I’m your host Victor Medina. I’m an elder law and estate planning attorney, as well a certified financial planner. I’ve got more hats than I have heads but it’s certainly fun to be helping people in this way.

So glad that you can join us on Saturday morning. I tell you, I am excited for this show. We’re going to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is annuities. No, no, no. Don’t tune out. [laughs] This is going to be a good one.

Before I get there, I want to share something with you real quick, which is that over the last week or so, I had the opportunity to meet with a great client of mine and it was one of these meetings where I had built it up in my head because I was, to be frank, very nervous about it.

I wanted to meet with this client because I wanted the opportunity to learn a little bit more about what they liked about what we do because I wanted to be able to copy that, serve them fantastically.

I wanted to give them everything that they think that they need, in that kind of relationship but I also wanted to know what makes them tick because if I can do that for them, then I can do it for other people and get more people like them.

Anyway, I built it up in my head and I was very nervous about it. I don’t get nervous about a lot of things but I was nervous about this meeting. I didn’t want to blow it because I knew this was my opportunity to learn about these people and learn what it is that they liked about us. I didn’t want to miss that chance.

What I ended up doing was preparing for it for the better part of the week before we had this Friday lunch. What came out off that meeting ‑‑ there’s a bunch of stuff that I learned, which was great but ‑‑ what came out of that meeting was their desire to know a little bit more about me, and see that in the communications.

See more of the personality that I have, and have that come out in the meetings. Challenge them, and work with them, and make sure that they’re doing the right thing. They wanted not more of me present, physically present, but more of who I am within the process of their relationship.

About a week before that, I was standing outside watching my middle son play soccer with another parent. Within that group of parents, I’d been charged with rounding up volunteers for this tournament that we were doing.

Over that time, I was sending out funny emails trying to cajole them into taking these volunteer jobs. They weren’t paid, and it wasn’t a requirement per se for you to do it. I figured, catch more flies with honey.

I was trying to be funny with the emails and get people signed up. People were having a lot of fun with it.

Anyway,

Income taxes can be the biggest bite out of your retirement dollar…but you can take control back. By following a few basic principles of smart asset location (not allocation) and proactive income tax planning, you can optimize your income taxes and and help keep more money in your pocket.

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 docs in a row and your NASDAQ secure, with your host, Victor Medina, an estate planning and elder law attorney and certified financial planner.

Victor Medina:  Everybody, welcome back to Make it Last. I’m your host, Victor Medina. I am an estate planning and elder law attorney as well as a certified financial planner.

If you’re listening to this live, it’s Saturday morning at 7:30 AM. If you’re listening to this on the podcast replay, it’s whatever time it is when you’re listening to it.

I’m going to tell you something. Today, we’re going to talk about proactive income taxes, which sounds like it’s delightful enough to get your eyes to roll in the back of your head, but I promise I’m going to make it as fun as I can. [laughs] Before I do that, because we are on an early morning breakfast kick, I want to talk to you about yogurt.

[laughs] I know, right? You didn’t come in to this to listen about yogurt. This is a retirement podcast. What am I talking about?

I’ll tie it in this way. If you’re not healthy, [laughs] then you won’t grow old enough to go to retirement. Here’s the thing, I had the absolute best yogurt I have ever tasted. I had it this morning.

I am a huge fan of “America’s Test Kitchen.” If you don’t know, this is a television show on PBS. What they basically do is they’re like little scientists around cooking. You watch some cooking shows and you’re watching the artists. They’re flinging ingredients around, chopping stuff, and you’re like, “How did you get to that recipe?”

The thing about America’s Test Kitchen is if they tell you that they want you to stir it 42 times, it’s because they tested 41 and 43 and it turns out that 42 is better. They test everything and one of the segments that they have are taste tests.

I was watching an episode. I got like six of these on the DVR. This is the worst thing to do, when I’m hungry, I’ll watch this. The reason why it’s the worst thing to do is because it just makes me hungrier and it looks delightful what they’re cooking.

Anyway, they had a segment on taste test for whole milk Greek yogurt. Greek yogurt is the biggest thing. Every time I go to the grocery store, my wife asks me to bring back a four pack of Chobani, the coconut flavor, and so I bring that back.

Now, that’s not my favorite. I’ve tasted it and I don’t tend to like yogurt generally. Sometimes I eat yogurt but I don’t like that yogurt.

They did a taste test. They did a taste test of whole milk Greek yogurt and here’s the thing, it grew, Greek yogurt, from 1 percent of the yogurt market in 2007 to 50 percent of the market today. In 10 years, it took 50 percent market share. Everyone is buying Greek yogurt.

One of the reasons for that is that it’s high in protein and it is something that is cream...

Income taxes can be the biggest bite out of your retirement dollar…but you can take control back. By following a few basic principles of smart asset location (not allocation) and proactive income tax planning, you can optimize your income taxes and and help keep more money in your pocket.

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.

People are living longer, and the cost of long-term care can be astronomical. Every week, Victor is asked about long-term care insurance. This week, we’ll discuss how to buy long-term care insurance, and whether you should get it at all. Plus, the DOL fiduciary rule is under attack. Learn why, and what you can do about it.

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. Thanks so much for joining us this Saturday morning if you’re listening live, which means you’ve got a cup of coffee because it is 7:30 in the morning. Now, not everybody listens to us live, so those of you that are listening to the podcast, you have the luxury of sleeping in, I suppose. [laughs] I don’t know.

There’s an advantage to being the first one to listen to the show because then you can spread the rest of the information to your friends. Anyway, that’s what I tell myself.

We’re going to be back on this show talking about an old topic that is one of my favorites. This week, we’re going to talk about the fiduciary rule. There’s been some updates to that. Then, we’re going to talk about long‑term care insurance, which is a great topic to go over. I tell you, there isn’t a week that goes by that somebody doesn’t ask me about whether or not they should have long‑term care insurance.

Before I get started with this, I just wanted to thank everybody for joining us this week, especially our new listeners, and ask a favor of you. If you like this show, it would be really helpful if you went on to iTunes and left a nice review there and told other people that you liked it or shared the information.

It’s one of the ways that Apple ranks these different podcasts and radio shows that are out there. If they’re reviewed well, then they think, “Maybe somebody else would like it too.” It’d be nice to get up on the ratings and start that climb to being the best radio show for keeping your legal ducks in a row and your financial nest egg secure, if I can get through the tag line anyway.

Before we get to long‑term care insurance, I wanted to cover a little bit about the fiduciary rule. I have probably spent the better part of four or five of the 15 episodes that we’ve done so far touching on the issue of the fiduciary rule. Those of you that get it already are probably tired of me hitting on this topic, but there are some of you that are listening that don’t understand why it’s so gosh darn important to have a fiduciary helping to manage your finances.

We’re going to attack this from a couple of different ways. In the time that I’ve last spoken about the fiduciary rule from the Department of Labor, which was all the way back on June 9th, a month and a half into it, there’s been three pieces of news that directly impact this, and it’s getting such little play out there.

I want to cover the good news first. As many of you know, I am a Certified Financial Planner in addition to being a practicing attorney. When I went out to start my financial services practice,

People are living longer, and the cost of long-term care can be astronomical. Every week, Victor is asked about long-term care insurance. This week, we’ll discuss how to buy long-term care insurance, and whether you should get it at all. Plus, the DOL fiduciary rule is under attack. Learn why, and what you can do about it.

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.

The stock market is doing great, so people don’t often pay attention to the amount they’re paying in fees. This week, we’ll cover the different kind of investment fees that exist and how to check your fees to make sure you’re not paying too much.

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. Thank you for joining us this Saturday morning. I am so happy to be with you. As the announcer said, my name is Victor Medina. I am the host of Make It Last, where we help you keep your legal ducks in a row and your financial nest egg secure. I’m excited for today’s show.

It’s one of my favorite topics to talk about. We’re going to spend the segments two and three talking about investment fees. Every time I give this presentation to a group, their eyes open wide because, for the first time, they’re being explained and taught how much they’re paying in investments.

I’m very excited for that, and I can’t wait to share that information with you. Before we get started on that, I wanted to talk a little bit about a cautionary tale. As you know, I have two professional hats that I wear.

When I’m not hosting this radio show, when you’re not joining us these lovely Saturday mornings listening to this show, I’m an estate planning attorney with an elder law focus, as well as a certified financial planner.

I wish that the majority of our clients came in with lots of time to plan and good health circumstances, basically not in crisis, but that’s not the case. It’s just human nature to wait until it’s almost too late to seek the help that you need. One of the things that we see a lot is that the people that come to us for help with an elder law situation, they do that really late into a process.

What they’ll do is they’ll wait until somebody’s sick or they’ll wait until somebody is in a nursing home. Then they’ll start to do the crazy research that it takes to find an elder law attorney and then somebody that can help them. They’re not often thinking with their most relaxed brain on.

They’re in crisis mode and, like any port in the storm and, they’re looking to somebody that’s going to be able to help them. Many times, we’ll meet them because we’ll have done work for a family and they’ll come across that family and say, “Well, who did you use?” and they’ll recommend our services.

We’ll see a lot of people referred to us for planning in crisis where we’re meeting them after an event has occurred. That’s late. The cautionary tale I wanted to share with you is about a client family that came in to see us pretty late into a process. I often will meet with the healthy spouse of an older couple, where one of them is starting to face some dementia problems. That was this family.

It happens most of the time. It just happens, I guess, in my practice. Most of the time, it’s the husband that’s sick and the wife that’s taking care of him. It gets to a point where they can’t take...

The stock market is doing great, so people don’t often pay attention to the amount they’re paying in fees. This week, we’ll cover the different kind of investment fees that exist and how to check your fees to make sure you’re not paying too much.

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.

For lucky episode number 13, Victor discusses what happens when you get too emotional about a single investment, and how to correct it. In addition, Victor covers powers of attorney. Is it a simple document? Can you use a form downloaded from the Internet? Listen to the show to learn how to test whether your power of attorney is worth the paper on which it’s written.

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. This is the show that helps you keep your legal ducks in a row and your financial nest egg secure. I’m your host, Victor Medina. I am a practicing estate and elder law attorney and a certified financial planner, which is what they said at the beginning of the show.

Why am I repeating it now? It’s a good way to introduce what we’ve got going on. Listen, I wanted to cover a big subject this week. I want to talk about powers of attorney, because everybody knows that you’re supposed to have one. Not everybody knows that they’re not all made the same.

I’m going to go over what you should be looking for in your power of attorney as you try to figure out whether or not that’s worth the paper that it’s written on.

Before we get to that, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about a client’s case that I had coming in. It’s an illustration of a problem that happens a lot with respect to investments.

As you often are told in all of the media, the radio announcements, things like that, not all investments are guaranteed, no particular investments guaranteed. Stocks are volatile. They can go up, they can go down. There’s no real way to know what’s going to be happening.

Yet, human behavior is such that when we get presented with the next great idea, our mind attaches to that like it’s going to absolutely happen. We rationalize everything about making that kind of a decision. We hold on to it tightly, with both hands, and we decide there’s no way that anything can go wrong with it.

I had a client of mine who was absolutely convinced that there was going to be a particular merger that was going to go forward. This merger had been announced already in the media and people knew what was going on with that deal. It was under certain government regulation.

The news was reporting that the expected stock price was going to increase by $3 or $4 per share. My client called me and said, “What do you think about this?” I said, “I don’t invest in specific stocks. It’s just not what we do.”

We believe that markets are efficient, which is to say that over time the price of any particular stock already factors in all of the information that’s knowable, so there’s no way to gain an advantage in that, and that the goal of our investing is long‑term. We’re thinking down the future. We don’t gamble that things are going to go up and down.

The client said, “What? I appreciate that. Thank you very much, but I think it’s going to go up. Can you buy that for me?” I said, “Look, you have enough money for you to have fun with ...

For lucky episode number 13, Victor cover powers of attorney. Is it a simple document? Can you use a form downloaded from the Internet? Listen to the show to learn how to test whether your power of attorney is worth the paper on which it’s written.

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.

This week we discuss Victor’s trip to Colonial Williamsburg and whether it’s a good trip to take with kids. Also, tips and tricks for selecting a great advisor, whether it’s for legal or financial matters.

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 with Victor Medina. I am your host, Victor Medina. This is the show that helps you keep your legal ducks in a row and your financial nest egg secure. Thanks so much for joining us.

On today’s show we’re going to talk about how to select the best counselor for you. I’m going to talk you through some things that I think are important. Before I get to that, I do want to take a second to acknowledge all the great feedback that we’ve gotten online, specifically from the podcast.

And let you know that, if you like this show and you are just listening to it live on the radio or perhaps streaming it on your computer, that one of the best things that you can do is just jump over to iTunes and subscribe to it or if you’re on an Android phone subscribe to that podcast version of it.

It’ll give you the opportunity not only get all of the episode automatically sent to your phone but it will also give you an opportunity to go backwards and look at the other topics, because we don’t revisit a lot of the same topics. There’s so much to cover here that having that library would actually be something for you to go back to and look at and see all the topics that we’ve covered.

So take a look at that. If you do like the show, by the way, we really would appreciate it if you jumped on to iTunes and leave us a nice review. One of the reasons that podcasts are ranked high for Apple is they look at the most current review and if things are reviewed well. We’d appreciate if you’d be able to do that for us. It’d be great.

Let me jump into a quick topic before I get to it. Now, I’m lucky enough that they give me the airtime here and I can talk about whatever I want. So, today, before I get to the big topic, I want to talk a little bit about the vacation that I took. I’ve just got back from a trip with the family to Colonial Williamsburg, and it got me thinking.

First, I want to share with you some of the tips. Colonial Williamsburg was a great trip for everyone in the family. We drove down on a Friday, and traffic was really light. The reason why it was light, by the way, is because my wife made us get up and leave at about five o’clock in the morning. There was nobody on the road, except for large trucks.

We made a little detour around Baltimore and took some back roads that a friend of mine taught me because his son goes to the College of William & Mary. By the time we got there, it was about 11 o’clock in the morning. We arrived at Yorktown. Yorktown is the site of the famous battle between the revolutionaries and Captain Cornwallis. This was when the French Navy kind of blocked people in.

One of the reasons why my children really wanted to go see that is that that middle child of mine, that loves Hamilton so much,