Navigating Financial Fires: A Guide to Protecting Your Financial Future

Hello, hello, hello. We're talking about something a little heavy today, but hopefully in a positive light by the end of the conversation. We all want financial well being, right? We all want financial well being. But there's like six things that could commonly change the course of reaching that financial well being. And we're going to talk about them and how they could. derail us.

And instead, if we want financial fitness with our family, we need to be able to withstand these possibly catastrophic events that could occur. There's six of them. We're going to be sharing about them today, how you can identify them, and we're going to share a tool to have better conversations and planning to deal with them. So that's my little teaser, what we're going to talk about today. And now if you would Join me in welcoming Mr. Brandon and Mr. Mark to the show as well.

We'll officially get things kicked off. Hey, what's going on? Hey, gentlemen. How are you? Good. How are you? I feel like I've just talked to Amanda. Well, I would, all I did so far was just tee up what we're going to talk about today. So welcome to both of you. fires that we need to be prepared for, um, and then how we can prepare for them. What else is on your minds today, Mark and Brandon? What's, uh, what's happening for you? What's coming, coming to the surface?

For me, honestly, I just got off the phone with someone who they said, you know, Terrified, petrified. They were really concerned about where their money is going, where, where they're going to be. They're 61. Uh, they had had a big change in their life. Their careers had changed pretty dramatically. And the fact that they were able to go through some of what we're going to cover today, uh, brought them a lot of peace. We were able to, you know, help them.

Build a sure plan to cover those big potential fires and help them reach financial peace of mind, abundance, empowerment, uh, without taking all sorts of risks that they didn't need to take. And that to me is why I do what I do and why I know you guys do what you do in part. Uh, so. If it's not about that, what are we doing? So I'm so happy we get to do this today and glad to be with you guys. And I, that reminds me, like, this is something we talk about with people all the time.

We, you know, spend 40 hours or more a week thinking about this kind of stuff. And yet some people never think about it, or maybe it only comes up after the fact. Right. Um, so that's a great reminder that these are things that. We might want to put our heads in the sand. We might want to try to ignore, but actually talking about them, being willing to share openly can bring us a lot more peace. Not just make us stressed because we're like, oh, because we looked at the hard thing, I guess.

I was talking to somebody like again, just an hour ago who on the flip side is 37, right? Uh, and you know, single, single. Single mom and at the same time saying, Oh, this stuff really overwhelms me and it's really big challenge to figure this out. And I said, uh, to her, uh, well, it's really, it's good that you're taking this on now versus waiting until you're 67 and then saying, Oh, I wish I would have thought about this. And even though the numbers make your head hurt or it's overwhelming.

That is a big thing to at least, um, step into it and not just keep your head in the sand because I don't know, it's too confusing to figure out 401ks or too, too confusing to figure out retirement or. anything else, right? And so to think forward thinking, even though we don't want to, none of us does, um, it's really important. Yeah. When do we want to get the fire extinguisher to put under the sink in our kitchens before the fire happens?

And we've got to have that foresight to think about it and pointless to get it afterwards or maybe less. Less helpful to get it afterwards. One of the reasons why I was a minute late was I was trying to wrap up with this, this couple and we use the tool that we're going to walk through together today. And we were just going through, you know, building out, how are we going to mark, how are we going to make it? And they were stressing. I mean, big time. It was so complex.

Uh, and by the end of the conversation, they were excited. They had two or three action steps they were going to take. They knew exactly what they needed to do, uh, to organize their lives. Now, when to take social security. What to do about a house, possible house sale, uh, and new house purchase.

Uh, what are we going to do with some of our bank on yourself designed life insurance, uh, some of our, the pension, the annuity, the social security, you know, when, when do we coordinate all of this so that we're not, we're not. enslaved by money. Uh, we've already spent 40 years on the slave job. I don't want to spend the next 30, 40 years in retirement, uh, still pinching pennies and worried about dollars.

So for them, that was, uh, I mean, this is, I think going to bring some fresh insight to a lot of people who are watching today. And I'm really glad Amanda, you brought this topic up. So thank you. Yeah. Um, I think this is great. Like a lot of people don't know That there are fire extinguisher equivalents in financial, um, fires, right? And how we can be ready to, um, put those fires out if they start to flame up.

Or there's also things we can do to prevent the fires from even happening in the first place, like where we store our matches, for example, Um, so this is a great analogy. Something to that, um, I think will set us up for a great conversation. Anything else before we start digging into what are these six? events that could throw us off, have catastrophic effects on our financial future. No, let's, I'd say let's jump in. Amanda, tell us all about them.

What are these, uh, these six L's? Yeah. So, uh, the first, we're going to go through these quickly because we want to get to, here's what you do about them afterward. So if you want us to dig into anything more deeply, share it in the comments, um, or We'll give you a place where you can follow up with us afterward.

So the first one is liquidity needs. This is not just for emergencies, right? You got to have an emergency fund. We can debate over whether that should be three to six months or one to two years, but also for major expenses. You know, you're going to have things like roof repairs or new tires for your car or a great example. We're going to come back to later is. Paying for college for the kiddos that can be catastrophic to people's retirement plans because they need to pay for that tuition.

Um, shortly before or many years before they actually retire. Anything y'all would add to liquidity needs? I'm going to pull up a page with this. Would that be helpful? Yeah. Good example of what this is, how it works and everything. Okay. No, in terms of liquidity, I think the many people downplay, we're talking about cash, like cash on hand and everything.

Uh, the problem with a lot of people's perception of liquidity, and I know you're trying to go fast, so I'm going to be brief here, is we think it's just dead money. Like, you know, what's the point of having a bunch of liquid money on hand? Um, so, you know, I think there's a value to liquidity. Uh, that's all. And that there's even a rate of return to liquidity.

Yeah, avoid the 29 percent credit card and that's, that's a 29 percent interest on a credit card and you got a rate of return right there.

Number two is long term disability. This is where you are unable to work. You have some kind of event happen that you have to replace your income. One of the things people don't think a lot about is that income is one of our biggest assets, the future income, the things that we could get. And you want to have something to cover the replacement income if you're unable to work and maybe the medical bills that could come along with that disability as well.

Not everything's always covered by insurance. What would you all add to long term disability? I'm going to pull that page back up by the way. There you go. Uh, other things to add, uh, no, I think honestly that's your biggest asset for most people. Most people, you know, even if you're just making 30, 40 grand a year, uh, and maybe you're 40 years old, what's 40 times 40. Um, that's a lot of money, right? You're going to work 40 more years. I don't know. It's 1. 6 million.

That's probably more than your 401k, your house value, but most people don't insure their greatest asset. Uh, and that's what long term disability does. It protects your income if you can't earn it yourself. Yeah. And don't forget, hopefully your income is increasing and so you got to adjust for that as well. More than 1. 6. I mean, I think about that as um, that cash machine idea, right?

If, if that cash machine is always producing, you're going to insure it if, if it's, you know, Not that you know, we want to make sure we're ensuring the cash machine basically, and we are the right. Yeah, you're right. If you had a money that money machine that was spitting out 40 grand a year in your living room with increases, Amanda, like you mentioned, you'd want to make sure that it was well oiled and that you insured that machine. I feel like this is the.

Well, least sexy part of one's financial life. Nobody wants to talk about getting hurt. Nobody wants to talk about disability insurance. Talk about that's like what the nerds talk about, but honestly, I'm so glad to pay this premium every month because I know if I. You know, slip on the banana peel and survive. That's like the worst outcome for my family. Cause I, I can't think I can't work. I can't earn money.

I'm just a big drag on the expenses and the disability insurance makes sure that my, I guess, obligation to my family to cover the bills is met. Uh, that's such a peace of mind experience. So again, what are we doing? These six L's are the six biggest reasons most people, uh, end up in bankruptcy court. So if that tells you anything, you need to pay attention to long term disability.

Yeah. And I think the statistics say that we're more likely in our working years to suffer a disability than the next one. We're going to talk about the loss of life and particularly for women who might be in our childbearing years, disability short term or long term, um, could be a real, uh, factor into our financial future.

Let's move on to number three, loss of life. So sure, we want to cover that biggest asset we just talked about, your income replacement, but also debt repayment, paying for major expenses like college, um, other things. This is something we hope never happens, but it's a real threat to our financial futures. What do y'all have to say about this one? Well, it's the only, uh, financial problem that's guaranteed to happen. You know, we insure our home with home insurance.

We have fire insurance, we have auto insurance, we have health insurance. Nobody bats an eye at paying premiums on all those things. And yet it's not guaranteed. My house is going to burn down, uh, or that I'll get sick or something and we'll need health insurance. Life insurance is the only insurance. that is guaranteed to have a payout. And yet we all think we can just somehow magically avoid that eventuality. Uh, not at all. Some people think, Hey, when I'm dead, who cares?

You know, um, I think there's a psychological conversation we could have there, you know, I always tell folks, you know, the importance of your continuing to meet your obligations to your family, but also your mission in life, like whatever you're living for now. If it's more than just yourself, why would you're benefiting those things? The charities, the family, the kids, why would all those efforts to support those causes that you care about the most? Why should all those suffer?

Just because you decide not to wake up with some morning. You know, uh, and the, the significant bankruptcies that many people go through, it's because the breadwinning spouse didn't ensure her or his life. And now the surviving spouse is suffering big time and has to end up unfortunately selling assets or even going through bankruptcy. So don't let that be your final gift to your family. I can't speak any more clearly about it than that guys. What do you think?

I mean, I've heard so many people as, as we're younger. And they're like, yeah, but it's not going to happen to me. And none of this is going to happen to me, uh, either, uh, disability, heart disease, uh, something, anything. Yeah, it's going to be to somebody else, but the reality is, and when people say, well, that's, uh, you know, I'm going to.

Live to be a hundred or whatever reality is the loss of life will happen to every one of us I don't know who has figured it out not to um, no one um Right. So as people think through that or think they're some kind of god complex or something like well Okay. We had to get down and realize that we are expendable. It will happen. And how are we protecting the people around us, whether it's today or in 50 years, it doesn't matter. Uh, how do we protect the people that we care about at minimal?

Right. And a lot of times people are like, yeah, but it, again. Not going to happen to me, so it's okay. So far, there's only been one, you know. Uh, and, and on the, uh, you talked a little bit about the younger people. If we talk about the older people, there's, um, often the sense that, well, I'll just, I have enough assets, I can self insure, which is a very, uh, um, wrong definition of the word self insured. Those actually apply in a very different situation, um, in a business sense.

Um, but the, I, like, if we go back to the fire of a house, right? Like, if you had a million dollar house and you had a million dollars sitting, you know, in assets somewhere else, would you still buy fire insurance? I know I would, because if my house does burn down, I want the million dollars and, you know, that I already have, plus the million that the light, that the fire insurance would pay out to me.

Um, I don't know why we think differently of, well, I have, you know, a million dollars for each of my kids. Why would I buy more insurance? Well, there's a lot of reasons why. Maybe we can come back to that again too. Love it. And it comes a lot to what you're saying, Mark, of, um, leaving the legacy and the things that you would have done had you lived 20, 30 years longer.

Now on to long term care. So this is where, um, a lot of people don't realize just how much it costs and how time consuming it is to find and pay for care. care that's needed when someone can't take care of themselves. Estimates now with inflation are ranging from 300 to 500, 000 and about 70 percent of older Americans are going to need some kind of long term care.

And if we don't know where that's coming from, we don't know how that's going to be paid for, um, that can be a pretty scary situation. What would you all add to that? Uh, I, I think it's kind of crazy that a lot of times people are like, yeah, but okay, well Medicaid will take care of it.

Um, I don't, I don't really want the government involved, but it's okay if, if, uh, we don't have any assets and, and they're in the facility and Medicaid, you know, I'm like, well, who will, I know it's just kind of a challenging thing for me and realizing that, um, we don't realize how. Uh, costly. These things are until we need it. Uh, same with college and all of this. Like we we've talked about inflation a lot in the past couple years.

Um, but I will tell you it's been happening a lot in this industry, um, for a long time. And we've now look 20 years from now, from where we are now, 20 years back and say, what was the difference? Oh, yeah, that was inflation for sure. 100%. Again, most people think, well, it's not going to happen to me. Or if it does happen to me, it only affects me. Uh, and it won't affect my family. Well, that's not true. Anecdotally.

I know that anecdotes don't make a statistic, but you know, we are collectively guys working with thousands of families across the United States. Uh, most families have to come in, take off work, help take care of elderly parents. I meet with folks all over the country that are hanging. onto a low paying job in a bad part of town so that they can go to feed lunch to mom every day or to take care of her in her elderly age at their house. And that's great. That's incredible.

That's dignifying, uh, service. The fact that they took care of you as a baby and now you take care of them as an elderly parent, what a gift. But imagine how many millions of dollars your family is losing because, you know, mom is at home and now you can't go to work. Uh, or, or worse, uh, if it costs. Thousands, tens of thousands from the family unit to cover for like, you know, enhanced memory care or skilled nursing care.

That can be, as you said, could be upwards of 10, 000, 12, 000 every month for many years. If it's a memory related illness, your body continues. The mind is gone. Uh, and we all have family members who are part of this. So please understand this is not a, if it's a win, People in your family will be impacted, unfortunately, by all of us living longer and there needs to be a plan around that.

I hate to say it, but again, we're, we're trying to, we're shouting from the rooftops that there's a fire in the neighborhood here and what can we do to avoid this burning your house down? Well said, and thanks for that.

Um, uh, good transition over into longevity. What if we do live a really long time? How do we make sure we don't outlive our assets? It's not just about covering, um, our basic living expenses, you know, putting food on the table and buying toilet paper, but also, you know, Medical expenses, long term care might be part of that, but tradition, you know, just typical, going to the doctor. I know my mom goes more often than I do. Um, travel, hobbies, you know, and so forth.

How do we make sure we don't run out of money before we run out of life? That's the biggest fear among retirees and it's a legitimate one. There is no clear answer from oh so average financial advisors that are offering oh so typical, um, stocks, mutual funds, target date funds, God forbid. There is no plan. And I mean, talk about a downer. We're talking about living a long time. That's supposed to be a happy thing. Right.

Um, and yet we financial planners have ways of ruining even the best parties here. So the, what's the worst part about living too long? Well, it's, it's like when you retire, it's like a gun goes off and you're now in a race with your money. And I'm telling you guys, this is not a race you want to, When you don't want to outlive your money here, you want your money to outlive you in this case. Uh, and, and I certainly don't have any desire to leave just a big pile of money to some stranger.

Uh, but what I do want to make sure is that I don't become a burden to my children, grandchildren, that sort of thing. And since we're all living longer and. I don't care how smart your stock picker or investment planner is. She or he does not know the future and they cannot tell you what the market's going to do, what tax rates are going to be, or how long you're going to live. Those are the three impossible questions that nobody can answer. But we've got solutions.

Uh, and I know Brandon and Amanda are experts at helping solve that problem. Uh, if you're able and open to looking outside the oh, so average financial strategies that are offered by, you know, the big wire houses and that sort of thing. I do want to add on some of that, like talking to, uh, the 36 year old person, right?

37. And I, I showed how much income they, um, It could have with some of our things and they're like, well, that's not a whole lot of money I said, yeah Let's just take a million dollars And divide that by, uh, 25, see how much that is, and, and then subtract 20% taxes or something like that. Do you see how much this is actually is not a lot of money. Uh, and most people in their retirement years have maybe a 10th, a 10th of what they need for that. And that's kind of scary actually.

Um. If you have, if you have a million, you're looking good, right? But how far does a million get you? Yeah, and Mark did a really great episode this past Friday on the Not Your Average Financial Podcast. I put a link in the comments, so be sure to check that out.

Moving on to the sixth and final, last but not least, what you're seeing on your screen, it says legal liability. I like to throw legacy in there as well. This is really like, what's your hundred year? plan. Like, what do you, like, if you think out a hundred years, what, what's going to unfold? And the default option is you give a bunch of money to the government and attorneys and your family gets what, whatever is left over.

And so if we're not protecting ourselves from both the legal, we're thinking like an attorney, what, what safety do I need here? And we're not thinking about legacy and making sure that money gets to our family rather than to the government, then what's That that's a potential fire. That is more like a wildfire that could destroy a lot of what we've built. Very good. Yeah. And I'm hate to, you, you make it sound so aspirational, but again, I'm calling this a fire.

So I look at legal liability as getting sued, you know, like, or somebody slips on the crack or, or slips on the banana peel on the sidewalk outside your house, or that. That pesky neighbor kid jumps off your back porch and breaks his leg. Uh, or somebody decides that, uh, you handed them coffee and it was too hot for them and they decided to sue you.

So these are terrible things, but honestly, again, we're looking at what are the major ways people end up on the wrong end of a bankruptcy court proceeding. Uh, and you need to make sure you're protected, whether that's LLCs, uh, or other liabilities situations or trusts, as you were bringing up, Amanda, Ways to get money out of your estate so that the government doesn't, uh, take the vast majority of the lion's share of your life's earnings.

What's the point in working to the bone to give it all away to your uncle, Sam. I mean, just tell me, is he really worth it over your life? Um, so that's the big piece, your estate plan, like Amanda brought up the a hundred year plan. I love that. And. The instant moment when somebody gives you the phone call and says, here, you know, we're going to serve you papers. You want to be sure you're covering yourself in both of those scenarios. Love it. Amanda, you did a great job. Thanks Brandon.

Do you want to jump in there with anything? You're good. I mean, again, I just think that legal liability is really, really, uh, important to think about again. It's 1 of those things that we, we want to, like, put our head in the sand and not worry about it'll happen to somebody else. But, uh, as they say, and, uh. in the world of business, CYA. Uh, let's, you know, we should be doing that in our finances as well as everything else.

Yeah. And particularly if anybody owns any real estate or is a business owner, we might have more like legal liability than the average person too. Good point. If you own a business or real estate property, it's not a matter of So get your ducks in a row and be ready. Uh, and if you have a little cash too, you just need to make sure it's not just laying out there for some attorney to go find and pick on you. You know, they, they, uh, they just do public searches sometimes and chase after folks.

You know, these are the ambulance chasers. I hate to say it that way, but, uh, so given all this. Again, what we're trying to do is anticipate the biggest problems people have in their life. What's ruined more families lives. Your personal life is at stake. When you go through bankruptcy, your life is shortened by a number of years and stress levels go up and divorce rates go up.

So if you can keep these fires from taking over the kitchen, uh, and, and burning the house down, you can literally add years to your life. And keep yourself in a better place health wise, relationally. So Amanda, you've done a great job giving us a picture of what these six fires are. Where do we go from here? Like now that we know about them. Yeah, I want to make this transition with a quick PSA. We've been using kitchen fires a lot, as we've been talking about here.

One of my former roommates, Thelma, used to remind me all the time that the number one cause of house fires, according to her, I've not fact checked this, was lint in the dryer. And it's, you know, she'd always be on us if she went to put clothes in the dryer and there was still lint from the last person that we needed to clean out the lint in the dryer, something super simple. That could save lives, prevent fire, house fires, it's just cleaning the lint in the dryer.

So everybody, before you do your next load of laundry, check your lint in the dryer. And what we want to share with you is kind of the equivalent.

What's that, um, thing you can do on a regular basis that can help prevent Fires, you know, if we put on the smoky, the bear, um, only you can prevent forest fires. That's what we're trying to do here. Trying to empower you. There are simple, basic things you can do to. Protect yourself from these fires. And that's what we, that's the transition we're going to make. And it comes down to a very, um, simple phrase that Mark says that I love this.

I'm going to steal your thunder a little bit, but then I'm going to pass it over to you to show this in action.

It's not the plan. It's the planning. It's not the plan. It's the planning. It's not one time you clean the dryer lint. It's regularly coming back and doing that maintenance to making sure that your system is great and working like it should. So Mark, give us a picture of what that is. Well, you know, first of all, I got to give credit where credit's due. I'm pretty sure that was said by, uh, Dwight D. Eisenhower. He says plans, plans are worthless, but planning is everything.

Plans are worthless, but planning, and this is a, this is You know, general, uh, this is a unbelievably successful in terms of military prowess, successful general in the U S military, uh, plans are worthless, but planning is everything. I also think about Napoleon, you know, he had a really dynamic military strategy. And I'm, I'm not a expert in. Napoleonic wars or anything, but he, he knew how to pivot on the battlefield.

And that was one thing that made him successful in terms of his military operations. So it's just a tool. So please understand the tools only as a useful as the one wielding it. Uh, and so putting it into practice with a guide like Amanda, myself, Brandon, uh, is going to be what really makes the difference. Again, it's not the fancy tool, it's the planning and it's the conversations.

Like I was just speaking before with the couple on this, on the call, right before this, um, this conversation, it was the planning, it was the back and forth, it was the discovery, it was the insights, it was the courage they were taking, uh, it's in those meaningful moments that they can make a change for the better. So, It starts with clarity though. It starts with clarity.

We took all, and this is a sample young family. Okay. So this is not anybody's real numbers or anything, but we'll call them Neil and Lauren Jetson. All right. Uh, so, uh, and, uh, they are each of them making a good income right now. They're both 30 in their late thirties. Uh, uh, he's making 95 grand. She's making 80 grand as a sales rep. They also have a rental property. They expect they'll start taking Social Security, each of them at age 67, 30, 000 a piece.

So that's not a, you know, that 30 grand is not included in his total income here, only the rental and the salary job. See how that works. Down below, we have our retirement accounts, the 401k, the Roth. His little play account. He has a little fun with an E trade. He still has a nagging student loan that's out there. So he's got to deal with that. Then they've got their joint and she's certainly got her inheritance money coming and their, her Roth IRA and so forth.

And then they've got their joint accounts down below. They've got their house with a mortgage on it. Tied to the house, their savings and checking. It's all laid out clearly. And then in addition, you can see they have some life insurance as well. And it's all laid out clearly.

So a lot of families have the nerd and, and also the free spirit, as they say, and somebody, somebody like the nerd might want to have this conversation with, with Amanda or Brandon or myself, and then take this person, This one sheet to the other spouse and say, Hey, in case you ever care, wonder here's where it's all at. Here's my bag of rocks more clearly laid out. And we've actually gotten rid of two or three accounts. We've added one.

We've streamlined everything so that it's all working in your favor. Uh, that to me spells sanity. It spells peace of mind. Um, Amanda, Brandon, what, what happens when you build something like this for a family? What do you think goes on in the hearts and minds of the people that you're working with?

Yeah, well, one, they're, They want it to be accurate, so they want to get the right numbers in there and make sure everything's up to date because we hate seeing mistakes in black and white on a piece of paper in front of us. And then that accuracy forces a conversation about, okay, what would you fix? What would you fill in? What's missing? What needs, you know, what needs to be deleted? How could we simplify?

It really helps frame a conversation that you can have better questions like that and find better steps forward from there. Yeah. Would it be, uh, would it make sense to go to signals next or what would you guys want to see happen? And what AssetMap then does is once you get everything on there, then it, congregates them and gives us some important things like signals and target maps.

If you want to show those and then I've got a business owner example after we get done with the young family one. Sure. Okay. Then I'll go ahead and hit, uh, now notice they have a little kiddo named Barry. And Barry has a 529 plan, but only 3, 000 in there. See that? So if I add back these guys and I come over here to target maps, I'm going to click on target map and I'm going to choose from one of the six L's.

And we've also included education, retirement funding, lots of the L's are listed here, but you could add any other goal. Maybe they want to buy a cabin in the woods, or maybe they want, you know, to, to start a business. Let's say that they want to send little Barry to college. So I'm going to choose Barry and I'm going to hit create. Now watch how easy this is to start thinking about the unthinkable, which is how in the heck are we going to get little Barry to go to college?

That's a very scary. Question, many people bury their heads in the sand. Sorry for the pun, Barry. Great pun. Yeah, thanks. So first of all, we got to figure out what do they want? What kind of education do they want to give Barry? 30, 000 bucks per year, starting when he's 18. Going to age 22. We're not going to do a six year degree in red, uh, red, uh, solo cups. I'm sorry. We're going to send you to college for four years, get you in and out. Okay. That's the first thing.

Figure out what you want. Maybe he's going to also, uh, want to travel to Europe for a distance learning, but we're going to leave this real simple. Okay. We could add all kinds of extra expenses here. All right. So he could add travel or whatever while he goes to college, but let's just keep this real simple for the video. Next we go over here to what you have. And at this point, we're going to start checking the boxes. All we've checked so far is that 529 plan.

So they are only 2 percent funded. To help get him through college. Now, what if for fun, let's say that we started a, a bank on yourself plan, uh, for a little Barry, Barry's boy bank on yourself, B O Y. Okay. And we're going to link it to Barry and we're going to put, let's say just for simple conversation. I realized there's a lot of numbers here. Let's say that the policy is insuring Neil.

Okay, now let's say that we've got, I'm going to pick a number, 200, 000 of cash value by the time, uh, by the time Barry is ready to go to college. And we're going to start that tying to Barry's life at age 18. And there's no taxes due when you borrow against a life insurance policy. And by the way, it's not going to count against you when you apply for financial aid either. So if I hit create, watch what happens to their funding. Boom! We've more than paid for college.

We've more than paid for college with the bank on yourself, whole life insurance policy. In fact, we could add a little bit more zest and help get ready. If they have another kid to help send them for college too. Maybe we don't put as much toward college. Maybe we send them to a private school. It's up to the parents now. So at this point, what we can say is clearly, clearly in at age 18, when little Barry's ready to go to college, we are ready with extra to send that little kiddo to college.

And all of it's easy and plainly spelled out. You can see exactly where the money comes from. The life insurance is part of it. The, uh, five 29 is another part and it makes it easy. Now, some people might be saying, well, Oh, that's great for Mr. Uh, Neil and his wife, who, who somehow magically found 200, 000 in their cash value, start with what you can. Start with what you can.

Asset map is here to help you know if you're on track or off track and start building a plan to getting you closer to your objectives. Any guys, any feedback, comments on what this is and how it works? That's great. Not to get too granular, but part of, you might see five. So one of the reasons I like, uh, asset map is it's not just, Hey, I did it. You know, we can plug in the numbers and all of a sudden we're good. But again, going back to the game analogy, the board, right?

pieces are moving, right? Things are changing. Um, and we might have a kid or something might happen along the way. Another kid. Um, but what's really important is the, um, um, 1 percent adjustments because we wrote in the journal behind me, five smooth stones isn't so much the, um, The map like this is good. It's a tool, but it's making those adjustments. And you might say, Hey, really, my goal is to get buried to college.

Um, however, I want to go to do this other thing that's going to cost me. You might realize, Hey, that's not a goal or a priority because I want to get buried to college, right? Because the map helps me figure that out. And it's and in the end, it's all about 1%. We might be able to shift it You moved it from one to 169, but as person who's like on a fixed income, maybe they make a little bit, right? 500 bucks a month, 400 bucks, whatever you can set aside toward that goal.

We can start building it into the asset map. And by the time your kids are ready for college or whatever your goal is, you'll have that number ready to go and you'll know exactly what sort of school to apply for. And there's no restless, sleepless nights. The unknowing is the hardest part. Amanda, I know you had something you wanted to share. Yeah, you ready to see a little bit more complicated of an example? Let's do it. Okay, so let's see. There's my tab.

And, and I will say, uh, that really when we think about complicated examples, uh, I don't know about your life, but our life is pretty complicated sometimes, right? Um, so.

So here's, um, Fred and Wilma Flintstone. Oh my goodness. These are great names today. Love it. And, uh, they own Flintstone International along with Barney, their business partner. Um, and Wilma works as a dental hygienist, but Fred is, you know, the founder and CEO of, uh, Flintstone International. And, uh, they also own some real estate. He gets both those, um, income and a profit distribution.

They've got their, uh, there's the rental property that they're getting that cash flow from, um, they've got a little bit of cash and savings. And then some of what you'll see here is if I go over to the business, we can zoom in and see, like, here's what the business owns, right? The business has, um, a building, for example, uh, that's worth 2 million. If I go over, we should see. Um, that building show up.

Oh, I've hidden it for now, but we could have that show up over here as you know, he owns 50 percent of the business and therefore he kind of has that as an asset that he could think about, but also we can determine like this profit distribution. He's getting that now, but hopefully he's not planning to sell the business. He would keep getting that profit distribution, even when he passes on management from the business. So we can say that let's just take that all the way to age 100.

Um, so that's what I kind of did here just to kind of set things up. Um, Fred and Wilma do have, uh, things like a buy sell agreement with Barney, um, where if something happens to Barney, they have a policy with Barney as the insured, they can purchase Barney's spouse out of, uh, her share of the business so that, um, Fred and Wilma can own it fully, uh, they're protecting themselves, right?

Both you get, they got this long term disability, uh, some group disability for each of them, so on and so forth. If you look at their signals, there's still some things we should talk about, right? Are those disability policies big enough? Um, do they have enough life insurance? Just because something's yellow doesn't mean that it's not necessarily negative. It's just a point, like, let's talk about it. Same with liquidity.

You might have noticed on that asset map, they had very little in checking and savings. We could have it like, is this really green, right? Like we use it as a place to have a conversation. But I wanted to, similar to I wanted to show you the power of the target map here. So I did a retirement planning for them. Actually, let me, let's do what Oh, so average would do. Here's their balance sheet. This takes all those things in there.

You mean by Oh, so average, you mean your typical investment planner, who's looking at stocks and bonds and, and looking at typical asset allocation to spend down, you know, 3 percent of your 401k over the next 30 years. Is that what you mean? Okay. And like most business owners, we live in breathe by the balance sheet. We talked to our accountants. That's what we're looking at. So let's look at the balance sheet.

It would look like, you know, they've got 1. 1 million of retirement assets in their forties. That's amazing. I can't like, wow. And then they also have these non retirement assets. They have the real estate, but they have some significant liabilities. But all in all, if you met a 49 year old with 4. 7 million in net worth combined with their spouse, you'd be like, Oh, they don't have any problems, right? Great. Like in the stone age, think of the inflation.

Um, but let's look at their target map. If we look at, well, if you You really look down at, if they just wanted to replace 50 percent of their current income for living expenses today, live on half, right, of what they're spending, but keep another 10 percent for travel, another 10 percent for medical as they age, right, 75 to 100. So we're not talking about replacing all of their income. It's just part of it.

Yeah. At 65 and then a little bit of an increase at 70, but then not traveling after 80. That's really smart, by the way, that you've got the, um, the income, you've got travel, and the go go years, as we call it, the go go years of retirement, and then the slow go years, and then the no go years, and the later years of retirement is when we're forced to spend on medical, so you've done a smart thing here, Amanda, just trunching it like that. Thanks.

But what you'll notice is they're only 49 percent funded. They would either need another 3. 4 million, putting them up somewhere around 8 million of assets, or they need to set aside 26, 000 a month. They're like for the next 16 years. That, that seems ridiculous. But that's when we get to have the conversation of, well, let's talk about what you have and, you know, right here, I've got, you know, that rental income, the profit distribution, continuing the social security.

They've got a cash balance plan that has an income that maybe this one doesn't increase. So maybe we could find something that has an increasing income. And then we've got the whole life, how much they could expect from there. Um, obviously their 401k contributions don't count toward. you know, their income. That's what they're actually just putting in. That's a different kind of cash flow.

But we could talk about, okay, you're not spending down this cash balance plan, but you are, we're going to count these. You're spending them down. What if we could get better income on them? Or what if we could get rid of the taxes on them? What would that look like? Or look, one of your biggest assets is this land that you own. How do you turn that into retirement income? What does that look like? What's your exit plan?

Really helps bring out a Different kind of conversation when you see it laid out this way because look if I turn that on if we say, okay We're gonna sell the land and we're gonna put that somewhere where it can grow at five percent and then give us an income Look, I just jumped up to 63 So by checking that box you're saying we're going to include this in our retirement spending plan And that means we would sell that land and then spend that million bucks, whatever You over

our retirement years, and that brings us much closer to retirement security. And then you could compare that with, let's not, let's not, um, sell the land, um, in that way. Let's actually, let's take that million dollars from when we sell the land and let's buy a 500, 000 annuity that gives us a guaranteed income. that we can turn on when we're 60 and that we know will last if we live to 121 years old.

And then the other 500, let's maybe start another business or let's take that, you know, uh, Wilma was a dental hygienist. So what if we buy a share of her dental practice, right? You get to like, think of creative things like that, um, help move the needle up from 49 knowing we've got plenty of time. We've got 16 years to get to a hundred percent and we can keep moving in those directions, thinking through those things as we go. I think one of you because you mentioned we have plenty of time.

We have 16 years. The thing that people think is they have plenty of time, uh, so let's just wait and we'll do it in 15, in year 15 or 14 or 10. Why would somebody do it, do something now versus wait? You know what I'm saying? Like a young person. Why would they care? Yeah. I mean, part of it is it's easier to move, like, okay, if, if retirement is we're standing here, you know, I'm. I'm 39. I'll be 40 soon. And I'm trying to look at when I'm 65.

That's like standing on the earth and trying to figure out how am I going to hit the moon with a slingshot. But I would rather make a 1 percent adjustment to be headed toward the moon today than have to make a 50 percent change because I'm headed in the entirely opposite direction or a 180 degree turn, whatever that works out percentage change wise.

When I'm You know, 55 or 60, you know, like, um, that's, that's one of the powerful ways to think about it is, yeah, a lot of this is pure speculation. If we're making those small adjustments, that's a lot easier than trying to make a big swing all at once. What would you add to that, Mark? Do you mind sharing your screen one more time, Amanda?

Sure. Because the last piece to this puzzle for a lot of folks, where it all comes together, Is what happens next after you shared what you did share there. If you click on what it means, that third tab. So we went from what you want to what you have to what it means. And it describes, Hey, here's what you're going to have to do or not do. Here's what we're going to include or not include. Scroll up one more time. And there's a tiny little, it looks like a chart or table there.

See what's going on there. There's a lot of interesting data there, and we're not going to get into all of it. But what a relief to know. Where this couple is, you know, like as you can see up above, there's a chart of green and blue numbers and it goes all the way out. I mean, that's a long time for them to live still because they're pretty young. But notice the green goes away and the gray appears and that gray represents their shortfall.

If you hover over one of those years, you'll notice their shortfall. Uh, and so this is where they can say, all right, we've, we've got ourselves covered until 2047, but we need to figure out how we're going to cover the rest of that. Maybe we turn on an annuity at 2048, for example, or get a rental property that covers that shortfall or so much more as Amanda came up with some really smart ideas, but what's so neat about this tool is one, it helps clarify.

It visualizes not just the here and now, but the future. You know, most people, when they, you know, show a spouse a net worth sheet, their eyes start to spiral and all a net worth sheet is, is a photograph. So that's fine. A photograph is fine, but sometimes you need a weather forecast and sometimes you need, in this case, a trend forecast. Forecast that shows where are we headed? Are we on track off track?

And when it comes time to spending your retirement monies, how and where is the best way to pull funds from each of the accounts and Amanda, as you can see down below, if you, if you hit expand on any of those, you can really show them. Here's exactly what you should spend the money from. Each year for one case, whatever else. And, uh, it goes really detailed. We don't have to go into all this, but you can see there's the social security turning on. There's the profit distribution.

It's really remarkable. And it gives people a lot of peace to know, okay, yeah, I'm 69 years old. I'm going to pull this from rental. I'm going to pull this from profit distribution. Here's my social security. Here's my cash balance plan. Here's when the life insurance policies are kicking in. Um, Does this kind of start to look like a plan a little bit? Does it feel a little bit like planning and giving folks some assurance that they can reach their goals? Yeah, it does. And it is.

And then imagine updating this every, like every six months and being able to have that conversation. How can we increase, you know, getting closer to this target by one to 3 percent over the next six months? What are those slight moves we're going to make? That's when it becomes planning. Which we've already talked about is way more important than the plan.

So with three minutes to go here, we need to tell folks if they want to be a part of this revolution where clarity is the default rather than fear, um, you know, there's really no charge to us having an, at least an initial conversation with you. I mean, imagine how much better you'll feel.

Imagine what you'll be able to communicate with your spouse about, and the, the benefits beyond just the financial numbers, but the resulting better relationships and better nights of sleep and more, uh, when you've got this kind of a productive, Conversational tool. It's just a tool, but what is even more important than the tool is that you're swinging that ax or that tool with guides like Brandon, Amanda, myself.

Uh, so if this is a tool that you want to incorporate into your conversations with your, your spouse or your kids or grandkids or business partners, give us a call, schedule a time to have a 15 minute strategy session with us. Uh, you can go to the links in the notes. I assume if it's not, I'll just mention them briefly. Uh, wealth, wisdom, fp. com, uh, slash call. And, uh, you can speak with Brandon, Amanda, or if you'd like, you can go to NYA financial podcast. com.

And then there's a big button that says, request a meeting in the notes. Whether you speak with any of the three of us, just write the word asset map in the notes of that appointment, and we'll be sure to know what you want to talk about when we have that 15 minute phone strategy session to get to know you a bit better and see if any of our strategies would be a good fit. Love it. Um, and don't forget to subscribe to the Not Your Average Financial Podcast and the Wealth Wisdom Financial Podcast.

Um, Mark had a great episode this past Friday, the four dangers of conventional retirement plans and what to use instead. We will look forward to getting to know you and we'll see you again next time here on our live, um, collaboration between the Not Your Average Financial Podcast and Wealth Wisdom Financial Podcast. Have a great day. All right. See you guys later.