The Planning Impact of Social Security

Show Chapters:

00:00 – 00:40: Teaser

00:41 – 01:40: Intro

01:40 – 01:53: Bumper

1:53 – 7:26 & 56:53 – 1:01:37: Spotlight: Landon Randall and Oxford Retirement

07:26 – 12:07: Who Landon Helps

12:07 – 16:41: Current Market Events in Arizona

16:41 – 23:38: Discussing Client Experience

23:38 – 30:16: The Most Common Confusion With Social Security

30:16 – 36:29: The Planning Approach and a Case Study on the Planning Impact

36:29 – 37:52: The Two Biggest Mistakes in Your Investment Plan

37:52 – 43:22: Money Management: Strategic vs. Tactical

43:22 – 50:58: How To Structure Your Finances In Retirement

50:58 – 56:36: A Market Analysis and What to Do About Inflation

56:36 -: End & Disclosures

Show Transcript:

Teaser portion leading into the show:

Landon Randall:            I cut my teeth in ’07 and ’08.

Wally Smith:                 Oh yeah.

Landon Randall:            Right? And I saw that, and I said never, I’d never want to be the advisor where my client has to live through that.

Wally Smith:                 Well, look at what happened between 1953 and 1983. That was a rising interest rate environment, and what happened to bonds during that time?

Landon Randall:            Right.

Wally Smith:                 There are bond proxies.

Landon Randall:            Man, if I quit work today, do I have enough? Can I retire? Will I make it? Will I run out? We all want that safety blanket before we walk out.

Wally Smith:                 But she just said, “Wally,” she said, “Okay, I think I understand that we have enough, but what I don’t understand is what do we do when the paycheck stopped?”

 

Show Intro

 

Beginning of Interview:

Wally Smith                  So Landon, welcome. Glad to see you. Glad you’re able to make it into town. You’ve got quite a good operation going down in Phoenix. I’d love to learn a little bit more about it. What’s the backstory on your shop?

Landon Randall:            Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me up to beautiful Colorado.

Wally Smith:                 You bet.

Landon Randall:            And I love the operation that you have here at Ridgegate Financial.

Wally Smith:                 Thank you.

Landon Randall:            Your team is doing an amazing job, and excited to see the growth that you guys are doing and achieving.

Wally Smith:                 I appreciate it.

Landon Randall:            It looks like you’re doing all the right things. But our shop located in the Northwest Valley of Phoenix in beautiful Sun City. Mike, my partner and founder of Oxford, had been doing business for 40 years there in the valley, and he brought me in early 2007 and worked my way up to VP and president. Now, I own the firm. We really focus on education first. Everything we do, we do a lot of educational classes. We teach at five different colleges on different retirement topics from social security and income planning, to tax planning, to estate planning, to investment pre- and post-retirement classes. And so our goal is to educate the community first and foremost. And I think the best client is an educated client to be able to help coach them.

We’re not there to be their one all, be all advisor. I don’t think anyone cares about your money more than you do. And I think most of us just need a coach to be their CFO or soundboard to bounce ideas and different strategies of what they should and shouldn’t be doing.

Wally Smith:                 Before you met Mike, you said 2007, what were you doing?

Landon Randall:            So I’m a native of Arizona. I raised cattle in 4-H. That’s how I bought my first car. And early 2001, not thinking we’d be going to war anytime soon, I wanted to travel and see the world so I decided to join the Navy.

Wally Smith:                 Oh wow. Timing is everything.

Landon Randall:            It is. Right? And so got into the Navy in March of 2001 and went into search and rescue, helicopter search and rescue and worked my way through the programs to combat search and rescue. And I’ve done a couple tours, one of them around the world on the Carl Vinson and 37 combat missions over Iraq. I really enjoyed it. I had a passion for it, really excelled at it, but knew that’s not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I wanted to have the freedoms that everyone has, to be able to travel, spend time with their families. Not that you can’t do that in the military, but it’s extremely hard as most people know.

So before getting out, I met with Mike and said, “Hey, I know I don’t have the gray hair like everybody else does in the industry, but I assure you, teach me everything you know.” And he said, “Let’s do that.” So as far as timing goes, getting into the financial industry in early ’07.

Wally Smith:                 Great timing.

Landon Randall:            So I’ve got impeccable timing on my life.

Wally Smith:                 Absolutely. Yeah.

Landon Randall:            I wouldn’t change it for the world, but yeah, it was quite interesting getting out of the military where I was saving lives and doing things like that, and I wanted to get into the financial world to help people. That’s our number one goal, is to help people. That’s what motivates me. It was devastating getting into the financial industry and meeting with people that lost 40, 50, 60, some people everything they had and in tears.

Wally Smith:                 Talk about shell shock.

Landon Randall:            Right. They don’t know what to do. And so that was my early phase of my investment advisory career. And I knew within the first year that I don’t want my clients to ever go through that situation. And I built our practice off education to make sure that the people I meet with and that I work with, how we structure their investments to make sure that that doesn’t happen to them.

Wally Smith:                 Very good. Yeah. You really did pick the timing. That’s for sure.

Landon Randall:            Right.

Wally Smith:                 The location. You’re down there, you said Sun City.

Landon Randall:            Yeah. Northwest Phoenix, Sun City. We’re right on Bell, which is the busiest street in Arizona. We got about 70,000 cars a day. We have a good shop there. I got about nine staff currently, three advisors. And again, do a lot of retirement classes. Actually, most advisor firms don’t get call-ins and walk-ins as you know, but we get them every day. And so we’re-

Wally Smith:                 I think that 10-foot billboard that [crosstalk].

Landon Randall:            Yeah, the big digital sign up front, but before we had that, people would stop in and say, “Oxford retirement. My mom needs to go into a nursing home. Can you help us?” So that’s why we put the billboard out front. Now people know we’re actually a financial firm, but we must be doing something right because we live in a community that’s 55-plus Sun City and everyone seems pretty happy. I don’t have anyone picketing up front and we’ve been in business a long time.

Wally Smith:                 That’s a good sign.

Landon Randall:            Yeah.

Wally Smith:                 Well, I know you mentioned helping people with the search and rescue, helping people with the finances. You and I hit it off right away. I remember a good friend of ours told me what you were up to down there. I gave you a call out of the blue and you had no idea who I was. And I just said, “I heard you’re doing some great education in social security stuff.” You told me about it so open, so freely giving and generous with your time. I think I was down in your office the next day. Flew [crosstalk].

Landon Randall:            You didn’t wait.

Wally Smith:                 And it has been great. I think that comes across and that’s I think one reason why you get referrals, is when you’re referable.

Landon Randall:            Yeah.

Wally Smith:                 And I think the caring really does come through. What would you say your avatar client is? Is there an age range? I think it’s a pretty narrow bell curve that you have down there.

Landon Randall:            Well, a lot of practices, when clients or prospects out there, everyone gets inundated with stuff from the mail, and you got these practices now saying, “Oh, we only focus on people with over 250,000 of investible assets. That’s what we want.” And they’re trying to do that. I pride myself on not doing that.

Wally Smith:                 Do you have a minimum?

Landon Randall:            I do not, and I don’t know that I ever will. That’s not who I am. Everyone is a human being and has a worth. I don’t care if you got five grand, 10 grand. If you need help and you need advice, I want to help you. You could say, oh, somebody with 50 grand. I spend as much time with somebody with $50,000 to their name to help achieve their goals and get them to where they need to be, to put them at ease, as somebody with $5 million. It’s the same work.

Wally Smith:                 We’ve known each other, I don’t know, five or six years now, I think, and we’ve never talked about that. But when I got into the firm, into the industry, I don’t know, in ’03 I guess it was, my friends told me the same thing. They said, “You’ve got to have a minimum, 250 grand, 500,000, whatever.” And I said, “No, I’m not going to do it.” I said, “That’s not how you value people.”

Landon Randall:            No.

Wally Smith:                 And what they said is that if you don’t have a minimum, they said you can’t help everyone or you’re going to go broke. And I said, “Well, I know I can’t help everyone, but I’m willing to help anyone.”

Landon Randall:            Right. That’s a good way to put it.

Wally Smith:                 [crosstalk] distinction, but it’s really true.

Landon Randall:            Yeah.

Wally Smith:                 And the thing is, Landon, I’ve never suffered for that. I’ve never suffered by saying, “Gee, I just wasted an hour with somebody.” Who might I think I am to feel that way? It has always worked out.

Landon Randall:            It’s all walks of life. Our average client is 60 to 70, I would say, in that range, maybe early 60s because we get definitely more pre-retirees, trying to figure out their retirement. It’s just difficult nowadays trying to retire before 65 because of healthcare costs. That’s one thing this government has got to get figured out. Social security, you could take it as early as 62, but your whole check goes to healthcare. And then like, oh well, you can get a subsidy through healthcare.gov. So now I want to retire early so I got to manipulate my income to be able to get a subsidy.

My fear for everyone doing that today is let’s say I do that at 62. You have a current administration in office that raised the thresholds of what your income could be to get these nice subsidies to cover your healthcare. But will it be that way for the next three years? You quit working and you retire based on what’s available today. And what scares me is every administration, as soon as they come in, they change everything the previous one was doing.

Wally Smith:                 Right. It’s getting more so that way.

Landon Randall:            And what if I’m not 65 yet and something changes? Do I go back to work? How do I cover that? Now my whole check is going to healthcare costs. Did it make sense? And so I really struggle with that. That’s a silver bullet in my practice that I really struggle with. Some people are forced prior to 65, and how do we make it work? So a unique area, but 60 to 70, I said with the market being so good since 2008, I would say most people have over 250,000 or so that I meet in their retirement plan through work.

The largest assets we see is equity in their real estate. Phoenix, booming market, booming real estate market. And outside of that is their employer plan, and those work so well because they’re dollar cost averaging. Best thing that happened to anyone retiring today, in my opinion, was Y2K 2008 and March of 2020. Market selling off. Every two weeks, I’m getting paid. I’m buying the dip. I’m buying on Black Friday. Market gets back to even in ’07, and I’m showing a great rate of return. The problem with that is the expectations because over the last 22 years, that’s what they’ve been doing.

Wally Smith:                 Yeah. Recency bias.

Landon Randall:            They think that’s how it works in retirement, and it doesn’t.

Wally Smith:                 And especially young people.

Landon Randall:            Right.

Wally Smith:                 One of the best things the government did was when they said they changed the law around to say with the 401(k), you’re already opted in, you have to opt out. So many people, they have no clue about the 401(k). And young people looking and well, okay, that’s how much money goes I can spend until the next payday. But they’re building some assets now and they weren’t before.

Landon Randall:            Sure.

Wally Smith:                 Anybody who’s younger than, what, 35 thinks the market goes up. That’s what you do. It goes up. That once in a lifetime market crash in 2001, and seven years later, you had another once in lifetime market crash. A lot going on down in Arizona, the real estate values. I know Colorado is crazy.

Landon Randall:            Yeah.

Wally Smith:                 We’ve got clients who are in the real estate field who are also down in Arizona.

Landon Randall:            Sure.

Wally Smith:                 Prescott, I got some clouds up that way, and people wanting to move away. A little cooler up that way.

Landon Randall:            Yeah. It used to be the number one retirement city for years in a row from the early 2000s.

Wally Smith:                 I know there’s an awful lot going on with the Taiwan semiconductor industry up around 17 and 303. That’s crazy. That was one of the most successful commercial development, Arizona commercial development group lobbying for that. They started I think back under the previous governor and back in ’13. And then in ’14, it really got kicked off and then Taiwan came over and $50 billion is going in, 50 billion.

Landon Randall:            I counted on my way to the airport this morning 40 cranes. You can drive on the 303 at … I was speeding to get to the airport at 80 miles an hour.

Wally Smith:                 You’re on a recorder now.

Landon Randall:            And for at least seven minutes at 80 miles an hour, I’m still driving by it. It’s ginormous. So Phoenix is booming. We’re a huge retirement state. I think us, Texas and Florida right now, we’re ripping at the seams, and people say, “Well, this is not going to last. There’s going to be another 2008.” I don’t think you’re going to see that in real estate, in my opinion. I think maybe in certain areas.

Wally Smith:                 I think in some areas, you will.

Landon Randall:            You’ll see a slow down.

Wally Smith:                 I know in Denver, I think with the interest rates going up a little bit now, I think we’ll see that.

Landon Randall:            And when you say interest rates go up, but that really affects in my opinion, new home buyers. People that already own a home, they’re seeing equity appreciate. So if they want to make a change, they’re coming in and they’re selling so they got cash to put down. So going from three to five may not affect them much. But a new home buyer, that market is going to slow down big time and then we’ll see where things go. And so I-

Wally Smith:                 Where it’s pushing a lot is into the single family rentals because people cannot afford to buy. So the single family rental market has been going up. We’ve seen a number of REITs that are out there that are just killing it. A lot of the big institutional money, you read about a lot of these, coming in, putting one, two, $5 billion and now it’s build to suit, build to rent, BTR. So they’re building whole subdivisions of build to rent, and the economics are there too.

Landon Randall:            Yeah. And speaking of Taiwan semiconductor, it’s awfully weird. All the discussions with the war of Russia invading Ukraine and now, is China going to take Taiwan? So it’s interesting that one of Taiwan’s largest corporations is now [crosstalk] offshoring, so where are things headed?

Wally Smith:                 Yeah. Well, that’ll be our next quarter podcast on what happened there. Who are the major employers then in the area down there?

Landon Randall:            I see a lot from American Express, Honeywell, Discover.

Wally Smith:                 At least semiconductor will be. Tech is booming.

Landon Randall:            Yeah. Because we’re Northwest Valley so I don’t really see … Intel is a huge employer, but that’s East Valley. And Phoenix, the Metro area is so broad, it takes forever to get across down. It’s the other side of the world. So we really focus in the West Valley, and so it’s really state employees and Honeywell, Discover, American Express.

Wally Smith:                 Is the baseball industry big down there or is it really more of a novelty over on that side of town?

Landon Randall:            Not for the last two years.

Wally Smith:                 That’s true. Yeah.

Landon Randall:            We normally have a big client event at the baseball spring training. It brings in a ton of people. People really enjoy it. Last year, they didn’t have it. This year at the debacle, it got pushed off and so we didn’t get to do it with our clients. I think there was only a couple of weeks of spring training. It’s really got to be hurting the cities that put in those facilities and the teams that did that-

Wally Smith:                 Oh, man.

Landon Randall:            … to not be able to use that and have the revenue that they were expecting.

Wally Smith:                 My boys are grown now, but gosh, for years, it was springtime we’re going down to Peoria, going down to Goodyear. We’re going to go down and play ball.

Landon Randall:            A beautiful time of year to see Arizona too.

Wally Smith:                 One thing, Landon, you talked about taking the clients at a client event. Something I noticed in our conversations and talking about your practice is the client culture that you have there.

Landon Randall:            Sure.

Wally Smith:                 We’ve talked about some other advisors we know around the country, whose, I don’t know, their corporate culture is not really that healthy or it’s all just the money, money, money, or toxic even in some ways. And I think part of the whole caring environment you talk about where you’re really wanting to give, you’re a giving person. Tell us a little bit about that. What do you guys do? Do you do client events? Do you send out Christmas cards?

Landon Randall:            Let’s talk about the industry. There’s a reason why you and I are independent. Right?

Wally Smith:                 Yeah.

Landon Randall:            But most people’s money, they go to the Vanguard, Ed Jones, Charles Schwab, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley.

Wally Smith:                 They’re all the same.

Landon Randall:            And these advisors have a license to sell stocks, bonds, mutual funds and VAs, and they’re told at the top what they can and can’t offer, and you better be doing this much or you’re out of here. And the first thing they do when they go in is sell their family and then they run out and can’t make quotas and get out.

Wally Smith:                 They put it all on their friends.

Landon Randall:            Most my clients come from firms like that because they don’t want that mentality. They want the independent advisory shop that has all of the tool in their tool belts to find the best tool for whatever they’re trying to achieve in their retirement plan. And so I think that’s the main reason why people come to us.

Not only that. Look at this pandemic. How many people are paying advisors and they can’t even reach them on the phone? I had a client call the other day and they happened to be with Fidelity on the management side and paid a fee. We were actually trying to get a hold of his advisor. We waited on hold for 30 minutes. I can’t imagine paying for a service on my life savings and I can’t talk to somebody. I’m on hold for 30 minutes. By all means, have the office say you’re going to call me back or you’re in a meeting or something like that. I can understand that, but to be on hold for 30 minutes.

So I think what this pandemic is doing is shifting away from these big brick and mortar shops to more of the independent where they actually get customer service. What happened to customer service? And one thing we do is I spend more time at the office with my team and my clients than I do with my own family. That is my family.

Wally Smith:                 I understand that.

Landon Randall:            My team is my family. My clients are my family. I want them to be successful. And so I don’t want to be in the office in a financial meeting all the time with clients. I want to get to know them. I want to meet their kids. I want to go out. So we do a lot of client events to bring their kids, bring their partner, bring friends, and we rent out the baseball game we bring 200 clients to. This month, we’re doing a Lake Pleasant brunch cruise. The boat only holds a hundred clients.

Wally Smith:                 So is it first come or …

Landon Randall:            Yeah, we have to. That’s the next era, is why can’t I get on it? So we have to always do first come, first serve. So I knew that the baseball game where we had … because we have 200 now. We have 100 here, so I know people are going to be upset. So now what we’re doing right around Memorial Day, Top Gun is getting released, the new movie. So renting a movie theater. And then the people that came to the boat cruise, we’ll let the other people have first come to that. You know what I mean?

Wally Smith:                 And is this the client and the spouse or the whole family? You got to draw the line somewhere.

Landon Randall:            Yeah.

Wally Smith:                 You can’t bring the dog.

Landon Randall:            Right now, because we haven’t got to do everything for a couple of years, we’re telling them clients and spouse first and foremost. If the event doesn’t get full, then we’re like, “Hey, yeah, if you have a friend or a relative or kids you want to bring with you, we’d love to meet them and have them.”

Wally Smith:                 One of the biggest, I don’t know, complaints I hear is the same thing, whether any of the companies you mentioned, the big wirehouse firms, they all have their pie chart of mutual funds that they’re going to drop you into. And frankly, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel when you see a bond mutual fund and they’re saying, “Why are you in bonds?” “Well, that’s for safety and stability.” And okay.

Landon Randall:            Not this year.

Wally Smith:                 No, not this year. And if there’s any … It’s pretty easy if you can show them, well, look at what happened between 1953 and 1983. There was a rising interest rate environment, and what happened to bonds during that time? There are bond proxies. There are bond proxies in the insurance field. There’s bond proxies in the alts field. There’s lots of ways to address that, but they never hear that. They never hear that proactive thing. And that’s what I hear from my clients, is they’ll call their advisor, if they can get them on the phone, and they’ll say, “Hey, I’m concerned about inflation. What should we do about inflation?” They don’t know. And why don’t they know? Because it’s a big wirehouse. They haven’t been told, “Here’s a solution. This is what we need to do.”

So the proactive side of that, being able to hedge a position, I want to talk a little bit about money management. But as far as reaching out, as far as being proactive and reaching out with you, I think you do a state of the union in January, February.

Landon Randall:            Yeah. Because the whole COVID and getting space, we found a nice place and we did our state of the economy the first week of February this year. We had a little north of 200 clients attend that. I think it’s very powerful. We bring out institutional money managers that actually manage our clients’ assets that are managing billions of dollars for large institutions. It’s one thing to have your money managed and you’re paying a fee and you get a service from the advisor, but I think it’s very powerful for my clients to be hearing from the people actually pushing the buttons and making those decisions on the portfolio directly from that. Who does that? You’ve got Merrill Lynch doing that. You got Ed Jones doing that. Uh-uh. Bringing people out so you can hear them. And we do a Q&A session kind of like we’re doing right now about the markets, and we get a lot of questions from the people in the audience and we go through all of that. I think it’s very powerful, and my clients really like it, and it’s always a good turnout.

Wally Smith:                 I think it’s a confidence builder for them to know, gee, Landon actually knows the people and they know him who are managing our money.

Landon Randall:            That’s right.

Wally Smith:                 I think that’s huge. Tell us about you did the halftime event, middle of the year.

Landon Randall:            I don’t have it set just on halftime because we’re constantly doing it. That’s right. That’s just the cable, and we get one done, it’s like, “Hey, what is the next one? What’s cool and exciting. What can we do?” So we try to do definitely two big client events a year, but it tends to be more quarterly is what it ends up being.

Wally Smith:                 I know we spent a lot of time before this podcast on social security, and we’re going to make a lot of that information available.

Landon Randall:            Yeah.

Wally Smith:                 But you’re probably one of Arizona’s most consistent and prolific teachers of social security.

Landon Randall:            Yeah. I like to think so at least. Yeah.

Wally Smith:                 As far as the name and the brand and the look when the mailers go out, got to imagine people see those come through for years and they’re just not ready yet. But when they finally are ready, it’s like, well, where is that guy? And so then they come. We see that sometimes on the radio. We’ve been on radio for years and people say, “Oh, I’ve heard you on radio for years. Just haven’t been ready yet.”

Landon Randall:            Right. No, absolutely.

Wally Smith:                 What is some of the confusion, the biggest confusion you see about social security when people walk in?

Landon Randall:            Well, backing up a little bit. I’ve been teaching classes at the colleges on social security planning for at least eight years. I’ve had a few thousand students, clients come through that. So I think it’s very powerful. Early on in my career, I didn’t know anything about social security and the ins and outs, but it’s such a huge basis of people’s retirement. The average consumer, 40 to 60% of their income in retirement, which retirement is now, what, 20 to 30 years for a lot of people, comes from social security. You can’t mess it up. You need to get that right.

So to me in my planning process, social security is first and foremost, how do we strategize, maximize that, find the best strategy for that family or household? Then what else do we have and how do we backfill to get them to where they need to be? And basically, everyone going into retirement has social security. They need to know, hey, what happens if a spouse dies or I’m divorced? What can and can’t I do?

Wally Smith:                 I think the confidence also, the big confidence builder is that indeed, you do have a well defined process. So it’s not a matter of, well, come in and we’ll try to figure it out together. You have very specific know what to ask them and how to move them forward. Are there misconceptions about, or maybe they’re not, should we take social security as soon as we can because it’s going away?

Landon Randall:            So I get asked this all the time, what is the magic age? What’s the best time to take social security? There is no magic age. And here’s the problem. We get our statements, and the old statement said, “Hey,” when you open it up, “full retirement age 60 to 70 year amount, your 70 amount if you waited and then 62.” Right?

Wally Smith:                 Yeah.

Landon Randall:            And we look at those numbers and you’re like, oh, it’s only a couple of hundred bucks a month. Why would I wait? Well, that’s exactly what the government wants you to do. Break everything down to the smallest denominator. Hey, it’s not that big of a difference, so why would I wait? Now, the new statements break it down by year, which is helpful. So I don’t think there’s a magic age.

Here’s what I believe, and I say this in every class, if I could quit working today and be guaranteed what I make every month guaranteed for the rest of my life, what do you think I’m going to do?

Wally Smith:                 Probably going to do it.

Landon Randall:            I’m going to quit working. I’m going to spend time with my family.

Wally Smith:                 You bet.

Landon Randall:            Travel, do the things that I want to do and fulfill my purpose in life. So here’s what I believe. If with all of my other resources that I built, maybe rental properties, real estate, maybe it’s your pensions, maybe it’s your 401(k), IRAs, brokerage accounts, whatever your resources are, the sooner I could take social security and with my other resources get to where I need to be for the rest of my life, why in the world would I wait? You see, I always tell everyone, I don’t even care about your investments. First meeting, I could care less to see what you’re invested in. I need to know amounts where you’re at.

But the truth of the matter is the first step of retirement planning is on the client. Nobody can solve for … Everyone wants a safety blanket, and they want their advisor, their spouse or maybe it’s themselves handling the finance, whoever is handling the finances. They want to know, man, if I quit work today, do I have enough? Can I retire? Will I make it? Will I run out? We all want that safety blanket before we walk out. And you see all these commercials, oh, do all these things. You need a million dollars to retire. Baloney.

The truth is the first step is figuring out how much you need. No financial advisor on this planet could tell you you’re going to be okay if you don’t know how much you need. So the very first step that I tell everyone, my engineer clients like you, they’ll come in with 10 spreadsheets. [crosstalk] They come in with 10 spreadsheets. I’m like, “What is this?” They’ve got it defined every month what they’re spitting down to a penny. They know. Right?

Wally Smith:                 Right.

Landon Randall:            But the rest of us that aren’t engineers don’t normally live our life that way. I tell clients, “Go over the last couple of months and be honest with yourself because if you mess this number up, you can blow up your whole retirement. And put everything in there. If you want to get your nails done, your hair done, you got taxes, you got your insurance, you got all of these things, come prepared with a number that you need.” And so if you said, “Hey, Landon. We have no mortgage anymore. We’ve done good. We’ve got our debt paid off. We’ve got no car payments. We need five grand a month in retirement to be able to achieve what we want to achieve and fulfill our purpose.” Well, if I could take social security at 62 and my other resources get to five grand a month, why would I wait? Because they’re only paying me until I die. It’s how long can I collect it?

Now, there are reasons as to why clients would wait. Maybe I need to get it as high as possible to protect my spouse when I die that they get that, or maybe I have all the resources I need and I really don’t need social security so I’m going to delay it and wait because I want to do Roth conversions. Taxes are a huge thing. We all believe taxes are on sale right now. Right?

Wally Smith:                 Absolutely.

Landon Randall:            So some of my higher net worth clients are like, “Hey, I’m going to wait until 70 because I don’t want the extra income for tax purposes, and it gives me more room to be able to do Roth conversions and get the money out, tax it at lower rates and get it somewhere where after five years and 59 and a half, all the gains are tax free.” That can make a lot of sense. So it’s different for everyone, but the truth is define how much do you need? When can I take social security with my other resources and get to that number the sooner? Why would I wait? I don’t know what the future holds.

Wally Smith:                 Well, I think it was about 10 years ago, you can correct me, but programs started to be made available through advisors and some of them online directly that will tell you how to optimize, maximize, what’s the timing, all of these things on social security. I probably subscribed to four of them over that time. I’m sure you have looked at a couple. I think we both resolved to stay with the same one ultimately.

Landon Randall:            Right.

Wally Smith:                 Why? Because it’s simple. It does the job. But the point being all that that report tells you is what you’re going to get. It’s all geared, optimizing it in their words is to how much can I get out of the system? What’s the best way to get the most out of the system? Which as you just said so eloquently is it’s not the game.

Landon Randall:            No.

Wally Smith:                 It should be how are you going to achieve your purpose in life?

Landon Randall:            Correct.

Wally Smith:                 And so when you break it down, some of these illustrations will say that you’ll get another $50,000 over, and a client says, “Well, gee, I want to get that 50 grand.” You say, “Well, that’s over 25 years. We’re talking $160 a month difference.” Is that worth waiting?

Landon Randall:            So it’s different for everyone. And what I always tell people when we’re first analyzing social security, we don’t want that, don’t look at it as an income stream. What we want to do is convert it to an asset. And how do you do that? You say, okay, my life expectancy maybe based on my date of birth is 82. I always add normally about three years. So healthy male when I meet them going into retirement, I run them at about 85 and run their wife normally at about 90 because men die first because we want to. So with that being said, what we do is say, okay, if husband lived to 85, wife lived to 90, if I took it at 62 or whatever strategies, what’s my high and my low? So you know our system. Right?

Wally Smith:                 Sure.

Landon Randall:            The analysis system that we use says, okay, here’s the highest mathematical combination over their lifetime if they lived to that and here’s the lowest. And then what that does, that highest, it doesn’t mean that’s the strategy I need to do, but now we have something to aim for. That’s the target. So what we want to do is customize the strategy to get as close to that number, but collect earlier on. That’s the name of the game.

Wally Smith:                 Yeah. I agree.

Landon Randall:            And it’s eye opening. Most people come in and they’re like, “Oh, it’s a couple of hundred, or no, I need to wait until 70 because from 62 to 70, it’s about a 75% higher payout. So that’s what I need to do.” Sometimes when we go through the analysis, they’re like, “Oh my gosh, it’s 30 grand over my lifetime. Is that 50 grand?” And some people say, “Why would I wait?” Then others are like, “That’s everything. I need to wait to do that because that’s everything.”

Wally Smith:                 In our firm, we refer to most things that … We say you cannot make any financial decision in a fishbowl. Every financial decision should be part of an overall ecosystem and everything is interconnected. So it’s the planning impact of your social security on the rest of your life and your finances.

Landon Randall:            Correct.

Wally Smith:                 I think most couples from what I’ve seen or with ages or within maybe two years, three years of each other, occasionally I have one, and there’s always anecdotes, but one of them that really stuck with me was a couple. He was 62, and she was 13 years younger, and they had a life insurance salesman trying to tell him, “Take your social security early. Use that money to buy life insurance.” And it was a dramatic difference. And so we talked him off of that ledge. The reason why was for the survivor benefit. Like you just said, women outlived the men by typically five to eight years is what we consider. So she had a potential of outliving him 20 years. Well, the gentleman just passed at the age of 70, and he waited until 70 to take his social security.

Landon Randall:            To protect her.

Wally Smith:                 And so her amount is hugely impacted by what she would’ve by waiting like that. And so that’s really the planning where it comes in. It’s not just okay, run a chart, look at it and take the money.

Landon Randall:            No, it’s not one size fits all, for sure. And I will tell you though. I don’t normally recommend people that are waiting until 70. I just met a client. They’re both waiting until 70. And he knows that his wife shouldn’t but she doesn’t come in and she won’t listen to him or me. And it is what it is, but they’re both waiting until 70. It’s hard for me to make sense of that.

You see, normally our social securities between spouses are not the same. One is higher and one is lower. Well, if one is lower and we’re already at social security age and one is significantly lower, there’s no way that’s going to get to the higher one. So if somebody is going to take it early, in my opinion, it should always be the lower one because they’re only paying us until we die. And in all scenarios, once we live past our full retirement age, 66 to 67, and once spouse dies, the survivor gets the higher of the two. The low one is always going to drop off. So if you’re wondering which one should take it early, the lower one always takes it early. Right?

Wally Smith:                 Absolutely. Well, waiting, you mentioned it earlier, not to stay in the weeds here but just the idea of waiting until 70. If you’re doing that for an overall planning reason so that now you can do Roth conversions and get all that Roth and that IRA money over to Roth, okay, great. And again, that’s what you benefit from working with a financial planner, somebody is looking at the [crosstalk].

Landon Randall:            And another one would be like, hey, there’s lots of second and third marriages now. It’s not uncommon. And maybe I have a pension but when I took my pension, I wasn’t married to my spouse, the one I’m with now, so they’re not going to get it. So some of the strategy may be, well, the sooner you can identify that there’s a shortcoming when the breadwinner dies, one way to fix that, we may not like it, would be for that person to wait to take social security until 70, just like you said, to protect that spouse because the pension is not going to go to them. You got to think of about that.

The biggest mistake I see in everyone’s investment plan is the most simplistic thing to do, naming beneficiaries. The easiest way to keep the government out of your money is to put beneficiaries on everything you own, whether it’s your bank accounts you can put beneficiaries. In Arizona, you can do beneficiary deeds to avoid probate. You put beneficiaries on your IRAs, 401(k)s, life insurance annuities [crosstalk].

Wally Smith:                 And if they’re tangible assets, have a trust and make that the beneficiary.

Landon Randall:            Right. A trust is one way to do it.

Wally Smith:                 [crosstalk] heavy lifting for everything else.

Landon Randall:            Right. So that’s the number one. But the second biggest mistake I see is we plan our retirement together today. And maybe we’re not retiring at the same time, but we plan it together, and what we don’t plan for is most of the time, we don’t die together. They plan it for today while we’re both alive, but what happens when one dies? If your advisor is not running a simulation to say, “Hey, what does that look like?” Your loved ones, if you do love your spouse, could be in a world of hurt. You see, your mortgage doesn’t cut in half when you die. Your car payment doesn’t cut in half.

Wally Smith:                 That’s right.

Landon Randall:            That doesn’t cut in half. Now, your electric may go down a little bit. If it’s my wife, the shopping bill is going to go down a lot. Right?

Wally Smith:                 Yeah.

Landon Randall:            But other than that, it doesn’t cut in half. So you got to plan for that, and that may be a reason as to why to wait.

Wally Smith:                 Talk for just a little bit about money management because I know there are a lot of tools out there. There are CDs, money market, bonds, bond funds, annuities, real estate, alternative investments, stocks. Stocks are usually, people think of that as the most volatile part or the top of the asset stack in that sense. You’re a money manager. You’re not at one of the big wirehouses that we named earlier. They’re sticking people into mutual funds. Are you a stock picker?

Landon Randall:            No. In fact, I tell clients that’s not what I do. If that’s what you want, go somewhere else.

Wally Smith:                 Go down the road. Yeah.

Landon Randall:            I’m in front of clients all day. If you think anyone that’s out there that’s got a financial advisor, if they think the person on the other side of the table are doing the investments, when they’re in meetings all day, how in the world can I be in client meetings all day and watching the markets and managing their money in the market and picking stocks and doing that? Right?

Wally Smith:                 Sure.

Landon Randall:            So I think a huge problem with our industry is advisors need to pick what they want. And there are advisors that clients meet with that are picking the investments and doing that, but they’re also in meetings all day. How do you do both? There’s only so much time in this world. It’s our most valuable asset.

Wally Smith:                 It’s interesting. Even on our regulatory filings asks how much of your time do you spend during the trading hours? Are you doing what? They ask us that.

Landon Randall:            Even with my own assets, yeah, I manage some of my own and pick my own stock myself. I’m sure you do too.

Wally Smith:                 Sure. Yeah.

Landon Randall:            But the bulk of it, do I do that? No. So clients don’t come to us to build out some modern portfolio, 60% equities, 40% bonds, which a lot of wirehouses do, and they charge management fees and all they do is rebalance quarterly. If that’s what you want, move it to Fidelity, TD, Schwab on your own and don’t pay … That’s not management to me.

Wally Smith:                 That’s right.

Landon Randall:            So the reason clients come to us is we use institutional money managers. For example, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Home Depot, do you think they walk into Ed Jones, Charles Schwab, Merrill Lynch and say, “Oh, we got $10 billion to invest. What do you have to sell us?” No. They go to institutions that manage their money for their objectives and their risk tolerance, and those money managers make changes as the economy changes, as the market changes, as the risk tolerance of their client changes.

So I would say 10 to 15 years ago, it was darn near impossible for the average consumer to get to an institutional money manager because these institutions require you to have millions of dollars. Right?

Wally Smith:                 Yeah.

Landon Randall:            You know all the different ones we work on. Some of them have $25 million minimums.

Now, the difference here is if you want to go in and get sold something and pay a commission up front, there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s that way to do it. This way to do it is you pay a management fee, and the philosophy here is we want our client’s assets to grow as we make more. I darn sure don’t want them to lose 50% and my income cut in half. Right?

Wally Smith:                 Right.

Landon Randall:            So we’re incentivized to try to reduce risk in a down market and preserve their assets and try to grow it in an up market. So really when we look at these, we use institutional money managers and we try to match our clients, and I normally have two to three institutional money managers in each client account for different reasons. I believe there’s two main basic reasons of how to manage assets, strategic, 60/40, 50/50, whatever I’m in and it rebalances.

Wally Smith:                 And for the layman, strategic is what they’re probably most familiar with, what they have in their 401(k) plan.

Landon Randall:            Correct.

Wally Smith:                 And it’s basically these are the assets and I’ve got some mid caps, some large caps, some small caps, some bonds, international and that’s my allocation. It’s going to ride up and down, ride the market up and down.

Landon Randall:            That’s right.

Wally Smith:                 Nothing changes.

Landon Randall:            Or they don’t know what to pick, so majority pick target-date fund that says 2020, 2025, 2030, and you pick the date closest to when you’re going to retire and then it’s going to rebalance and do that and you have no clue what you own inside of there or what it is.

Wally Smith:                 I’m sure what my producers are thinking about is Larry’s portfolio. Larry, who’s the guy? He’s the one guy out of 20 in the department who actually likes this stuff. He seems to know what he’s talking about.

Landon Randall:            Sure.

Wally Smith:                 So now everybody has Larry’s portfolio.

Landon Randall:            Right. So that’s strategic. That’s one way to do it. And then there’s tactical money managers that are forward looking and either if equities are selling off, they’re backing off. Maybe they’re going to bonds. Maybe they’re going to gold. Maybe they’re going to real estate to try to back off. And then they go in more into equities as they see fit in an improving market. They’re not perfect. I’m not saying, oh, that’s the way everyone should be. I like a balanced approach. Normally, what I’ve seen over my time of doing this, tactical money managers normally help reduce losses in a down market because they’re getting out and switching to different asset classes, but they’re slow to get back in.

Wally Smith:                 That’s true. Yeah.

Landon Randall:            They’re so slow to get back in. And so on a rebound, strategic normally does better, but in a down, not as good. Right?

Wally Smith:                 Right. Yeah.

Landon Randall:            So I really like a balanced approach in my client accounts between a tactical money manager with maybe 25% to 40% of the money then strategic on the rest. And on that strategic part, maybe it is individual stock portfolio. I wholeheartedly believe, and I say this in all of my classes that I teach, I don’t believe anyone right now going into retirement should have more than 50% of their money invested in anything with a risk of loss, truly. And some people are like, “Well, how could you say that? I’ve done really good in the market.” That’s great.

Wally Smith:                 Until you don’t.

Landon Randall:            But if I take you through my process and if you knew with what you tell me you need, and I’ll tell you, over 80% of the people I meet with, with what they tell me they need, if they never made a dollar and never lost a dollar would be fine for the rest of their life. They just don’t know how to put the puzzle together, especially the taxes. So if you knew today with what you had, if you never made a dollar and never lost a dollar that you’d be fine for the rest of your life, why do you have all of your money invested in something to take that away from you? And like I started with, I cut my teeth in ’07 and ’08.

Wally Smith:                 Oh yeah.

Landon Randall:            And I saw that and I said, never, I’d never want to be the advisor where my client has to live through that.

Wally Smith:                 That’ll give you scars no man can see.

Landon Randall:            Correct. And so we do our planning and our process through that, and there are ways to do that. You talk about bonds. We’re in a rising interest rate environment now. Everyone has been told modern portfolio theory, as you get older, you’re more conservative, Wall Street is comprised of two products, stocks and bonds, however you want to wrap it in whatever shell. Right?

Wally Smith:                 Right.

Landon Randall:            Okay. So bonds have been going down since the ’80s. So we could always on a volatile period of time, since the ’80s, go into bonds, limit our losses, get a decent rate, and that’s how we would manage and then get back into equities as you see fit. The world has changed. That doesn’t work anymore.

Wally Smith:                 Well, since the 401(k) was introduced for most of the time that baby boomers have accumulated their funds or their assets have grown in a 401(k) plan or a company plan of some kind, roughly 2% of that gain each year came from bond market between 1983 and 2015 roughly.

Landon Randall:            Right. And you look at this and people this year, they’re like, “Well, I don’t understand this. I’m getting hit on both sides.” The US Treasury 10-year notes, which is a great benchmark for interest rates in this country, year to date, what’s it, April 1st? So it’s been three months. The 10-year Treasury notes are up over 50% year to date. Rates have risen 50%. So if you pull up any basic bond fund, and I’ll just use Vanguard’s long-term bond index bond, BLV, it’s down 10% year to date. That’s worse than the S&P.

Wally Smith:                 But that’s the stable part of your portfolio.

Landon Randall:            Correct.

Wally Smith:                 Stocks and bonds with the bonds for stability.

Landon Randall:            Right. And so maybe we need those bonds, or I don’t want to … I have all my money at risk. Are there other asset classes to take what I have in bonds? And I’m in bonds for a conservative rate of return, but it has a loss. Are there asset classes-

Wally Smith:                 But you’re losing money safely.

Landon Randall:            Right. So are there investments where I could move that money from bonds that still earn an average rate, four to six, and have no down?

Wally Smith:                 Sure.

Landon Randall:            There are.

Wally Smith:                 Absolutely.

Landon Randall:            And a lot of people don’t know what those are.

Wally Smith:                 Well, that’s what we help them plan with.

Landon Randall:            Yeah. Right.

Wally Smith:                 And that’s, again, the difference between working with an investment advisor or working with just trying to get the attention, like you said, being on hold for 30 minutes. You’ve got to have large, large amounts of money now with the wirehouse firms to treat you with personal service.

We only have so much time left. I think that’s one of the things that really comes through, Landon, talking about your practice is at every turn, it’s people realizing their purpose, quality of life, what are they trying to do? And that’s evident. That comes through in the planning and being able to say around our shop, what we talk about is a client of mine coined a phrase for us, oh gosh, five, six, eight years ago, plenty of money, plenty of pensions, guaranteed income much more than they spend. And sweet, sweet lady. She and her husband, I count them as friends for 16 years now, but she just said, “Wally,” she said, “Okay, I think I understand that we have enough, but what I don’t understand is what do we do when the paycheck stopped?”

And it was such a profound question because it really got right at the heart of it. And one of your answers would be, well, when the paycheck stopped, do you have enough to live life? Do you have enough to enjoy yourself? And if so, where do you want to be worried about? Do you want to sleep well at night or you want to worry about the market going up and down because you have unnecessary risk?

Landon Randall:            Yeah. It’s quite daunting. People think, oh, I’m going to retire. I’m going to leave it all in the market and take distributions off of it.

Wally Smith:                 Yeah.

Landon Randall:            I will tell you, the only people who called me in March of 2020 when the market dropped 33% from February 19th to March 23rd, S&P dropped 33%, only people that called me are the people that don’t listen. All their money is in the market and they’re living off of it. Who wants to live that kind of stressful retirement? And the call goes, “Landon, I can’t afford to lose. I got to make this last.” Then why do you have it all in the market if you can’t afford to lose?

And so what I’ll tell them, it’s not a lot of it, but, oh, just ride it out. No, if we need to go to cash, we can go to cash and we’ll try to pick the best timing and most likely dollar cost average in. But we want to take that fear out. I would encourage everyone, structure your retirement like your working years. Social security is going to be a paycheck. If I board the first through the 10th of the month, on the second Wednesday, the 11th through the 20th, on the third Wednesday, and the 21st through the end, on the last Wednesday of the month. So whenever that’s coming in, you have that set. That’s defined by social security.

Then my other income, whether it’s pensions, maybe your annuities, whatever it may be, you separate that out two weeks. If you’re used to getting paid every two weeks, structure your income in retirement like your working years. And the truth of the matter is when you do, nobody that I meet with got to where they’re at close to retirement age without learning to live off what’s coming in.

Wally Smith:                 That’s some of the best advice.

Landon Randall:            So if you structure your income in retirement like your working years where it’s coming in week or every two weeks, we tend to learn to live what’s up coming in. Right?

Wally Smith:                 Right.

Landon Randall:            And you want that, try to structure that. My goal is to try to structure all of what they need coming in guaranteed. The rest of the money, yeah, let’s invest it in the market for that high rate of return. I don’t have to hold a lot of bonds because I don’t need the safety side when all my money is not in it. We want to try to grow it. And that’s my client’s luxury portfolio. They want a second home. They want to cruise around the world, whatever they want to do. And if that all disappeared because of really bad markets or economy or whatever happens in this world, they’re still going to be okay because their income is where they need it to be guaranteed.

I think what you saw in the ’90s was a huge run up. It was over a 500% rate of return in the ’90s. Then what happened? The lost decade. 2000 to 2010, no rate of return. Okay. So what did Morningstar do in July? Release their 10-year report? What did they think the US equity market is going to be for the next decade? Negative one. That scares the daylights out of me as an advisor. Morningstar that does all of the analysis of mutual funds and all of these things, they think the US equity market is going to be negative one for the next decade. Well, I hope they’re wrong, but the truth is if they’re not, we as advisors better be doing the right thing and structuring this properly if we’re going to go into a lost decade because there’s more people retiring today than ever before.

And I think we’ve never needed our money to last as long as it has to last now. And you have this run up now since ’08 to now, it’s a little north of 400%, kind of like the ’90s, not near as good but like the ’90s. Lots of times when you have that run up, you tend to go into a slow down period. Is your portfolio built to last as long as you? You don’t know until you have it analyzed. And if it’s not, you and I bring it to their attention.

Wally Smith:                 That’s the job.

Landon Randall:            And they can change it with us, change it themselves or change it elsewhere.

Wally Smith:                 Absolutely. Landon, what about inflation? Touch on that briefly. What do you see? What remedies? What approaches?

Landon Randall:            Well, you raise interest rates to control inflation.

Wally Smith:                 Oh yeah.

Landon Randall:            You ask the economist how you raise interest rates to control inflation is you got to raise rates higher than inflation to control it. Are we going to get to that? Well, it’s inflation, true. Inflation is 8% right now.

Wally Smith:                 At least.

Landon Randall:            Right. Okay. So we got to get the Fed rate above that. Good luck.

Wally Smith:                 There’s not enough taxes to pay the interest on it.

Landon Randall:            Right. We got to get the government to stop spending. They’re the one that cost it. All the quantitative easing under Obama, $4.4 trillion over basically six years from ’08 to 2014, they stopped. They left it on the books. The government shuts themselves down in early 2020. Trump is in an election year. He knows … The debacle in DC, the average person can shut the TV off and disconnect. However, when it starts affecting your money, your 401(k) and your investments, that can swing votes, and Trump knew that. He’s no dummy. And the head of the Federal Reserve is put in by the president, but they’re not supposed to be dependent to the president. So the government shuts themselves down. Trump is in election year and knows, hey, he wasn’t elected as a politician. He needs to get this market higher by the time of election or he’s going to lose a lot of his base and not get reelected. Well, he didn’t get reelected anyhow.

But with that being said, the Fed printed about four trillion and bought bonds in 2020 alone. What Obama did over six, we basically did in eight to 10 months. And then Biden comes in and we’re doing 120 billion a month. Well, then in November, Jerome Powell comes out and says, “Oh, we’re going to start to taper about 15 billion. We’ll be done by June of 2020.” All right. That lasted three weeks. And in December, he comes out and says, “Oh, this ain’t working. We’re going to double down. We’re going to reduce it by 30, taper by 30 billion. We’re done by March. We’re going to do four to five rate increases and then we’re going to start dumping bonds.” Oh great.

What does the market do? It’s not going to react well to that. So you get January, a correction in January, which the correction is 10%. Why didn’t it sell off? I think the market is trying to pressure the Fed. Slow your roll. You can cost a crash if you do all that at once.

Wally Smith:                 Well, they’re talking six or seven rate increases this year.

Landon Randall:            Right. And so we got the first one of a quarter of a point. We’ll see what they do. But this war with Ukraine just added a mess to it. Right?

Wally Smith:                 Yeah, it did [crosstalk] really convenient on the political news front as far as the attention-

Landon Randall:            COVID went away.

Wally Smith:                 All sorts of things went away. I don’t know what … Anyway.

Landon Randall:            Right.

Wally Smith:                 We won’t go there.

Landon Randall:            We don’t go into there. But the truth of the matter is it’s time for the US since the ’08 crisis, they’ve been printing and doing quantitative easing, it’s time to tighten the belt. You got the national debt over $30 trillion. You got somewhere between nine and 10 trillion on the Fed balance sheet and bonds. Outside of that …

Wally Smith:                 That’s what you would do if you wanted the country to be healthy and survive.

Landon Randall:            Right. The rest of the world is watching and they’re saying, I don’t know about the US. You hear a lot of talking in the last couple of weeks about the dollar. Why? Because the rest of the world is watching us manipulate it. For the previous decade, it was, oh, China manipulates their currency. China is manipulating. Oh, what are we doing? It’s kind of concerning. So I think what you’re going to see is the government is going to have to tighten their belt and-

Wally Smith:                 For the investor, what should they do to fight inflation to try to survive?

Landon Randall:            Well, unfortunately, with the low interest rate environment we’re in, I think you have to be in the markets to try to generate the rate of return to outpace inflation. The good news is the markets historically have always outpaced inflation. And at our current interest rate environment, you’re not going to get anywhere close.

Wally Smith:                 I have a number of clients that are talking about they’re selling an asset or cashing something out so that they can pay off their mortgage. They don’t realize that a low interest fixed rate mortgage is an incredible asset to hang on to. So that’s one of our initiatives, is to help them out.

Landon Randall:            Yeah.

Wally Smith:                 On a personal note, this is not theory for you, you’ve got a dad who I know you [crosstalk] an awful lot about, and so it’s not just a matter of seeing clients getting older or their parents getting older. This hit home. How is he doing?

Landon Randall:            My dad is doing really good. He’s 83 but had a respiratory failure the last month. I thought we were going to lose him a couple of times. But got it figured out what the right machine and technology, and he’s back home doing really well. So thanks for asking. But my dad … I’m younger than a lot of people in our industry. And I think a lot of people appreciate that, my clients, because they know I’m going to be with them throughout their retirement. Right?

Wally Smith:                 Yeah.

Landon Randall:            They know I’m not going anywhere. But also, my father is the age of some of my clients’ parents, and I’m going through the same scenarios of, hey, assisted living, nursing home, health scares that a lot of people my age wouldn’t be going through yet. It’s crazy. I actually live side by side, I’m a different generation than my clients, younger, but with my family since I’m the baby, I’m going through a lot of the same scenarios. And so it helps all these things. Like I said, the crash of ’08 coming into the financial industry, all these things in my own personal life help me to change how I do my planning. Just like you. Right?

Wally Smith:                 [inaudible] away.

Landon Randall:            Absolutely.

Wally Smith:                 You can’t unless you’ve experienced this.

Landon Randall:            Correct. Right. So family is good. My stepdaughter is turning 18 this year. She’s graduating from high school, going up to NAU. So we’re excited about that. My son just turned 16. He’s got a new car and got his license and going through that.

Wally Smith:                 Quite the athlete too, right?

Landon Randall:            Yeah. So he’s doing football and now he’s focused a hundred percent on wrestling and went to state. He lost his state championship match due to a disqualification, which it was pretty petty without a warning or anything, but I won’t go into detail there, but it was quite frustrating. And then my daughter, soccer since basically six years old. Right?

Wally Smith:                 Yeah. Sure.

Landon Randall:            But she came to us and said, “Hey,” like a lot of probably parents have experienced that, they’ve been doing it so long, she says, “I don’t want to play in college. I want to focus on college life.” Well, I hope it’s the right college life. Right?

Wally Smith:                 Yeah, absolutely.

Landon Randall:            So yeah. My wife retired about a year and a half, two years ago from the Air Force. Unfortunately, she married somebody that does retirement planning. So she … “I’m going to retire in my 40s and I’m not working anymore.” I’m like, “Yeah, no, you married the wrong guy for that.” So she’s working for Lockheed and running the F16 simulators at Luke Air Force Base.

Wally Smith:                 Nice.

Landon Randall:            Really seems to enjoy it, and so that’s good. So life is good. My parents actually, my mom and my stepfather, they moved up to Pagosa Springs last year.

Wally Smith:                 Okay.

Landon Randall:            So now I get to come up here even more so and got a beautiful place. Southern Colorado, I’ve always enjoyed it.

Wally Smith:                 It’s beautiful.

Landon Randall:            Once I finally retire, I could definitely see myself here in Colorado. I love it here.

Wally Smith:                 Well, we certainly hope to see you up here more often. I know we’ve been talking about you making a visit for a while. Glad we finally made it a reality.

Landon Randall:            Right. Absolutely

Wally Smith:                 Landon Randall, Oxford Retirement. Are you going to keep the name?

Landon Randall:            Oh, you want to go into detail on that.

Wally Smith:                 Short version.

Landon Randall:            So unfortunately in our industry-

Wally Smith:                 You got the brand.

Landon Randall:            You know with regulations that you don’t really buy the company. You buy the assets of the company. So I’ve always had my own firm where everything gets paid to and running that side by side to be able to make this acquisition from Mike. And so the name of our firm that actually owns Oxford Retirement & Estate Planning is called Hybrid Wealth Management because I believe what we do is hybrid. It’s not all market. It’s not all fixed. We do a lot of planning. We got basically three pillars. When we take our clients through, income planning, first and foremost, you got to get that figured out. Then move on to the investment plan. How do we manage it as best as possible? And then our legacy plan. Is it my church, my charity, my kids? How do I maximize the benefit, reduce what goes to the government and do that?

So Hybrid Wealth Management is the name of our firm that owns Oxford Retirement. Nobody really sees it, but Mike, my partner and mentor that taught me everything and got me to where I’m at, he’s not retiring. He’s still working there and he’s not ready to retire. We just put in place our succession plan ahead of time.

Wally Smith:                 Sure. Yeah.

Landon Randall:            And so the name will stay the same as long as we want to.

Wally Smith:                 Sure.

Landon Randall:            We got a great brand. Like we said, Mike has been doing business in Arizona for over 40 years.

Wally Smith:                 Absolutely.

Landon Randall:            Yeah, it’s good.

Wally Smith:                 Thanks for coming in.

Landon Randall:            No, thank you.

Wally Smith:                 I appreciate it.

Landon Randall:            All right.

Disclosures:

© 2022 Ridgegate Financial. All Rights Reserved.

“Purpose. Planning. Portfolio.®” is a registered trademark of Ridgegate Financial in the United States.

This podcast is hosted and operated by George Wallace Smith and has brought Landon Randall to this episode for a guest [KS1] interview.

Landon Randall is the owner of Hybrid Retirement Solutions, LLC DBA Oxford Retirement & Estate Planning and is an Investment Adviser Representative with AE Wealth Management, LLC. George Wallace Smith is the owner of Ridgegate Financial, LLC, is an Investment Adviser Representative with AE Wealth Management, LLC and a Registered Representative with Emerson Equity, LLC.

Both firms are independent financial services firms that utilize a variety of investment and insurance products.

Both firms offer investment advisory services through AE Wealth Management, LLC. Investment advisory services offered only by duly registered individuals through AE Wealth Management, LLC (AEWM). AEWM, Ridgegate Financial LLC and Hybrid Retirement Solutions, LLC DBA Oxford Retirement & Estate Planning are not affiliated companies.

Ridgegate Financial LLC offers securities products. Securities offered through Emerson Equity LLC, member: FINRA/SIPC. Only available in states where Emerson Equity LLC is registered. Emerson Equity LLC and Ridgegate Financial LLC are not affiliated companies.

Emerson Equity LLC and AE Wealth Management, LLC are not affiliated companies. Emerson Equity LLC is not affiliated with any other companies identified in this communication.

Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. Any references to protection, safety or lifetime income, generally refer to fixed insurance products, never securities or investments. Insurance guarantees are backed by the financial strength and claims paying ability of the issuing carrier.

This podcast is intended for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be used for the sole basis for financial decisions, nor should it be construed as advice designed to meet the particular needs of an individual’s situation.

Ridgegate Financial LLC and Hybrid Retirement Solutions LLC DBA Oxford Retirement & Estate Planning are not permitted to offer, and no statement made during this show shall constitute tax or legal advice. Neither firm is affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Government or any governmental agency. The information and opinions contained herein provided by third parties have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed by Ridgegate Financial LLC or Hybrid Retirement Solutions LLC DBA Oxford Retirement & Estate Planning.

Please remember that converting an employer plan account to a Roth IRA is a taxable event. Increased taxable income from the Roth IRA conversion may have several consequences including (but not limited to) a need for additional tax withholding or estimated tax payments, the loss of certain tax deductions and credits, and higher taxes on Social Security benefits and higher Medicare premiums. Be sure to consult with a qualified tax advisor before making any decisions regarding your IRA.

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