Making Better Decisions in Retirement | The Retirement Income Show

Mark: Glad you’re with us today for the Retirement Income Show. I’m Mark Elliot, Troy Sharpe, the CEO and Founder of Oak Harvest Financial Group. Find out more on the website, oakharvestfinancialgroup.com. The office is located at I-10 and Bunker Hill, at 920 Memorial City Way. You can always call the team if you’d like to learn more about some of the questions or concerns you may have about retirement, or any financial questions. The team is here to help, it’s 800-822-6434. There’s no cost, there’s no obligation to chat with the team. 800-822-6434. Of course, you can always go to the YouTube channel. Well over 100 videos now on YouTube. Just search for Troy Sharpe and Oak Harvest, and I guarantee if you have a concern, or a question about retirement, or of the financial world, Troy’s probably got a video on it. Just search for Troy Sharpe, Oak Harvest, YouTube. Troy, all the scenarios, your Oak Harvest Retirement Process path that you create for your clients, it’s investment, income, tax planning, health planning, legacy, estate planning, source security, when and how do we do it in the income part, Medicare’s in the health care part. There are so many moving parts, but everybody’s different. There are savers, there are spenders, sometimes they’re married, sometimes they’re both savers, sometimes they’re both spenders, most times one’s one and one’s the other. It’s always interesting. You had a story ways back that I always thought was really interesting. It’s the buffalo or the cow. It’s how we look at things. I would imagine, I don’t know, maybe sometimes you even have spouses that one looks at it more like a buffalo and one will look at it more like a cow. Explain that story, because I think it’s fun, and especially we’re going into a brand new year. We know that our outlook is so important, and the optimism we have for a year ahead.

We don’t want to be pessimistic. We don’t want to look bad. We got to be excited about a new year. Troy: Yes, it’s New Years, new beginnings, it’s always an opportunity to get back on the path, or the path you want to be on, or the path you started on. Life happens, life comes up, and sometimes we get pulled astray, and we need to get back on the path that we originally intended to go down. Financial planning, retirement planning is one of those things where the worst thing you can do is put your head in the sand. Certain parts of retirement planning, for example, I don’t want you to put your head in the sand, but when it comes to those of you that look at your investment portfolio every single day, you probably would benefit from putting your head in the sand. At least looking at it once a week, once a month. I know for some of you that would just be impossible.

We have so many clients too, that say, “Troy, you know what, I check in every six months. That’s all I need to do.” There has been numerous studies over the years. I forget the exact numbers, so I’m going to summarize here from my memory. Those who look at their accounts every single day, average around 5% a year. Those who look at their accounts every single month average around 6% or 7% per year. Those who look at it once per year, average around 8% or 9%, and those who never look at it, average around 11% or 12%. It’s a very simple story because it ties into the fact that the more you look at your money, especially once those paychecks have stopped, because there is a psychological transition into retirement. When you go from receiving a paycheck and saving, saving, saving to all of a sudden, “This is all the money I’ll ever save. No more paychecks are coming in, now I start spending and start distributing,” for many clients that’s a year or two psychological adjustment until they feel comfortable actually spending. A plan absolutely helps that. What that study does that I just mentioned is it really brings home the point that there are emotions tied into the performance of your portfolio when there are no more paychecks. The biggest mistake that consumers make, especially when they manage their own money, is the belief that, “Things are rocky in the future, I need to go to cash,” or, “I don’t like who’s the next president or the current administration,” or, “I don’t like the political policies that are coming out of DC. I need to go to cash.” These are mistakes that if you made, we’ve seen a lot of people, we had to keep a lot of people invested prior to president Biden coming into office. No matter how much you disagree with the president’s policies, the president has very little to do with how the stock market performs.

If you went to cash because of the administration that was incoming, because emotionally you didn’t like the direction of the country, you made a massive mistake because market is up significantly since that time. Those are the types of decisions that if you make that decision and if you pull that cord, you have cost yourself hundreds of thousands and sometimes in the case millions of dollars. Now let’s think that through. What do you mean, Troy? How could I have cost myself millions of dollars? Yes, I missed out on the market run-up. I could have made an extra 20%, 30%. when I’m looking at financial decisions, I’m not looking at the cost or benefit of any decision today. I look at it in terms of the time value of money. If you pulled out because president Biden was coming in and you came back in three months later, four months later because of the fear of missing out, the market’s up 25%, let’s say you have $1 million portfolio. You cost yourself, depending on the allocation, $100,000, $200,000. Let’s just say, you cost yourself $100,000, that’s in today’s dollars, but if you made that $100,000, if you had stayed in and had a proper investment strategy, or someone by your side to help guide that decision, to help you to realize what the true underlying fundamentals of the market is, or will be, or what we’re seeing as far as expectations, that $100,000 in 10 years, realistically, you could expect it to be worth somewhere around $200,000, in 20 years, somewhere around $400,000. When I’m looking at decisions that people make, and decisions we make today for clients, we’re not just looking at the value gain today, we’re looking at the time value of that money, and what is the cost or benefit over time. Then there’s this whole tax component that overlays with it, and of course, you have inflation as well, you have to take that into consideration, medical expenses.

It’s all tied in, and that’s the type of analysis that we’ll do. Little tangent there, but ultimately, we need to make better decisions, it behooves us to have a partner in retirement that has their ear to the ground, that is emotionally disconnected from the decisions that are being made every day. That’s the power of a good partner. When you say, “You know what, my investment portfolio is part of my income strategy, which is now a part of my tax plan, which is all a part of my estate plan,” and we’re setting initiatives, and then we’re keeping track of those deadlines for when actions need to take place that improve your financial situation, and then being held accountable to those actions, but then also reviewing and monitoring and adjusting. That’s what a relationship should look like with your retirement professional. It’s not just put your head in the sand, it’s not just look the other direction, and not be proactive as far as the planning side of things goes, but being passive on the investment side of things, for many of you, that is the right course of action. I didn’t quite get to the buffalo story there, Mark, but I felt that was important to go through. Mark: Yes, and you mentioned hooves. You were kind of in that area. I do think it’s really interesting though, because emotions do drive us, and you brought up a great point that those that are a little bit hands-off, but they’ve got a pretty good idea of what they’re doing, and then you have clients like me, though, that really don’t, they just rather go play golf. Troy, you make sure that I don’t get myself into trouble financially, my money is going to be fine, and it will last, but there’s so many variables in all of this. People that are super aggressive, people that take a lot of risk, because they’re comfortable with it, and then others that don’t want to take any risk at all.

I think there’s a lot we’re going to talk about as we move this show along because there are so many different outlooks on all of this, which your clients are not all the same at Oak harvest, are they? Troy: No, absolutely not. At their core, most of our clients are very similar as far as a few key initiatives or goals that they have. They want to first and foremost make sure that they retire once. They want to make sure that once they retire, that they feel will secure, that they know where their income is coming from, that they know they’re not going to run out of income, that they know they have a tax plan in place because they don’t want to give more to the government than they otherwise have to. They absolutely want to know that if something happens to them, their family will be taken care of. That is done by having a plan in place financially and also legally on the estate side of things. That’s why we’re bringing the CPAs in order to have one place under one roof where we can tie all that together.

You don’t have to go to the CPA and then hope your advisor calls the CPA to get the tax information. Then you don’t have to go somewhere else to talk to the attorney and then hope that the financial assets get transferred into the trust or the LLC or the family limited partnership. It’s all done under one roof. That’s, again, it’s value. I talked earlier in the show, I would never walk into a bank without ever making a deposit and ask for a withdrawal. I would never just walk into Bank of America or Chase or the Credit Union and say, “Hey guys, my name’s Troy Sharpe. I’m here for the first time. I’d really just like to make a withdrawal.” It doesn’t make sense. You have to make deposits into people’s lives before you could ever ask for anything in return. That has been our philosophy from day one here at Oak Harvest Financial Group, is we need to provide value on going basis, we need to make deposits to prove our worth, to prove our relationship, to prove our value. Then we know we can ask for the relationship, we can ask for the business, we can ask for the opportunity to work with you and your money, but it starts with trust, it starts with a foundational principle of always putting your interests first.

The core belief I had when I started Oak Harvest Financial Group, and many of you know the story of my grandparents, was to simply be a firm that if we had existed when my grandparents retired, they could have walked in the door, sat across the table from someone they unequivocally trusted, that would always act in their best interest, and have the ability to have the investments, the planning, the legal, the taxes, all done under one roof, have all those professionals talking to one another, and know that they were going to be okay. 1-800-822-6434. Let’s sit down, have a conversation, and see if we’re a good fit for each other. Mark: Hey, we’re halfway through the Retirement Income Show with Troy Sharpe, the CEO and founder of Oak Harvest Financial Group. We’ve got a lot more to get to. Stay with us. We’re back right after this. [00:11:48] [END OF AUDIO] [music]

Mark: Glad you’re with us today for the Retirement Income Show. I’m Mark Elliot, Troy Sharpe, the CEO and Founder of Oak Harvest Financial Group. Find out more on the website, oakharvestfinancialgroup.com. The office is located at I-10 and Bunker Hill, at 920 Memorial City Way. You can always call the team if you’d like to learn more about some of the questions or concerns you may have about retirement, or any financial questions. The team is here to help, it’s 800-822-6434. There’s no cost, there’s no obligation to chat with the team. 800-822-6434. Of course, you can always go to the YouTube channel. Well over 100 videos now on YouTube. Just search for Troy Sharpe and Oak Harvest, and I guarantee if you have a concern, or a question about retirement, or of the financial world, Troy’s probably got a video on it. Just search for Troy Sharpe, Oak Harvest, YouTube.

Troy, all the scenarios, your Oak Harvest Retirement Process path that you create for your clients, it’s investment, income, tax planning, health planning, legacy, estate planning, source security, when and how do we do it in the income part, Medicare’s in the health care part. There are so many moving parts, but everybody’s different. There are savers, there are spenders, sometimes they’re married, sometimes they’re both savers, sometimes they’re both spenders, most times one’s one and one’s the other. It’s always interesting. You had a story ways back that I always thought was really interesting. It’s the buffalo or the cow. It’s how we look at things. I would imagine, I don’t know, maybe sometimes you even have spouses that one looks at it more like a buffalo and one will look at it more like a cow. Explain that story, because I think it’s fun, and especially we’re going into a brand new year. We know that our outlook is so important, and the optimism we have for a year ahead. We don’t want to be pessimistic.

We don’t want to look bad. We got to be excited about a new year. Troy: Yes, it’s New Years, new beginnings, it’s always an opportunity to get back on the path, or the path you want to be on, or the path you started on. Life happens, life comes up, and sometimes we get pulled astray, and we need to get back on the path that we originally intended to go down. Financial planning, retirement planning is one of those things where the worst thing you can do is put your head in the sand. Certain parts of retirement planning, for example, I don’t want you to put your head in the sand, but when it comes to those of you that look at your investment portfolio every single day, you probably would benefit from putting your head in the sand. At least looking at it once a week, once a month. I know for some of you that would just be impossible.

We have so many clients too, that say, “Troy, you know what, I check in every six months. That’s all I need to do.” There has been numerous studies over the years. I forget the exact numbers, so I’m going to summarize here from my memory. Those who look at their accounts every single day, average around 5% a year. Those who look at their accounts every single month average around 6% or 7% per year. Those who look at it once per year, average around 8% or 9%, and those who never look at it, average around 11% or 12%. It’s a very simple story because it ties into the fact that the more you look at your money, especially once those paychecks have stopped, because there is a psychological transition into retirement.

When you go from receiving a paycheck and saving, saving, saving to all of a sudden, “This is all the money I’ll ever save. No more paychecks are coming in, now I start spending and start distributing,” for many clients that’s a year or two psychological adjustment until they feel comfortable actually spending. A plan absolutely helps that. What that study does that I just mentioned is it really brings home the point that there are emotions tied into the performance of your portfolio when there are no more paychecks. The biggest mistake that consumers make, especially when they manage their own money, is the belief that, “Things are rocky in the future, I need to go to cash,” or, “I don’t like who’s the next president or the current administration,” or, “I don’t like the political policies that are coming out of DC. I need to go to cash.” These are mistakes that if you made, we’ve seen a lot of people, we had to keep a lot of people invested prior to president Biden coming into office. No matter how much you disagree with the president’s policies, the president has very little to do with how the stock market performs. If you went to cash because of the administration that was incoming, because emotionally you didn’t like the direction of the country, you made a massive mistake because market is up significantly since that time. Those are the types of decisions that if you make that decision and if you pull that cord, you have cost yourself hundreds of thousands and sometimes in the case millions of dollars.

Now let’s think that through. What do you mean, Troy? How could I have cost myself millions of dollars? Yes, I missed out on the market run-up. I could have made an extra 20%, 30%. when I’m looking at financial decisions, I’m not looking at the cost or benefit of any decision today. I look at it in terms of the time value of money. If you pulled out because president Biden was coming in and you came back in three months later, four months later because of the fear of missing out, the market’s up 25%, let’s say you have $1 million portfolio. You cost yourself, depending on the allocation, $100,000, $200,000. Let’s just say, you cost yourself $100,000, that’s in today’s dollars, but if you made that $100,000, if you had stayed in and had a proper investment strategy, or someone by your side to help guide that decision, to help you to realize what the true underlying fundamentals of the market is, or will be, or what we’re seeing as far as expectations, that $100,000 in 10 years, realistically, you could expect it to be worth somewhere around $200,000, in 20 years, somewhere around $400,000. When I’m looking at decisions that people make, and decisions we make today for clients, we’re not just looking at the value gain today, we’re looking at the time value of that money, and what is the cost or benefit over time. Then there’s this whole tax component that overlays with it, and of course, you have inflation as well, you have to take that into consideration, medical expenses. It’s all tied in, and that’s the type of analysis that we’ll do.

Little tangent there, but ultimately, we need to make better decisions, it behooves us to have a partner in retirement that has their ear to the ground, that is emotionally disconnected from the decisions that are being made every day. That’s the power of a good partner. When you say, “You know what, my investment portfolio is part of my income strategy, which is now a part of my tax plan, which is all a part of my estate plan,” and we’re setting initiatives, and then we’re keeping track of those deadlines for when actions need to take place that improve your financial situation, and then being held accountable to those actions, but then also reviewing and monitoring and adjusting. That’s what a relationship should look like with your retirement professional. It’s not just put your head in the sand, it’s not just look the other direction, and not be proactive as far as the planning side of things goes, but being passive on the investment side of things, for many of you, that is the right course of action.

I didn’t quite get to the buffalo story there, Mark, but I felt that was important to go through. Mark: Yes, and you mentioned hooves. You were kind of in that area. I do think it’s really interesting though, because emotions do drive us, and you brought up a great point that those that are a little bit hands-off, but they’ve got a pretty good idea of what they’re doing, and then you have clients like me, though, that really don’t, they just rather go play golf. Troy, you make sure that I don’t get myself into trouble financially, my money is going to be fine, and it will last, but there’s so many variables in all of this. People that are super aggressive, people that take a lot of risk, because they’re comfortable with it, and then others that don’t want to take any risk at all. I think there’s a lot we’re going to talk about as we move this show along because there are so many different outlooks on all of this, which your clients are not all the same at Oak harvest, are they?

Troy: No, absolutely not. At their core, most of our clients are very similar as far as a few key initiatives or goals that they have. They want to first and foremost make sure that they retire once. They want to make sure that once they retire, that they feel will secure, that they know where their income is coming from, that they know they’re not going to run out of income, that they know they have a tax plan in place because they don’t want to give more to the government than they otherwise have to. They absolutely want to know that if something happens to them, their family will be taken care of. That is done by having a plan in place financially and also legally on the estate side of things. That’s why we’re bringing the CPAs in order to have one place under one roof where we can tie all that together.

You don’t have to go to the CPA and then hope your advisor calls the CPA to get the tax information. Then you don’t have to go somewhere else to talk to the attorney and then hope that the financial assets get transferred into the trust or the LLC or the family limited partnership. It’s all done under one roof. That’s, again, it’s value. I talked earlier in the show, I would never walk into a bank without ever making a deposit and ask for a withdrawal. I would never just walk into Bank of America or Chase or the Credit Union and say, “Hey guys, my name’s Troy Sharpe. I’m here for the first time. I’d really just like to make a withdrawal.” It doesn’t make sense. You have to make deposits into people’s lives before you could ever ask for anything in return. That has been our philosophy from day one here at Oak Harvest Financial Group, is we need to provide value on going basis, we need to make deposits to prove our worth, to prove our relationship, to prove our value. Then we know we can ask for the relationship, we can ask for the business, we can ask for the opportunity to work with you and your money, but it starts with trust, it starts with a foundational principle of always putting your interests first.

The core belief I had when I started Oak Harvest Financial Group, and many of you know the story of my grandparents, was to simply be a firm that if we had existed when my grandparents retired, they could have walked in the door, sat across the table from someone they unequivocally trusted, that would always act in their best interest, and have the ability to have the investments, the planning, the legal, the taxes, all done under one roof, have all those professionals talking to one another, and know that they were going to be okay. 1-800-822-6434. Let’s sit down, have a conversation, and see if we’re a good fit for each other. Mark: Hey, we’re halfway through the Retirement Income Show with Troy Sharpe, the CEO and founder of Oak Harvest Financial Group. We’ve got a lot more to get to. Stay with us. We’re back right after this.