Thank you for coming out. See if this thing works. Um, before we get started, let me just give you the introduction. My name is Matt Matt Dunn. Uh, out there is Rosie Maya and Austin Pelli who works with us. Uh, spoiler alert. I am a
retirement planner, financial advisor, investment advisor, series 65. My firm is the help to retire group. Uh, this isn't a commercial. This is just who we are. Tonight, I look at this these types of educational
workshops or justformational sessions as not work because we're not selling anything here today. We don't do at our firm uh what you call them I call them chicken dinners. I don't know. Those are pretty good. But you know, you go there,
you can have some you know whatever and then listen. >> Yeah, I got a sit but that's fine. We don't do that. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. My office is in Worcester West uh West Springfield. We have an office in Florida uh and one
in satellite office in Hington. But you can read about us. look up some cards out there. We offer doing this a long time. Um, we do a holistic plan. All right, that's enough about us tonight. You will have the opportunity if you so
desire to talk to us later and I'll talk to you about that as we go. But tonight, this is just going to beformational. The class is going to last about 60 minutes, maybe a couple of minutes over that. I would ask this folks, they passed around those white sheets. If you had some
specific questions, we like to do that. We can't take questions with a group of this size because we'll be here all night. So, write them down and we'll hang around if they're general questions. We'll answer them if we can. Um, you will, like I said, you have the opportunity to be with us for no cost
consultation if you so choose. So, we want to get your questions answered here tonight. Uh, write them down. Again, no selling. We are part of the AFC, folks. So, what what is that? That's the Association of Financial Consultants. That's a 501c3
nonprofit. Now, my firm is not a nonprofit, but when we do these educational seminars, workshops, whatever you want to call it, it's a strict noelling policy. The AFC that nationwide does financial literacy both in high schools and grammar schools, but
also for folks who are a little older than that. And so, we are part of that. That's one of the reasons we come to a library because we don't try to pitch anyone any products. Three sections tonight. Social Security. We'll talk Medicare and then a little bit about retirement income and some strategies
and tax. And these are things that we use with our clients. If you like them, take them home, use them yourself. If you haven't advised and you want to use, great. If you want to meet with us, we welcome that as well. So, that's what we're going to talk about tonight on the Medicare. I will give honorable
mention to chronic illness folks in in our world and I don't know if anyone's ever gone through this uh we have we see clients go through it I went through it personally both caregiving and what people are
concerned about nursing home that type of stuff only 16% of financial advisors will ever bring that up why because they don't know how to solve that I'm not here to say we're going to end up in an airplane. But I'm going to give honorable mention to that because you
can have the best plan known to man, but if that happens, if anyone's ever gone through with that, that type of thing or seen a parent or anyone go through chronic illness where I need care, and I'm not talking about the worst case scenario, Alzheimer's, dementia, that
type of thing. I'm talking about care at home. 72% of us will need some form of care. That's according to HHS. That's according to the actuaries. Now, I don't want to scare you because most of the time it's at home and it's not it's a family member helping out.
It's a big issue in this country. So, I give it honorable mention. All right? Uh probably at the end. Quick disclosure. Please don't take anything I say here as investment advice, legal advice, or tax
advice. This is all information. Okay. Uh that's my main office where I am in Worcester 255 Park Avenue. I spend most of my time there. NSSA. What's that? The National Social Security Advisory Certificate Designation. All that is is
folks, this organization was developed by two gentlemen who worked at the Social Security Administration for 30 years each and retired as actuaries. They were not people at the desk. they understand the social security and all
the rules 2,800 pages in the in the workbook. It gets a little bit I don't know all the answers on social security but we did do this and get this designation because for our clients social security is usually
if not the largest one of the largest sources of retirement income that someone will have. So I want to get that right. It comes down to editorial comment. How do I coordinate that with whatever else I have going on if I have
anything new? A lot of people have 401ks, IRA, all kinds of different things. We'll talk a little bit about that, but we are part of that. And the only reason we did that, well, we did it because we want to stay up on it. Not that we know everything there is to know about it, but if some one of my clients
has a tricky question, I can assure you we can get the answer to that quicker than calling the 1-800 number that I Okay, so we have that that I guess expertise. Social Security started in 1935.
It was only one age you could file at. What age was that? It wasn't all these different ages. >> 65. That's right. You didn't That was it. Turned 65. There were no work rules. There was none of that. It wasn't tax. All of that. By the way, what was the life expectancy
in 1935? >> 66. Nobody was getting. >> There were 40 people paying in for every one person collecting a check. Now it's two. Now it's two. There's a lot of people on social security. In fact last year in January any teachers here people
who work for so you know because they've been looking for this for 16 years 3 million more people went on social security January of last year and I'm not talking about just the 12,000 uh people turning 65. This was the elimination of the windfall
elimination provision in the government pension offset. That's no more. So 3 million more people on social security because of that. Okay. And I know the teachers and a lot of people who have those government pensions and also worked for so you know
worked in the private sector paid into social security. It would affect their social security because of that. Not anymore. And widows and widowers. That's even really that's we've had to personally go through that with several clients and I went through that with my mother who was a teacher who taught
nursing at Quincig for 30 years and had a pension but didn't really work you know when we were growing up you know worked a little bit she could never collect my father's social security when he passed away she couldn't get it until they changed that law okay um so there's
pressure on this is anyone here collecting social security right now so we have some folks Anyone been on for a couple of years? Some people. So, you get a cost of living adjustment. Question. Is that cost of living adjustment that you've gotten in your
opinion, does that keep up with the cost of inflation? >> I had anyone say, "Oh, yeah. >> No, it wasn't." Medicare Part B. Are you on Medicare Part B? >> Yeah. >> What was that last year? >> What's it this year? >> 202.
>> That's right. See, we have a full Medicare team and I'm going to talk a little bit more about the healthcare because and give you our opinion, but it's been it's more of our observation doing this for a long time. But the Centers for Medicare Services last year, so we have a full
Medicare team. In other words, we have three four different advisors. That's all they do with Medicare. And CMS came in out last year in July and said, "Here's our projections for the next 10 years." And this I was talking to a woman earlier today uh this
this afternoon and she was saying well it continues to go up. Well CMS that is Medicare. They said in July Medicare Part B will go up 11%. That was their prediction. Guess what it did. You know what their prediction is for 10 years? Double.
>> That's them. Who knows? So, what we say or what I ask is, do you think it's smart or prudent to plan for potentially needing more income later on in life? Income, not
assets. Income. Do I think that that makes sense? >> Yes. because of this and other things, but I mean really because of this because my observations have been in this I don't know 16 years that I've been doing this that as people get older
in retirement health care becomes as important or more important than anything else >> very important and I'll talk about some of the holes that are in there and maybe some of the things that you can do okay um so you know again the FICA taxes that went up as well just this is an
editorial comment. We know so if I made a billion dollars, I would only pay this year uh FICA tax on that $185,000 $200,000, right? It's not on all the income. They say these guys say that that would shore up the program if they
raise. I'm not calling for more taxes, but something's going to give when it relates to Medicare and Social Security. There's two funds. We're only going to talk about the top really today. If you got disability questions, I'll try to answer those off offline. Current
workers are paying in for every worker collecting a check now. It's about it's a little over two people. Used to be 40. It's a pay as you go system collecting social security benefits. Is it going broke? There was this last year they were talking about this. They seem to
talk about it all the time. What do you think about that? Is it going broke? What does that mean? Is there a trust fund with money sitting there that you paid into? >> No, >> there's IUS
fun. >> There's no trust fun. That's great. Okay. Well, will the benefits be there? Yes. It's not broke. But what have they said? And if you have a statement, you can see this. It says in the fine print, if they don't make changes to this
program, we'll run out of money. We'll be insolvent. will only have enough money to pay about $800 for every thousand we owe everyone, including those who are on social security. That's what they said. And they've been saying it for 16 years. They they have the
trustees. Who's they trustees of this? Medicare is even worse. We're insolveny. Well, Matt, what are you trying to say? You're going to run out. This is editorial comment. I don't believe that you're going to get your social security cut or cancelled.
The guys at the NSSA say that as well. Why? Two reasons they say. Number one, it would be a catastrophic event in this country for even cuts because 50% of the people in this country according to
Fidelity at 65 do not have any anything except social security. The other half have half have money. There are the billionaires and zillionaires that we read about. I'm not worried about them. They got more lawyers. Who am I worried about? The regular
people that we serve like myself. Who's going to pay? Oh, the billionaires will pay. Okay. Not historically. The 50% of the people who don't have anything, they're going to pay taxes. Taxes, folks. Okay. So,
that's number one. The other thing they say is a lot of the people who are retired, they t they tend to what? they tend to vote. Okay. So, changes will come. We believe this is editorial that you're not going to get cut. So, I'm not
here to scare. Now, if they cut something and something happens, you can call up there and say, "Hey, I heard some guy in the Lunberg library say it wasn't going to happen." Then, I don't think it's going to, you know, hold any water. Okay. Uh, eligible. How am I
eligible for Social Security? I worked and paid into social security for 10 years. >> Yeah. Or I'm married to someone who work and paid into social security for at least
10 years or I was married to someone who worked and paid into social security. That's how I'm eligible for a benefit. Some workers still may not become it. I was a teacher and never worked in the private sector and I wasn't married or never was married to someone who did.
I'm not going to get a social security. Okay. Um there's an 8-year window. I think people know this. I can file as early as 62 or I can wait, right? The longer I wait,
the more I get. What's the best age to file? It's a personal choice, folks. >> Okay, we got to look at other factors. It's called planning. What we call it, our firm is, for lack of a better, we just
call it just because we like to keep it simple. A lot of people want to keep the paycheck, but lose the work. Does that make sense? That's what we call That's not funny.
Keep the paycheck, lose the work. So when someone files can affect two things, not all the time, but can. It can affect how long their money will last
and how much taxes. Those are two things that when we're doing planning, when we're doing a success score, and I'll explain this to you a little bit later, but those are factors that sometimes can be affected by when someone decides to
file. With married couples, when both are collecting social security, sometimes they want to do survivorship planning because they understand that if something happens to him and we're both
collecting social security, what happens? We lose one social security benefit, right? We get the higher of the two. But she just lost 25, 26, $30,000 in income,
>> right? And for some people that can be significant and it can affect what their situation as a whole looks like. So they talk about that. So social security is a tool in the planning. There are cases where people should file as early as
they can. There are cases where maybe it makes sense to wait. It just depends. Okay? It just depends. And there are cases where it does not matter in terms of the overall just to bet. So we like we're biased do a little
little bit of planning and maybe we can look at that. Okay. Uh some choose to work longer. So understand that. So sometimes working longer and I'll make a comment on this. This is just from our business a little inside baseball. It's
sometimes folks it's the money is one thing. Sometimes people have pre-retirement jitters. Does that make sense? Because it's an emotional thing. I've been working 50 years, 40 years my whole life and all of a sudden, you know, I'm going to lose the work and I'm
going to keep the paycheck, you know, and it gets a little bit emotional. It's a good thing to stay, I call it stay in the game or have some purpose, have something to do. If that's work, that's great. It's it's really good for that. Why? What do the actuaries tell us? If
someone retires and does absolutely nothing, >> what does that mean? >> They say that's early death. >> That's what they say. You know, some people I had people say, "No, no, no. I love to do nothing." Okay. But it's a good thing. And I'm talking about the
emotional side of things. It's not a bad thing to ease into. It's good to plan five years before I'm going to retire. Really, it really is because it's a big decision when someone walks out. Okay. For most people, for most people,
I might have other money saved. So, your benefit uh they did up the death benefit. It was $250 a long way. >> Uh and it is tax preferred how they tax social security. >> So, I'll give back. They're going to
take you want to know these two things. FRA, FRA, PIA, full retirement age. At your full retirement age, according to them, thank you. >> According to social security, you will receive your primary insurance amount. I don't know why they call it that, but
they do. Primary insurance amount. Okay. At your full retirement age. What's your full retirement age? When were you born? Most people in this room, I'm going to say it's 66 in some months or 67 in some months.
That's when you're full retirement age. Okay. There's a couple things you want to pay attention to when it comes primary insurance amount, how they base it. They take the top highest 35 years. You bade in adjusted for inflation. How they do it. And they have this bend
point on these formulas. Sometimes people work a couple extra years and no one wants to hear that. But if they do, they uh a lot of times they're kicking out lower earning years because they're a lot of times they're making more now than maybe 30 years ago. Okay? And it can affect your your
benefit. What I say is you want to take a look at your statement and just look at the earnings because it'll have the earnings record. You just want to make sure there's no uh there's no errors. Very rarely, but I've seen it. Sometimes there's errors. Okay. Um, so you can go
online to get your statement if you haven't already gotten it. Has everyone done that? Okay. They don't mail them out as much as anyone got one mail. So a few people have you want to go to ssa.govmy account and download your statement if you haven't got one recently. You want
to find your CIA. It'll tell you every single year when you file and tell you what it would be in 62, 63, all of that. Okay? So you know what you're going to get. The longer I wait, the more I get. Everyone understands that. Okay. So, person 62 and a person 70. All things
considered equal. This person waits to age 70. This person files early. Well, obviously the 62 is going to collect more checks, right? But the person who waited because of the 8% growth is going to collect a much higher check. Who will
collect more over their lifime? How long >> if they both live to 85? >> Okay. >> But what if they both die at 72? >> You see, it's more about planning. Okay. More people in this country file a lot
more file before their full retirement age and wait to 70. In fact, more people file before their full retirement age than wait. And there's reasons to do it, okay? But like I said, sometimes filing because of
the taxes and less pressure on what? My 401k and all this other stuff. Okay, it can affect things. So, it just depends. It just depends. Um, the max anyone will get this year is 4,000. You can let it grow to five. If you're still working
and you file social security before your full retirement age, there's an earnings test. Okay? And so they limit how much you can earn. If this year it's $24,480. So if I'm my full retirement age is 67
and I file at 64, I can't make more than that. Earned income, folks. W21099, not pensions, not investments. Earned income working. In the year that I turn my full retirement age, it goes up to
65,000. I can make once I'm at my full retirement age, whatever that is, I can earn as much money as I want without any penalty. What's the penalty? Well, here's an example. Someone made $63,000.
They filed early. The penalty was $20,000 almost the hold back. Every $2 over that earnings test, they would hold a dollar of social security. So, it doesn't make any sense. you know, if you're going to work full-time, a lot
of people will work part-time. Just keep it under that earnings limit. Okay? Uh if you're going to work, so new rules, file and suspend is gone. Even the switching strategies we used to use are gone. It used to be different things that a family could do to really
increase lifetime social security in the household. Not so much anymore. They changed the law uh just because you know it was a 2015 we can't do it anymore. We still can do spousal benefits.
This is we still see a spousal benefit is filing on my spouse at my full retirement age if that half of their benefit is more than mine.
You with me on that? at full retirement age and my spouse must be collecting. Okay, still see it. Someone didn't work as much has a lower benefit. Uh once I claim I can't switch, but why would you?
Okay, I used to be able to switch. Remember I said that the longer I wait, the more I get. Everyone knows that, right? They call it delayed retirement credits. I don't know what that's what they call. Okay. But when I'm talking about a spousal, those
delayed retirement credits do not apply. So, here's Tom and Susan. Tom's primary insurance amount that's at his full retirement age is $2,400. But he waits and he gets it to grow and he grows to 3,000
because he's getting more. He waited. He starts collecting. Here comes Susan at her full retirement age. She didn't work that much. So, she's going to get half of his because half of his is more than hers. How much is she going to get?
>> 1,200. There you go. Right. 1,200. She'll get 1,200 because that's half of his primary insurance amount. Okay. Okay. Um expouse. If I was married for 10 consecutive years and did not get
remarried before age 60, I may be able to file on an exspouse. Okay. Now, I've had people ask me, Matt, will that hurt the expouse? >> What do you think?
>> Would you say I hope it does? No. Who cares? >> That's not bad. Who cares? >> No, it won't. It won't survivor benefits. No change to that. Age 60,
50 if I'm disabled, deceased. Okay. Higher of the two benefits, not both. age 60. Now, here's the thing. I've had this happen in my my firm. So, this was
a few years ago. Couple came in. They were 62 and 63. They weren't they were retiring a few years. She is a is a a uh ICU nurse and has been for a long time. He worked he had a pension. They had
some money. Modest. We did a success score. We did a they were going to retire in three or four years. We did a keep the paycheck, lose the work plan for them because they wanted to see where they stood and that involves some things, but we did it. Okay, we're good.
She said, "What about survivorship?" Because I'll lose some of the pension and I'll lose one of the social securities. What happens then? So, we did that and it brought down their success score. Not terrible, but they were in a good spot. They didn't have a tremendous amount of money. They didn't
have any debt. They didn't spend they live modestly. Okay. Well, you know, you can hear what's coming. A few years later, he passed away. It wasn't It was a tragedy. It was an accident. And someone at the hospital said, "Hey, you're 63 years old, 64 years old. You
can file on his social security cuz it's age 60, right? Subject to the earnings test. She's making over $100,000 a year as a nurse." >> So, she called me and said, I said, "You can't." Now what has subsequently happened is she did retire at 66. She
filed she's collecting his social security. She's allowing she made more money than him. She's allowing her benefit to grow and at age 70 she will switch which is in a year and a half and it's about4 to
$450 more a month. Significant, right? So they're still switching with that. I'm not saying hey that's great or anything because it's sad. But I'm just saying that that's how it goes. But understand that it's one or the other, not both when it comes to survivorship.
So, but DRC's do apply. So, if he dies, she's going to get 3,000. She's going to lose her 1,200, right? But she'll get 3,000. And again, switch options. Still must be 6050 if disabled with fall elimination.
We talked about that. That's no more. Is it subject to income tax? Well, folks, there's been a couple of changes on taxes. I'm going to talk a little bit about tax planning without giving tax advice. People know this, right? We're seeing it right now. So, they changed the law
last year, the big beautiful bill. >> I said that on Western Mass. I go, this isn't politics. Uh but they added so what they did and is is
they made the standard deduction permanent $15,750 a person. If I'm over 65 is an additional $2,000 and then they added in a bonus 6,000 standard deduction.
Over 65 now incomebased they got too much income it won't work. But a lot of people in retirement have less income, right? What does all that mean? It means we've got people right now with 44 $45,000 married filing jointly in standard
deduction and they got 75 $80,000 in gross income. What does that mean? Their taxable income is 40 grand. Now this is not permanent. This is four years. What this is means and this is is
it might be there are a lot of people not everyone but a lot of people that we talked to who if they had their they prefer to keep more money in their family than pay the internal revenue service only what they legally have to
does that make sense yeah oh no we want I don't have anyone over there that I'd like so sometimes tax planning has become and is an important goal for some folks.
That is a process. That is a strategy. I'll I'll talk a little bit about it, but there are things and with this new tax law, the Social Security Administration said when they passed this, we'll see because people are doing their taxes right now, but they said
their estimate was 85 to 90% of the people who are collecting Social Security effectively will not pay taxes on it. That's what they say. Okay. because of this. Now, we'll see, right?
We'll see. But that's what they said. They did not change how they tax social security. But just so you know, if I have Bill and Susan and all they have is social security, $60,000. For tax purposes on social security,
they have what's called provisional income. It's a little wonky. They take half of the social security benefit, 30 grand, and all other sources of taxable income. That's how they calculate, hey, am I
going to pay tax on my social security? 30 grand. If I'm married filing jointly with a $42,000 standard deduction, guess what? Off that my taxable income is 24,000, but only half the I'm not paying any tax. You
see? They didn't change these brackets. I'm not going to get into it on the provisional income, but I will say this. If these two folks had that social security, but they also had a CD at the local bank for 100,000
and they were earning 4% on it, but they weren't taking the income. They were putting it back into the CD. A lot of people do that, right? Is that question is that 4% they just earned that 4,000? They didn't take the income, >> but is that 4,000 taxable?
>> Yeah, I'm not earning 4%. >> I'm losing money safely, >> right? >> It's better than a few days ago. But does that 4% go into the calculation for taxes on social security? >> Oh, yeah.
>> So, they went from $30,000 in provisional income to $34,000 in provisional income with no more income because of where that money was. Now, that doesn't apply, I'm sure, to anyone here, but what I'm saying to you,
do I have a distribution plan? Do I have a keep the paycheck, lose the work plan, or am I willy-nilly? Sometimes moving things around can make a difference. Okay. Move the CD to a tax deferred account. Boom. Eliminate tax on
social security. So, when it's time to claim social security, some folks have done that. I don't know if you did it online. You can go online and file. Want to do it a few months before you're going to want to collect. Uh or you can call them and, you know, set
up an appointment. Sometimes they'll do it right over the phone for you to file. You probably use the 1800 number. you want to have them call you back, you know, rather than wait there on the phone waiting there for 5 hours. Uh have
them call you back, you can do that, right? So it's e whatever is most uh whatever is most uh easy to you and you can also talk about this again taxes. Should I withhold taxes? It's why it's t it is advisable to take
a look at the situation right now with with the way the tax if you get ready taxes. It's about with your doctor. Okay. See if there's anything you can do. Medicare part B part A. What age for Medicare part A?
>> 65. What about Medicare part B? What's Medicare part A? Hospital. >> What's B? >> Oh yes. Right. >> B I have to pay for though, right? 202 for most folks. What age do I have to file for B?
>> 65. 65 except >> what if you're working? >> Yes. >> Except if you're working and covered under a group health insurance >> either yours or your spouse's then I don't have to file for part B and pay for if I'm 65 and not covered by group
health insurance I don't have to file for. But say at 67 I wanted to. What happens? >> Penalty. Can you get out of that penalty? >> No. cannot. >> Okay, I think most people know that now
because you've probably been inundated with solicitations for Medicare, right? If you turn in 65, they said, "So Medicare A and B, depending upon your age and your situation, 3 months before, the month on the three months later, okay, they have that with them.
What if I retire and I'm 67 in the middle of the year? It's not. It doesn't matter. You get a special election period. Don't don't get all worked up about that." Okay, part B you enroll like we said penalties if you don't you'll never get out of it. Same thing
penalties with part D2 drugs for most folks Medicare part A and B will not be enough right because there's a big hole there if you get sick. So they have what? >> Either a supplement plan. They buy a
supplement plan. They pay a premium and they buy a drug plan. A part D. If I have a supplement, and they're all very, very similar. They're all very, very simil whether it's Blue Cross, Etna, they're all the supplements are all similar. It's just what you're going
to pay. I can go anywhere that takes Medicare with a supplement, but I pay that premium every month, paying 250, depends on your situation. Okay. If I don't want to pay the premium,
there's also what? Medicare Advantage plan a lot of times no premium, no monthly premium, co-pays, that stuff. They an advantage plan most of the time will have the drug plan in there. They've
lowered the max out of pocket on the drugs to $2,000. I think people aware of that. But my question to you is, do you does anyone here think that those insurance companies are going to take a loss? There's issues with this stuff, folks.
Okay, there's issues. So, advantage supplement. If I'm an advantage, I'm now in the network, right? And I might be restricted on where I can go without paying more. A lot of people are on advantage plans
because they don't bring and a lot of times it works perfectly. had trouble, but there's been issues, okay? And I'm not one way or another, I don't sell it, okay? But my team does whatever the client wants.
But understand this and our agents are fiduciaries. You should get an agent for Medicare unless you want to, you know, deal with that yourself because you get inundated. Oh, no, I want to deal with the 1-800 number. I can assure you it won't be the
same person when you go and there will be changes. What do you mean? This year, last year there were big changes. United Healthcare pulled out. It affected 750,000 beneficiaries different Pittsfield. They pulled out in
Hammond County. They got to fight with Mercy Hospital. This is Medicare Advantage now. Okay. In July, we had two clients at 83 years old. They've been going to Mercy Hospital for their whole life. They called up Matt. What happened? They they told me to get a new doctor 83.
>> They patched it up. We were able to do it. They Massachusetts has a uh a drug reimbursement plan. Okay. They weren't going to qualify for it for any reimbursement or any amount, but they had the window open. So, we got them a
new election period because of it. And they were because they're 83 years old, folks. Okay. And they're in the middle of the year. They got in a fight. United Healthcare. And I'm not bashing the United. I'm just saying that that's what happened last year. So things happen. So I say get a get an agent. Here's what
I'll give you inside baseball. An agent will come in. So our guys are we've got three women who do it. That's all they do. And they will run every plan in the area. They'll show you the good, the bad, and the ugly. If you buy a supplement and you pay the premium, the agent gets paid.
If you buy an advantage plan, the agent gets paid. Guess where the agent gets paid more? >> Advantage plan. >> Advantage plan. >> Has anyone ever told you that? >> Yeah.
>> Oh, there's free toothpaste. There's This is not my bias. There's this, there's that. >> Okay. >> Nonsense. Bio. Oh, free free asp. It's the healthcare. It's the healthare.
Okay, that's vantage works beautifully for people because there's there's holes in that and you can there's things that you can do. You can sometimes bridge some of these h or lessen some of
this exposure out of pocket exposure for nickels or dimes on a quarter not you know what I'm saying? So, if I can bridge that through different types of indemnity plans, there's things that you can do to limit a potential max out of
pocket if you want to. Okay. The time to do that, it's see it's a holistic health thing. It's not I want to look at those those those plans closely. Skilled nursing's a big one. There's other things, folks, that can cause issues. Most bankruptcies in this country are
because of what? >> Medical medical. >> Okay. So, it's an important consideration. >> Irma, what's that? >> That sounds like a hurricane. >> That's a hurricane. >> I got that one.
>> Yeah. Yes. That's if you have too much income, you're going to pay more for Medicare Part B. >> Yep. >> They look two years back. >> Okay. Most people will pay the 202, but
if I have a windfall two years and then I go to retire, you're going to get hit with the with the Irma. Right now, you can get that reverse once you're >> depending. >> Yeah. Once you you know, you stabilize cuz we had some we had a woman win the lottery out there
>> and it wasn't one of But it was pretty good. She her it's not funny, but her her went up to like $650. They can't partake. She'd call him Ron, you won the lottery, you know. Oh, okay.
It's pretty good for one year. So, be careful with that, though. Be careful with that when you're looking at her earring. All right. So, you got these choices. Uh, if you have an HSA account, you stop 6 months before you retire. You cannot pay for a supplement plan with
the HSA. >> Crazy. You can pay Medicare Part B with that. I don't make the rules. >> Yeah. I don't know why. Okay. Those are the rules. Um,
a little bit about retirement. So, when you're going to retire is the paycheck stops, right? We're going from employer insurance to Medicare, potentially claim social security, stop contributing, start to draw down
investments. or I go from an accumulation mindset to what? Distribution. There are some criterion rules you want to pay attention to probably in distribution. There's a bunch of them, but the big one or one of the big big
ones is don't take money out of an account that's going down in value if you can help it. That make sense? Pretty. You understand what I'm saying?
What's the average return on the S&P 500 for the last 60 years? Ballpark cherry 90%. Right. With dividends. Does that go up 9% every year? Does it go for this?
>> It's not the average return. It's what what's happening when you take the money out. >> You see, >> I know what the average return is of the QQQ. That's the technology sector. It's averaged about 14% in the last 20 years.
You own it. You have a mutual fund. You own these companies. Microsoft, all of them. They're in your mutual fund. Done well. What did it do in 2022 lost 30%. See, that's not a good time to be taking
money out. I'm compounding the problem. I'm compounding the problem. Do I have a retirement income plan? Do I have a keep the paycheck, lose the work strategy? Doesn't have to be that complicated, folks. Most people, it's pretty simple.
I got 401ks. I got bold bear. I got all the stock markets. I got all this stuff. It's all good, right? It's all good. But that year wasn't a good year. If I'm retired, if I had all my money in a balanced mutual fund, here's the example. They call it sequence of
returns. Balanced mutual fund if I work 401k. A lot of people have it. Oh, I got a lifestyle fund. Okay. Oh, it's protected. It is. What did it do? It was down 14% or 16% in
2022. It didn't matter. I mean, so you were still working, putting money in. You were buying shares at a lower cost. And guess what? It's called dollar cost average. No problem. Retired. I got my social security. I did
a keep the paycheck, lose the work plan, and it calls for me to take $1,000 a month out of my 401k. >> Well, the market's a little jittery. I don't know. It's down 14%. I took four
4%. That's an 18% withdrawal. have that happen a few times and see what it does to your how long your money will last. You see, that risk can easily
be mitigated. Easily. No big deal. Prepare. Don't panic. That's what grandma said. I had someone in the other day, Malik, you came in one of these. Everybody said, "I got five accounts
here. I don't have it all." Really? One says Vanguard, one says Fidelity, one said Meil Lynch, one says John Hancock. See, no problem. Now, I can look at it and I'm not that and within 5
seconds say, "Oh, yeah." But I didn't say that. I said, "You know what? We're going to do keep the paycheck, lose the work. Part of that is to do what? To get a third party unbiased review of what's in there. We use a company called Morning Star. You ever heard of them? >> Yeah. So, we pay Morning Star to do it.
And then he comes back with the report. I didn't say it. This stuff's all the same. Here's what you've done the last 20 years return. Here's the risk. And here's what it cost you. He's like,
whoa. Yeah, it's great when things are good, but he's like, "All my eggs are in one basket." I said, "That's right. You just have name different names on the on." And you can be fine with that. I'm just saying a lot of times people out because the average retiree will go through
three and a half serious market dislocations over their retirement. Now, maybe it doesn't happen. I don't know. But I don't want to play around with that. I want to have a place to go if things are bad. Unless you happen to know what's going to
happen in the market or interest rates. I don't know. Would argue no one else does either. Okay. Uh so we like different buckets for our clients. We don't we usually have some people
have two buckets. They have a growth bucket and they have an income bucket or a protection bucket. A lot of people want tax advantage buckets. Can they get it? I don't know. But I don't want the same stuff because
of the markets job. Okay. Here's an example of a keep the paycheck, lose the work. Just simple. This is just an example. So these folks are working. They make $100,000 or $8,300 a month. They're going to retire and they're
going to collect social security. They're going to collect $6,200 a month. That means they need $25,000 or a couple thousand a month to keep the paycheck and lose the work. You with me?
Well, what do they got to say? Well, he saved $600,000 in his IRA or his 401k. Now he could just leave it all there and not worry about the risk. Okay. And take Have you heard of this? The 4% rule.
>> Yeah. >> We could argue that all day long. The American College W. These academics argue it. BC has a retirement center. They argue it. Some say three, some say two, some say four, some say five. It's not 10.
You know what I mean by that? I'm gonna take 10% out of that 60 $600,000 every year. Okay, you will run out of money unless you die soon. Okay, so they claim about a 4% that's 88% chance that work.
Okay, might work, might not. What he decided to do is have a couple of buckets. He split the 600. He put 300 in a growth bucket for growth with risk and he put 300 protected in an income bucket.
And the income bucket in this case threw off $27,000. So he kept the paycheck, lost the work with using only half of his money. You with me? He's at 101,000 in income but only using
half the money and he still has 300. >> Okay. Taxes required minimum distributions. What age? >> What we said? >> 72. >> 72.
Every year till you die, right? It's actually 73 unless you were born after 1960. It's 75. They increased it. They changed it a lot. Now, that's good. Why? You might be
able to do that plan on your situation. There's another thing that they changed that you might want to be aware of. How they tax nonspousal inherited IRA and 401ks and 403s.
You with me? >> So your child or someone other than your spouse inherits your IRA, your 401k, your 403b, anything that's tax deferred. What do they have to do now?
All has to come out within 10 years and taxes have to be paid. This is a huge tax prep. Okay, but be aware of that.
25% penalty if I fail to take the RMD. Government's plan is very simple. at your age, depending on when you were born, you will start to take a percentage out of those accounts and you will do it every year. Here's a question for you. That person in 2022.
So, say they had to they had their money in that balance mutual fund that I talked about and it happened to be down 14% for the year. So, they have to take an RMD. So, he's were looking at the market and it gets to December and it looks like, hey, it's just going to be not a good year. So, I have to take that
4% out. So I'm just going to take out less because the value is less. Correct. >> Right. >> How do they calculate the required minimum distribution? They take the balance
December 31st the prior year which in this case was December 31st 2021 which at that time was what? alltime market highs
it's worse why I want to have buckets it will happen when will it I hope it doesn't I'm messing about when I don't know okay I don't know okay R&Ds here's an example
I mean in 73 the R&D on a million dollars $37 7,000 $2 million 83 112,000 all taxable all tax remember that Irma you see be careful when you have
sometimes these are like tax torpedoes it can affect a lot of things all right survivorship married filing jointly all of a sudden what filing single
different taxes. I don't now I don't have those standard deductions just mean taxes. Oh, and on top of that, here comes a massive R&D whether I want it or not. Okay, this is not advice to do.
But but everyone knows what Roth is. I'm going to pay tax on the seed. It's going to grow tax deferred and then if I follow the rules, the whole harvest is going to come out tax. Well, I get ready to die. I don't want
to make money. Well, can I convert from a traditional tax deferred to a tax-free? Yes. Right. Very easy to do. What do I have to do though if I do that? >> Pay that tax on it.
>> So, probably not going to convert a huge amount in one given year. But am I doing? Do I have a Roth blueprint? What's a Roth blueprint? A Roth blueprint number one starts with your
tax deferred money. Do you want to know how much you will pay in taxes on that IRA 401k for the rest of your life and to your beneficiaries? That's number one. I want
to know what the is there a problem. How much am I going to pay in taxes? I'll give you an example. We had someone in the other day who wanted a Roth blueprint. Here's they had a million dollars in an IRA. We showed them under current tax laws
what they're going to pay on that if they live to be 90 using just a reasonable rate of growth. But you're going to take these R&Ds. It was about 600,000. But left over for her their kids was a
lot of money. What's the highest tax bracket right now? 37%. On that billion dollars, the tax conservatively calculated on the million was about $950,000. So, so these people said, "You telling
me that I could potentially, my family pay $950,000 on that million dollar to the Internal Revenue Service?" Good. Well, Matt, what if they change the laws? They going to lower the taxes. Okay, they they might, but
that's under today's tax brackets, folks. They're like, "What do we do about that?" I don't know. A Roth blueprint will show you number one, how much am I going to pay in taxes? If we're going to do conversions, this isn't advice, but this
is just what we do with our clients. We want to look at three factors. First of all, a conversion strategy is over time, right? A little bit over time because of the taxes, because of Irma,
because of a lot of things. I'm not going to convert $300,000 in one year. Probably we're going to do a little bit every year. What am I going to pay in taxes? But we look at three criteria. Number one,
if I start with $300,000 and I want to, it doesn't matter the number, but let's just take $300,000. I start with $300,000 that I want to get from forever taxed IRA 401k to under
current law never tax wrong. The first criteria when I start that process because it's over time I started with $300,000. When I'm done with three, four, five years, whatever it is,
I want that balance to be at least $300,000 or more. That's number one. Number two, I don't want to pay out of pocket for the taxes. If you convert $50,000 from your IRA, guess what? the Internal
Revenue Service is going to get paid. I'm human. I'm going to write a check. Well, no. People want to do that. I'm going to write a check to the Internal Revenue. So, we use the money that we're converting to pay the tax. Number three,
we do not kick someone into another tax bracket. Those three criteria, I'm not saying it's Oh, that sounds good. Those are the three criteria that we look at when we're looking at this. If a Roth
blueprint shows that someone can go from some of their money from forever tax to never taxed, it will show you what is the lifetime wealth on that. You can't believe it. Okay. Well, Matt, is that it? No.
Because when we do a Roth blueprint, and I'm giving this advice, if you're going to do conversions, whether with anyone or look at that strategy, you should have that blessed by a certified public accountant before you do it on a on an
annual basis. Why? Because there's no more doovers. Even advis first of all, we we had someone come in the other day, Meil Lynch, they didn't say anything about taxes. The person that was the person with a million dollars. Why did your guy tell you you got a $900,000
problem? Why? I don't know. I can't answer that. But we want a certified public accountant to bless it before it's done because there's no more doovers. Give tax advice. We do tax planning.
So if taxes, is there anything I can do about taxes? The answer is maybe because there's no hey that works for it doesn't okay but understand the
tax brackets that we're in right now and I'll make this comment you can believe it or not you can ask Google or whatever that is we in a historically low tax brack I know Massachusetts, you know, we all
hit. But yeah, so anyways, don't run out and do anything, but if you want a rock blueprint, we'll do one and show you. Okay, may or may not work. I don't know. A lot of times it does, and it's worth more and more. Wow.
Sometimes people are surprised at what they will pay in taxes in retirement under today's tax brackets. What happens if they change it? They've already changed it. They change the law as it relates to non-spousal inherited IRA. So, I want to
be able to look at not evade taxes, not Cayman Island nonsense or any of that, but is there anything legally I can do over time to limit that? That's planning. Okay. Long-term care. Two minutes. I said
honorable mention chronic illness. Does anyone when you're talking about that issue, I mentioned this before, 16% of the people in our world bring that up to anyone.
Does anyone here have or own what's known as long-term care insurance? So, we have some folks that bought that probably a while ago. What the reason I say that is we can't get what they have today. there's issues with that. Okay, it's good you have it
and all this don't cancel anything. What else can I do? When you're looking at a holistic plan, number one, have a keep the paycheck, lose the work plan. That's what we call it. Retirement income. Have whatever protections I can have in terms of my health care, Medicare, all of that
stuff. I might want to have what? Estate planning, right? That's important. Uh what about long-term care? there is still can get long-term care. There are two other ways that you can ensure against that risk. Number one is what's
called a hybrid. Anyone heard of that? They call it different things. So, you know, everyone know what life insurance is. >> You had life insurance. Maybe you own life insurance. Is it the new kind or the old kind?
>> What's the old kind of life insurance? >> It pays your beneficiaries taxree if you die. What's the new kind? >> It pays your benefit taxree if you die, but if you get sick, you can use it while you're alive.
>> Is it? >> Yeah. Yeah. That that's So, I'm not going to get into products or anything. I'm just saying that's one way and there's a million different things that you can do. >> There's some other things that you can do in terms of getting income. There's some other things you can do with existing money, repositioning it to get
leverage. You know what I mean by that? How much will $1 pay me if I get sick? Can I get Can I turn $1 into two or three without buying something by getting some leverage? Maybe. Okay.
The big thing is this for us because most of our clients do not have long-term shares. We have some who do. They bought it usually a long time ago. They have their keep the paycheck lose the work plan. They have a survivorship plan if they want one. They've got their
estate planning. For us as, and this isn't legal advice, uh, but our attorneys that we work with, the big thing is a durable power of attorney document. Familiar with that one?
>> Yeah. Because Mr. and Mrs. Jones are going along, right? Mr. Jones has an IRA at Fidelity. That's in his name. Mrs. M. Jones is the beneficiary on that. So if Mr. Jones passes away, when
he passes away, she gets the money. Mr. Jones becomes incapacitated. Something chronic illness, whatever, you know, whatever it is. He's incapacitated. Mrs. Jones calls up Finelli. Hey, this
is Mrs. Jones. I need to take some money out of >> What are they going to say? >> Put Mr. Jones on the clock. >> He's in the Masonic home. Oh, go to court
while he's alive. I call it the piece of paper that's done the right way by an estate planning attorney and the custodian knows about it. Who's the custodian? Where the money is. Why do some custodians have their own lawyers? Yes.
Now we can act quickly to maybe preserve some of the assets to do it. And that's a holistic view. Is that perfect? No. No. But that's a very inexpensive dog. I don't trust in all that stuff. That's
a whole another thing. We do that in the office. But I'm just saying for most folks, I want to be able to react quickly to be able to in case, god forbid, that happens, we can move quickly. It's not going to be perfect, but we can preserve assets. I'll wait
till Mr. Jones gets sick. That's fine. As long as it's not what >> all signs. >> No, no, it's not. I mean, he can't sign. We're dealing with one right now. The client is not has not been diagnosed
yet. I'm dealing with for five years. We have advised our with our attorney. You won't wouldn't do it. Wouldn't do it. Stepdaughter calls now.
They haven't but the stepdaughter call for five years longer. Hey, let's get wouldn't do it. It could be bad. >> Do it early. >> That's easy. >> Nobody wants to talk about that stuff, but
>> sometimes that happens. Okay. Um, so that's enough for me. Here's the thing, folks. If uh I appreciate you coming out tonight. Um, if anyone wants to meet with us, this is how it works or how we
we work. One or two ways. Number one, you love to see you at the office 255. If you want to come down to Worcester, uh you don't. But we meet in person for up to one hour. On that sheet, there's things
common concerns. We'll discuss whatever you want to discuss. Most folks want, hey, show me what a plan would look like for you. Will you do a morning shower? I want a Roth blueprint. I'm concerned about taxes. We can talk. We'll talk about whatever you want to talk. There's no cost or obligation to pay this. It will be up to 1 hour. It will not go
longer than that. If there's a second meeting, it's because you've asked us to do some homework. Very common is a Roth blueprint. Sometimes it's I keep the paycheck, lose the work. We got to do some analysis. I keep the paycheck, lose the work encompasses a couple of things.
Number one is a success score. If you want to know your success score in retirement, we can do it. It's not perfect. We use the Monte Carlo and all that stuff. We get your information and we run it. We also will show you different income strategies, that type of stuff, what it would look like.
Morning style will give us a third party look. I want a Roth blueprint. We collect the information. We run a rock blueprint to show you what potential tax savings could be. Whatever you want to discuss the second meeting, there's no cost or obligation to that part. If there's a basis for us to work together
long term, that's what we do sometimes. Um, that's discussed. We're fiduciaries. Nobody pays us any hidden fees. There's none of that. We just we disclose if someone's going to on board a client how we get paid. I have no and that's all
upfront. Okay. Um you can zoom that meeting if you want. A lot of people want to do that zoom. Uh whatever you want to discuss. So those sheets what happens is either uh Maya or Rosie or someone from the office will call and try to set up a date. I think we're
booking a couple weeks out. we got, you know, do quite a few of this this stuff. So, whatever works, that's uh how that would work. If you'd like to, we we'd love to see. If not, hopefully you got something out of this. I would ask you to just turn those sheets in. Um that
would be helpful for us. Um that's all I have. It's 7:05 or whatever. I appreciate you coming out tonight. We'll have a good night. Thank you.