12.24.22: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

12.24.22: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Producer:
Any examples used are for illustrative purposes only and do not take into account your particular investment objectives, financial situation or needs, and may not be suitable for all investors. It is not intended to predict the performance of any specific investment and is not a solicitation or recommendation of any investment strategy.

Producer:
Welcome to Retire 360 with your host, Dwight Mejan. Dwight is a licensed fiduciary and financial advisor who always places your needs first. Dwight works hard each day to educate Americans like you on how to reach the financial freedom they've worked so hard for. And he can help you too. So now let's start the show. Here's Dwight. Me? Jan.

Dwight Mejan:
Hey. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. I just want to welcome everybody to the show this afternoon. Good to have you here. For all of you return, folks. Thank you for being with us. Thanks for taking your Christmas afternoon. Perhaps you're driving in the car or heading to a family gathering. It's just a great time of year. But I just want to welcome you. If you're a first-time listener, we hope you pick up some great information and return in the future. We always love to connect with our listeners and I just want to acknowledge those of you who are listening for the first time. Thanks for tuning in. We want to encourage you to take a look at us. Check out our website. You can find that at Retire360Show.com and our phone number at our office. We are in downtown Southern Pines 910 235 0812. So we also have a podcast. If you download podcast podcasts, you can find our show, Retire 360, you can find that on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, whatever you go to to download the podcast, you can find prior shows. But hey, we're glad that you're here and Mitchell, I'm glad you're here with me and.

Mitchell Keiser:
Glad to be here.

Dwight Mejan:
Good, Good to have you. And also want to acknowledge Sam, our executive producer. Good to have you with us, Sam. Yeah.

Producer:
Merry Christmas to you guys and everyone listening in North Carolina.

Dwight Mejan:
Yeah, it's great. It's a great time. It's a it's a cold, cold Christmas. We haven't had one of these for a while. Have we ever been.

Producer:
Very.

Dwight Mejan:
Cold? Everybody's buttoning up a little bit more or should be before they head out. But yeah, it's an exciting time of year. So thanks for tuning in. We got some little lighter episode today. We don't want to get too serious, but we do have some good stuff we're going to cover. This is your your show. It's your money. And our goal is simple. We want to help you win with your money and we want to help you achieve the financial goals that you have in mind for your future with confidence. And that's hard to do sometimes in this market that we're in. It's been a rough year in the markets anyway, but hopefully you've found some bright spots in that and we certainly want to help help you find those bright spots in your day. So thanks for tuning in with us. But just a little recap a little bit here to what we're going to talk about today. We're going to start out with our normal quote of the week. We'll get Mitchell in on that here shortly. But we're going to talk a little bit about Social Security update. I'm going to talk about some warnings about some scams, unfortunately, that goes on this time of year.

Dwight Mejan:
It never really stops, but it does tend to escalate during the Christmas season. So we're going to give you some things that you can do to make sure you're not caught up in one of those. There's an RMD deadline that is fast approaching. You've got about a week left to get those required minimum distributions out. We'll talk a little bit about that. We're going to talk about inflation. This was a steep year for inflation and there's really no signs in the near future that inflation is going to get under control. But we're going to talk a little bit about some inflation items and what to do with your stray 401. K Mitchell is going to talk a little bit about that and we're going to talk a little bit about how to rebalance your investments since it's year end here. But and the least and most affordable states to retire, we're going to address that a little bit. And if we have time, we'll talk about some Christmas toys through the decades. So, Mitchell, why don't you start us off here with the financial wisdom for the week?

Producer:
And now for some financial wisdom, it's time for the Quote of the Week.

Mitchell Keiser:
All right. I got two for you. I got one for the heart. And I've got one to make you laugh. First quote we've got from Dr. Seuss. Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas perhaps means a little bit more. And then the other one is from P.J. O'Rourke. And that is Christmas begins around the 1st of December with an office party and ends when you finally realize what you've spent around April 15th of the next year.

Dwight Mejan:
I think they call that the financial hangover. I think I've heard it referred to as before.

Mitchell Keiser:
Yeah, I like that. So do you want to hop in and we can talk about some important reminders for the end of 2022, which I guess we've only got a couple more days.

Dwight Mejan:
We certainly do. Let's. Let's do that. Let's jump in and talk about Social Security. Social Security is many people hopefully know by now is getting a cost of living adjustment. We call it the COLA for 2023 and that increase will be 8.7%. That's up from this past year of 5.9%, which brings the total two year increase to 14.6%. You know, Mitchell, we when I look at those numbers, had a client come into the office this past week, and as many of our listeners know, who've been listening to us, we do something called tax mapping, which is an important strategy that we utilize with our clients. And one of the things that we do is we're always looking ahead to map out the tax plan for the current year that we're in. And one of the reasons that's so important and we share this a lot with our listeners is because a lot of times people don't oftentimes think about where they're taking income from and they don't know when they're crossing a tax bracket tier. So we plugged in for this client that came in. They wanted to maximize some Roth conversions, which we'll be talking about a little bit later in the show. We had to tack on that 5.9% on their Social Security because they want to get as close as they can within their current tax bracket, which for them is 12%. And we had to make that adjustment in that tax map so that their next dollar that they take out of their portfolio, out of their IRA, doesn't get taxed at that higher bracket.

Dwight Mejan:
We call that the effective marginal rate. So just something to be aware of, but we want to help our listeners with those tax maps. So keep us in mind if you don't have somebody doing tax mapping for you or looking forward on the tax return, that is something that we will do with you and just let you be aware of where you could be pushing some higher brackets. But hey, the government has recognized there's been a significant increase in the amount of inflation, which is why these COLA adjustments are taking place. So this is a pretty significant raise and we want to help protect our listeners from inflation by protecting and growing their portfolios. So if you have questions on that, just be sure to reach out to us. And again, you can do that by contacting us at our office at 910 235 0812 or go to our website at Retire360Show.com and you can book a complimentary consultation or strategy session with us there. But hey, we want to talk a little bit here about some of the scams. Unfortunately, that's going on pretty heavy during this holiday season. Mitchell, why don't you tell our listeners what's going on in that area?

Mitchell Keiser:
Yeah, just something to be cautious of. You know, the holidays are a time when people, you know, they relax, they cut loose, they sip a little bit too much eggnog. And, you know, they're just they're focused on having a good time, as you should. But that's also a time when scammers are up in their game. I'll tell you, just in my own personal experience, I'm not saying that they're all scammers. They're not. Homelessness is very real and there are people that are in need. But I will tell you, in my area where I live, the grocery stores and the shopping centers, there's all of a sudden a whole lot more people standing out there asking for money. And I've heard there's people that will station even in certain cities, like for certain days, like they'll be in this city for a day at this store, and then they'll bounce to another city for another store. And I don't want to get too off topic here, but some of those people, I will just I tell somebody if they're like, well, you know, is that real? I think those people really do need help. Some of them do, yes. But there are some people out there, if you just read the statistics about how much money some of those people make, it's significantly higher than you probably would think. I mean, people are especially around the holidays, they're very generous and that's just one that I've experienced personally. But there's a lot of stuff, you know, on Facebook on any kind of social media platform. Form that you could be using. There's there's there's fraud everywhere. I mean, we experience that every day. Fraud is it's unfortunately, it's a lot easier to commit than we often think that it is.

Dwight Mejan:
It's you're right on it's it's it's a pain if you've ever been there. I know many people listening to this have I had it a few years back on a personal checking account. Still don't know to this day how they got it. But you know I know one of the things I try to do to limit some of the scams going on is I try to limit write in checks. I mean, I just can't remember the last time I wrote a check. I have to do it sometimes with business, but I just try to set up everything I can on automatic draft or direct bill pay because it's as simple today as, you know, you write a check, someone's got your routing and your account number and you can just go create checks. Today. You could buy software at your local Staples store, go to your computer, and if you have that information, you can write checks against somebody's account. So just be aware of that. And my encouragement is just try to limit some of the checks. But certainly a lot of our audience, Mitchell, is very susceptible pre retirees and retirees sometimes pretending people calling, pretending they're from Social Security or another government agency and just be aware that these agencies do not make phone calls. The Social Security, the IRS, government agencies are going to work through the mail. So if you ever suspect that you're being played on a phone call, I mean, hang up the phone and call somebody at that agency directly and let them know what was going on and just just be aware that that is very heavy going on right now with the holiday season and that market pre-retirees and retirees, people are going after them because they typically have some kind of savings to go after, don't they, Mitchell?

Mitchell Keiser:
Yeah, absolutely. And I'd say just another thing for our seniors to be cautious of is I just got through Medicare season on kind of the part of the business that I do and people have said so and so called from the Social Security office or the Medicare office trying to get this information. They're not going to call you either. The Medicare office isn't going to call you if you need to talk to the which Medicare would be the Social Security office. You need to talk to them. Your best bet is to go down to the Social Security office or they will also communicate with you by mail. Another huge scam I told people this year that came in last year was the highest year ever for Medicare phone fraud. I think it was like was over 3 billion or something like that. $3 Billion people were scammed out of last year. Just on Medicare fraud. I'll tell you a couple of other scams that I've seen. Amazon people are getting texts on their phone from Amazon. I've got a couple of them. Or even just things from your bank, just verifying statements, verifying different things. And again, I wouldn't respond to any of those either because my grandma, she asked me just a couple of weeks ago, you know, is this real from Amazon or from my bank? Like it says that I have this and I'm afraid to text back to it like it says. And I'll tell you what I told her. If you are suspicious of what could be going on in your bank account or Amazon account, go to your Amazon account. Go to your bank account. If there's something going on, you'll see it there. So, I mean, if you open up your app on your phone and it's not there, then it's probably a scam. So I would never just respond to something or give something audibly over the phone.

Dwight Mejan:
Yeah, absolutely. We heard one this week that one of one of the things some of the fraudsters are doing is they're calling to verify information about the cost of living adjustment that we just spoke about earlier for people who get Social Security benefits. And just remember that the adjustment that you're getting this year, if you're drawing Social Security, that 5.9%, this adjustment is automatic and a beneficiary does not need to verify anything whatsoever. So Social Security, they won't ask you to provide information or money to get your benefit increase. And Social Security Administration, they're never going to ask for personal information via email or text. So just keep in mind, scammers often use pressure. So just be soliciting. Just be suspicious of unsolicited phone calls, emails, mailings from people, companies or any other entity that you don't know. And if you receive a questionable call or text email, hang up or don't respond to it and you can report it at 0igsa dot gov. That's OIG dot s s a dot gov forward slash report. And they like to hear about that because they do try to track some of this stuff down. So with that, we're going to take a break. And when we come back, we're going to hop into required minimum distributions. So we'll be right back.

Dwight Mejan:
Hey welcome back to Retire 360 Show. Again, my name is Dwight Mejan. I'm here with Mitchell Keiser, my associate, and Sam Davis, our executive producer. Love working with these guys and love talking to you, our audience. Love hearing from you, our audience when encourage you to if you hear something on the show today or something we talk about, we've got a popular topic coming up right here for year-end required minimum distributions. But if you have a question, you have a need. We would love to talk with you. You can reach out to us by phone. We are in downtown Southern Pines on northwest Broad Street. You can reach out to us at 910 235 0812. We would love to talk with you or we'd love to have you schedule a time to come in to our office. Complimentary. Of course, you can go to our website, Retire 360 show dot com, and you can book an appointment complimentary, of course, on that site. But Mitchell, we want to talk a little bit here, don't we, about required minimum distributions. Why don't you just tell some of our younger listeners that maybe know what that is? Tell them what that is, Mitchell.

Mitchell Keiser:
Right. So it used to be 70 and one half. I think it might have even been earlier than that several years ago. But once you turn 72, you were required to spend down on your 401. K. So this is money that has never been taxed. So a lot of times. So we work with people that are they have one employer their whole lives and they have like one huge IRA. And we work with people. We have a couple of nurses that are clients and they have like seven different IRAs. And it doesn't matter how many IRAs you have, every IRA that has never been taxed, you have to pay. Once you turn 72, you're required by law to start to spend down some of that money, not spend down, but withdraw it out of that for one K to start paying the tax on it. Uncle Sam's making sure that he's getting his cut. But now it doesn't matter what you spend that money on, but you are required to start drawing it and that has to be taken before the end of the year. And if you don't take it, it's actually the highest tax, whatever you want to call it, tax penalty in the tax code. And that's so if you do not take your RMD, your the IRS forces you to take the RMD the following year and then they tax it at 50%. So instead of whatever tax rate that you are going to be at, which is more than likely ten five, you're going to be required to pull it and then they're going to tax it at 50. So not something you want to miss.

Dwight Mejan:
No, it's a stiff, stiff penalty and it comes with penalties. There is some possible relief coming is not law yet, but they're working on a secure 2.0 act, which is a revision of the current secure Act. And one of the things they're talking about doing is lessening that penalty. We don't have exact word on that yet, but that could be changing sometime next year. And rightfully so. I mean, it's a stiff, stiff penalty. We bring it up because it is due by year end. And there is one exception to this rule. When you're 72, for example, if you have a listener who's listening right now who turned 72 this past year in 2022, you actually have until April 1st of next year of 2023 before you have to take that first RMD. So if you miss it this year and you turn 72, that's the only exception. You do have some time frame here going into April one that you can take it. However, if you do wait to take it, you do have to take another one by December 31st of next year. So in effect you'll be taking two RMDs. One. In April and then one by the end of the year. So we'd like to just tell our listeners, you know, we would love to help you manage your distributions in an efficient way. And we see this all the time. Don't we mature with people that come to our office? We ask them with the current advisor if they have somebody managing their assets, what is the distribution plan or strategy that you have in place for your RMDs? And what they typically tell us is we're just taking the minimum required amount and that's the only strategy.

Dwight Mejan:
And unfortunately that's not always the best thing for every person because typically the bucket of money that people have, that's the largest bucket. Is that qualified or IRA bucket that requires minimum distributions and a lot of times. There's money, particularly if you're listening and you're under age 72. There are some tax strategies that would be very helpful if you haven't had someone sit down and look at your situation. There may be opportunities to take money out of those accounts before you're required to do it. And that may ultimately put you in a better tax situation. When you do hit age 72, when you're forced to start taking those in. So we won't go real deep on that here on this show. We want to keep it a little lighter today, but by all means, if you need a strategy around those distributions, reach out to us. Give us a call. 910 235 0812, or go to that website at Retire 360 show and book a consultation with us. It's complimentary. Again, one of the things that we do at 360 Capital Management, our firm is we start building a retirement plan around a tax map.

Dwight Mejan:
And a tax map is simply your map personally for how you distribute income, all of your sources of income. If you're drawing Social Security right now, if you have a pension, if you have an IRA, all of these complicate the taxes in retirement. And we do a whole seminar that we run almost monthly. If you'd like to attend one of those webinars, reach out to us as well and we'll let you know when the next one is coming up. We do have one coming in January. We're trying to firm that date up, but if you would like to get on a list and be invited to that, it's a free seminar that we do. It's about an hour long and we will give you hands on practical tax strategies that you can walk out of that seminar with and begin to formulate a plan for how you're going to take those distributions. But it all begins with a personal tax map. That is something that we give to each listener if they'd like it. And from that tax map, we build out an income plan, we build out an investment plan, we build out an estate and legacy plan. And finally, we look at your insurance and make sure your insurance and your Medicare plan is all tied together because it all fits right in the center of that tax map.

Dwight Mejan:
So by all means, reach out to us. We'd love to help you with that. And if you have a 401. K that's coming in, one of our next segments, Mitchell is going to talk a little bit about that 401. Ks. I just want to remind the listeners very, very, very important. If you have a 401. K, an old one that's sitting out there from a previous employer that requires its own RMD, if you have traditional IRAs, those can be taken from just one IRA. For example, if you have three separate individual IRA accounts at three different custodians, you can meet your IRA requirement from just one of those accounts if you'd like, but you cannot commingle a prior 401 K that's still at a company in a 401 K account. And that's one of the reasons we also encourage people, if you have those accounts, we highly encourage you to roll those out into an IRA. We'll talk about some other specific benefits to why that's important. But Mitchell, why don't you tell the listeners here to how they can say goodbye to RMDs and really divest the IRS from your retirement plan? Because many of our listeners, without even knowing it, they're partnering with the IRS in their retirement and going to be paying more in taxes than they need to pay. So how can we help folks in that area?

Mitchell Keiser:
Sure. So something we like to do at our office is the Roth conversion. And, you know, we get asked all the time, is a Roth conversion for everybody, Is it something that everybody should be doing? And I guess the quick answer of that to that is no, but it's a pretty good idea. Here's why. The benefits of a Roth conversion. So once that money is under the tax classification of a Roth, that money is now tax free when you withdraw it. And any growth on that money is also going to grow tax free. So it's going to grow tax free, withdraw tax free. And we have a lot of clients that they don't even touch their 401. K because they've got tons of income from this pension. That pension passed employers and they're just leaving it for their kids, for their legacy. Well, if you do a Roth conversion and money's in the tax status of a Roth, it transfers to your beneficiaries tax free as well. So if they don't need it, that money will just continue to grow and grow and grow tax free. I mean, who knows, I guess, where taxes are going in the next five years, but in 25 years for the next generation, I mean, I couldn't think of many better ways to leave a legacy for somebody than to not only give them something, but give them a real number because, you know, you all have 100. Let's just use a simple number, $100,000 for a retirement. Well, that money's not all yours if it's in a qualified account, because you still have to pay, you know? At least probably 20% of that, 20 to 30% of that back in taxes. So 100,000, if that's what you have, is your, you know, your nut, your nugget, that's not all really yours, because you're going to be forced to give a good portion of that up. So Roth conversions, are they for everybody? I guess not. But I do think the benefits tend to outweigh the. The cons.

Dwight Mejan:
It's unique. Mitchell Like you're saying to everybody's situation, which is why it bears getting a second opinion. Perhaps you work with an adviser, you're listening to the show. If you had a medical emergency or you had a serious medical problem. Most of our listeners, myself included, I'd be going for a second opinion. Yet many people, when it comes to something as as important as their retirement, their retirement plan, they don't get a second opinion and we will provide that for you. We'll do it all within the context of looking at your taxes. And here again, Mitchell We have people all the time and we do our seminars in the area. We ask people, do you think taxes are going to go down, stay the same, or go up? Overwhelmingly, over 90, probably 95% of the room. When we ask for a show of hands, they believe taxes are going up. But very few people have a conversion strategy or a more importantly, a tax mapping strategy to mitigate the taxes that they're going to pay over one's lifetime. And we never propose there's ways to eliminate taxes. That's not what we're saying. But there is there are ways to minimize and strategize the taxes that one will pay over their lifetime so that it's a smaller amount. And if we if we all are right, and I think most of us are that agree taxes are going up, then it makes sense to make sure there's a plan in place to pay the minimum amount of taxes that one should pay over their lifetime.

Dwight Mejan:
And we've got simple software that we show people if they do certain conversions, how that would look under current tax rates not changing. And then we can show them what would look like if taxes went up slightly over their lifetime. And those numbers get even more staggering in terms of how much money people are saving. So the other last thing I want to say about that. Mitchell, You talked about it. If someone has kids and they're probably going to inherit this money. Sometimes the worst bucket of money for kids to inherit. Is to inherit money that's going to be taxed. And many of these kids are still working. So imagine if your kids are in the prime of their careers. Making some of the best income towards. To use that baseball analogy, your kids are at third base, rounding third base, heading home to their own retirement, and they're making the best income earning years that they've had. And then they come into this large sum of pretax money. They've only got ten years to pay the taxes on that. And oftentimes they're going to get thrust into the highest tax bracket, which today is 37%, looking to go up again, we don't know how much, but that could put those kids in a very big bind from a tax standpoint. So there are some other strategies. We won't get into that today, but definitely want to help you get the IRS out of your retirement plan. Anything else on that? Mitchell Before we go to a break.

Mitchell Keiser:
I think that's a good place to stop for now. Next, we're going to get into inflation and what that looks like. If you guys want to reach out to us, you can see us at Retire360Show.com or you can give us a call at 910 235 0812. We'll be back in just a few minutes.

Producer:
You're listening to Retire 360 to schedule your free no-obligation consultation with Dwight visit Retire360Show.com

Producer:
You're listening to Retire 360 with Dwight Mejan. Now back to the show.

Dwight Mejan:
All right, listeners, welcome back to Retire 360 Show. I'm your host, Dwight Mejan, here with Mitchell Kiser, our executive producer, Sam Davis. We're going to shift gears here a little bit and just talk about inflation, specifically inflation, as it relates to Christmas tree prices. Of course, we're at this Christmas season. I know a lot of our listeners have real Christmas trees I don't even want to pull. Mitchell and Sam, what do you guys have? You guys got real Christmas trees or do you got artificial?

Mitchell Keiser:
Here in the Davis household, we have two artificial trees. But I think next year I'm going to go with a real tree for the first time because I've seen it at some friends places and it looks good.

Dwight Mejan:
So, Sam, how much have you gotten out of that? Have you have you computed your cost per year for that Christmas tree? How much it's costing you?

Mitchell Keiser:
Oh, man. So we've had it for a couple of years now and it's in good shape, so it could last a good while. So it is an economical choice. The smaller one we've had for a good many years, so we've definitely gotten our money's worth out of that one. But yeah, it's just, you know, the real tree does offer that allure. You know, I saw this, this stat here that they're going to sell 21 million of those live trees this Christmas season alone. So, you know, there's still a demand for it.

Dwight Mejan:
That's awesome. How about you, Mitchell?

Mitchell Keiser:
Yeah. So I agree with Sam. The smell, the to have a real tree. It's definitely more of a Christmas aesthetic, but we are also on the fake side. So we have an artificial tree as well.

Dwight Mejan:
So awesome. I'm kind of a 5050 guy here myself. We've got a real one. We always have formed a family tradition. We go up around Thanksgiving, up to the mountains in western North Carolina here, and we cut down our own tree. So we've had a fun time doing that, did it again this past year and brought that thing home. And it's pretty cool. We see the line of cars coming back usually on Sunday afternoon when we're heading back from just all these cars coming back with Christmas trees. So it's a big tradition, I think, in a lot of families. But interesting stats here on inflation. Most cost increases in the Christmas tree industry are between five and 15% this year. Some areas of the country are seeing as much as 21% or more, according to Real Christmas Tree Board, which conducts marketing and research for the industry. But as Sam said earlier, nearly 21 million live Christmas trees will be sold by the time consumers wrap up purchases over the final days leading up to Christmas Day, which puts sales on par with last year's strong performance, according to the National Christmas Tree Association. But Mitchell, we got some stats there we want to share with our listeners. Why don't you give them a couple of those about Christmas trees?

Mitchell Keiser:
Absolutely. So about 33.6% of American households will buy a real or fake Christmas tree. Collectively, that's about $4.19 billion. That's an average of 8560 a tree and $122 per artificial tree. I'm sorry, $85.60 per real tree, 122 per artificial tree.

Dwight Mejan:
You know, it's interesting. It's the first year I saw that stat on $4.2 billion and I was pulling some guys at the gym when I left last week about that stat and I said, Do you guys know how much the Christmas tree industry is? And they said, Oh, it's a ton. You just got some funny answers. So if you're sitting around the family table looking for some conversation, maybe you can have a little bonus prize, or who opens the first gift to see who comes closest to the actual dollar Spent 4.2 billion. So have some fun with that at grandma's table and don't bring politics up so you can bring up Christmas trees. It's a little lighter and you won't send Uncle Buck running off to the out to his car and leaving the family gathering. So we're trying to help you keep it light this Christmas holiday. Right.

Mitchell Keiser:
Or bring it up if you want to see some drama.

Dwight Mejan:
Yeah. If you want to see some drama and you want to you know, you're the eight on the Enneagram and you like a little bit of challenge. We need to talk about that. Mitchell. Mitchell is like this Enneagram expert. If you don't know what an Enneagram is, I'm going to make a note for that. We need to let Mitchell tell our listeners a little bit about that. That's a fun we talk about fun right now at the dinner table when this fun family season that Enneagram is. Mitchell brought it to our attention a few years back our family and we've we refer to the Enneagram. It's basically a personality test, but it's very, very accurate. How long does it take Mitchell to do that?

Mitchell Keiser:
Enneagram probably takes a 1015 minutes to do the test.

Dwight Mejan:
Okay, I need to have you do a little segment on that. That'd be fun to do sometime. But hey, just to wrap up inflation, just a story because this is fresh on my mind. I had a prospective client come to our office this past week and this gentleman had done very, very well in his career saving. The interesting thing is he didn't have a great paying job, his average paying job, but he managed to save over $1,000,000 in his retirement. And earlier in the year, he saw some things he didn't like. So he got out of the market completely. I told him, I said, hindsight's 2020, but I said, you did a good job making that decision. But he's disturbed by the fact, and rightfully so, He says, Dwight, my problem is I'm sitting in cash. And we were joking a little bit. As I said, yeah, cash right now is the safest place where you can be and still lose money. And of course, what we're talking about there is inflation. So if we have inflation running at 8.7%, just imagine if you got 100,000, for example, sitting in cash and you wouldn't normally keep that amount in cash. You're normally the type of person that wants that to be working for you. And like I like to say, money never sleeps.

Dwight Mejan:
Money's always doing something or should be doing something. So it's how we invest that. But for this particular person, he was very risk averse and we were talking about that. He says, You know, I'm losing over 80 grand a year. And we just took the million dollars and he took it at the 8.7%. And he was intuitive enough to realize that he didn't have the right spot for it to be in, but he didn't want to go to the other extreme and put it in the market. So we began to talk about principle protected products that have upside potential or fixed rates right now that are 6%, a little over 6%, 6.15%. So if you're kind of one of those investors that says, hey, I don't want risk to my principle, I want to have a safe place where I could invest some of my cash. Right now, I'm looking for a relatively short term area one, two, three, maybe even five year time frame until we see what's going on with this economy. Reach out to us and let us know. We'd be happy to talk with you a little bit more about that, learn a little bit more about the type of investor that you are. And as fiduciaries, we have virtually the entire investment landscape at our disposal.

Dwight Mejan:
And we can craft a strategy, craft a plan, and our job as I see it, Mitchell and I talk about this all the time. We are teachers. We are at heart. We teach consumers and listeners what to do with their money. And we'll explain some products to you and some different strategies of where you can park some of that hard earned savings, particularly if your risk averse. We'd love to talk to you about some of those and just reach out to us and we'll talk to you more about that. Mitchell is going to come in and talk to us a little bit about the stray 401. K Why don't you tell our listeners, Mitchell, what the stray 401 K is? I alluded to it a little bit ago before our break, but why don't you tell our listeners what they need to be paying attention to if they left the company? Perhaps many of our listeners are moving on to a different career in January and they're sitting on an old 401K and this would apply to a 403 B We've got a lot of teachers. I know that listening to our program that call up, call us up, tell them a little bit about that.

Mitchell Keiser:
Sure. So we get asked all the time, what should somebody do if they had a previous employer and that's changed and they have a four or one K still with their prior employer. So what should they do with that? I used the example earlier about a nurse that we had, and I'm just going to use that example again because we the career of nursing is one that they tend to probably have a lot of different jobs, different hospitals. There's higher turnover, but we have somebody that they had six different for one case IRAs, and we consolidated them into one. Why would you do that? So when you leave a41k with a previous employer, you are limited to their scope of what they have to invest in. So versus when you go to a private broker like us, for example, we have the full investment landscape where standalone employers just have like a small slew of things to invest you in. You also could be losing money in fees. And if a lot of times people will ask this to, well, how much does that cost to roll your money out of your prior employer into like just one IRA that you can just keep all your money in one place? It doesn't cost you anything to do a rollover. Some employers have limitations if you're not 59 and one half. So make sure that you know that. But just to roll your money from one place to another should not cost you anything.

Mitchell Keiser:
That's what's called a direct rollover. Sometimes people have to do what's called an indirect rollover, where they take it as cash, like in the form of a check. If you do that, we just caution people that you have 60 days to invest that to reinvest it before you would be responsible for the tax on that money. That's pretty important because if you have a pretty big IRA and you take it and you don't invest it, I mean, that could be that could throw you into a huge tax bracket. So those are just kind of the different options. If somebody is interested in that or they do have prior for one case that they need to consolidate, just make their life simpler or see what other options there are. I know we had somebody that the beginning of the year, their portfolio was just tanking and they needed to go in more of a safer fixed strategy. So they rolled it out of their old plan into our plan. I mean, they've been they've been positive. They just needed to reallocate to fit their fit, their investment tolerance a little better. So there's options. Again, if you need help with that, you can reach out to us at Retire360Show.com or you can give us a call at 910 235 0812.

Dwight Mejan:
We'd love to hear you.

Mitchell Keiser:
I'd love to hear from Dwight. We also get asked a lot how do we rebalance a portfolio and what does that look like? So if somebody rolls it, how do they rebalance it? What does that terminology even mean?

Dwight Mejan:
Yeah, you know, it's it's a great question, Mitchell, And it's something that, you know, we're at the end of the year and, you know, the stock market, we all know, always has its ups, it has its downs. You know, some sectors of the market overperform and some sectors underperform. 2022 has been a pretty grim for most of them. As we all know, it's the worst year, for example, in the bond market since the Great Depression. It's been a terrible year for bonds, but rebalancing your portfolio to its original or updated asset allocation, what happens is you take steps there to lock in your gains from sectors that had really good performance and you purchase shares in sectors that have lagged behind at at lower prices. So if you rebalance your portfolio with a broker, they're likely charging you a fee up to about five and one half percent in rebalancing fees. This is not a fee efficient strategy whatsoever and we want to help you with that. So we we recommend that you work with someone who has your best interests in mind and looks to save you money, not lose more of it. And we are a fiduciary firm. We have you know, we're not limited by like a lot of advisory firms are with certain assets on the platform. I always say if you went to a restaurant and you had a menu that was relatively small, some people like small menus, they don't have a lot of choices.

Dwight Mejan:
They can just kind of pick something. But in the financial world, you want to work with a fiduciary advisory firm that has a lot of asset assets available on their platform and being independent. That's one of the things that we at 360 Capital Management do. We can tailor and customize portfolios from the ground up. We have what's called open architecture. We also use some strategic models where we use tactical management strategies as well. So give us a call. It's a complimentary for listeners of our show. We provide comprehensive consultations. There's no cost to our listeners, There's absolutely no obligation. We can even do a Zoom meeting, if you prefer that. I know we reach some areas a little bit away from our office, but we're happy to come to you. We can do a Zoom call or you can certainly come here to our office downtown Southern Pines, but we'll help you cut unnecessary costs from your IRA, your 401. K, Any other savings account? Had somebody in here yesterday, they learned a little bit about expense ratios and we did an analysis of their portfolio. It was actually a listener of the show and they came in and we help them understand that from their portfolio. They had thousands and thousands of dollars that was coming out and these weren't the advisory fee that they were paying, these were the assets that were being selected for them by the advisor who was working with them.

Dwight Mejan:
They had them in some fairly expensive fees. And that's one thing. If the asset has a pretty good track record, we're not against fees, but we need to be managing those fees and making sure that we're getting a good bang for our buck and getting a good return if we're paying assets that have higher than usual fees. But these particular assets, many of them didn't have great track records and we were able to show them ways that they can cut their costs down of the assets that they were holding. That's called your expense ratio. So we can also help you. Mitchell does this with Medicare and maximizing your Social Security. That's another strategy that we work with prospective clients on is when to take the timing of that Social Security. But you can reach out to us, contact us at Retire 360 show dot com and you can call us at 910 235 0812. We'd love to get you on the calendar and meet you face to face and go over that with you. We're going to break for a moment and we'll be right back. And we'll finish up with some fun stuff.

Dwight Mejan:
Well, we're back here at Retire 360 Show and we're glad you're with us. If you're in that car and heading to grandma's or uncle's or to dinner. We want to give you a little segment here where you can have a little fun at the Christmas table. Over dinner, we want to keep it lighthearted, so we thought we'd give you some more ammo here. But we're going to talk about the least and most favorable states for retirees. So this was put out per CNBC. It was a 2022 report that they did on how many years $1,000,000 in retirement savings would last. So they pick some states. Looks like the top ten where $1,000,000 won't go so far. And then where the top ten states where we're $1,000,000 would go the farthest. We don't have the data on what they're how they put this together. I assume it's just on basic average necessities. But the point is we're going to take them through states. Mitchell Why don't you want to start us off? Mitchell What about you Take the listeners through where $1,000,000 won't go so far.

Mitchell Keiser:
What's so so unfortunately, it's all the fun states. There you go. So you've got Hawaii, So $1,000,000 per average. If you if you went to Hawaii would last you 10.9 years. Wow. You're out of money. New York, 13.8 years. California, 15 years. Arkansas, we got 16.5 years. Maryland, 16.6. Oregon would only last you about 16.8 years and New Hampshire would be 19.9 years.

Dwight Mejan:
That's not a lot of that's not a lot of time. Ten years. I mean, I know Hawaii's expensive. It's been a few years since since I've been to Hawaii, but certainly is expensive. I'm sure housing is the biggest cost for a lot of this. But that's that's big. So when we when we talk about where $1,000,000 goes to the farthest, I'm going to start from the the bottom on number ten and go to the number one where it's the cheapest. But you can ask your family members, where do you think the cheapest state is to live? We're $1,000,000 in retirement savings will take you the furthest. So we'll be thinking about that. I'm going to start with number ten. Arkansas, 23.4 years. Tennessee, 23.5. That's tied with Indiana. Georgia, 23.8 years. That's also tied with Iowa. Now we got Alabama, 24 years. Kansas, 24.6, Oklahoma, 24.8 years. If I want to take a guess at number one, where $1,000,000 goes to the farthest. Well, if you said Mississippi, you were correct, 25.3 years. So pretty amazing that even Mississippi or even number ten with Arkansas at 23.4 years, you know, the number ten for where it wouldn't go far was New Hampshire. Still not even really close. But so if you want to stretch your dollars in retirement, hey, you've got your state right there in Mississippi. I can't say I've spent a ton of time in Mississippi. I've been there. I went on a golf trip one time down to that Alabama golf trail, Robert Trent Jones, golf trails where I went. That's about the only time I spent in Mississippi. But golf was true.

Mitchell Keiser:
I'll say. I'm not sure what you're going to do in those states, though.

Dwight Mejan:
No, that's true. I guess that's like you said, Mitchell, where all the fun states are, that's where it's most expensive. But it's funny, we have we're looking at a color coding of the map of the United States. And if you go to this, maybe Google CNBC 2022 report on least and most affordable states, you can kind of see the color mapping there. It's kind of interesting to look at, but. Let's let's shift gears here. As we start to wind down the show. We're going to talk a little bit about Christmas toys through the decades. And we'll talk about the top selling Christmas toy that was through the decades. This is kind of interesting to look at, but I'll start us off, Mitchell, with number one here. Going back to 19 tens. Anybody want to take a crack at what the top gift was in the 19 tens? If you said Teddy bear, you were correct. But I found the back story behind the terrible teddy bear here to be pretty interesting. The quick story behind it was it goes back to 1902. Anybody know who was president back then? If you said Theodore Roosevelt, you were correct. He refused to shoot a tied up, defenseless black bear during a hunting trip. Now, I don't know how the bear got tied up. I didn't do that much research on it, but it was tied up. And he had a clean shot and he was in Mississippi hunting. But after the Brooklyn shopkeeper heard about the story and he didn't want to shoot it, the shopkeeper's name was Morris McAdam. He saw a political cartoon about the incident, and he and his wife made a stuffed fabric teddy bear and put it in their shop window, sparking immediate customer interest. I thought that was interesting. The teddy bear of 19 tens. What about the twenties there, Mitchell?

Mitchell Keiser:
Yeah. So around the twenties they were introduced to the yo yo. So in 1928 there was a guy by the name of Pedro Flores. He began manufacturing the yo yo in the United States. So it's actually Filipino of origin. This guy, he soon sold that company to a competitor, Don Duncan, who was supposedly a marketing whiz. And so he created like a yo yo trick contest. But it ended up launching the world's most popular toy in the 1920s.

Dwight Mejan:
Yeah, I don't. I don't see too many kids doing yo yos these days, but I know there are some people that can do some pretty cool stuff with yo yos. I just don't see too many of them out there these days, but.

Mitchell Keiser:
They use a yo yo app.

Dwight Mejan:
Yeah, you're probably right on their phone.

Mitchell Keiser:
Right?

Dwight Mejan:
Put a piece of string on your smartphone and let it fall.

Mitchell Keiser:
You go.

Dwight Mejan:
First. Yeah. Yeah. But one of these things now almost too grand, so. Hey, the Shirley Temple doll was the 1930s. Can't say I can relate to that. My mom loves dolls and does doll collecting, but pretty crazy that some of these iconic Shirley Temple dolls and other types of dolls sell for thousands and thousands of dollars as antiques. But that was the 1930s, a popular one. Mitchell You don't even know this in the forties. What was the forties top selling toy?

Mitchell Keiser:
Yeah, I know it was a slinky. I know what a slinky is, but I'll tell you, I didn't know that a slinky was actually 80 feet of wire into a two inch spiral. I didn't know that. I didn't realize they were that long. That is a 1940s. It was the slinky.

Dwight Mejan:
Well, 1950s. We had Mr. Potato Head. That was classic. I remember Mr. Potato Head that sold more than 1 million units in 1952. He hung around, though. I mean, I was playing with Mr. Potato Head back in the seventies, so he was still going strong two decades later. Pretty interesting.

Mitchell Keiser:
Well, the 1950s. So that had 1 million units in what you just said. So the 1950s, they came out with the hula hoop and they sold 25 million in their first four months. So the hula hoop was came out in 1950.

Dwight Mejan:
Pretty cool. Well, the 1960s, I do remember this one. Etch-a-sketch. That's the thing that you had two little dials on the bottom and it sketched. Oh, yeah. You know, you could it basically did lines horizontal, horizontal and vertical. And if you really got good with it, you could kind of make it curve a little bit and you could draw faces. But the only thing that got me about the Etch A Sketch was you could never really form a break in that writing. So everything was kind of all together and I was kind of a little perfectionist with that thing. And I never liked the fact that I could force a break in there and separate it and draw a person next to it. I was like, These people were connected, you know? But that thing sold 600,000 units in 1960.

Mitchell Keiser:
And then later in the sixties, they also came out with an Easy-Bake Oven where they sold 500,000 in 1963. Later on in the sixties, they also came out with the G.I. Joe there. They marketed that to little boys. So I guess they sold all those dolls. So they had to get the the male side of that. So you had GI Joes. They also came out in the sixties.

Dwight Mejan:
Love GI Joe, love G.I. Joe. Well, take a guess what the seventies was. Mitchell Any idea? 1970s.

Mitchell Keiser:
While I'm looking at it, but I would not have guessed.

Dwight Mejan:
The Star Wars action figures. To this day, I was just watching a hockey game the other night up in Raleigh and they had a Star Wars night, the theme night. So people were dressed up in the stadium. But that's still what a huge, huge series. I'm a huge Star Wars fan, not the type that dresses up in costume to go to hockey games, but nothing against people that are but Star Wars is absolutely huge. In the seventies, a big fans, 40 million units in 1978 of Star Wars action figures.

Mitchell Keiser:
Yep. And then the eighties came out with the Rubik's Cube. How can you. Yeah. So they sold about 100 million of those between 1980 and 1983. So which I invented that.

Dwight Mejan:
Now I say, how would you like to have invented that thing?

Mitchell Keiser:
Probably took them a couple hours.

Dwight Mejan:
And then finally in the 1990s, we rounded out here with Beanie Babies and another big ticket item sold over 100 million in two weeks. And guess what? They were sold in in that two week period of time, they partnered with a fast food eatery, none other than McDonald's Happy Meals. I think people were just going out to buy Happy Meals, throwing the food away just because they wanted the Beanie Babies. It was crazy. I remember people in front of me in line getting like, there's like two of them and they're ordering like 20 Happy Meals. I'm like, I got a car full of people, and they'd get in their car thinking they wanted them. Beanie Babies. Well, hey, we want to thank you for tuning in today on this Christmas Day. I just personally want to wish everybody a very merry Christmas, a happy New Year. I truly hope 2023 is your best year yet and hope to be a part of that in the area of your financial plan. If you feel like you're off track or you're not even on the right track or you don't know where you're headed, or perhaps you do have an idea where you're headed and you just want to make sure you're on that right direction.

Dwight Mejan:
We would love and consider it an honor if you would reach out to us for that second opinion. It is complimentary. You can reach out to us at Retire360Show.com again that's Retire 360 show dot com you can call us at 910 235 0812. We would love to help you get a course in a direction for 2023 and I just hope for all of our listeners I hope for everybody that it's a good year ahead in 2023. There's a lot of caution signs on, of course, for sure, a lot of uncertainty out there in the markets. But this much I do know, we live in a resilient country and we have a resilient market and we just encourage everybody just to have a plan, stick to the plan and work it. But thankfully, everybody is with us. I hope you have a happy and healthy New Year and close out to this year and enjoy that time with family. That's what it's all about, being together and being with family and friends and celebrating Christmas. So. Mitchell, any thoughts that you want to share with our listeners as we sign off today?

Mitchell Keiser:
I just say Jesus is the reason for the season.

Dwight Mejan:
Amen.

Mitchell Keiser:
When you don't know where to look, look up.

Dwight Mejan:
Amen. Well, thanks for being with us, everybody. And we we hope it's a great day. And merry Christmas to everyone. Happy New Year.

Producer:
Thanks for listening to Retire 360. You deserve to work with an experienced and licensed expert who will strategically work to protect and grow your hard-earned assets to schedule your free no obligation consultation with Dwight visit Retire360Show.com or pick up the phone and call 910 235 0812.

Producer:
Investment Advisory Services offer through Brookstone Capital Management LLC BCM a registered Investment advisor BCM and 360 Capital Management are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM, but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Past performance cannot be used as an indicator to determine future results.

Producer:
I'm Matt McClure with the Retirement dot Radio Network Powered by a AmeriLife. If amusement parks are your kind of thing, roller coasters can be fun. But when it comes to investing for retirement, not so much. One of the most volatile investments around is cryptocurrency. That means, sure, there's some potential upside, but is it worth taking a ride on the crypto coaster? First, what is crypto? Anyway, the website Investopedia defines it this way a cryptocurrency as a form of digital asset based on a network that is distributed across a large number of computers. This decentralized structure allows them to exist outside the control of governments in central authorities. Bitcoin was the first such currency out there, so it's been the most talked about and face the most scrutiny. Like anything in life, crypto has its advantages and disadvantages. While it offers a faster and cheaper way to transfer money, its value is highly volatile. The technology has gotten some blowback from both sides of the political aisle. One of the most vocal critics has been Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Elizabeth Warren:
Unlike, say, the stock market, the crypto world currently has no consumer protection. None.

Producer:
Republican Senator Pat Toomey, ranking member of the Banking Committee, who generally supports the industry, also acknowledges there are issues with crypto.

Pat Toomey:
Now, it's important to note that many people have raised legitimate issues about cryptocurrencies. These include their use in illicit activity and the possible effects on monetary policy and our existing financial infrastructure.

Producer:
But what do big time investors have to say about cryptocurrency? Here's Warren Buffett speaking at a recent Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting.

Warren Buffett:
Now, if you told me you owned all of the Bitcoin in the world. And you offered it to me for $25. I wouldn't take it because what would I do with it?

Producer:
Still, cryptocurrency has legions of fans who swear by it and enjoy riding the daily roller coaster. So are you willing to risk your hard-earned and hard-saved money in a volatile cryptocurrency market? That's a key question to consider as you invest in your future. With the Retirement dot Radio Network powered by AmeriLife, I'm Matt McClure.

Producer:
Are you interested in protecting your assets from market volatility, rising taxes and economic uncertainty? Then tune in to Retire 360 with Dwight Mejan to learn how you can protect and grow your hard-earned money. Retire 360 Sundays at 3 p.m. right here on Talk 97.3 FM 104.1 FM and 990 AM WEEB. Protect your hard-earned money today at Retire360Show.com

Producer:
Registered Investment Advisors and Investment Advisor Representatives Act as fiduciaries for all of our investment management clients. We have an obligation to act in the best interests of our clients and to make full disclosures of any conflicts of interest, if any exist. Refer to our firm brochure the ADV 2A page four for additional information, any comments regarding safe and secure products and guaranteed income streams refer only to fixed insurance products. They do not refer in any way to securities or investment advisory products. Fixed insurance and annuity product guarantees are subject to the claims paying ability of the issuing company and are not offered by BWA.

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