Paying for Healthcare in Retirement

You can have all the money in the world in retirement. But if you don’t have your health… well, you really can’t enjoy it. Part of that, says Bill Kepper, a physician for 40+ years, is being a good patient throughout your life, following doctor’s orders. 

But as important is making sure you can get the medications, procedures, and other things you need as you get older… while you’re depending on your retirement income and retirement accounts to pay for it.

Bill shares his thoughts on the healthcare system and how to best take care of yourself.

Listen in to discover:

  • Habits you can adopt now for better long-term health

  • The importance of staying active – physically and mentally

  • Fitness and nutrition habits anybody can adopt

  • Tips for adjusting to more time at home in retirement

  • And more

Listen now…

Episode Transcript:

John Curry: Hi, this is John Curry. Welcome to our podcast today. I'm sitting across the table here with my good friend and personal physician Bill Kepper. Bill, thank you for joining us today.

Bill Kepper: A pleasure to be here.

John Curry: I have known you for over 40 years, you've been my personal physician all these years. My wife introduced us, in fact, before we ever got married, and we started working with you.

Bill Kepper: And you've been a client of mine for I don't know how long, maybe the same length of time.

John Curry: So, we have a professional relationship, but I have to tell you, folks, we have a personal relationship, 'cause I consider Dr. Bill Kepper to be not only a great physician, but a good friend, a counselor, and a good confident. Bill, what I want to do today is focus on a theme called Health and Wealth. People are so worried about their money, worried about the stock market, do they take their money away, how do I save more money, financial advisors tell them maximize your 401k. My position is, after 43 years of doing this, it's nice to have some wealth, but I'm seeing a lot of clients who don't have good health when they retire. They're not gonna get to enjoy that money very long. So, I want us to talk a little bit about health issues, but I would like you to start ... Please, just tell us your background and why in the world you decided to become a medical doctor.

Bill Kepper: Well, I grew up in the suburbs of New Orleans out by Lake Pontchartrain in a family of three, being the caboose in that family. Mom and Dad, attorney dad and mom somewhat of a local socialite with all of her old Newcomb buddy friends and housewife homemaker. She had joined lots of different clubs. We enjoyed a fairly idyllic lifestyle in a brick, one story, three bedroom house, and had family same last name in New Orleans saying my mom was a Yankee from Shreveport, Louisiana.

John Curry: A Yankee, huh?

Bill Kepper: So, after having gone through high school at a private school in New Orleans called [French 00:02:16], where I was forced to learn Latin and French, decided to go into premed curriculum at LSU. So, I went north for college, north and a little bit west. Met my wife on a blind date, first football game blind date between fraternity and sorority in 1968 on October 5th, did not know she was gonna be my wife, but I was hoping from that day on that that might happen.

John Curry: Wow, so you knew right away.

Bill Kepper: Well, she liked me and that was kind of unusual. I was a bit of a nerd back then. I might still be a bit of a nerd, but nobody has the guts to tell me.

John Curry: There afraid you might give them the wrong prescription.

Bill Kepper: Or the wrong exam.

John Curry: That's funny, that's funny. Talk a little bit about your experience as a medical doctor. You've been practicing how long? Forty years, forty-two?

Bill Kepper: Well, it depends on whether you count what I did in residency in 1976, started the residency program, got my Florida license a year after my first GGY1, post graduate year one. So, I started practicing in '77 with a license, but '79 had my own private practice. That continued to thrive for a long period of years such that in the early '90s, mid '90s, we decided to band together against the powers of the hospitals and the insurance companies to form an organization called Tallahassee Primary Care Associates, primarily family doctors and pediatricians. We later added specialists to our group. I enjoyed being a member of that organization up until 2014, when I retired to go from that organization to go work at Southwood with Hospital Corporation of America, [inaudible 00:04:18] Medical Clinic.

John Curry: And now you're fully retired.

Bill Kepper: Fully retired as of August 31st.

John Curry: August 31st just last year.

Bill Kepper: Last year.

John Curry: So, we'll come back around to the healthcare issues in a moment, but from your perspective of being [inaudible 00:04:34], I've known you personally all these years. You've worked very hard, you didn't just spend five minutes with a patient and run them out, you worked long hours, you loved what you did for a living, it wasn't just work for you, it was a calling.

Bill Kepper: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

John Curry: How have you adjusted to this thing called retirement?

Bill Kepper: It's interesting because I could honestly say that the first couple of months of retirement felt like an extended vacation. Hunting season ensued, as it usually does in the wintertime, and I enjoyed spending more time in the woods than I had been able to for the last several years. But now it's seeming like a little bit of planning on my part for activity would be helpful, though I do have to recognize those plans are subject to change based on still being married to the sweetheart I met in 1968.

John Curry: So, what are you trying to say, that Sharon has her own views about what to do?

Bill Kepper: Sharon has her schedule about what she wants to do, and I should understand that I will be needing to work around that schedule.

John Curry: So, it sounds to me like that you went from having one boss on the work side, to now you've got a full-time boss on the home front.

Bill Kepper: Well, yeah, and I've always had a full-time boss on the home front. I just wasn't home as often as I am now.

John Curry: Let's talk about that for a second. Do you find, or did you find initially anyway, that it took some adjusting because you did work such long hours and then finally you're at home? Did you find there was any type of stress going on there?

Bill Kepper: Well, it was interesting because about the same time I was retiring I was seeing my pulmonologist, who was confirming the fears that many of my primary care doctor and cardiologists thought I might have developed sleep apnea. So, the adjustment was getting used to sleep apnea machine, CPAP, AutoPap, which was not at all difficult, and I began sleeping much better, dreaming really interesting dreams and then waking up to the same disappointed every day is the same day.

John Curry: That sounds like that movie "Groundhog Day" just a little bit in there to me. What are some of the issues that you noticed as a doctor treating your patients that prevented people from truly enjoying their day to day life and maybe even would hurt them going into retirement years?

Bill Kepper: Well, over the years ... and I think I lived through a fairly marvelous period of innovation in medicine. When I first started in medicine there was very few open heart surgeries being done in only certain selective centers in the world, the Charity Hospital associated with Tulane Med School, they had not done any coronary bypass surgeries while I was in med school there. They were doing them down the road at [inaudible 00:07:37] Clinic, but they were not doing them at Charity Hospital. Valvular surgeries were being done, you know, on a regular basis, but Clinic and some of the folks there were majorly involved in helping to restore lives after coronary artery disease happened. 

We went through a period where we evolved a whole lot of very effective treatments for hypertension, so I saw a reduction significantly in the people who were under medical care not getting nearly as many strokes as they had been getting percentage wise, not having the younger age nearly as often that would take people out of a period of vitality or early retirement. 

Then coronary artery disease started taking a significant hit with good mediations to adequately control the cholesterol levels. This presupposes the patients would actually go to the doctor, get diagnosed, take the medication, and continue to take the medication if they were gonna get the benefits of the changes in medicine during that time.

John Curry: Well, I can speak to that personally because I had open heart surgery, triple bypass to be exact, in July, July 10, 2008. I can't remember how many times I complained about the medications that you had me taking, and you explained to me in a very nice matter, "Look, these are important for these reasons. You can ...", 'cause I started working on my diet and my exercise and started taking these things seriously. But I can see where it would be very easy once you've made improvements to think, I don't need that medication anymore. 'Cause I'm the kind of person I don't even take an aspirin.

Bill Kepper: But, John, you're the kind of person who will get 100%, 110% into a self rehab program and think that's gonna solve the problem.

John Curry: True.

Bill Kepper: Sometimes it does.

John Curry: Well, it's made a big difference.

Bill Kepper: It's made percentages of difference for you, but the difference is you don't have to compartmentalize one or the other. You can combine both.

John Curry: Absolutely, and that was the take away for me, that you need to do everything you can do for yourself, eating right, exercise, relaxing, not being so stressed out, but take advantage of modern technology and modern, especially medical technology, and use the pills and the treatments that are available to improve yourself. That's really what you just described, isn't it, is taking advantage of the technology?

Bill Kepper: Yeah, if in doing so you make your doctor look good.

John Curry: I like that, especially if you follow directions, right?

Bill Kepper: You're still here.

John Curry: That's right. I'm still here, still here. Let's talk a little bit about the future of healthcare in our country. People are concerned about that. The costs are going up and up. All of the stuff about so called Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, some people love it, some hate it. To the extent you're willing to talk about your professional [inaudible 00:10:41] in this sense, how do you feel about it? I mean, is it good care, bad care, as a whole? What's your view as a retired physician?

Bill Kepper: Well, let me preface what I'm gonna say or maybe change the response a little bit. Our conversations recently have been more not about the effectiveness or lack of effectiveness in healthcare but the availability of health care and the financing of healthcare.

John Curry: Okay.

Bill Kepper: When people start getting on TV and start talking about healthcare, they're talking about how to pay for it. Who's gonna have access to it, and who's gonna pay for those folks' access to it? So, during the Obamacare origination and thought process, that's what the whole question was to be resolved. I think that medical care as far as capacity to develop new and novel therapies has gone on pretty much unabated. Every one of those has come out extraordinarily more expensive than we hoped they would, and they stay expensive because bit pharma requires a whole lot of money to run its engine. Is big pharma our friend? The answer is, I think, on an individual basis big pharma is our friend, but on the standpoint of what big pharma has done to our economy, it has separated us into a group of haves and have nots. I have an insurance policy that will allow me to pay for any $300 dollar a month medication, or I don't have an insurance policy that will allow me to pay for a $300 dollar a month medication. I understand that creates sometimes vital differences in outcomes.

John Curry: Yes. You said something very interesting there that caught my ear. So, the quality of the care is there, that's not really a question I don't think in this country 'cause the people in your profession are caring individuals. So, it comes down to affordability: Can I afford the care while I'm working, but especially is causing a lot of angst when people retire. I'll tell you, when we're meeting with clients either in number one or two, sometime they'll switch the order, is: I'm worried about cost of healthcare, and I'm worried about running out of money, in other words losing income, and they'll flip flop. Some will be number one, some will be number two. But we're seeing that those are the primary concerns. How do I pay for my health insurance in retirement, my healthcare, rather, and will I run out of money. Will I spend all the money I have in my retirement accounts and be broke?

Bill Kepper: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

John Curry: And you look at that, and as a retirement planner, we have to help find ways so people can finance that care. It's becoming more and more difficult. We see people, Bill, who are paying more for prescriptions each month out of pocket than they paid for a mortgage payment. That's insane.

Bill Kepper: Yeah.

John Curry: I don't know what the answer is. I'm certainly not a politician, so I don't know what the answer is. I'm not an economist, but I look at that and as a planner I don't want to just talk about people investing money or having life insurance. How can I help them have a better quality of life today while they're working, but especially in retirement? Because this is something I've been doing for 43 years, I hope to do it for another 20 or 30, well long as I live. I keep telling people I'm gonna be like George Burns and live to be 100 years old and keep on working, but on my terms. Don't get me wrong. I don't want to work every day, and I don't work every day, but I want to have fun.

Bill Kepper: Sure, Gracie.

John Curry: Okay. I don't think he's buying that. Okay. Talk a little bit about the biggest issues you think hurt us from the standpoint of enjoying our life. Is it high blood pressure? Hypertension? What are the things that you think, based on what you've experienced, are the things that are getting to us?

Bill Kepper: I think probably overcommitment to things that may or may not have value is the biggest stuff that gets to us. As far as healthcare concerns, you know, we've done a pretty good job of reducing stroke, we've done a fair job of reducing cardiovascular disease in general in those people who are under treatment. The hypertension has reduced the likelihood of rupture of aneurysms as well as having blockages in major arteries that supply organs that we cannot afford to damage without loss of capacity. So, you know, that's pretty good. We're still having the major battle with trying to find out where the genesis of cancer is and how we can do something to stop that in its tracks before it gets started, or preferably early recognition and effective treatment for that. A lot of cancer remedies are still pretty hard to deal with and leave us with loss of function at times.

John Curry: What are the things you think we should be doing as individuals to give ourselves the best chance of having a long life?

Bill Kepper: Wear your seatbelt.

John Curry: Okay.

Bill Kepper: Quit smoking.

John Curry: Okay. I wasn't expecting those.

Bill Kepper: Well, people die of those things.

John Curry: Yeah.

Bill Kepper: Avoid large crowds of people during the wintertime, so you don't get the flu. Airports.

John Curry: Stay away.

Bill Kepper: Stay away or bring your hand cleanser or wear gloves, you know, the types of things that we can do for preventive. Gone are the days, I guess, hopefully, where we worry about on a daily basis thermonuclear attack. Still remember diving underneath desks, and I realize that was a ridiculous posture to die in.

John Curry: Yes, I remember that.

Bill Kepper: Yeah, the Cuban Missile Crisis was ... I mean, not as big in New Orleans as it was in Florida, but it was big enough to make an impact on us. But I think, you know, living with consistency in your life habits, not jumping after everything that's on certain TV shows that may be or may be not run by a knowledgeable doctor.

John Curry: Talk a little bit about the things that we can do from a fitness and nutrition focus. Is there too much emphasis on that, or is it truly just the way I am is the way God made me?

Bill Kepper: Okay, so you're asking me to say, what should I do not what do I do?

John Curry: Okay, well, your words not mine.

Bill Kepper: Having been able to get off the rat race, the treadmill of work, I've been able to enjoy much more recreational time. I'm the type of person that will not go to a gym and exercise, 'cause that looks like work. But I will go out and walk the dog. I will go out and decide to park a little bit farther away from the hunting stand, so that I get to carry my equipment closer and maybe increase my chance of being successful. I will be that person who doesn't mind the fact that this self propelled portion of my old lawn mower is broken, so I have to actually push the thing, because I think there's value in that. So, getting physical activity rather than exercise, I like to say, because to me it makes more sense. It's getting closer to that time of the year where you can smell the cut grass. When I finish cutting my half acre yard, which has got a house on it so it's not a whole half acre, it gives me a sense of accomplishment to know I've done something, in a way my own little cardiac stress test to prove that I can still have the capacity to enjoy life. I enjoy fishing. I'd rather fish from a kayak than I would a sailboat, 'cause it's too much work to sail a boat. It's more efficient from a kayak.

John Curry: I love my kayak.

Bill Kepper: Plus there's some exercise associated with that, as long as you don't hurt your back by getting off the top of your care.

John Curry: Right.

Bill Kepper: But keeping yourself reasonably trim and fit is good things, and some centering type of things where you expand your knowledge as well as your capacity, physical capacity, read a good book, find something worthwhile to do for the sake of others, and volunteerism, those sorts of things add value and I think years to life. Many, many years ago I was reading in what we call a throw away journal, which is one that has more drug adds and fewer well thought out articles, but there was an article written about the benefits of jogging. This person who was in Scandinavia somewhere had done this extensive study about how much longer people live if they have the active lifestyle of running on a regular basis. It was roughly equivalent to the amount of time they spent running. So, I got from that, if you like to run, go. You'll live longer doing what you like to do. If you find it onerous, then you'll live longer doing something onerous. So, a lot of my choices are with activity other than exercise, doing something I enjoy doing.

John Curry: I agree totally. I happen to go to the gym three days a week, but I enjoy walking. I take long walks, I mean sometimes like an hour. Go the park, enjoy being outside. Sometimes at hunting camp, even during non hunting season go out there and just walk.

Bill Kepper: That's the best time to get out and walk, non hunting season.

John Curry: That's right, otherwise you might get shot. Look, there's a big old deer. Let's get him. But what it does for me, it not only gives me the physical activity, but it also works on the brain, letting the brain decompress some. I'm reading more and more things that say that the key to having an active life in retirement, in your 70s, 80s, and 90s ... Our oldest client is 100 years old, excuse me just turned 101 I think. She's very alert, she reads, she studies. So, let's talk a little bit about the importance of exercising the brain, too, not just the body. What does medical science tell us about that?

Bill Kepper: Medical science would say that that's one of the better things you can do to prevent Alzheimer's, is stay engaged in problem solving types of activities, puzzles, those sorts of things, reading about new idea, perhaps even learning a foreign language, though I don't know that it's necessary now that I've gotten English and Redneck and Cajun and all those things throw at me, along with a smattering of French. But to me-

John Curry: Ha, Redneck.

Bill Kepper: ... the key issue is, with me and my wife, my wife will often ask me what I'm thinking, and I'll often not be aware that I'm thinking about anything in particular, but I'm just you know letting my mind wander when I'm out there in the woods or doing something like that. I find it very beneficial for me and hopefully for others that at times when I catch myself doing that, I say, how could I better be putting my mind to use? I will spend some time in prayer. To me, that's centering because it helps me to connect with the God who I think created me, and the God who I think has called me to come live with Him for eternity.

John Curry: Very good. Talk a little bit about some of the things that you've done, since you brought up your faith there. You have done a lot of work over the years on different missions. I know one of those was a trip to Haiti. Would you talk a little bit about what you've done as far as ... I know, sometimes you don't like talking about it, but to the extent that you're willing to share, just a little bit of some of the things you've done, because there's more to life than just work, work, work.

Bill Kepper: Well, some of the best part of work ... and John you may recognize this  too because you've been involved in volunteerism with honor flights and that sort of stuff ... is what you give of your capacity to people who can't possibly repay you.

John Curry: Yes.

Bill Kepper: So, what Haiti, which is one of the times I reflect back most to some of the original 9/11, I started the first day at short term mission project in Haiti at a village I had been to several times previously.

John Curry: I never knew that. So you were there when the attack occurred?

Bill Kepper: Yeah. Somewhere around 10:00 in the morning, we were in the midst of seeing our 20 or 30th patient in the clinic building, and our pastor, who came by with new technology for us at the time, cell phone, said that the United States was under attack. Of course, incredulity was the first emotion I had. "No, there's no way. United States couldn't be under attack. We've got too many satellites, we've got too many things covered." The attack came from within.

John Curry: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Bill Kepper: We found out as much as we could out there, and so I gathered the people together who were volunteers at the clinic. We had nurses and lab techs and just plain volunteers to help us with the pharmacy and that sort of stuff. I don't remember which other doctor was there. I said, "Guys, we have just heard some terrible news about the United States under attack. We won't be able to find out more about that till we get back to our compound tonight where we can turn on cable news network and see more about it. We've got a clinic to run. So, let's have a period of prayer and reflection on what might be going on for our loved ones back home in the United States, knowing that we're here for a purpose and reason, and we need to accomplish that purpose and reason." 

Turned out the end of the week, after a lot of prayer and my concern that I might have to buy a Haitian schooner that they use for bringing food substances, et cetera, from the north part of the country down to the south, and back and navigate my way back to the United States, we were able to board an airplane and take our trip back a few hours too late to make [inaudible 00:25:35], but I think we were one of the first flights into Miami that Sunday afternoon, to come back to the United States. That was a weird time to be in Haiti, when all of this stuff was going down and all the airplanes were shut down and that sort of stuff. Didn't stop me from going. It just made me think about, you know, who's in charge and who has to respond to that person in charge, with faith, in order to be able to continue to do what you do. 

You know, the first time I went to Haiti I was afraid that I might not come back. That fear had disappeared by the time that 9/11 happened, but it came back pretty quick. And as being responsible for the care of the other people that I went, I didn't share that responsibility by myself. Somebody else was guiding the trip, too, and that person was the one that compelled me to go to begin with.

John Curry: What are you doing now in retirement or what will you be doing since you have all the extra time on your hands? What does retirement look like going forward, say, just look out, say, five years?

Bill Kepper: I think I plan on traveling, putting some of that money that you helped me save up over the period of time to good use, and seeing part-

John Curry: Enjoy it while you can.

Bill Kepper: ... part of the world where, you know, I haven't seen both ... No, traveling our nation as well as maybe international travel. My wife had not ever flown before we got married, and we flew to Jamaica for our honeymoon, but she's flown since then. She doesn't mind the experience too much. We were fortunate to have a son who competed in international rowing and got to see parts of Europe and parts of Asia and South America as a part of following him around as crew parents. So, that was great for travel, but since he's retired from that we need to have our own impetus to get us out of Tallahassee and move out and see some things.

John Curry: Very good, very good. You mentioned hunting earlier. How important do you think it is when people come to this thing called retirement, that they have hobbies, interests, to keep them busy in retirement. Or have you been retired long enough yet to know?

Bill Kepper: I think it adds value to what you can do as having a set point in time where you're gonna go out and do something you enjoy. If you haven't figured out what you like yet, you need to start figuring that out so that you can say, "I might want to be working with stained glass." "I might want to, you know, take up golf." Oh, lord help you. If more people were satisfied with their golf score at the end of their golf game, I might have thought about taking it up, but they're a bunch of unhappy folks.

John Curry: Right, angry, and slapping a little ball around. I'm one of those.

Bill Kepper: As well as they wanted to do. I've got fishing and never brought home any fish, not very often but on occasion, but I still had a good time fishing. To me, hunting and fishing are those things. They add value because it gets you out of the rat race to a certain extent. Yes, it costs a little bit of money, but I think the money is well spent. I think you could buy fish almost as fresh as I get to bring home and cook them up and they might taste pretty much similar, but there is some degree of benefit. I don't know, maybe I'm going back to the caveman times, hunter/gatherer, taking home, bringing home at least the main course so you can enjoy your vegetables even more.

John Curry: Absolutely. I started deer hunting again this year with my brother, my son, and my grandson. I quit for years, wouldn't do it. I did it because of them. Some of the best time has been just sitting around the campfire, just grilling some meat on the grill, sometimes it was chilly, and just talking. Having a good time and just being with the family. I didn't care if I shot a deer or not. In fact, I had an opportunity to kill several, and I didn't even shoot one. Everybody else did. They said, "Why didn't you shoot a deer?" I said, "I was just enjoying sitting there and relaxing." Cold at times, but I had not done that in 10 years. I did other things, but to me it's gone back full circle to where I enjoy doing that, 'cause it gets me outside, like you said, walking to the stand, park the truck down the road, walk farther. I get my exercise, get outside closer to God. It's just great.

Bill Kepper: You even get to see the day begin or the day end-

John Curry: Or both.

Bill Kepper: ... from an elevated position. That's not a bad thing.

John Curry: I agree totally. I agree. But you're right, it's very therapeutic. We're getting close to the end here. To kind of wind down, what suggestions or advice would you offer to anyone who's listening to this from the standpoint of this theme about health and wealth. You're working so hard to make money, 'cause you've gotta have a job, pay the bills. You're trying to save for retirement. But, what advice would you offer to tie the importance of taking care of your health now and a plan of action at the end when you go into retirement, to be able to truly enjoy your wealth? What would you say?

Bill Kepper: Good question. We all know the story about pro football players who have extraordinarily good health through high school and college, maybe a few surgeries, do carpentry work on them, and yet because of the series of concussions that they might have had or something like that, don't get to experience a full senior life. I think it's thereby good to put on your helmet, even if you're not a football player, of protection, so when you ride a bike you wear a helmet. When you go rollerblading, maybe you wear all those guards that I had on when I fell down on Harriman Circle one day. I hurt my pride, but that was about it. Didn't put the roller blades back on either.

John Curry: I'm not going to, so you were braver than I am. I'm not going to put roller blades on my feet, or roller skates either.

Bill Kepper: I had a friend that did it, and he loved it. I thought, "Well, I'll see ..." You know this about guys. Guys will buy sporting equipment, which will then encourage them to use the sporting equipment 'cause they don't to pay for something and not use it, and then they go out and try the sport. You know, vis a vis all the people with the golf clubs. So, I think that, you know, there's a little bit of that in me.

But I think keeping yourself physically healthy is a lot easier than reclaiming health after you've already lost a crucial function. So, by being cautious and, like I said, use reason in which you try to do things. Don't go out and try to run a marathon without training for it. Don't necessarily think that everybody has to run a marathon. I remember in my running career, which I cut short on purpose sort of like Forrest Gump, but way before he did, I ran a 15k one time. I said, "That's pretty much what I want to do, is run a 15k." But I didn't want to run a second 15k, because I had other things to do.

John Curry: Right. But at least you tried it.

Bill Kepper: Yeah.

John Curry: That's a good place to come to a close here. How important is it to try new things instead of just saying, "Hey, this is the way it is. I'm not gonna change." 

Bill Kepper: Well, there is that ropes course down there at Tallahassee Museum. I've thought about going down there and trying that. 

John Curry: It is fun, I've done it.

Bill Kepper: Yeah, I know a person who was a principle in designing it and putting it up. That's Dr. Ben [inaudible 00:33:42] son, Lucas. Yeah, I'm gonna do that. But I think it's important to try new things to challenge yourself, not to get caught up in the humdrum of the usual and the always. Go somewhere that you are intrigued with that's not particularly dangerous. [inaudible 00:34:05] going to the Ozarks 'cause you've seen both other mountain ranges in the United States, but you haven't been to the Ozarks yet. You might find a diamond there, something like that.

John Curry: Very good. So, just get out and do something different.

Bill Kepper: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

John Curry: Do something different. Well, my friend, thank you so much for taking the time to share your stories. It's been a pleasure sitting here with you.

Bill Kepper: And likewise.

John Curry: Thanks, Bill.

If you would like to know more about John Curry's services, you can request a complimentary information package by visiting johnhcurry.com/podcast. Again that is johnhcurry.com/podcast. Or you can call his office at 850-562-3000 again, that is 850-562-3000. John H. Curry, chartered life underwriter, chartered financial consultant, accredited estate planner, Masters in science and financial services, certified in long-term care. Registered representative and financial advisor of Park Avenue Securities LLC. 

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#2018-59261 Exp 6/20

The Two Most Important Elements of Financial Planning

As a senior analyst with CNBC and pioneering financial journalist, Ron Insana has seen a lot of ups and downs in the markets and how that impacts the average investor. And over the years he’s identified some key factors that separates those who do well… and those who fall behind.

Ron shares the two most important things you must be doing right now to invest in your future. And he has some specific advice for what to do when you have a “winner” in your portfolio – it might not be what you think.

We also talk about…

  • How to overcome the Main Street versus Wall Street divide

  • The one thing that could most affect your investments in the coming year

  • Why “balance” is so important in your financial planning

  • The impact – good and bad – of today’s 24-hour news cycle 

  • And more

Listen now…


John Curry: Hello, this is John Curry. Welcome to the latest episode of the Secure Retirement Podcast. Today I have the pleasure of sitting with Mr. Ron Insana. Ron is senior analyst and commentator for CNBC. Hello Ron.

Ron Insana: Hey John, how are you?

John Curry: Good. Good to see you.

Ron Insana: You too. Thank you.

John Curry: We've had two great days here at a conference dealing with retirement planning. In fact it's called Retirement Income Summit. So, Ron, tell me a little bit about your background so our listeners can know who you are. Your background, and then folks you're gonna hear some background noise, because literally I grabbed Ron.

Ron Insana: We're in a hall.

John Curry: And he's sitting with me in a hallway.

Ron Insana: A hotel hallway.

John Curry: And doing this presentation. So Ron, tell us who you are and why you do what you do.

Ron Insana: Well it's an interesting question with respect to the why. The why was originally accidental. I got a job at Financial News Network back in the early days of business television.

John Curry: Good old FNN.

Ron Insana: FNN. And decided to say for the next 34 years. So between Financial News Network and CNBC, I've been a financial journalist for more than three decades. And the conversations that I heard around me at FNN in mid 1980's really sparked my interest and my desire to figure out a way to explain the language of Wal Street in the language of main street, so that we could really make financial market and economic events meaningful to people at home for the first time on television.

That's something now that's been going on for several decades in a row.

John Curry: That has to be fascinating, because really you were a pioneer in that, because that wasn't being done at the time.

Ron Insana: No, FNN started in 1981. I joined in 1984. So Bill Griffith, Sue Horera and myself were among some of the earliest players in that space. And we were to be honest making it up as we went along. Not necessarily the content, but certainly the approach that we took. We ad libbed a lot of it. It was an underresourced facility way back when. But part of that process is it was really sink or swim. So you either learned the content and then went on the air and delivered the news, or you didn't make it. So learning the content was the most challenging part of it having not studied any of this in college.

I was a film major in college and I ended up being a business journalist. That's one interesting thing too about jobs and opportunity that I try to impress upon my kids, is that you don't know where you're going to end up, ans so that you should embrace every opportunity that comes your way because it could take you places you'd never thought you'd go. And you might actually end up in a destination that was better than the one you intended.

John Curry: And just be curious about people and other things. That's what I love about my work. 43 years now building a clientelle. I have clients from all walks of life. I learn something new everyday.

Ron Insana: Absolutely.

John Curry: Every day. And it's fun.

Ron Insana: And that's one of the interesting things about the news business and it's even on an accelerated basis today given the way in which media and politics have changed, and economics. There is no deadline anymore. There is no day. There is all day. And there is all news all the time and so.

John Curry: Everything's a deadline.

Ron Insana: Everything's a deadline. Every minute is a deadline, a potential deadline. So you really have to learn not only how to maintain that curiosity, but maintain the pace, and then also take all that information that's coming so fast these days, put it into perspective, and determine what's noise and what's news. And what's really important to people. Particularly in our field where we're talking about people making decisions about how to allocate their money. Whether it's for pure savings. Whether it's for education. Whether it's for healthcare. 

Sometimes they really do have to listen and they really can't avoid the news and they may have to make changes as a consequence.

John Curry: And quickly.

Ron Insana: And quickly. Sometimes. Yeah, I mean, usually you have enough lead time. I think the market sends you enough signals. And it's a pure belief of mine that the markets are message sending mechanisms. And sometimes they give you enough of a heads up that you don't have to be the last one out the door if something big is coming.

John Curry: I think that's so important because people who are listening to this are probably asking, "Okay, how do I go about building an investment portfolio?" And to make it clear, you don't sell investments?

Ron Insana: Correct, no.

John Curry: You're not in the business of selling them.

Ron Insana: I may someday again, but right now I don't. Yeah.

John Curry: So if you would, take a moment and give our listeners your perspective on what to do with all the talking heads telling you do this, do this, do that. Just give some of your thoughts on what people should do when they're investing for the future.

Ron Insana: Well I think there are some people who are quite capable of doing it on their own because they've had some lifelong experience with it, or they come from a family that's very familiar with the investing process. And that's one way if you're lucky enough you can go about it. To me the thing that makes the most sense is having a trusted advisor, who is seasoned, who has experience. Who can first and most importantly, develop a plan. Everything that I've seen over the course of my career is that people with a plan tend to outperform people without a plan.

People who adhere to their plan with a great deal of discipline and patience again, tend to outperform people who just again, sometimes noise, and make moves that are inappropriate for the longer term goals. So I think that planning process is extraordinarily important. And it encompasses everything, from 401 K's to Roth IRA's, to insurance products, to everything else that you need to fully round out an investment profile that meets all your needs. Whether it's short term cash. Whether it's education for your kids. Whether it's retirement. Whether it's the end of life. All of those plans, if people are truly thinking about these things, they should take a holistic approach and make sure they're hitting all those marks so that they don't fall short of their goals when the time comes.

John Curry: I tell people that if you have a plan, a written plan of action, you're more likely to stick to that. And you're not going to be swayed so much by the news media, or your friend on the golf course saying, "Hey [crosstalk 00:05:29]."

Ron Insana: [crosstalk 00:05:28]. Yeah.

John Curry: Right? Or worried about the political arena. Because the truth of the matter is, I love how you talk about Wall Street and main street. The truth is people on main street do not have access to the information that's available on Wall Street. And by the time you take action, it's already been done.

Ron Insana: Yeah, although that space has shrunk a little bit over time as information's been a little bit more democratized. 

John Curry: No doubt. No doubt.

Ron Insana: But you're not gonna beat algorithms, you're not gonna be professional money managers who are advantaged in ways that are appropriate for their business. I mean their job is to sit there all day, interact with companies, interact with strategists and others to determine what's coming next and try to know a little bit ahead of time. And I don't mean that in a nefarious sense that some people use it. But their job is to be ahead of the curve. And most people who are working all day and raising kids and doing other things with times, coaching in the afternoon or what have you. You just don't have the time to dedicate to that process where you know everything you need to know all the time. That's what professionals do for a living.

And having done it myself on the news side, I realize there is still a gap between what most people know and what I hear. And that's true for investment professionals as well.

John Curry: I hear from clients, "I don't want to know that stuff. I might have the time to do it. I don't want to take the time to do it. Because I want to go with my wife. You help me find the right answers."

Ron Insana: Yeah, and your written plan comment is interesting because I'm a completely uptight list maker. That's how I live my life. And part of that is a function of my job. I started taking notes more so than I ever did in high school or college, about the news. And I used to go through pads and pads of paper every single day. We would take notes on everything that occurred. And I got into this process of not just taking notes, but then also making life lists. Still hand-written. It's a little bit archaic. I occasionally use my notes page on my cell phone. But I make lists and check things off. 

And I think that's made me more efficient in my work and even in my personal life, because I do feel accomplished when I'm taking those things off and I do know that they're getting done. And I think that's the same with a financial plan. The more that you can tick those things off and meet your goals, the more comfortable, the more relaxed your life is going to be.

John Curry: Amen. My team gave me a hard time, because you see I have a journal in front.

Ron Insana: I see that, yeah.

John Curry: I make notes all the time. And they'll laugh at me and say, "Why don't you just put it in the computer?"

I said, "Because I can't get my hands on it. I can't see it that way."

Ron Insana: Well I'll tell you, there's some interesting studies coming out about kids who are taking notes with their computers in school versus kids who take hand written notes. Retention levels are higher with handwritten note takers.

John Curry: Interesting.

Ron Insana: And there's some new studies coming out with that. I had this conversations with my kids. One of my kids actually had right, left confusion when he was young, so his handwriting was horrible. So he really requires a computer to take notes.

John Curry: Right.

Ron Insana: But absent that, literally writing things down is great for hard wiring your brain.

John Curry: Yes. I agree totally. I take a lot of notes at conferences like this conference I've got a book half full already. And then I'll have my thoughts also.

In the few minutes we have remaining, because we've got to get back to a tight schedule here.

Ron Insana: I think we're good. Yeah.

John Curry: Just talk a little bit about what you see as being the future from the standpoint of all the political unrest that's going on. The lack of civility if you will across the different industries, and political world especially.

Ron Insana: Well it does seem to be a unique time. I hate to use the word unprecedented, because you can go back into early American history and find things that are less civil than this in terms of the political distance.

John Curry: They shot each other back then.

Ron Insana: Yes. Aaron Burr was around, and Mr. Hamilton was cut short at what, 37 years old as a consequence. And even John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had some wild political arguments amongst their campaign teams that are probably more like today than we want to recognize. But I think civility coming back to political discourse is either going to take a statesman or a stateswoman who redefines the process back towards what we're accustomed to. Or we might just spin off the rails into having these food fights on a regular basis in politics.

Now having said that, the US economy is in fine shape. The tax reform bill is helping some folks. De-regulation is helping some industries. So absent the political or geo political upset, the economy still looks good. I think we are getting to a point in the cycle where we're at peak growth, where the Federal Reserve may very well accelerate its interest rate increases. And we might have something of a downturn later this year, early 2019 that'll feel challenging.

So I think those are the things people need to pay attention. Mostly really in a lot of ways absent some geo political catastrophe, the Federal Reserve is the thing to watch. If rates start to go up more quickly than people anticipate, even though earnings are good, even though growth is relatively good, we know that rising interest rates generally interfere with stock market performance.

John Curry: Right.

Ron Insana: So there are times that you have to make allocation decisions based on what the Fed's doing, and I think that might be central to the conversation we're going to have later in the year.

John Curry: So what advice would you offer to people listening to this, that hear you say these things? Is it still develop your plan, stay the course?

Ron Insana: Well absolutely. And there are times, and there will be a time again, where you ... And in fact it might even be now, that if you have enormous winners in the stock market that have run up well more than 300%, the index's alone have done that since the bottom of 2009, that you recalibrate your portfolio. You re-balance, you bring the allocation back into what is your planned targets for stocks, for bonds, for other alternatives that you may have, and make sure that those remain in balance and they don't get too far out of whack with respect to the program that you've put in place.

So we've had a huge run up in the market, we've had a little correction. 10% peak to trough, which is normal. And in fact, well overdue in a certain sense. And if you have stocks that have gone absolutely ballistic or hyperbolic, or however you want to describe it, again, it's a good time to pare those back and find some other opportunities in the financial markets that are under-owned, under- loved, and under-explored. And your advisor often times can help you do things like that.

John Curry: That's difficult for most people to do.

Ron Insana: Yeah.

John Curry: Because they see it going up. I don't want to get out of it. It's going great. And then they wait too long. All of a sudden the market comes down. Now they're hurting.

Ron Insana: Well you don't have to sell it. You never have to sell everything. You take some chips off the table. You take some profits. You re-deploy the profits into assess that might be underperforming for a period of time. You might want to put a little more ballast in the portfolio by buying bonds or munies, or something along those lines. Upping your contributions to a whole life insurance policy. However you can meet your goals. You never want to let your portfolio get too far out of balance where you're riding on the back of just a couple of assets, a couple of stocks even.

And then all of a sudden if they do in fact run into trouble, you're going to have to make up that ground later on. So sticking to a balanced plan, however that balance is defined by you and your advisor, is most often the best way to go. 

John Curry: And I think it's key not to have all your money in the market anyway.

Ron Insana: No, I mean you have to have a little cash, a little dry powder.

John Curry: Have some liquidity.

Ron Insana: Absolutely. Look, that's part of that plan which is, how much emergency cash do you need? How much is dedicated to tax deferred savings? How much is dedicated toward even some speculative investments you'd like to make? Do you have what we like to call Vegas Money on hand so that if you see something that's interesting that you want to trade, you can feel comfortable doing that without worrying about the overall plan that you've already put in place.

John Curry: Absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about this conference we're attending.

Ron Insana: Yeah.

John Curry: We've had the pleasure yesterday of going over to Yale University and hearing some professors in the finance and marketing department.

Ron Insana: I'm surprised the divinity school didn't burst into flames when I walked in. But that's another story for another day.

John Curry: [crosstalk 00:12:54].

Ron Insana: It really was.

John Curry: But why are you here? Tell us why you have such an interest in doing what you've done. You've served as our MC this week for Park [inaudible 00:13:03] Securities, conference on retirement masters. Why are you here? Why do you have such a passion for this?

Ron Insana: Well it's an interesting format for me. Having become a contributor to CNBC, and I did go off and manage some money for a period of time after my full time work at CNBC. And I went through that process during the crisis. So it wasn't quite as fruitful as I had anticipated. So I came back, got back in the media business. And then expanded my public speaking business, which in a lot of ways is as fulfilling as my television job used to be.

I get direct feedback from the audience. We do deeper dives without any commercial interruptions when we do interviews, when we do conversations. When I give a speech and then do Q and A with the audience, it's actually informative for me because I get to hear what people on the ground are thinking bout. Whether they're financial advisors. Whether they're an insurance business. Whether they're clients and we're doing client events in some cases. I get to go all around the country and hear what people have on their minds. And that's both in terms of what's happening in the economy and the markets. But it's also in terms of what they're thinking about politically and how they view the news media more broadly, which is always a challenging question I have to face when I'm in front of an audience.

So given the rapid changes in all those areas, it's great for me to hear the audience and hear their concerns or hear what they have going on in their businesses. If their businesses are running hot, how are they feeling about the economy. If they're feeling really hot are they telegraphing that to me in a way so I can use that as an economic indicator. It's really a boots on the ground experience for me that helps me inform some of the things that I still do for CNBC and MSNBC as well.

John Curry: Well, I've been fascinated watching you this week. You take the time to talk with people. You're a celebrity but you are down to earth. You talk with people. You're getting to know people. You're truly a people person. You enjoy getting to know people.

Ron Insana: Absolutely. And for a wide variety of reasons. One, I've kind of always been this way. And have never really shied away from conversations. I kind of like to hear what people are thinking. And it's funny. I used to watch president Clinton when he was in office and I interviewed him on numerous occasions. He had this, in addition to his insatiable curiosity about facts and figures and content, he also had an insatiable desire to talk to people.

John Curry: Right.

Ron Insana: And I always noticed that he drew energy from that. And it's not necessarily something that I added after I met him. But I always find it's informative to me. I make new friends and quite frankly and somewhat selfishly, sometimes you find new business opportunities in these conversations as well.

John Curry: Sure.

Ron Insana: I think shying away from the audience actually leaves you in a position where you get less out of the experience than you would otherwise. 

John Curry: Absolute.

Ron Insana: So some people like to hit and run. It's just never been my style.

John Curry: Same here. Keep on contributing, helping people. Let them grown. As we wrap up, anything you want to end with that you want to share with our listeners.

Ron Insana: I think the more informed they can become and the more aware they are of their circumstances around them locally, literally around them locally within their own companies or chosen professions, but then also more broadly with respect to the news and respect to what's going on with domestic and global events, then the less risk there is of getting blind sided or at least, the better chance you'll have of delivering informed questions to the people that you work with, your advisors. So that you feel comfortable that when you get a question answered, it's adequate to the situation.

So I think as much as people say information has been democratized, it's true up to a point. There's a lot of information but there's not a lot of wisdom. So I think people have to pay enough attention so they know which questions to ask, and also know that they're comfortable that they got their questions answered correctly.

John Curry: Very good. Before we go, tell people how they can tune in to catch your shows.

Ron Insana: Well see I'm on CNBC usually Thursday or Friday on Power Launch, which is one to three Eastern time. MSNBC is fairly random based on the news. They'll call me whenever they want me in. Very often times I'll appear on Stefanie Rules show which is at 9 AM Eastern time. And then we're coming out with a newsletter. Some colleagues of mine and I starting May 1st, called the FAQ, or Financial Advisor Quotient. That's gonna be FAQ, or FAQoutient.com. That should be out may 1st I believe.

John Curry: Very good. Ron Insana. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Ron Insana: Thank you for having me.

John Curry: It's been a pleasure.

Ron Insana: Appreciate it.

If you would like to know more about John Curry’s services, you can request a

complimentary information package by visiting JohnHCurry.com/podcast. Again, that is

JohnHCurry.com/podcast. Or you can call his office at 850-562-3000.

Again, that is 850-562-3000.

John H. Curry, CLU, ChFC, AEP, MSFS, CLTC, registered representative and financial advisor of Park Avenue Securities, LLC (PAS). Securities products and services and advisory services are offered through PAS, a registered broker dealer and investment advisor. Financial representative of the Guardian Life Insurance company of America, New York, New York. PAS is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian. North Florida Financial Corporation is not an affiliate or subsidiary of PAS. PAS is a member of FINRA and SIPC. This material is intended for general public use. By providing this material, we are not undertaking to provide investment advice for any specific individual or situation, or to otherwise act in a fiduciary capacity. Please contact one of our financial professionals for guidance and information specific to your individual situation. All investments contain risk and may lose value. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Guardian nor any of its subsidiaries offer Long Term Care Insurance and Guardian, its subsidiaries, agents or employees do not provide legal, tax, or accounting advice. Please consult with your attorney, accountant, and/or tax advisor for advice concerning your particular circumstances. Not affiliated with The Florida Retirement System. 

The Living Balance Sheet® (LBS) and the LBS Logo are registered service marks of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America (Guardian), New York, NY. © Copyright 2005-2018 

This podcast is for informational purposes only. Guest speakers and their firms are not affiliated with or endorsed by PAS or Guardian and opinions stated are their own. 

#2018-61307 Exp 6/20

Don’t Forget Healthcare in Your Retirement Planning

When you’re talking about financial planning, you can’t leave out healthcare, says Peter Stahl, author of Top of the First: The Convergence of Healthcare and Financial Planning. It’s one of the most important parts of your retirement, after all. And it’s one of the biggest expenses, too.

Medicare is one element here that confuses a lot of people. Peter has some solid advice for navigating that program. He also highlights three things you can do to maximize your healthcare funds when you retire.

There’s a lot more on this vital topic, including… 

  • How to maximize your health savings account

  • Ways to plan effectively for long-term care

  • The right time to enroll in Medicare – it’s different for everybody

  • How the new tax law could impact your healthcare planning.

  • And more

Listen now…

John Curry and Peter Stahl Episode Transcript: 

John Curry: Hello this is John Curry, welcome to a new episode of our Secure Retirement podcast. I am in New Haven Connecticut for a conference this week, it's called Retirement Income Masters and I'm sitting here with my friend Peter Stahl. Peter, welcome.

Peter Stahl: Thank you, John.

John Curry: Peter Stahl is unusual fellow in the sense that he talks about the convergence of healthcare and financial planning. And Peter you've been to Tallahassee to do a couple of workshops for me, our clients loved it, our advisors loved it. So what in the world is this convergence of healthcare and financial planning, and a little bit of your background please.

Peter Stahl: Sure, well I've been in the financial services industry John my whole career, which is about 30 years. But back in 2012 I put together my business to really train and educate both consumers as well as financial advisors on some of the central financial planning components that surround retirement healthcare.

John Curry: Very good, and you make the difference to the way to emphasize that, retirement healthcare. So how does retirement healthcare differ from me going to work, and working, have a career and I'm not retired yet?

Peter Stahl: Right, good question. Healthcare, the primary way people get their healthcare during their working years is through their employer. Almost to the point where we just take that for granted.

John Curry: Yes, we do.

Peter Stahl: So that's just the way it's been for a number of years, and there's tax incentives at the company level that have kind of driven that, and that's grown. More recently we had the Obamacare exchanges for people that aren't getting their insurance through their employer, they're getting their insurance on an exchange and so that's the primary driver there within that marker. 

When you transition to retirement, it's all about Medicare. Medicare is mandatory, Medicare will either be in part or in whole your healthcare during retirement. And then you have other issues, both as you accumulate wealth for that retirement space, and then as you move into retirement, such as custodial care. So both the ins and outs of Medicare, and then the complexities of some of the issue surrounding custodial care really make up the core of the retirement healthcare discussion.

John Curry: I get questions literally every day that I work, because most of my work is in retirement planning. I get questions about Medicare, and I didn't pay much attention to it until we started getting you coming in doing workshops for us, and as I was getting closer to 65 as of December of last year, 2017, so I had to do a little homework myself. And I was surprised at how little I knew. I knew a lot about solutions security but now as I'm aging and my clients are aging, I'm getting more and more questions about Medicare, so we've got to bring you in to do another workshop. 

Let's talk a little bit about the different components of Medicare. Many people think I just call up Social Security or I go online and register for Medicare and it's not big deal. It's more complicated than that, isn't it?

Peter Stahl: It is in the sense that a lot of us have the mindset that we have to enroll in Medicare at age 65, for example, where the trend in our country has really been aligning your Medicare enrollment with your retirement because meany people have company insurance that carry them through all the way until they retire, and because those retirement ages are being pushed out to later in life, we have many people that are working until 68, or 70 or 75 and retiring and enrolling in Medicare at that point. 

Now, there is some complexity, there are some folks that will have to get enrolled at age 65 so nothing's quite as simple as it seems in the service, but the general trend is lining up that Medicare enrollment with your retirement, so yes there's a lot of nuances to this Medicare that people don't realize, that being one of them.

John Curry: There's a lot to learn, too. I know in my case I took part A, enrolled in part A but didn't take part B because I'm still working and have a group plan. So down the road that'll change, and Medicare will be the primary.

Let's talk about one of your big issues you always talk about. You touched on it today some, and that's health savings account. Talk about that and the role they play in helping cover in post-retirement years.

Peter Stahl: Sure, it's an exciting topic, the health savings accounts. The first thing you need to recognize is health savings accounts are not available to everyone. They're available if you have the right type of insurance. When I say the right type, there are certain stipulations that a health insurance plan has to meet. It's called a high deductible plan, so there's deductible stipulations and there's a few other, both federal and state stipulations that this insurance policy has to meet. If it does so, it qualifies as let's call it HSA insurance. So you'll have a health savings account along with this high-deductible health instance plan.

So this is, you know many employers are offering this, and people that are self-employed. It's about 30% of the working population, has a high-deductible health insurance plan that is HSA approved. The concept is, you put money into the health savings account, it goes in pre-taxed. So that's pre-federal, pre-state, pre-FICA. And when I say pre-state, that's 47 of the 50 states. And then, you can take the money out tax-free for qualified health expenditures. But what's happening John, in our country is people are recognizing that health care costs for most of us will be greatest during our retirement years. 

And so they're using the health savings account as a way to save for healthcare expenses in retirement. And so rather than having the money come in the front door and go out the back door in the same calendar year, they are paying this high-deductible with other disposable income and therefore freeing themselves up to invest the HSA and let it grow for retirement. 

John Curry: And really what they're doing is, in a way, pre-paying those costs, aren't they? So they're setting money aside today to take care of a problem that we know if we live long enough, we're going to be facing it.

Peter Stahl: Exactly and so they're recognizing that health care is probably my largest expense during retirement. It's a mandatory expensive and so I need this specifically planned, save and invest for it. And so they use the health savings account to that end.

John Curry: On the panel today you made that comment about mandatory expenses. Explain to our listeners what you mean about that, because some people out there are thinking "It's not mandatory, I don't have to have health insurance."

Peter Stahl: Well, mandatory in the sense that you want health insurance, you'll need to get enrolled in Medicare. And it doesn't matter if you're very affluent for example and say "Well couldn't I just elect for some sort of private health insurance, and not opt for this government Medicare system?" No, it doesn't exist. So if you want health insurance when you make that transition from employer based insurance, or from one of the state exchanges that you're on into retirement Medicare will be your insurance. Now there's federal benefits that can work in conjunction with Medicare, retiree insurance, becoming a little more rare, but there's certain retiree insurances out there once again can work in conjunction with Medicare. But either in part or in whole, you're going to be needed to enroll in Medicare, and there are costs.

You mentioned that part B, it carries a premium. Part B, your prescription drug plan, it has a premium. Most people go out and get a Medigap plan to fill in some of the holes, it has a premium. So there are costs and the costs actually vary for some of the pieces based on your income. So some of the people are going to be paying a lot more for this coverage than others.

John Curry: Absolutely. We just had a cost of living adjustment increase with Social Security that people I'm talking with said "I didn't see it." Because my Medicare premiums also went up. 

Peter Stahl: Right.

John Curry: And let's talk about what you're seeing at that end?

Peter Stahl: Yeah, it was interesting. In 2017 Social Security announced a two percent COLA, cost of living adjustment. 

John Curry: Finally, the year before was only .30.

Peter Stahl: And the year before that it was zero, so people were actually pretty excited about a two percent pay raise. And then as you just stated, they got their statements and they're looking at them and scratching their heads saying "I'm not seeing any increase." So there's really two things that went on unique to 2018. One of them was, most people saw a pretty substantial increase in their Medicare part B premium. They had been sheltered from increases in their premium over the last couple of years, due to complexities that we can't get into on a podcast, but they had been sheltered from previous increases of Medicare costs and that sheltering went away in 2018, and so they saw a pretty sub sizable bump in their Medicare costs.

Medicare comes out of Social Security, so that wiped out the 2% COLA. And then John, the other thing that happened is some of the income levels to determine what your Medicare premiums were going to be got changed, for the more affluent households in our country. And as a result of that, some of the more affluent households actually saw their Social Security Benefit decrease because their Medicare B increase and D increase was even more sizeable.

John Curry: And the ones I talked with were not very happy about that.

Peter Stahl: No, they weren't.

John Curry: They don't like that. When I do individual consultation or in seminars or in speeches, that comes up quite a bit. Talk a little bit about the impact Peter, that the new tax law has on the planning for healthcare.

Peter Stahl: Well, there's a lot of good news in the tax reform that was passed, but there wasn't a lot of direct change as it relates to Medicare and tax planning for retirement. Most of the changes were on the corporate side. Now there is one piece of that, one major exception to that in that there is a new bracket introduced for the most affluent households in our country that will drive up Medicare costs even further for them, so that the one footnote to all that is there will be for the affluent households in our country a pretty sizeable increase next year in their Medicare premiums.

John Curry: Right. Very good. What are some of the things that you think anyone getting close to retirement ... Let's say they're five years away, or they're stepping out of the workforce into retirement. What are the things that you would love to share with them to get them to think about these issues?

Peter Stahl: Yeah, I would say, I mean if we could back up five years as you just said to do some planning, terrific. If we can back up 10 or 15 years, even better.

John Curry: Much better.

Peter Stahl: So what I always tell folks is, as you accumulate money for retirement, and those peak earnings in accumulation years, let's call it from age 50, 55ish, all the way up until you retire, there's some changes to the traditional ways of saving money that you should consider. Number one is, if you have a 401K at work, 401K's are terrific, but there's two versions of a 401K. A traditional, and a Roth. I'm always encouraging people for their employee deferrals, the money they're putting in out of their paycheck, to start building a balance in the Roth, because the Roth will give them a tax-free cash flow in retirement, very important. So consider the Roth would be point number one.

Number two would be the health savings account that you brought up a minute ago. If you have the ability to chose a high deductible health insurance plan and you do your research and figure that's maybe a good option for you and your family, then fund that HSA and don't spend it. Get it invested and let that thing grow. You have to have enough disposable income and your emergency fund in place so that when life happens, you're not going to be forced to tap it during a market downturn.  But get that HSA working for you, fully-funded, and let it grown.

And then the other piece of it is, just consider tax efficient investing. A lot of folks are looking at big capital gain distributions this year. That's a nice problem to have, I mean the tax return with a lot of capital gains means you've got a nice investment portfolio generating those, and a good problem to have but considering tax efficient investing, tax deferred annuities.  There's ways to help control some of those taxes so that you can be in a position to manage some of them, medicare costs driven by those in retirement.

John Curry: My friend Ed [inaudible 00:13:38] likes to talk about forever taxed, retirement counsel IRA's and never taxed, Roth IRA's and life insurance.

Peter Stahl: I like that.

John Curry: And he's right about that, if they're used properly and also to help cover some of the costs in long-term care down the road. You talk about that quite a bit too, just from the standpoint of what's going to happen in retirement. So let's talk about now you're in retirement, what is your research and your teaching say about the different types of healthcare costs in retirement?

Peter Stahl: I like to break it down in terms of routine costs, what I call kind of your meat and potatoes, your day-in to day-out, month-in to month-out costs.

John Curry: I stubbed my toe, I've got to get to the doctor, right?

Peter Stahl: Right. And that's everything from your premiums on your Medicare, to the copays to the deductibles, to things that aren't covered, the dental work, the vision ... But then recognizing that an even larger potential cost lurks out there, even beyond the cost John of potential non-financial implications of your family, if and when you a custodial care event. And so I break it down, routine costs and custodial care. Custodial care meaning the non-medical events, so help getting out of bed, making your meals, getting around the house, using the facilities, taking a shower. We all know people and have had life experiences where people due to medical conditions need help with these activities and daily living. That can have enormous both financial, and non-financial implications on your retirement. 

John Curry: Absolutely, and many people are surprised to learn that's not covered by Medicare and their health insurance coverages. It's just, it's not adequate. 

Peter Stahl: It's not, and the other thing that people automatically think I'm talking about nursing homes. Well I might be, in about 30% of the situations a custodial care need gets the point where a formal nursing home environment is the best and sometimes the only solution. But the more common scenario is people who are getting their care at home by loved ones.

John Curry: Right.

Peter Stahl: Loved one's meaning your spouse or your daughters. The daughters are a lot better at this than the sons, that's just the reality and if we don't plan for this, it can be crushing on the people we love the most. 

John Curry: I've heard you say several times now, that the long-term care situation, or custodial care as you describe it, which I like better, it's not about you. It's about your family, it's about the people you love and care about who will have to change their lives to care for you. Would you expand on that?

Peter Stahl: Sure, as I consider this for myself, the question I need, as challenging as it would be in my life to need custodial care, and I'm a typical healthy guy who likes to exercise and eat right. Having a custodial care event is the furthest thing from my thought. But the reality is, if it were to happen, who would provide the care for me?

This is not about the challenges that I would face personally, this is about my spouse and my daughters because they realistically would be the ones that get involved with my care and they've got very full lives, and my spouse is not the same age as I am. So if I have a custodial care event at age 75, at age 80, is she going to be equipped physically from a health point of view to care for me? My daughters at that point will be hopefully having a family and managing a wonderful career. Are they going to have 20, 25, 30 hours a week to get involved in my custodial care? We need to think these through. It's not about me, it's about the impact caring for me would have on their life. 

John Curry: I've been doing this for 43 years now, and one of the saddest things I se is someone needing care, a mom or dad, and then you have the brother and the sister let's say that argue. And one is providing, in charge of the care and one is attempting to, or maybe not even attempting to. And then they fight over assets later, if there's anything left because "Well I gave all the care, I deserve something."  And the other one says "No, we split it 50/50." 

And it's very frustrating because with proper planning that could have been taken care of either by investing money to set aside for that purpose, purchasing a traditional long-term care insurance policy, or if appropriate, having a life insurance policy that has a long-term care rider on it, or other types of programs or even annuities you can purchase that have long-term care provisions.  And I get so frustrated because surely someone, some financial advisor told you about this before you got to me, and they always say no.

Peter Stahl: Yeah it's amazing how early on we are in this country with all these conversations. The first baby boomer hit age 65 a couple of years back now, summer of 2016, so now we've got 10,000 people a day turning 65. 10,000 people a day turning age 70. An age where they're really dealing with these issues, in fact that's why I called my book Top of the First, because despite these issues having been around for so long, we're just more recently as our country ages getting after them and dealing with them. And to your point, there's a lot of ways to equip your financial plan to be ready for custodial care need. It's not just long-term care insurance. That's a very viable and a good solution, but there are what they call asset-based products, and hybrid products and life insurance and annuity ... There's a lot of ways to create income to help out the daughter, the wife, the husband, whoever it is handling that care.

John Curry: Child or grandchild. You know Peter one of the things I tell people is I don't know that you need to purchase long-term care insurance, but you certainly need a plan in place to fund long-term care because if you live long enough, you're going to have a problem. Now that might mean that you allocate your Social Security payments so that maybe you don't need the money, and so invest it or just use it for the care. We have just a few minutes left, talk a little bit about your book. What prompted you to write this book?

Peter Stahl: Well I started speaking back in 2012 about these issues and I just realized the vast need for eduction on these topics. And there's a number of ways people like to get educated. Sometimes it's a live presentation, so I travel the country coast to coast-

John Curry: Yes you do. [crosstalk 00:20:41]

Peter Stahl: But, like myself, I like to read. I'm a prolific reader both for personal enjoyment as well as professionally, that's how my brain works, that's how I digest information, show it to me in writing. So I thought alright, I will put this out into print as well. And now we're getting into podcasts, and video and into other ways to get that information out there, so I put the book out there to really go through the central issues and to allow people to have a resource to understand how to think about them.

John Curry: Well the title of the book is Top of the First, the Convergence of Healthcare and Financial Planning, and the author is Peter Stahl, and that's S-T-A-H-L, Peter Stahl. Peter, anything you want to share in closing with our listeners?

Peter Stahl: Well I would say there are some encouraging trends when you look at the number of people that are recognizing they need to start to address these issues, and save and invest specifically for them.  That trend is a positive trendline when you look at it, so despite the enormity of these costs and some of the complexities around the alphabet soup of Medicare, people are recognizing "I need to get after this, and I need to do it well before I get to retirement." And so I'm encouraged by that.

John Curry: Talk a little bit about the importance of coaches to help you along the way. This is a very complicated subject for financial advisors, this is a complicated subject for me. The more I study it, the most I realize how much I need to study it. So let's talk about the importance of having someone that you can work with that understands your situation and help you.

Peter Stahl: Yeah, I close my book John, you just made me think of this, and I mention this in the forward as well in that there are a lot of pieces to this puzzle, and you do have the do-it-yourselfers out there, right? And if you like to delve into stocks and bonds and investments and annuities and mutual funds, and you want to put your own plan together and can figure out growth versus value and international domestic, great. I personally like to have a financial advisor even though I'm a CFP myself, I have an advisor to oversee all my assets. 

But when you add in the complexities of healthcare costs and custodial care, the alphabet soup of Medicare to try to do this on your own to me speaks volumes as to why people rank healthcare as their number one concern. It is very complex, and simple things such as proper use of an HSA, the Roth 401K versus the basic 401K, people tell me "You know, I've never heard that before." So finding an advisor such as yourself who takes a wholistic approach is critical.

John Curry: Well I think you're right about that, and one of the things that occurs to me as we're sitting here in New Haven, Connecticut, is we're talking about just one piece of the puzzle and we've gone for almost 25 minutes here just talking about Medicare and healthcare issues. When you start factoring in how do you plan for inflation? Because healthcare costs are much higher than the regular inflation rate. So there's so many parts to this thing and it's not just about the healthcare. How do I make sure I don't run out of income? How do I coordinate my pension if I have one, my 401K with my Social Security? All of this stuff is a bunch of moving parts. But I'm getting the same reaction from my clients who are telling me, my biggest concern is how do I pay for healthcare in retirement? Where will the money come from? And if I have a custodial need, custodial care need, how will I pay for that?

Peter Stahl: Right, and we want to enter retirement with peace of mind. And the way we do that is by properly planning ahead, and it can be achieved. You addressed the custodial care concern, you addressed the routine healthcare costs, and you build and invest and save appropriately for those. Then you get to retirement and you move through retirement knowing that you're going to have to worry about it.

John Curry: And it does take a little work, you have to take the time and be willing to take the actions necessary to make sure that you have that peace of mind down the road. 

Peter Stahl: Absolutely.

John Curry: Peter, tell people how to get a copy of your book.

Peter Stahl: Easiest way is right on Amazon, if you go onto the Amazon.com book sale section, the top of the first and with my name it would come up with a search.  I also have a website to my speaking business is Bedrock, Bedrock Business Results. So if you can go to my website, which is a google search will do that as well. But you can go to my website as well and find the book.

John Curry: Peter Stahl, thank you so much.  I've enjoyed being with you today. 

Peter Stahl: I've enjoyed it as well. 

If you would like to know more about John Curry’s services, you can request a

complimentary information package by visiting JohnHCurry.com/podcast. Again, that is

JohnHCurry.com/podcast. Or you can call his office at 850-562-3000.

Again, that is 850-562-3000.

If you would like to know more about John Curry's services, you can request a complimentary information package by visiting johnhcurry.com/podcast. Again that is johnhcurry.com/podcast. Or you can call his office at 850-562-3000 again, that is 850-562-3000. John H. Curry, chartered life underwriter, chartered financial consultant, accredited estate planner, Masters in science and financial services, certified in long-term care. Registered representative and financial advisor of Park Avenue Securities LLC. 

Securities products and services and advisory services are offered through Park Avenue Securities, a registered broker-dealer and investment advisor. Financial representative of the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America New York New York. Park Avenue Securities is an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Guardian. North Florida Financial Corporation is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Park Avenue Securities. Park Avenue Securities is a member of FINRA and SIPC. This material is intended for general public use. 

By providing this material we are not undertaking to provide investment advice for any specific individual or situation or to otherwise act in a fiduciary capacity. Please contact one of our financial professionals for guidance and information specific to your individual situation. All investments contain risk and they lose value. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Guardian, its subsidiaries, agents or employees do not provide legal, tax or accounting advice. Please consult with your attorney, accountant and/or tax advisor for advice concerning your particular circumstances. 

Not affiliated with the Florida Retirement System. The Living Balance Sheet and the Living Balance Sheet logo are registered service marks of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, New York New York, Copyright 2005 to 2018. This podcast is for informational purposes only guest speakers and their firms are not affiliated with or endorsed by Park Avenue Securities or Guardian and opinions stated are their own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

#2018-61433 Exp 6/20

Achieving Simplicity in All Areas of Your Life

Financial and retirement planning – most important issues in our lives, in fact – are often made too complicated. The best plans… the best ideas… are actually the simplest, says Steve Harvill, founder of Creative Ventures.

You can also take an active role by using easy-to-use tools to work towards your most important goals one step at a time.

Steve shares some strategies for injecting simplicity in the key areas of your life. You’ll discover…

  • Having “more” of something doesn’t mean you have more value

  • The “old school” method for achieving key objectives

  • Why you should be thinking inside the box

  • The OCT method for focusing on tasks with the most impact

  • And more

Listen now…

Episode Transcript: 

John: Hi. This is John Kerry. Welcome to another episode of Secure Retirement Podcast. Today I'm sitting with a gentleman who's going to blow your mind. His name is Stephen Harvill. I've heard him speak before. Stephen is the creator of a company called Creative Ventures.

Steve, it's good to see you again. 

Steve Harville: Thanks so much for having me and a chance to do the Podcast. It was great to see you here in New Haven. 

John: Well, I learn something new every time I'm around you. 

Steve Harvill: That's quite an honor. 

John: Would you please take a moment and tell our listeners a little bit about your background. I think it's fascinating that at age 25 you were hired to do a big project with Disney and still do it. 

Steve Harvill: My company is 32 years old. It's a strategic consulting firm. Our offices are in Dallas, Texas, but I live in Austin. When I was very young I had an idea for a real estate company that I was working with. We were planning ski resorts. And they implemented the idea and it became really effective. And the CEO of the company came and said, "Steve, I want you to go to Houston and introduce this idea to the Urban Land Institute." 

And I said, "I'm not going to Houston and stand up and talk about something I made up. I'm a 25-year-old scientist right out of college." And he said, "I understand you thought I was asking you to go. I'm telling you to go." 

So I got on the plane and went to Houston. After I introduced the idea a number of people came up to me afterwards and asked me if I could come and help their company do it. One of those companies was Disney. I said, "I could absolutely do that. It's not that hard to do." And they said, "How much do you charge for that?" And I went, "You can charge for that? Are you kidding me?" 

And that started the company that 32 years later is still actively working on strategy with companies all over the world. 

John: Well, let me explain to our listeners where we are. We are in Hew Haven, Connecticut. We are at a Park Avenue Securities conference on retirement planning. And yesterday we had the pleasure of going over to Yale University and listening to some folks. And you told the group earlier that you're a scientist. You actually have a degree, I think you said in astrophysics. 

Steve Harvill: In physics, yes, and in marine biology. 

John: And marine biology. So tell me how in the world does a scientist, because I have a lot of friends that are scientists at Florida State University. So how do you go from being a scientist to become a very successful entrepreneur in your world? 

Steve Harvill: You know, I think to say that I'm a scientist is probably an exaggeration, because a scientist is a practicing person. I never practiced what I learned or what I got out of my college education. So, I was always driven at an early age by story. Stories fascinated me. I was a comic book kid. I'm a comic book adult. I've gone to the movies every Saturday since I was nine years old. 

That idea of story fascinated me, and I was always thinking that there would be a way to structure ideas around story to create some type of an impact around it. And that was really the idea that launched everything that we did, was this idea that we could present, in a really unique format, our ideas so that they would be dynamic, have an impact, people would remember them. They'd be simple. They'd never exceed three parts. 

And that's what we've kind of built the company around. And we have seven strategic platforms, seven different ideas that we work with companies on all the time. 

And so it was really more based on the idea that you look at things like a scientist does, right? In parts and pieces. You look at them as having a connected element to them so that they reach an outcome. And from that moment on it was just about using that stuff to implement our ideas, and our ideas just happened to hit home. 

John: Today in your workshop you talked about elegant simplicity. I find that in our world of financial advising, it's too complicated. It's too complex. And I know it's complex for me, and I have to work at it to find ways to present ideas in a simple way where clients feel comfortable with either the advice I'm giving or the products themselves. 

Would you take a little bit of time, please, and explain why it's so important to go from that complex down to the simple and why it's so dag gum difficult to do so? 

Steve Harvill: We live in a world that believes that complexity creates value. That more is better. So we're always thinking that if we can get more, we get more value, we have more impact. And that's wrong. 

Instead what we're looking for is the right thing, not moral something, but the right thing. And the right thing is almost always a much more simple product, a much more simple presentation, a much more simple story than we ever think it is. And so we have to fight against this prejudice we have thinking that more is always better. 

If your brain can overcome that, then you create this idea of restricting what you can do. You build ... Actually, people talk about thinking outside the box, simplicity is about building boxes, because what you do is you limit your input. You say to yourself, "I only have this much space. What can I do in that much space?" It's called creative restriction. 

And so what we look at is helping people say, "We'll create the box for you. You can do whatever you want within the box. You can't go outside the box." And it forces people to think differently about their content, Right? 

If I told you you only had three pieces to the story you could tell a client, you would figure out how to tell the most compelling and impactful story in three pieces. 

John: Absolutely. 

Steve Harvill: And that kind of restriction is what simplicity is really about. It's about training your brain to think that way. 

John: I love it. In my office we have a philosophy, my team and I, three full-time people that support me, April, Amanda and Jay. We want to keep everything as simple as we can, but we still battle this thing about making it too complicated. And our clients love it, because they'll say, "Look. I don't understand annuities. I don't understand investments. I don't understand the life insurance, but I do know that you understand me and what I'm trying to get." 

And that was my big take away today. I'm here. I'm glad that I come for these conferences. I learn. But the challenge, as you pointed out, when you get back home there is a whirlwind of activity, and narrow it down to the few things that you want to do. Maybe the one thing that you said. 

Steve Harville: The one critical thing. We call it the OCT. And it's really hard to do. It's a staggering amount of discipline. You're already doing that. You already recognize that really what the story about is your clients tomorrow, right? 

John: Right. 

Steve Harvill: You're in the tomorrow business. You're protecting their tomorrows. And that idea then creates the opportunity to weave stories around that one aspect, right? All stories have three parts, a beginning, a middle and an end. And so a good story is structured around those kinds of pieces. And so what you're really looking is, "What are the stories I tell my clients?" Right? "What are the stories that I can connect the value of my knowledge to the value of their output, of what they need at the end of their journey, at the end of the journey of doing work with me."

And you and I have met each other on a number of conferences before. This isn't the first one. And I think that the way your company positions that is the right way to look at simplicity. But you're right, it's always a battle. 

John: Yes. 

Steve Harville: You're always battling against, "Oh, it's this. It needs to be that. It needs to be this." When it really doesn't. And it takes this staggering amount of ... You know, Bob Dylan, the singer/songwriter, great singer/songwriter Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan said, "It's only about three chords and the truth." 

John: Yes. 

Steve Harville: And if you can build something around something as simple as that and you can do the stuff that he's done, that shows you the value of simplicity. 

John: I don't play guitar much anymore, but when I first started, the guy who was teaching me said, "All you need is three chords."

Steve Harvill: Yeah, that's it. And most rock and roll songs are based on that simple pattern, right? And they build things in between the chords, but it's just the three chords. It doesn't have to be that complicated. And you know what, people will flock to simplicity. 

John: Yes. 

Steve Harville: They'll see you as different. They'll understand the connection faster than anyone else will that's in a complicated situation. It's just trying to fit it properly, and that's the challenge. And I thank God for the challenge, because it keeps my company in business. 

John: Yes. Talk a little bit about how people listening to this can apply some of your concepts in their day to day lives? They're not running a big business necessarily. My clients are people who are members of the Florida retirement system. They could be a government employee. They could be a business owner. They could be a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant. A big, broad spectrum. 

So from a personal planning standpoint, whether it be their money, their time, their energy, their life, what advice would you offer them? 

Steve Harvill: Let me give them a couple of tools. 

John: Okay. 

Steve Harvill: One, and you may be surprised, but simplicity evolves around very simple tools, which is great for that. One of the tools that people overlook the use of is what is called, "The Checklist." We call it, "The checklist format." And that is creating a very simple form that allows you to make sure that every single time you do something you're doing the right pieces of it. 

Because what will happen is, you'll repeat it, repetition will create a little laziness in the outcome, and you'll miss important things. So the creation of these checklist ideas, surgeons use them in surgery. We talked about it a little today, about the five elements that stop an infection and that how every surgeon has to check off those five things to be sure that they're done every single time that they go into surgery. 

Those checklists are really important. So think about creating very simple checklists around your ideas. If it's a planning ideas what are the three most important parts about that idea to make it happen? What are the three most important things you have to get done in a day? Not the five things, not the ten things. What are the three most important things? 

Make sure they're visual, in front of you all the time. And if you can create just even the use of a checklist, you'll simplify a lot of the things that are going right in your head and they're not. 

John: Correct. When you were sharing that story about the physician, I'll tell you what I thought about. And I use this every day. I have on my wall a picture of a B52 bomber, because when I was in the Air Force I was a crew chief on the B52. And we had to use a laminated checklist pre-flight and post-flight that you had to check everything off with a grease pencil. And it was imperative you do that because you had eight crew member's lives in your hand every time that plane took off or landed. 

Steve Harvill: It's a great example of using that. And people think of it as being a silly, an old-fashioned, silly thing. It is one of the most important simple tools you can use. And we have checklists in my company for every task that happens almost every day. So that I am sure that everybody in Dallas is doing the right stuff all the time. 

We utilize a thing called the OCT, the one critical thing, every day. And we want to be sure we get that one most important thing done. And then everything else on the checklist is gravy. 

John: I think anyone listening to this, if you just took the idea that Steve just shared of, "What are the three things I want to get done?" And possibly maybe it's four if you count your OCT, because how many times do we get up, "Oh, I've got all these things to do," and you've got this big list. But if you forced yourself, the restraint you said earlier ... 

Steve Harvill: Yeah, creative restriction. 

John: Creative restriction. Move it down to three and maybe four counting your Number 1 thing. So how do you apply that in your personal life? Do you do the same thing in your personal life? 

Steve Harvill: I do. And I wouldn't let you use that fourth item on your checklist. 

John: Oh, you would not? 

Steve Harvill: I would say the OCT is one and you get two other ones. 

John: Oh, got it. 

Steve Harville: Yeah. 

John: So it has to be one of the three. 

Steve Harvill: It has to be one of the three. And people will do that. We call it, "The bleed." People will say, "Here are my three things, and here are the three parts of the first thing." And I will say, "No. No. No. That's six parts already. You only get one thing to do, the elements of the discipline around that idea of three." So I use it constantly in my life. 

So I'll have the list of the next three books that I'm going to read. I already have them written down and then the order that I'm going to read them. I'll keep that list active all the time. I'll hear something or I'll see something that will catch my eye, and I carry my notebook with me all the time. That will get in the notebook so that I never let it escape. 

One of the problems in complexity is things escape. They're ethereal, right? 

John: Yes. 

Steve Harvill: They're like fog. They're here in a moment and then they're gone. But the more simple things that you can do and a more simple perspective allows you to capture them. 

So all of the stuff we do, we capture. We never let it go.

John: I agree with that. And today you made a comment, "If you're taking notes, and how could you not be taking notes?" I keep journals. One entire bookcase in my home is just nothing but leather bound journals. 

And friends will be critical and say, "Why do you pay $20 for a leather journal when you can just buy a legal pad?" I said, "Because a legal pad I will lose it. I will lose those sheets. Those leather journals will be there." 

Steve Harville: Yeah, it's amazing how when someone uses an artistic form of note taking, that the notebook, the paper, the pen and pencil are very important to that process. 

John: Yes. 

Steve Harvill: They select a specific thing to use. They use it all the time. It's part of that kind of the criteria of the habit of doing, right? Is they select a specific one. We used to do ... and I've got idea notebooks like you fill a wall. But I used to have trouble going back and finding the ideas in the notebook. So when I was writing my latest book, I went to a five by eight index card system. So all my notes were on five by eight index cards and then I filed them by the idea. And I thought, "Oh my God, all those journals that I did. If I had been doing the cards, I would have found everything." 

John: Yes. 

Steve Harvill: So I made a big shift. One of the things about simplicity is you need to be flexible to new ideas, right? And so that was a huge shift for us to go to the five by eight cards that we started probably a year and a half ago. 

John: I like using four by six cards to keep notes for articles I'm working on, so I'll have them alphabetical.

Steve Harvill: Really good idea. 

John: If I get an idea of something for our newsletter, I may not be ready to write that article, but I can write it down and file it. 

Steve Harvill: We have a huge thing for newsletter. We have a 30,000 circulation newsletter that goes out every month, and I have the newsletter file and I have the Blog file and I have the Over Coffee, which is our video series, the three-minute video you can watch while you're having your coffee in the morning, called, "Over Coffee."

I have those categories, and those are topics that I'll go back and I'll write on, I'll think about. I'm doing one on the relation of simplicity in the universe, and I have all the notes on that. That's the magazine commissioned us to write that. And so that's how I keep my notes also. Very simple and elegant methodology. 

John: I love it. Would you take a few minutes and talk about the importance of narrowing it down to the three things, though. Because you talked about that like the traffic light. You showed that. I believe we do think in threes. I don't know where I've learned that over the years, but I think we do think in threes. 

Steve Harvill: There's a process of simplicity called, "Thoughtful reduction." And that's that capability of taking something that's large and making it smaller. And to do that, in order to thoughtfully reduce something, you have to think. That's what the thoughtful portion is. It's not just reduction. So that large lists of large things can be made smaller if you think about them. 

And so you have to be able to place them in the right order, be able to see them is really important, scale. And so we make sure we see everything in order to be able to know what to do. So we use Post-its a lot. So we'll use large Post-its to build maps of the idea. We'll move the pieces around on it. We'll storyboard them on large sketch pads so that we can see the idea.

John: You'll hear some noise in the background, folks, because we're at a conference and things ... 

Steve Harvill: Yeah, broken down. 

John: ... are being done. So bear with us just a moment. 

But Steve, let's go back to ... the last few minutes we have let's talk a little bit about why it is so important to narrow it down to those things. I think intuitively most of us know that our lives have become more and more complex. Supposedly technology is supposed to make our lives better. 

You were sharing with one of my colleagues earlier chastising him in a nice way about checking his e-mails too much and allowing him to disrupt his family time. 

So why is it that we have all these tools that are supposed to make our lives better but it's made our lives more complex? 

Steve Harvill: That's because we think any time we get any free time, it has to be filled with productivity. 

John: Yes. 

Steve Harvill: That's wrong. Free time isn't meant to be filled with productivity. It's meant to be free time. 

John: And allow your brain to rest. 

Steve Harville: Exactly right. So here, I'll give you a quick exercise to show you how to do that. 

John: Okay. 

Steve Harvill: Take six Post-its. Two each of the same color. Right? So let's say there's two red ones, two yellow ones, two blue ones. 

On the two red ones write the two most important things you have to do tomorrow, one and two. 

And the next one, the next color, write the two secondary most important things you have to do.

On the last one write the third things that you have to do that are third most important. 

So now you have two of the most important, two of the second most important, two of the third most important. Okay? 

John: Yes. 

Steve Harvill: Now take one of the most important ones and throw it out. You don't get to do it. Take one of the second ones and throw it out. You don't get to do it. Take one of the third ones and throw it out. You don't get to do it. And you will be shocked at how fast you'll make that decision. And it will show you exactly which of those was the most important. 

John: Because now you have a visual representation. 

Steve Harville: We use poker chips and we'll tell people, "Here are your poker chips. Here are the reds, the blues, the grays. You get to do your most important, second most and third. Now, immediately throw out one of your most important. You don't get to do that one." They'll look. They'll move it off. That's how fast they're able to figure out what's important. 

John: Just that quickly. 

Steve Harvill: Just that quickly because they see it.

John: That is a great exercise. And I would think that the sooner we teach our children and our grandchildren how to do this, the better their lives will be. 

Steve Harvill: Yeah, they're fighting it all the time. You know, we're teaching our children the same way we taught our children in the 1800s. We're teaching them for jobs that won't even exist. That's an entire different Podcast on the problems with the way we're doing things. We're stifling stuff. We're forcing pegs into the wrong holes and we're producing students that are very good at rote. They can win contests but they can't independently think. They can enter a math contest and win a math contest, but if given that problem out of the context of the contest they can't solve it. 

John: Yeah. 

Steve Harvill: It's a big issue. 

John: It's a big issue. And people are not paying attention. I love what you shared earlier, because it's a pet peeve of mine is when I'm going to the store to give someone my money and they're not looking me in the face. They're ignoring me like I'm a headache. 

Would you share just a little bit about that story, about the coffee? 

Steve Harvill: Yeah. It was in the coffee shop this morning. And they opened ten minutes late. Even though they committed on their sign to open at 6:00 a.m. it was ten after. I went in and I said, "Are you ready to go? Are you open?" She had opened the door. No answer, just nodded her head. I said, "Okay." And I ordered coffee for my wife and I. And as she was making it she never looked at me. As she rang me up, she never looked at me. She said, "Put your room number." And she handed the thing. 

And I bent over and stuck my head down on the counter so she'd look at me in the face. And I said, "Follow my head up," and she followed my head up. And I said, "You know, your tip is not based on your product. It's based on your personality. So why don't you smile just a little and look someone in the eye, and you'll be surprised at how much money you'll take home tonight." She just looked at me and went, "Hm." Obviously not that effective. 

John: I do that all the time, and my wife gets angry with me. 

Steve Harvill: Mine does too. 

John: But I will say, "Look. If I'm giving you my money ..." I will put the bill out there and somebody will hold onto it. They will take it and I will hold it ... 

Steve Harvill: Until they look up at you. 

John: ... until they look me in the eye. And it's a pet peeve, because in my world I don't get paid nor should I get paid until I create value. If you're my client and I bring value, then we should do business. If I don't bring value, we should not do business.

Steve Harvill: It's the idea that people think the transactional business is not important. Right? Even though it's not a relationship building business, it's straight transactional, they'll think it's not important. It is. 

John: It is important. 

Steve Harvill: It touches another person, so it's important. And I would spend more money training my transactional employees than I would spend training my relationship employees, because every phone call, every exchange of money, every question asked and answered is part of the deal. 

John: Yes. I agree totally. Well, I know we have other things to do. We're still at this conference. Steve, I just want to thank you so much for taking the time to share this with the listeners, and we bring value by sharing things outside of the financial planning world that I'm in, and I just thank you so much for doing this. 

Steve Harvill: John, I'd do anything for you. Just ask. 

John: Thank you so much. 

Steve Harvill: Thank you so much. 

John: If somebody wanted to receive information about your book ... 

Steve Harville: Sure. 

John: ... or just about your company, tell them how to get in touch with you. 

Steve Harvill: Yeah. The newsletter is free. It goes out every month. The blog is posted every two weeks. You just have to go to CreativeVentures.com So CreativeVentures.com And you can sign up for it there. You have access to all the past newsletters. You can order the books. You can do anything you want from there. See all the videos, everything on the website. And we'd love to have you as a visitor and a subscriber. 

John: And I would encourage you to do that. You'll find great information that will help you grow and be more creative in your own world. Again, Steve, thank you so much. 

Steve Harvill: I'm honored. Thank you for having me. 

If you would like to know more about John Curry’s services, you can request a

complimentary information package by visiting JohnHCurry.com/podcast. Again, that is

JohnHCurry.com/podcast. Or you can call his office at 850-562-3000.

Again, that is 850-562-3000.

John H. Curry, CLU, ChFC, AEP, MSFS, CLTC, registered representative and financial advisor of Park Avenue Securities, LLC (PAS). Securities products and services and advisory services are offered through PAS, a registered broker dealer and investment advisor. Financial representative of the Guardian Life Insurance company of America, New York, New York. PAS is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian. North Florida Financial Corporation is not an affiliate or subsidiary of PAS. PAS is a member of FINRA and SIPC. This material is intended for general public use. By providing this material, we are not undertaking to provide investment advice for any specific individual or situation, or to otherwise act in a fiduciary capacity. Please contact one of our financial professionals for guidance and information specific to your individual situation. All investments contain risk and may lose value. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Guardian nor any of its subsidiaries offer Long Term Care Insurance and Guardian, its subsidiaries, agents or employees do not provide legal, tax, or accounting advice. Please consult with your attorney, accountant, and/or tax advisor for advice concerning your particular circumstances. Not affiliated with The Florida Retirement System. 

The Living Balance Sheet® (LBS) and the LBS Logo are registered service marks of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America (Guardian), New York, NY. © Copyright 2005-2018

This podcast is for informational purposes only. Guest speakers and their firms are not affiliated with or endorsed by PAS or Guardian and opinions stated are their own. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#2018-61407 Exp 6/20

The Importance of Self-Care

When is the best time to start eating right, exercising, and working on reducing the impact of stress in your life? Right now, says Ellen Berkowitz. 

As a doctor specializing in psychiatry, Ellen has seen the impact of a lack of proper “self-care” in herself and her patients. She shares some simple techniques and practices you can use for your own self-care plan at home.

The result is a better quality of life – and health – now and as you get older. And that’s just as important to your retirement as the financial side of things. It’s never too late and you’re never too old to starting take care of yourself

We go into detail on self-care strategies, including…

  • The right way to meditate… even you don’t think you can do it at all

  • Easy stress reducers you can start today

  • The importance of rest and sleep to your brain function and physical well-being

  • How to combat the sometimes “self-imposed” physical limitations that come with age

  • And more

Listen now…









#2018-61406 Exp 6/20

Staying Flexible in Education, Your Career, and Life

When it comes to retirement planning, what you want can be very different than what you really need. The same goes for many things in life, says Dr. Jim Murdaugh. We get into the nitty-gritty of that philosophy.

Since this week’s guest is president of Tallahassee Community College, we also cover his first-hand experiences in how the college experience is changing.

Jim came to that role after a long career in local and state law enforcement, where he had a variety of roles. As he likes to tell those just starting out… life isn’t a straight line. He has some tips for embracing that fact.

We also cover…

  • Applying a results-driven approach to financial planning… and life

  • The benefits of making a job your mission

  • Why you should never view your competition as an “enemy”

  • The “disruptions” that are impacting higher education and Florida’s job market

  • The value of lifelong learning

Listen now…










#2018-61403 Exp 6/20

A Secure Retirement Method to Deal with Financial Threats

Many people think they are taking all the right steps toward a long retirement full of time with family, travel, and relaxation. Unfortunately, there are many financial threats to your retirement plans – some you can see, some that are invisible until they take away income and assets. To make matters worse, too many folks have assumptions about their current retirement plan that are just plain false.

But you can plan and prepare for these threats, even the unexpected ones, to protect your retirement funds. And you can cut through the misinformation out there. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach here, and the solution is not to simply buy more financial products.

It takes a personalized plan, and you must take action ASAP.

Listen now to discover…

  • The 4 biggest threats to your retirement right now

  • How taxes can impact your retirement plans in ways you didn’t know

  • Why you need to go through a “retirement rehearsal” right now

  • A 4-part plan for creating an effective retirement plan (or fixing your current one)

  • And much more

Listen now…

 

Gordon: Hi, everyone. This is Steve Gordon. I’m here with John Curry.

John, I want to pick your brain a little bit, selfishly honestly. You and I have known each other for a long time and we’ve worked together on many, many different things, and I’m holding here in my hand a little pamphlet that you’ve created called “John Curry’s Secure Retirement Method” up at the top. And at the top of this, there are four boxes and I’m really curious about these boxes. I’d like to learn more.

You’ve got one that says “The Vision Session,” another that says “The Discovery Session,” a third that says “The Strategy Session,” and then a fourth that says, “The Implementation Session.” And I would love for you to walk us through what each of those is and how you use those to really fulfill your mission.

Curry: Okay. Well, let’s start with the mission. Steve, I reached a point after being in business almost forty-two years… I’m in my forty-second year actually… that I’m frustrated with the financial services industry in the sense that it’s all about profit. “Hey, let me come and sell you a life insurance policy or a long-term care policy or an annuity or a mutual fund, whatever.” And my philosophy is it should start with planning first. So here’s my mission, real short and sweet.

My mission is to help as many people as possible prepare for a secure retirement. My team and I do that by helping you identify what the financial threats are to your income both now while working and ultimately when you retire. Then we help you, the client, and your other advisors prepare for those threats, either by eliminating or at least reducing those threats to your income now and your income in retirement.

Gordon: Let me interrupt you.

Curry: All right.

Gordon: You’ve talked about financial threats. What in the world do you mean by financial threats?

Curry: Well, it’s funny you ask the question that way because a lot of people are totally oblivious to the threats that are around them, totally oblivious. For example, the four biggest threats… three are involuntary; one is voluntary. The voluntary one is retirement. So, if you retire, you have no more income, at least earned income. Agreed?

Gordon: That’s interesting. I never thought about that as a financial threat.

Curry: Most people don’t. However, going back to 2000, 2001, 2002, people who went into retirement in 1999, at the end of ’99, they got smacked in the face with a bucket of cold ice water called the stock market being down 20-something percent. Everybody said don’t worry about it; it’ll come back. It didn’t. In 2001, down again 20%-plus. In 2002, the same thing. So they got hurt. So this thing called retirement… they had no more income coming in; therefore, they had to retire on their financial assets. But that’s a voluntary loss of income.

Let’s talk about the three that are involuntary. How about job loss? You lose your job. You’re either laid off or just flat out fired because the company went belly up. We saw a lot of that in 2008; didn’t we?

Gordon: Tons.

Curry: A lot of people still not at work. So job loss. Next would be disability. What if you get sick or have an accident and you’re totally disabled and can’t work and earn income? Not only does your present situation suffer, but now you can’t save or invest money for this thing called retirement.

And then the fourth one, which is the ultimate loss of income threat, is dying. And we talk about dying too soon. I don’t know about you, but whenever I die, it’s too soon, you know. I don’t care when it is. I could be a hundred years old and it’s still too soon.

So, if you recap, you think about, okay, retirement. I lose my income. If I lose my job, I lose my income. If I become disabled, I’ll lose my income. If I die, my family loses my income. So we look at those, but there are other threats other than the financial side as far as losing income.

Think about stock market losses. Now we’re not worried about income so much because you’re working and have a paycheck. But what if you were depending upon, say, half a million dollar IRA to give you an income stream in retirement and you’ve been told to use a 4-percent withdrawal rate and now you’re account is only worth three hundred thousand because the stock market took away $200,000? Your income just suffered, didn’t it. So it wasn’t just the value of the asset going down. When you start converting the asset to income, your income is clobbered. I teach that to people.

Gordon: Well, we’ve seen that. I mean, we’ve seen people who would have retired, probably wanted to retire several years ago, but because the markets were down, they were sort of forced to continue working, continue producing income because the asset that they had accumulated is now worth less than it was. So it effectively reduced the number of years of income stream that they had from it if I’m understanding you correctly.

Curry: You’re correct. And what’s happening is survey after survey by universities like Boston College, their retirement section, division, their retirement conference survey that’s done every year for the past twenty years, indicates that people are doing just that. They’re working longer, not because they want to but because they have to, because they have to. So all that being said, that led to me coming up with a process, a method, if you will, to help people prepare for secure retirement. And I’ve been using this all my career but I got really serious about it in 2003 after what we just described happened.

So the first thing is in those boxes as you referred to it in the vision session. We begin to explore somebody’s current situation, and we look for possibilities for their future. I like to call it thinking about the realm of possibility. Where are you today? What do you have? And what is possible for you?

Gordon: So this is kind of a big deal because I know just with the people in my world who have recently retired or are looking to retire soon, a lot of times they kind of have this preconceived thought in their mind of what’s possible and sometimes it’s not a real good picture. But because they don’t know what they don’t know, they’re not really able to see clearly what all the possibilities are. So as you’re meeting with people in one of these vision sessions, how do you kind of help expand their thinking to really be able to see a bigger possibility?

Curry: Sometimes by asking a lot of very sharp, detailed questions that they’ve never explored, sometimes frankly a shock effect. I’ll just give you an example that happened yesterday. The guy was kind of smug about his money. He says, “Look, you can’t help me. I’ve got a million dollars. Everything’s going to be just fine.”

I said, “Okay, why are you here?”

He says, “Oh, wow, good question.” He said, “Well, I’d like to think I’m okay.”

“Do you want to test that? I have a way of testing that. Would you like to test, do a retirement rehearsal and see what could impact your future?”

Gordon: That’s really interesting. I’ve never heard that term before, “retirement rehearsal.” What is that?

Curry: Because I created that. I hope nobody’s ever heard it.

Gordon: What is that?

Curry: It’s taking what you have, and this is where we get down to the discovery session, number two, taking what you have and putting it in a model of where I can show you what the impact of inflation, taxation, market upticks and downturns will do to your money. So, for this gentleman, he assumed a 4% payout rate on his million bucks. Okay? That’s forty grand a year. And I said, “That’s great, but that’s as far as you’ve gone. What if we have just a 2% inflation factor? Because I have no idea what it would do. Would you like to see it?”

He said, “Yes, please.” So I showed him and it went from green to red. He said, “Wait a minute. Does the red mean I’m out of money?”

I said, “The red means you are totally broke. All the money’s gone.”

He said, “That’s only twenty-one years of retirement. What if I live longer?”

“You’re still broke.”

And he says, “Thank you for being so direct.”

I said, “Now, can we back up into the way I like to do it?”

He said, “Please.”

So then, we showed the impact of not only inflation but taxation. “So now you’ve got inflation taking away your money. And what about taxes?”

He said, “John, I didn’t even think about paying taxes.”

I said, “Most people don’t. See, you’re thinking that when you go into retirement, all of a sudden the government is going to forgive the taxes.” I said, “They let you accumulate all this money in your IRA, 401k, profit-sharing plan, state deferred comp, whatever you have, and they defer the taxes for you. You didn’t save any taxes. You simply deferred it into the future, so when you take it out, now they want the tax.”

But somehow people forget that. So when I showed him the tax impact, he goes, “Holy cow! I won’t have any income.”

And I said, “That’s assuming everything stays the same.”

Gordon: So, really, the way… your process, and that’s really what it is… you’ve got four parts to a process, the vision; let’s look at what’s possible in the future beginning with where you are now working forward. The discovery session where you sort of… you gain a deeper understanding of their current situation, and then once you kind of marry where they’d like to go with where they are now, you can begin to put together a strategy to get there. But until you’re able to do all that… I mean, what’s just occurred to me… I mean, I haven’t thought really deeply about this before, John, and I think this is important. What’s just occurred to me is that so many people are approaching retirement with these assumptions that are probably incomplete.

Curry: Yes.

Gordon: At worst, or excuse me, at best incomplete and at worst completely wrong based on bad information.

Curry: Absolutely. And misinformation.

Gordon: So really, what you’re beginning to describe, and I know there are a couple more parts to this, but what you’re beginning to describe is a process where you are able to take the assumptions that they have and actually put them into a model that will show them and take all these other things into account that you know exist because you’ve been doing thousands and thousands of these plans throughout your career.

Curry: You’re correct. And here’s the key. Instead of sitting there and telling you what you need to do when you come sit with me, part of the vision session is asking questions. I’ll probably ask you thirty or forty questions. I have nothing to tell you. I’m learning you who are, what you want, what you don’t want, and then we discover every piece you’ve got. We look at everything you have, everything from something as mundane as car insurance all the way over to your life insurance, your savings, your investments, everything. And somebody listening may be wondering, “Why in the world would this guy care about my car insurance?”

I care very much, because what if you have an accident and you injure or, worse, kill somebody? That sucking sound you hear is a cashectomy of the attorney taking away your assets. So I want to make sure that you’re properly insured with car insurance and homeowner’s insurance. I don’t sell either one of those, so I would refer you back to your property and casualty agent and say, “Please get this fixed.” Because I don’t want all of my work that we do together to be lost because something bad happens. In my world we call that unplanned life events.

I want to go back to something you said a moment ago. It’s not me coming up with the strategies. You and I as a client/advisor relationship, we co-create a plan, because whose plan is this? It’s not my plan; it’s yours. So we have to make sure that we co-create it and it’s very important. Not everybody out there is a client for me. They have to have the mindset that they want to grow, that they want to improve. If their attitude is that everything is just fine like it is; “I don’t care about learning anything new,” I’m not the advisor for them. Just got to be honest about it, Steve.

Gordon: So, coming back to your process, we talked about the vision session. We talked a little bit about the discovery session. I think you’ve just touched on the strategy session a little bit. Is there more to that that we need to talk about?

Curry: Yes, because in the strategy session, here’s where most people get in trouble. They go to someone who says, “You know, Steve, everything you have is no good. Let’s throw it out and buy new products.” No, no, no, no. That’s not accurate. Let’s work with what you’ve got. Whatever you have today, let’s see if we can make that work. Now, if you’ve got a product that’s not working, we will know. You know, Ronald Reagan would always say, “Trust but verify.” I believe in verifying. I need to verify to your satisfaction that the strategy I’m showing you works. If it does not work and I can’t verify that, you should not do it.

Likewise, if you say, “John, I’ve got $200,000 dollars in a mutual fund,” I’ll say, “Great, let’s look at the statements. Let’s verify that.” Not because you may be lying to me, but every day when I see clients, they’ll say something and they’ll look at the statement and go, “Oh, it’s not as much as I thought,” or maybe it’s more than they thought.

So I believe that, when you get into the strategy session, it’s: What do you have? What can we use? Don’t throw everything out and try to buy new products. That costs you too much money and, frankly, a lot of times it’s recommended just so somebody gets paid a new commission. Don’t waste your money. I’m not going to waste mine, and you’re not going to waste yours if I’m working with you.

Gordon: So then you take people through the strategy session, and then you get to the implementation part.

Curry: Correct.

Gordon: How does that work?

Curry: Well, once we agree on a strategy, you have to then follow through to take action. To give you an example, a client yesterday, a medical doctor, he’s been talking about getting his will updated for the last two sessions that we met over the last six months. So I said, “You have not followed up on that. You have to implement. This has to be done. Your wills are so outdated and trust provisions.” So I picked up my phone; I called the attorney that we agreed to use. This is after hours, 6:30 last night, and he answered the phone. “I’m sitting here with Dr. So-and-so. He’s going to be giving you a call. I’m calling you to put him on the spot, with his permission, to have accountability. Either he or his wife will call you tomorrow.” This morning at 10:15 I got a text saying they called and booked the appointment.

So that’s implementation. That is, instead of talking about it, it’s acting on it. That’s implementation. If you need life insurance, buy it. If you need long-term care insurance, buy it. If you need to transfer money from something aggressive to more conservative, transfer it. And my job is to say, “Steve, you as a client said you wanted this; correct? We have to take this action.”

And if you reach a point of where you don’t do it, I simply say, “Steve, do we need to cross this off the list?” Because, see, if I have to keep badgering you about this, you’re going to get frustrated and it’s a waste of my time and energy. So let’s either do it or let’s agree not to do it, and it’s okay either way. People don’t get mad at me. See, the thing is, we together determine what’s important for you, and if it’s no longer important, it’s okay. It’s okay.

Gordon: So let me just make sure I understand. So together with the client you co-create the strategy. Take the client’s vision of what they want financially in the future through retirement or maybe even before retirement and into retirement, and then maybe even beyond the time that they’re on the planet, what legacy they want to leave. You take all of that into account. Okay, that’s the vision.

Curry: Correct.

Gordon: And then you figure out what they’ve got and what you can still use, and maybe to reach the vision, there are some changes that need to be made. If there are, that’s the strategy that you sort of map out, almost like a prescription.

Curry: Well said. So we agree on what needs to be done and now what is the best way to do it. So strategy, the way I describe it, would be what is the best way to get what you want done? Because really, is it just one way? I’ll give you a quick example that’s very controversial out there. Which life insurance plan is better? Term insurance, universal life, variable universal life, or whole life?

Gordon: I don’t have any idea.

Curry: It depends on the client. If I’m working with a young couple in their thirties because their parents asked them to work with me, I’m going to say, “Buy all the term insurance you can get. Protect your future insurability. We’ll argue about whole life and universal life in the future.” If someone is my age, sixty-four, term insurance is a waste of my money. Why would I have term insurance? Only one reason, to allow me to have protection until I upgrade it later. So it depends upon the client’s needs.

And I get so frustrated with my industry because somebody will say, “The only way to do your insurance is X, Y, and Z.” That’s wrong. That’s not accurate. Maybe we have a blend of different products. For a long time, I had whole life and term insurance. Why? Because I didn’t have enough cash flow to justify having all whole life insurance. I had to pay some bills. I had to educate some kids and grandkids. So that’s a good example.

So now the strategy might be we blend products. We have this product, another product, yet a third product, and that’s the part where I love what I do because my clients are not under pressure to buy anything, because right up front the first meeting there’s no charge, but then we’ll agree on a fee. They pay the fee, I present the information to them.

There’s only four things they can do with it, Steve. They can ignore it, do nothing, throw it in the trashcan; implement it all by themselves; go to another advisor, a competitor; or work with the Curry team, which is me and my team of advisors around me and a support team. So I have zero pressure to sell anything and my client has zero pressure to buy anything because of the process we use, the secure retirement method.

If I’m just pedaling products, then I’ve got to make a sale to, quote, justify my time with you. You don’t like that as a consumer. I don’t like it. I don’t like the implied or the outright pressure, “Hey, you have to buy from me because I gave you something of value.” No, no, no, no. Let’s agree upfront that there’s a value. Put a dollar value on it, write a check for the planning fee, and then do what you want with it. A different approach, isn’t it.

Gordon: It’s a very different approach. And so what I see here is that you’ve really… you have a process to guide someone through so that they can get to the point where you’ve co-created a plan, and once you’ve co-created the plan and you get into the implementation phase, there are things that the client will have to do, and you’re there almost as a coach to guide them through that piece. Because, I mean, all plans are great, but if you don’t implement the plan it really at the end of the day hadn’t had any impact. So you’re guiding them and helping them and some of these things are difficult to do.

You mentioned the doctor that needed to get a will. We don’t all want to go sit with an attorney and get a will done, but having that extra bit of accountability sometimes is very, very valuable to get the things done that we don’t necessarily want to do, but we know that we need to do.

Curry: Absolutely. And it’s not just me helping with that. I have a team around me, so sometimes it will be me. Sometimes it will be one of my teammates that would help with that process. Sometimes it’s another associate. Heck, sometimes it’s a competitor. I’m in situations where sometimes some of my competitors, a friendly competitor will call me and say, “Would you please help me with this case. I don’t understand the Social Security; I don’t understand the retirement planning side.” Because that’s my specialty. Now, when I first started September 1975, I just sold life insurance and I got tired of that. I wanted to do the planning. I wanted to be more creative. How do we take the pieces of the puzzle, dump them on the floor, and build something together?

Gordon: That’s really exciting, John. Now, coming back to this pamphlet that I’ve got that you’ve created. Inside there are a couple of pieces here that I think are very powerful. You’ve got one that’s titled, “The Secure Retirement Scorecard,” and on it, you’ve got a whole series of… There are ten statements and it gives you an opportunity to sort of rate where, you know, as an individual you might stand on each of those. And I’m just going to read a couple of them and maybe you can tell me why you think this is important and the impact that it has, the clarity that it brings for people.

So on here, there are statements like: “I have a clear well-defined vision of my future.” You say, you know, another statement is, “I have a step-by-step action plan to achieve my retirement goals,” or, “I have a trusted team of advisors helping me to achieve my goals.” So you’ve got some statements on here and there are ten all together. Those are just kind of a sampling, but as I look down the entire list and I’ve gone through this as a client, at the end of it I’m able to get a really clear picture of what’s… just in my opinion what’s working well and where maybe I have some holes. And that, in and of itself, is valuable.

Curry: I think there’s tremendous value there because what it does, it allows you in the privacy of your home or your office to do your own assessment. And I do a lot of telephone appointments, see, where they’re twenty minutes, thirty minutes long. People will complete this ahead of time, call my office, schedule a telephone appointment, and we’ll go through it together.

Now, one of two things will happen… actually, one of three things, but the two bookends are somebody will say, “Wow, I really need your help. I’m struggling with this.” The other end is somebody says, “I don’t need anyone’s help. This is letting me know everything is just fine.” Maybe they’ll zoom in and say, which is in the middle, “I need help in one particular area.”

I think people come to me and say, “Well, I don’t want to do the planning process at all. Frankly, I just want to buy a long-term care insurance policy. Will you help me get it?” Of course. So now when I do the planning, now you’ve hired me by offering your business to me, I get paid whatever commission they pay me for selling that product. I will do that if it’s appropriate.

Gordon: Really what you’re doing is you’re empowering an individual to understand where they may need help and where they may not need help. Or maybe it’s everywhere or maybe it’s nowhere or maybe it’s one or two or five things, but you’re empowering them to know that before they ever get on the telephone with you or anybody else.

Curry: “Empower” is a great word because, instead of me taking the power away from the client and now I’m this big shot, know-it-all advisor who has all these designations after his name, I’m giving you a tool where you could go through and assess what’s most important to you and your family. It gives us a place to start when we have the conversation and that’s all it is. It’s what I call the retirement conversation. We’re sitting there and talking about where you are today and where you want to be.

Gordon: Now, in a few minutes, we’ll share with people how they can request a copy of the scorecard so they can experience this for themselves, but before we get there, John, I want to move on to the next piece of this pamphlet, which I think is really powerful. And it’s called “Your Retirement Vision.” And if it’s okay with you, I’d like to actually just read the four questions that you have there. I think they’re powerful questions.

Curry: Okay.

Gordon: The first question starts with a statement: “Think ahead to the day of your retirement. Looking back from that day, what has to have happened along the way for you to feel happy about your retirement?” How does that impact people when you ask it?

Curry: It’s shocking. When I first did this back in 2000… well, the first copyright back in 2003… I did it before… all of a sudden people would look at me and they go, “Wow. I don’t know.”

And I always said and still do, “I know you don’t know, but if you did know, what would the answer be?”

And they’ll start telling me. They’ll say, “Well, you know, I’m healthy. I have a great relationship with my spouse and my kids. I have money in the bank. I have an adequate income.” So all of a sudden, they start building their future. And then once we have that vision of what it looks like, then we can measure to see if what they have will get us close or is it way off? And then that’s the starting point.

Gordon: The second question on here, and I love that you then begin to break this down. You ask: “What obstacles and concerns stand in your way to achieving your vision of retirement?”

Curry: Yes, because there are obstacles. There are things that get in your way. For example, ___________ (audio time 26:22) to come in and he said, “Well, I’m the biggest obstacle.”

I say, “I don’t understand.”

He said, “The truth is my wife and I fight about money because, you know, I watch all the talking heads on TV and I thought I knew all of it and I’ve been investing our money and for the past ten years we’re flat out even. I’ve made no money and overall lost no money but have had no growth. Zero growth.”

I say, “Wait a minute. With all of the bull market we’ve had, how could you not have some growth?”

He said, “Because every time something changed, I moved my money around. So the biggest obstacle is me.”

For others, they’ll say, “Well, the biggest obstacle is we’re not able to save enough money. We have too much debt. The biggest obstacle is I’ve got two adult children that moved back in, so I’m spending my money that I planned to save for retirement taking care of them.”

I hear all kinds of things. Stuff that, if I wrote a book about it, nobody would believe it. They’d say there’s no way that that’s occurring. But you have to remember, I see… the days that I choose to see clients, I see four to six clients a day, and I see all kind of stories, good stories, sad stories, but there’s a lot of obstacles. Maybe it’s paying taxes. “Yeah, I’m in a higher tax bracket. After I pay my taxes I don’t have enough money.”

Another obstacle could be someone’s health. “Hey, I would love to work. I can’t. I have medical problems. I can’t work. I’ve become disabled.” There are a lot of issues here.

Gordon: Let’s go to the third question. The third question here is: “What are the most important actions you must take to overcome these obstacles and concerns?”

Curry: That question took a while to work on, because I wanted a question that would let you the client determine what you feel like the steps are, and that’s why I came up with that question, because I don’t like it when someone points their finger and says, “You know, John, you’ve got to do this, this, and this.”

My standard answer is, “I don’t gotta do nothing.” I have the right to die broke. I have the right to go to jail because I didn’t pay my taxes. I don’t have to do anything, so I resent it when somebody’s like poking their finger at me saying I’ve got to do something. So I say, “Okay. Let’s take that finger away and give you the client the opportunity to tell me what you think the actions are.”

Now, I may not agree with you. I have the right to disagree if we have a good, healthy relationship, but I want you to be thinking about what steps need to be taken. And I’ll tell you what I hear most of the time, almost every time. They need to spend less and save more. “I’m spending too much money today, enjoying life, and it’s going to hurt me later in life.” That’s what I hear most of the time.

Gordon: I love… and this fits with the theme of everything that we’ve talked about and, really, coming back to that word “empower.” All the way through here, you’re empowering the people that you work with to own their financial future, to create their financial future. And I think that’s so different and refreshing from what happens most of the time.

Curry: Thank you. I think that’s the way it should be, because it is your future. It’s not my future. Hey look, my plan’s in place. I know if I drop dead today my family is taken care of. If I become disabled, I get money tax free to pay my bills. If I want to retire today, I could. I could literally walk out this door today and retire. I choose not to. I’m on a mission, Steve. I’m going to help as many people as possible with my books, my CDs, my DVDs, my webinars, my live events. All they have to do is say, “I want the help.” They don’t have to buy a product. There’s ways they can learn. So my view is, help as many people as I can. You know? I don’t want to retire. I hope that I’m like George Burns. One hundred years old when I die and they have to cancel engagements because I died.

Gordon: What is it about that mission? Why? Why do you…

Curry: Do you want the truth?

Gordon: I want the truth. Why are you so passionate about this?

Curry: My grandfather and my father. My grandfather retired from the State of Florida Department of Transportation out of Defuniak Springs, Florida. Doesn’t matter if you’re in the corporate world or in the state government. Doesn’t matter where you work, the concept is the same. My grandfather retired healthy as a horse. He lived… flat lived for four years in retirement. Because of the lousy advice he got, the day he died his pension died with him, and my grandmother got squat for the rest of her life. She lived to be one week shy of ninety-five years old. Died at age ninety-four. She lost all that money for almost thirty years, twenty-seven years. So he took a pension option that when he died it died also. So she suffered.

My father worked at the same place my grandfather did. He saw what my grandfather did, and he chose a different option. So he chose an option to take care of him and my mother for the rest of their lives, but he gave up tens of thousands of dollars every year in retirement income. He retired at sixty-two. He died August 15 of 2015 at age eighty-five. So for twenty-three years… twenty-three years my dad settled for less income than he could have had for him and my mom. Now Mom’s taken care of now, but they could’ve used so much more of that income to do things during their lives together in post-retirement. That’s why.

I have the passion for it. I’ll stand the ground. People say take a stand. Hell no. I am the stand when it comes to retirement income planning. I’ll fight for you, and I’ll fight with you if it’s important to you. And if it’s not important, we’ll say goodbye and part ways on a friendly basis. But that’s why.

And sitting with my father over the years, begging him and pleading with him to let me help him with stuff, but his attitude was, “Hey, I’ve got it taken care of. Don’t worry about it.” It wasn’t taken care of. It wasn’t.

And one day I told him, I said, “You know, Dad, I help total strangers with this stuff and you won’t let me help you.” But it was pride, and it was a individualist attitude that my grandfather and my father both had, and frankly, they were a little scared. They didn’t want anybody to know about their poor decisions and not taking action. So that’s why.

And frankly, I’ve worked with, oh, maybe thousands of people. I went to a funeral yesterday of a gentleman who’s been a client for thirty-five years, and most of what we did for him was on the insurance side and the retirement planning side, you know. Eighty-something years old. The work that we did together will endure for the rest of his wife’s life and the rest of his two daughters’ lives. How can you not want to do that? How can you not have the passion to want to share that with people when you know you’re making a difference in someone’s lives?

Now, when I was younger, it was about money. I needed the money. Now it’s about how many people can I help. And if I never meet whoever listened to this recording, if I never meet you, if something that we have said today will help you get action in your life to improve what is done, God bless you. If I can help you, pick up the phone, call my office, book an appointment, come and see me, attend one of my webinars, whatever. And there’s no cost or obligation. If you want to work with me, great. If not, it’s okay.

Gordon: Wow. That’s powerful. So I want to come back to the last question here in this retirement vision and the last and fourth question is: What progress have you already made towards achieving your retirement vision?

Curry: I have that question there, Steve, because most people beat themselves up. They come in with “I don’t have this. I haven’t done that. I gotta do this. I gotta do this. I gotta do that.”

And I go, “Whoa, stop. Stop, stop, stop, stop. That’s all negative. That’s energy draining. Let’s focus on what you’ve done. Let’s give you credit for the actions you’ve already taken. Maybe you have X amount of money in your IRA. It didn’t get there by itself. So you’ve already saved some money in your IRA. You’ve reduced some spending. You’ve reduced your debt. You’ve taken action. Let’s make sure that you take a few minutes and give yourself credit for what you’ve already done. Focus on the positive.”

And I think about the word “team” all the time when I’m working with people. Time, energy, attitude, mission. Time, energy, attitude, mission. What’s your mission? Prepare for a secure retirement. What’s your attitude about it? Attitude will drive your action. If you have a great attitude and you want to improve it, you’ll do better. So that question helps you get in the right frame of attitude. It raises your energy level, and now you make the most productive use of your time and my time.

Gordon: It’s powerful stuff, John. Thank you for sharing what you’ve shared today. Now, I know people listening to this are probably really curious about this pamphlet that I keep referring to and then maybe they want a copy of it so that they can go through the secure retirement scorecard and the retirement vision and experience this for themselves. How can they get a copy of this?

Curry: Well, they can do a couple of things. Number one, they can send us an email. You can send it to john_curry@glic.com. I’ll repeat that: John underscore Curry, C-U-R-R-Y, at GLIC, G-L-I-C, dot com. Or you can go to my Website, John H Curry dot com. Remember the H… JohnHCurry.com, or they can call my office, 850-562-3000. You can call and request it. We can mail it to you, email it, whichever you prefer.

Gordon: Very good. John, thanks for spending some time today and talking with me. And for everybody listening, thank you so much for your time and we’ll talk real soon.

If you'd like to know more about John Curry's services, you can request a complimentary information package by visiting johnhcurry.com/podcast. Again, that is johnhcurry.com/podcast. Or you can call his office at 850-562-3000. Again, that is 850-562-3000. John H. Curry chartered life underwriter, chartered financial consultant, accredited estate planner, masters in science and financial services, certified in long-term care, registered representative and financial advisor at Park Avenue Securities LLC.
Securities products and services and advisory services are offered through Park Avenue Securities, a registered broker-dealer and investment advisor. Park Avenue Securities is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Guardian. North Florida Financial Corporation is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Park Avenue Securities. Park Avenue Securities is a member of FINRA and SIPC. This material is intended for general public use.
By providing this material we are not undertaking to provide investment advice for any specific individual or situation or to otherwise act in a fiduciary capacity. Please contact one of our financial professionals for guidance and information specific to your individual situation. All investments contain risk and may lose value. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Guardian, its subsidiaries, agents or employees do not provide legal tax or accounting advice. Please consult with your attorney, accountant and or tax advisor for advice concerning your particular circumstances.
Not affiliated with the Florida Retirement System. The Living Balance Sheet and the Living Balance Sheet logo are registered service marks of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, New York, New York copyright 2005-2020. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Guest speakers and their firms are not affiliated with or endorsed by Park Avenue Securities or Guardian and opinions stated are their own.
2020-97990 Expires 4/2022

Easy Ways to Improve Your Health for a Better Retirement

Retirement is not just about money. Physical fitness is also key.

My personal trainer Jason Harville shares easy ways you can stay fit, no matter how old you are… especially if you have any issues, conditions, or injuries.

This is not about becoming a bodybuilder. Rather it’s achieving a standard of fitness that incorporates flexibility, cardio and strength for better overall body function. That’s key to truly enjoying a long and healthy retirement.

Find out…

  • The most important benefit of having a personal trainer

  • The 3 elements of any successful fitness plan

  • Exercises you can do right now to improve health

  • A diet plan that makes sense in the real world

  • The simple exercise you should do if you sit a lot at work or at home

Listen now…

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