3 Areas Your Fiduciary Financial Advisor Says Seniors in the Danger Zone Need To Address First
What's a Senior in the Danger Zone?
To fulfill our fiduciary financial advisor duties, we define a “Senior in the Danger Zone” as a person over the age of 65 years who has made no arrangements to pay for long-term care, or who is at risk of outliving their retirement assets. Typical areas of concern include:
I have only 5-10 years at best to grow more money:
- How do I plan for long-term care?
- How should I invest, Income or Accumulation?
- How do I manage market downturns–they could devastate my savings?
5 Questions to Ask About Medicare
Medicare is complex and today’s changing health care landscape makes it more important than ever to fully understand how it works. If you or someone you know is near retirement, you may have questions about how to enroll in Medicare and what Medicare covers. Here are answers to some common questions about Medicare that can help you understand your options and avoid costly errors or gaps in coverage.
10 Keys to Maximizing Your Social Security Benefits
As you begin to research Social Security benefits, it is
critical to understand the strategies that may affect you and your family now and in the future. This guide addresses each strategy and also prepares you to discuss each topic with your financial advisor to compile the best plan for you and your
family’s future.
How Much Money Do I Need For Long-Term Care...?
How much do I need to save for long-term care so that I can enjoy my other retirement money is a question we routinely must ask people because hardly anyone believes it will happen to them unless they’ve experienced it in their families. It’s something we must know to appropriately set retirement goals, because it’s an issue of risk-management.
Rely On Our Comprehensive Fiduciary Financial Advisor Services
We Aim to Solve These Common Problems...
Individuals, Families, Small-Business Owners, Professionals, and recent Retirees all face these common problems in terms of Risk Management: Rising Tax Rates; Rising Interest Rates; Rising Inflation; Market Volatility; Rising Healthcare Costs. All of these issues are measured against generally borderline insufficient asset levels.
WR Nichols is a Well-Known, Published Author, Educator, and Media Personality
WR Nichols is a Best-Selling Author, Well-Known Legal & Financial Educator, having taught nationwide classes on long-term care planning and ethics. Mr. Nichols co-authored the best-selling, "Masters of Success" and authored the in-depth, personal, perspective of long-term care soft-back, "Pack a Sweater." Mr. Nichols has appeared on The Brian Tracy Show (motivational speaker) and Hollywood Live! with Jack Canfield (best-selling author of, "Chicken Soup for the Soul).
High Tech Implementation
We use cutting edge technology and platforms to ensure encrypted security, confidentiality, accuracy and efficiency in all phases of our planning techniques. For but one example, our custodian was the innovator in fractional share trading and has been a leader in the robo-advisor space since 2001. We use encrypted services owned by such industry giants as Fidelity. These powerful applications help us quantify risk and manage it by running sophisticated statistical analyses to identify at-risk areas. We use technology to meet with you online or in-person, to shrink distances, shorten commute times, and by using digital contracts where appropriate--all to increase convenience, efficiency and productivity.
Asset Protection, Legacy & Charitable Planning
Most advisors omit discussions of protecting wealth from predators and creditors. Because of our wealth of legal experience in the estate planning, trust and probate spaces, such planning goes hand-in-hand in our analysis and forward legacy planning processes. Charitable giving is an ancillary topic that naturally goes hand-in-hand with these discussions during our advanced planning meetings. Best yet: these topics are relevant for Families, Small-Business Owners and Professionals because: all these are comprised of Individuals!
Professional Team Ready To Help You Develop a Long-Term Care Contingency Plan
We make the complex simple …
Long-term care (“LTC”) is a factor in retirement planning because it affects everyone. While 7/10 of persons age 65 or over will need LTC at some point, the trend is getting younger! In 2018 only 57% of LTC recipients were seniors due to accidents and rehabilitation of younger people.
A full 51% of caregivers are the adult child of the LTC recipient. Another disturbing trend is that 63% of those CAREGIVERS used their own funds to pay for the expenses of the person for whom they were caring. And 70% of caregivers reported missing work to function as a caregiver. These statistics become more alarming viewed against the reality that 56% of those adult-child caregivers have children of their own under the age of 18 years. All of the above means that 100% of families are affected in some way when a family member needs LTC. Source: www.genworth.com.
So, we would be remiss in our fiduciary obligations by not addressing the LTC contingency in our planning process. And not facing the facts of LTC in developing your retirement plan would make you the most selfish of persons. Neither of us want that outcome. So, we face the facts and we plan!
It may appear daunting, but the process need not be complicated. First, we address the expected need. Next, we address the best ways to achieve that need via growth rates available to us. Then, we work with you to determine how best to manage the various levels of risk we are dealing with in your particular case. Often, we risk-shift. Other times, we manage the risk within the parameters your case will allow. The main constant in all cases is that you need to take action sooner, rather than later, to make time your friend, not your enemy.
Fee-Based Planning
Being a fiduciary means your best interests are paramount. If a product solution/investment vehicle is recommended strictly because of the commission/fees associated with it, an advisor has a conflict of interest. But, if the solution offered is truly in the client’s best interests, the commissions/fees earned fall into the backdrop of the joint-venture-type arrangement that truly represents the advisor/client relationship. In our 28+ years of experience in dealing with client relationships, all but insurmountable conflicts of interest (as strictly defined by applicable Codes of Professional Responsibility) can be resolved with full written disclosures. Click the icon above to download a copy of our Compensation Disclosure.
Risk Management
Most advisors focus on risk analysis as a trade-off of, “how much would you be willing to risk losing to get this amount of gain?” Not so with us.
Risk management is about so much more than this zero-sum type of Risk/Reward approach to investing and wealth planning. Risk assessment is one part. Risk-shifting is another part.
We see so many people come in, tout their conservative nature while emphasizing, “We can’t afford to lose any money!” Then, they make the riskiest choices in planning for their future based most often on pure emotion informed by popular mythology or other anecdotal information. We hope you can see the conflicting strategies at play in just this simple scenario.
We quantify risk. We add qualitative factors peculiar to your situation. Then, we provide you with a plethora of options. Where you wish to go is your call. Making sure you can get there is where we come in–and we base our recommendations on an evidentiary approach.
Cash Flow Analysis
In large part, retirement boils down to what you can spend. Wealth and legacy planning is the process of determining your ability to spend. To increase the probability of you enjoying a high-quality of retirement based on the ability to comfortably spend what you can, we build a variety of analytical frameworks to hone in on probable outcomes tested against a variety of “what-if” scenarios. This process is ongoing to keep your plan current and also serves as another part of risk management. Surprises aren’t generally a good thing in investments and retirement. We try to plan so we avoid them.
Unlock Possibility
If you think your case is beyond repair or too complex to address, think again. We have made careers out of “Find a Way to Win Financial Planning.” Needless to say, the results have been much to the happiness of our clients who trusted us enough to share their information and allow us to work with them. You can too–you’ll love doing business with us–just ask any of our clients by clicking the icon to see!
