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The Smart Take:
It’s usually a life event — retirement, Social Security age, business sale, death or inheritance — that tends to drive people to seek financial advice. Those that tend to benefit the most from advice are those whose time is valuable and where the cost of a mistake is high (and potentially irrevocable.)
Hear Kevin and Tyler talk about recent meetings they’ve had with people seeking help. Learn why the problem that brought them in often isn’t the real problem. Rather, it’s the “unknown unknowns” or the “things they think they know but just ain’t so” that are more so the problem to avoid or opportunity to capitalize upon. This is an episode that many listeners will be able to relate to and cause ‘aha moments.’
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The Hosts:
Kevin Kroskey, CFP®, MBA – About – Contact
Tyler Emrick, CFA®, CFP® – About – Contact
Intro:
It’s another edition of Retire Smarter. Walter Storholt here with Kevin Kroskey, President/Wealth Advisor at True Wealth Design, joined as well by CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Tyler Emrick. The team serves you with offices in Northeast Ohio, Southwest Florida, and the Greater Pittsburgh area. But you could find us from anywhere at truewealthdesign.com. Schedule your 15-minute call with an experienced financial advisor on the team by going there, truewealthdesign.com and look for the “Are we right for you?” button.
We’ve got a great show on the way today as we’re going to be talking about a little bit of a continuation of our conversation from last time. We won’t exactly call to say part two of the most recent episode. This will be a standalone, its own thing. And we’re going to be talking about some known unknowns, some unknown unknowns, some known knowns, and how they all wrap in on top of one another. That’s very much a paraphrased quote from Donald Rumsfeld. Don’t know if anybody remembers that back from the early 2000s. I think that quote was, but it had to do all about the known knowns and the unknown unknowns. And I don’t know, which one are we focusing on today? Kevin and Tyler are we unknown unknowns capital-
Tyler Emrick:
Hold on. The listers have to know. Walter knows that verbatim. We didn’t even have to look it up. I know he knew it, so that’s pretty good.
Kevin Kroskey:
I add something too, that likewise, I remember when he gave that speech, and it’s one of those things where you kind of have to listen to it a couple times or read it before you, I think you fully appreciate it, at least I did.
Walter Storholt:
The transcript helps, I’ll say that.
Kevin Kroskey:
Yeah, I remember Mark Twain, there’s a quote from him to that, and of course, I mean, he just says it probably more eloquently than most, but it’s a kind of fourth or fifth dimension. I’m not sure how many Donald Rumsfeld out there, but Mark Twain said something to the effect of, “It’s what you think that just ain’t.” So, I don’t know if that falls into Old Donnie’s own paradigm there or if that’s another dimension to it, but all those things matter a great deal. But before we get into this, I do have a kind of special announcement, if you will. Well, you didn’t give me my chance to give.
Walter Storholt:
I was just so eager to jump into the unknown unknown territory.
Tyler Emrick:
So, he didn’t even give us a heads-up on the announcement thing-
Walter Storholt:
Let’s start with this, the known first. What’s the answer?
Kevin Kroskey:
So Tyler is aware, but by the time this episode airs, I think the official announcement should be made. So I’m going to go ahead and share it now, but Case Western Reserve University is in Cleveland, Ohio, and I don’t know if it’s the self-proclaimed or the proclaimed or what, but it’s at least in these parts of Northeast Ohio. It’s known as the Ivy League School of the Midwest, and I guess Chicago and Northwestern and-
Tyler Emrick:
Miami, Ohio. Miami, Ohio. Like come on, on my own mother-
Kevin Kroskey:
Might be a reach.
Tyler Emrick:
I put that in there.
Walter Storholt:
All right. Sorry, Tyler.
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah, come on.
Kevin Kroskey:
They do a lot of things. The business school is really renowned. They have a lot of good schools. And Aaron Seil in our office actually got his MBA from there, so kudos to Aaron and having a good brain and being a proud graduate of the Ivy League of the Midwest. But what they do every year is something called the Case Weatherhead 100. The Weatherhead is their business school, and they do this in conjunction with Cranes Publication and Cranes. I’m not sure where they are, but what all markets they’re in. But I know they’re in New York City, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, and it’s basically the business magazine for those large cities. And in conjunction, those two do this Case Weatherhead 100 and look at the top growing firms in the region, and you self-nominate. It’s something that I’m proud that we’ve grown and that we’ve won, but I’m not sure where we came in on the ranking list, but we were notified in July that we did, in fact, win our first Case Weatherhead 100 award.
Walter Storholt:
Nice.
Kevin Kroskey:
And while growth is good, I think I would be remiss in if I didn’t point out why it’s important to us. You look at Tyler. Tyler joined us about four and a half years ago, CFP®, CFA, very smart, motivated, high achiever, just a great advisor, and a great person. Aaron Seil, CFA, and for anybody that doesn’t know what the CFA is, it’s measurably harder than the CFP®. But we have some very smart, motivated people here. And those people need opportunities for growth to attract and retain good people, and then, you reinvest back into those people so we can continually get better. And that great Japanese saying of Kaizen and continual improvement, but the growth isn’t just for growth’s sake, it’s really to continually get better, to invest back into our people and to our capabilities so we can help our clients even more.
And it’s kind of this fortuitous growth cycle where that growth is really an outcome of the work that we do for our clients and their satisfaction. And really a testament to that. They see and feel that they’re getting a good value for what they’re paying for us in our guidance and the help that we provide. So I’m really proud of that. But again, it’s not just for growth, but I think it’s really a testament to that our clients are happy, we grow predominantly through referrals, and then it’s just this good fortuitous cycle that growth allows us to continue to reinvest, and get better, and help our clients even more.
Walter Storholt:
Well, fantastic. And congratulations on the honor. And is this something that you’ll pursue in the future as well and hope to be one of, I guess, companies can win this award multiple times, right?
Kevin Kroskey:
Yeah, they can. And we surely will. And candidly, I’m quite confident give it because they look at five-year growth rates and just the growth that we’ve had, I’m quite confident that we will be having a similar announcement this time next year. So I wouldn’t say that unless I felt confident, but-
Walter Storholt:
That’s the momentum lasts a little bit. Yeah, that’s good.
Kevin Kroskey:
Yes, it’s that flywheel of momentum for sure.
Walter Storholt:
I love it. The flywheel of momentum. I mean, it almost deserves an egghead drop there. I’m not sure, but I don’t want to bring the mood down on the exciting, exciting Weatherhead 100 announcement. Well, congratulations to you both and the entire True Wealth Design Team. And would you guys get to go to some sort of event? I mean, there’s got to be a little bit of a fun-
Kevin Kroskey:
There is a gala, it starts fairly late at night, and it will go well past my average bedtime. So we haven’t-
Tyler Emrick:
He’s not lying.
Kevin Kroskey:
… committed to the gala just yet.
Tyler Emrick:
It’s so true. 6:00 start time.
Walter Storholt:
I do know you were an early riser, Kevin. I didn’t know that early, maybe.
Kevin Kroskey:
So we’ll see.
Walter Storholt:
All right. Very nice, very nice. Well, thanks for sharing that with us. And congrats once again, guys. And now, can we go to the unknown unknowns? I’m chomping at the bit.
Kevin Kroskey:
Yeah, go ahead. Tyler, why don’t you? We have a few different stories I thought we would share to really illustrate some things we’re talking about, and we’ll let Tyler kick it off.
Tyler Emrick:
Okay, sure. Yeah, I think the family that I kind of had as my example and want to kind of bring in is a pretty common one. We come in, and families meet with us, and normally that first meeting is normally when we first meet a family. It’s just getting to know them and trying to understand what brought them in and what they’re looking to accomplish. And sometimes they know that, and they have this list, and we kind of check down through it. And other times, it’s more of just an organic conversation where ourselves as financial advisors, kind of lead that conversation to help identify and see the why behind what brought them in and understand how we might be able to fit in and how we might be able to help.
And I had one fairly recently here within the past month, and there were a few items they were in the middle. They had a list of items that they knew they wanted, and I think that list is pretty common. And one of the things on there was what brought them in to talk to me was their estate planning. They had been a family that lived well within their means for a number of years. Unfortunately, they had gone through, and their parents had passed, so they had been through some probate. I don’t know if anybody has ever gone through probate, but it is normally not the best of things. Well, Kev, I’m sure you both have maybe had some various experiences going through probate yourselves.
Kevin Kroskey:
Seen some family members go through it for sure, yeah.
Tyler Emrick:
So this family, unlike many or just many that come to see us, I think estate planning was one of the big things that were on their mind. And a lot of times when they come in, they don’t really know exactly what they needed or what they want or how that fits into their whole plan, but they have this kind of pie in the sky like, “Hey, I know I need to get this taken care of because I went through it and I knew it wasn’t a good ordeal for me.” And they had had a few children, and they wanted to make sure that really their estate had transitioned too efficiently and effectively. So normally, when that happens, I think the top of mind for most families is well. “Hey, let’s get the basic estate planning documents in order, right?” So, will, power of attorney, living will, healthcare directives, all that type of stuff, and get that in order.
And that’s normally maybe where it stops. But as with anything, and I think us as financial advisors trying to look at the whole picture as we are going down our conversation and we’re kind of talking through, I mean, there’s a whole host of other opportunities there, especially when Serena and I know just on estate planning here, but as they looked at their situation, they’d had a good asset base that they had saved. They had had multitude of accounts that they had accumulated over the years. There were some estate tax concerns at their asset level that we needed to work through. They had inherited some trusts and some irrevocable trusts. So there was a little bit more complexity there. And I think a lot of moving parts. And I think that’s a good situation where, “Hey, someone came in, they knew they wanted estate planning, and that was maybe what brought them to the office.”
But as we got down and maybe peel back the onion a bit, as Kevin always says, we kind of realized that “Okay, yeah, you do need some basic estate planning documents, but as your assets continued to grow, I think there was quite a bit of opportunity for some estate planning to maybe save them a few tax dollars down the road.” And then even more so in getting more granular, there’s some more opportunity as far as saying, “Hey, how do we set up their current assets and net worth in a way that will make that transition more effectively?” Whether that’s, I mean all the buzzwords, Kev, I could list out asset location, unrealized loss, or tax lost harvesting, and quite a few other things that kind of play into it that I don’t know if we have time to get into from a granular standpoint, but that was the first one that kind of popped into my mind. And Kev, I don’t know if…
Kevin Kroskey:
Tyler and I, it’s common that we will get a few sets of eyes on a case and for a new-
Tyler Emrick:
Sure. Oh yeah.
Kevin Kroskey:
… perspective client or new client. And then we always have a quality control process for our current clients too, where we have another advisor kind of reviewing what was already done by that primary advisor. So you want to make sure that you’re doing good work, but that collaboration oftentimes will help you get some vantage points. And when we first start talking about it, I would say a couple things. People will often come into our office or another financial or service professional, whether it’s a tax or attorney or something, after they go through something. So, in this case, the people fairly recently had lost their parents, and parents had an inheritance, kind of went through that whole painful settlement and probate process, and what have you.
And like, “Man, we don’t want our child to go through that when our time comes.” But they were only in their early-mid ’60s. And one of the things, they had a level of assets that was very significant, but at that point in your ’60s, it’s like you don’t even know if you have an estate issue. I mean, if they’re spending drunken sailors and “Hey, maybe they don’t have any tax problem at all, right?” Or if they live so far below their means, and that’s going to keep growing-
Tyler Emrick:
Which is their case.
Kevin Kroskey:
… compounding. Yeah, yeah. So even they come in with, oftentimes they think it’s a problem or maybe a problem, I would say sometimes it’s often a symptom of maybe the other problem, or it’s like you kind of have to take a few steps back and have that big picture of all this stuff of their spending their asset growth assumptions, how they’re going to invest. I mean, even if they have a ton of asset-
Tyler Emrick:
Asset growth, right? The asset growth is hard to quantify when you’re looking 30 years down the road and just seeing how big that number can get. I mean, I think you and I maybe get numb to it, but I think can be shocking.
Kevin Kroskey:
Yeah, well, if you look out over a long period of time, I mean certainly the distribution of outcomes, not to get too wonky here, but for Walt, terminal wealth dispersion.
Walter Storholt:
They can’t just keep using the same one to get.
Kevin Kroskey:
I love that one because it’s TWD, just like our company’s initials. So it’s a special place of my egghead-
Walter Storholt:
I see why it draws near to you, yes.
Kevin Kroskey:
But my point is, you can have, think of a baseball field. In the baseball field, between the left foul line and the right foul line pretty wide. I mean, sure the average returns could be this over 20 or 30-year period, but it’s way more complicated than that. The sequence or the ordering of returns, so on and so forth. But Tyler, if they have everything in cash, well, okay, that baseball field, this got a lot, we’re playing basically center field plus or minus is 10 feet, right?
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah. Rates are a little higher now. Little higher.
Kevin Kroskey:
Very, yeah. But it’s like you don’t know if they have an estate tax issue. And certainly, we can’t predict what the estate tax exemptions are going to be or anything like that down the road. That’s one of the reasons why you want to make sure your estate documents are flexible, whether you want to prioritize either tax or income tax planning or state tax planning. But you really need to start with that financial plan. We sound like a broken record every time, but it’s really whether you’re doing income tax planning and trying to make sure that you’re lowering your overall effective rate that you’re paying over time and maximizing your after-tax wealth, helping your money last longer. Or if you’re looking and say, “Hey, does somebody have an estate tax exposure?” I’m like, “I don’t know.” You’re in your ’60s. How long you going to live? How much you going to spend? What kind of rate of return are your investments going to have?
Tyler Emrick:
Well, I think about them specifically, I don’t know if we had this in my notes, but another reason why they came in was those Roth conversions. I don’t even know if I mentioned this, but they came in and said one of the first things after we started talking about the estate planning was like, “Hey, I just did a Roth conversion this year, was that right or not?” And they kind of had that conversation. Yeah, okay. Was that right or not? Ideally, everybody is listening, right? We’d like to know that number beforehand if it’s right or not before we take care of it. And I think that just as anybody, they’re getting their information, and they’re trying to stay up. I mean, it’s hard to stay up on everything. And I think they had read an article that Roth conversions were good and were like, “Hey, let’s give this a try and do it.”
And they actually went to their CPA, and their CPA said, “No, this isn’t going to be good. This isn’t good for you, kind of why do it?” And then they kind of came to me almost as an oh moment, like, “Oh, was this right?” And I think there’s maybe two things here to unpack possibly. And the first is, well, hey, that financial plan that Kevin you were talking about, what that’s going to do is that’s going to tell us if conversions are going to be good for you or not. And when I say conversion A, we’re just simply saying, taking money out of pre-tax retirement accounts, paying taxes on it, get it into a Roth that grows tax-free, but is that right? And then two, what is the amount that makes sense to do it? I mean, the last episode we just finished recording, I mean started talking about income planning and limits and being mindful of that.
I think Roth conversions and that fit right in. So understanding that’s important. But then two, I think when we start looking at the professionals in our lives and the advice that we get from them. I ask as a follow-up question, “Okay, so how much does your CPA know about your financial situation?” And well, both of them said, “Well, not much.” I was like, “So they know how much assets you have and how much is in retirement accounts and how much is in other places?” And they both said no, he has really no idea. So it’s almost like, well, how can in that situation, or this is my advice to them, how would he know or she know if it was a good decision for you or not. If they don’t understand how your assets are going to change, what your tax bracket potentially looks like, what your estate planning goals to use that information to say, “Yes, this makes sense or not.” I think your financial plan thing, well, I believe in it, but I think that’s a great example as to why Kev or maybe to piggyback off that a bit.
Kevin Kroskey:
Yeah. It makes me think about a meeting I had recently too. And a gentleman came in, and I could probably talk for an hour about this meeting that lasted less than that. It was very interesting in many, many ways. But he thought he came in, and he thought he had a problem. And in just talking with him for 15 minutes, the problem that he thought he had wasn’t a problem at all. But I uncovered a much bigger problem, and it was somewhat similar. They had some common traits to the story that we’re talking about, but they inherited some property, and they were concerned about paying taxes on the inheritance. And sure, some states do levy an inheritance tax, other states will have an estate tax, and other states may have neither, but it depends on the state where the property is. In this case, it was some real property.
And I was like, “Well, you don’t have to worry about that. There’s no inheritance tax in that state.” He’s like, “Oh, great, but tell me about this.” The other thing, and I was asking what else they had received and received some IRAs, and they had a bunch of annuities, the parents did. And this gentleman, he’s an engineer, smart guy. Nobody makes it through engineering school without being smart. They sometimes make it through being overconfident. I will say, I love our engineering clients, but it goes back to the unknown unknowns I suppose. But-
Tyler Emrick:
Kevin, probate’s tough. I mean, just in general, making those decisions. If you have nobody in your corner get all these accounts, paperwork gets thrown at you, sign it almost, right?
Kevin Kroskey:
And this wasn’t even probate. This is just this specifically with the IRAs because it’s not going through probate. It’s going through transferred by the beneficiary designation. Well, the gentleman completed all the inherited IRA paperwork and completed in a way where it was not rolled into an inherited IRA, and you could go ahead and take that over a 10-year period, but they just received it all in cash. I’m like, “Well, how much did you get?” And it was well over six figures. And I said, “Well, you don’t have a problem over here with the real property that you’re inheriting because there’s no inheritance tax. But you really just probably cost yourself 20 or 30 grand in unnecessary income taxes by completing the paperwork wrong. And unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about it now.”
Walter Storholt:
It’s tough to deliver that kind of bad news, isn’t it, Tyler? To folks. I mean, sometimes you get to deliver the good news of, like, “Nah, no, you didn’t make this big mistake.” And then other times, you got to say, “Ah, well, we’re going to have to start back from, not necessarily scratch, but we have to accept this and move on with the plan.”
Tyler Emrick:
It’s tough, and well, it happens more frequently than you would expect, especially with the paperwork I mentioned before. If anybody’s had to go through and fill out some of that stuff, there can be the intricacies there that I think you can really trip yourself up. And Kevin made, I think I said at the end, but you can’t go back and change that once it’s done. And a lot of times when that election’s made, your kind of stuck.
Kevin Kroskey:
If we go back kind of big picture here, but why do people typically come into our office? They have some sort of life event, and whether it’s a transition, in this case, their parents passed away, they’re receiving inheritance or settling their estate, they’re going through probate, big life transition. You have somebody maybe a death of a spouse, and the surviving spouse is ongoing big transition there. They’re getting ready for retirement, they’re going from work into retirement or some other kind of related retirement transition or “Hey, I got coming up on being eligible for social security or eligible for Medicare, I got this transition.” Those are usually some of the key inflection points why people will reach out to us. But then also when somebody’s time, we work with a lot of busy professionals, the value of their time is great when they’re working and even, they value their time personally as well.
And when their value of time is there, they want to go out and find a trustworthy and competent professional where they can leverage their time, they can delegate, but be informed. So I would say those two things coupled with, when the cost of a mistake is really high, those are all three areas where it’s like ding, ding, ding, I should probably go see somebody in advance rather than saying, “Hey, here’s what I did, please tell me, please tell me it was okay. Please tell me it was right.” I can think of so many times there’s one of the colleges here in Northeast Ohio, department chair of, I would pick on the engineers, again, not picking, I got a lot of examples here, but he came in, and it’s like it was a paperwork thing and he is like, I’m not sure what happened here. I was trying to do this rollover, and it wasn’t even an inherited one, and it just completely blew up.”
And it’s those tax ones that are very overt, that’s very concrete, like holy fill in the blank with whatever word or expletive you want to use there. But that’s where you can see the pain. That’s where you can see the error. Tyler, we’ve seen other ones, and I think this is a common one with the store you started with, where maybe it’s not as overt. They buy some investments, and then they just kind of hold them and don’t really keep an eye on them sort of thing. And it’s like, “Hey, they don’t have to worry about money. And so, they’re kind of not locum, they’re not really sure what to do.” Those, I think in my view, are maybe a little bit stealthy, if that’s a word. And they’re kind of a relative loss there to maybe what they could be doing. Was that an issue that you had with that other perspective client you met with?
Tyler Emrick:
It was. Yeah, I mean, because you think about over the years was the number of ways that you get investments that the family that comes to mind that you’re thinking of. I mean, they had got their investment options or ideas from just an investment publication, but as with anything and the changes over the years, I think you definitely don’t want to get into a situation where you’re trying to day trade, and you’re making many investment changes. But I also think too, having some type of process in place to where in their case, they buy a company that was recommended by a family member through this publication, and then they’ve literally held it for 20 years, 25 years. And that’s okay. But the issue is what are the checks and balances that are in place there to be able to identify, hey has this been a good performer, is it not?
How does this fit into my overall estate planning and investment plan? So, I think that passive approach and maybe the approach of, “Hey, we’re going to be okay. We’re definitely going to have enough assets.” There really is that or living in the gray. I guess is another way to maybe put it away. I think about it, but I think there can be a lot of value there to least just wrap your arms around and get the knowledge to say, “Has this been good? Has it not?” And how do we move forward, and that process looks like so…
Kevin Kroskey:
You’re way nicer than me. This is another proof to that fact. I would say it’s almost like they abdicate responsibility. They’ll look at it like a one-time thing, say, “Hey, I’m reading this newsletter and it sounds good. I’ll go ahead and buy it.” And then just, it just sits there with, and they never look at it again. It’s like if you don’t have the information, how can you make a good decision or really look at it? A couple analogies I would say is I think of my landscaping, and we’re kind of doing the fall clean up here in Northeast Ohio, and I got to cut down these ornamental grasses that I have so grows back better and stronger next year. Or one of my favorites that’s a good one. I have a buddy that has a personal training business and one of the things that he will tell you about his clients, the ones that see the most positive change from their work together and he’s accountability person, really we know what to do.
It’s usually the difference between the knowing and the doing gap or actually getting it done, but the people that will step on the scale. And then when he brings out the CalPERS, and they say, “What do you do with those things, pinch my fat?” The people that won’t get the information, that won’t measure what matters. They’re non-committal. And if they’re non-committal, much less likely to get positive results. And that goes, whether you’re talking about your personal health, your investment planning, again the taxes are, you’re going to get the pinch there, the CalPERS because it’s going to reconcile in your tax return. You’re going to be like, holy moly, or whatever you want to say, you’re going to get that information whether you like it or not there, but it’s those other areas where, or maybe in that gray zone or what have you, if you’re not kind of pinching the fat and getting the CalPERS done and stepping on the scale, how do you really know if you’re doing okay?
Tyler Emrick:
You kind of know what you have and have some type of benchmark to understand and make decisions for yourself. And I think that’s pretty key. And certainly, we can go into all the other stuff that, well, you’ve had a lot of good analogies there, but I think when I was say I get a lot of individuals that, “Hey, I want to invest in this company because I know it.” And I think that there’s a big disconnect there from a good investment and a good company that and you believe in, and those don’t always necessarily drive. And then-
Kevin Kroskey:
Once again, Tyler, you’re proving you’re nicer than me when somebody says, “I know this company. Really? What do you know about them? What do they talk about on their last quarterly report? Who’s the CFO and who are the main competitors?
Tyler Emrick:
You should know that, yeah.
Kevin Kroskey:
Then quickly they’re like, “Okay.”
Tyler Emrick:
You should know that. And a lot of people have buying strategies, but no extra strategy and how it fits into plan. So yeah, I’m going to echo everything that you say and maybe in a little nicer way, but hey, yeah.
Walter Storholt:
It seems a little bit like a pay me now or pay me later kind of thing. You’re going to know the information at some point, and it would behoove you to know it on the early part of the spectrum rather than at the end so that you could at least adjust to it and expect what’s coming down the pike. But you’re going to know it’s going to hit you at some point.
Kevin Kroskey:
I mean, anybody that comes in our office and says, “Hey, here’s what I did, I hope that’s okay.” are very obviously recognizing after the fact that they have some doubt and maybe they screwed up, and they have to-
Tyler Emrick:
Well, Kevin, really quick, one point there, good for them for coming in and saying that though too, right? Because we might be a little hard on them here, but the thing is good that they came in, and even if it’s after the fact, yes, we want to catch it before, but don’t keep kicking the can down the road. And I really commend them for coming in and saying, “Hey, yeah. I might have done this incorrectly. How do we fix it?”
Kevin Kroskey:
For sure. I mean, tomorrow’s the first day of the rest of your life, and you can always learn from these things. It’s one of those, and we’ve done past episodes about, like, “Hey, when does it really make sense to hire a financial advisor?” And I’ll come back to what I said before, and it’s like, “When you have one of these transitions, whether it’s a death, whether it’s retirement, social security, Medicare, selling a business, all those things have a lot of complexity.” And we help people make those transitions many, many, many times each and every year. And then you may only make that transition once in your lifetime.
So do you want to wing it and hope you get it right, or do you want to go ahead and maybe hire a professional that actually does it and does it several times every year? So there’s obviously going to be a cost to that, but it’s our job to help you see that the cost can be much less than the benefits quantitatively in most cases. And then qualitatively, the peace of mind that people get is often even worth more than the quantitative benefits. So, I don’t know, it’s one of those things. I hired an attorney recently. We have some tax things that we’re working on for the business, and the business is growing, and I’m paying this gentleman $1,100 for an hour billing in 15-minute increments. Yeah, sure, that’s a good one.
Tyler Emrick:
Come on, Walter. Shoo. That’s a shoo moment.
Walter Storholt:
New sound effect, I suppose.
Kevin Kroskey:
And I have a fair amount of information in this area, and I also have the aptitude to go ahead and try to acquire that information. But the cost of a mistake here is very large, and I want to make sure that I get it right and I want to make sure that I leverage my time in a valuable way. And that’s maybe somewhat of an extreme example, but same goes for-
Walter Storholt:
Time retirement.
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah, time’s huge.
Kevin Kroskey:
But the cost of the mistake, if you make one of these irrevocable decisions and we can’t undo it, some things we can undo, other things we can’t, but the cost of the mistake can be many, many, many times more than what the cost of good advice is going to be. So, you just have to do it. It’s these things that maybe you think, I mean, if you’re going to go to a doctor, you’re going to have to get in a gown, you’re probably going to have to take your blood drawn, you might have to pee in a cup. All those, you don’t have to do that when you come to our office, but it’s the same sort of thing. We have to go ahead and understand. You have to reach out for help. You have to walk in and at least be aware that there may be some things that you just don’t know out there that a professional, whether it’s a doctor, attorney, an accountant, a financial advisor does know more than you, and it’s their job to help walk you down that path to get the outcome that you’re really seeking.
Walter Storholt:
Great points across the board guys, and enjoy the storytelling and some of the discussions and getting to hear how you walk people through this journey of, “Hey, something’s maybe not quite right, something’s wrong.” That gut moment of feeling like the people say, “I need to come in. I need to get a second opinion. I need to get a look at what’s going on, these decisions that maybe I’ve made or that somebody else has made.” Either way, there’s this point of discomfort that’s all a sudden sort of popped up for somebody, and you guys get to come in, pick things apart, diagnose, and then come up with solutions to move forward and put everything into the proper perspective. And so I know that puts you in a neat role and a great position to help people out and bring them a little bit more piece of mind with what’s going on because they’re coming in with so much uncertainty.
And that’s probably a similar story to maybe somebody listening to today’s show. And if that does sound a little bit like you listen to those stories and you’re like, “Man, that’s a little bit like what happened to me when I met with this person over here, or that decision that my significant other made with our financial life, and I’m not so sure about how that’s going to all work out.” If you’re having some of those similar types of feelings, maybe it would be best to reach out to the True Wealth Design Team and set up a time to kind of review your situation, dig in a little bit, see if they can help get things in the right direction or at least even understand those things you don’t even know that you need to know in your financial plan. Those unknown unknowns, and see if you can dig into those a little bit to bring things back full circle here.
If you’d like to set up that time to visit, you can do that at truewealthdesign.com. It’s quite easy. Just click on the “Are we right for you?” button when you go there and schedule a 15-minute call with an experienced financial advisor with the True Wealth Team. You can talk to a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, a CFA, great team members there at True Wealth Design, of course, across the board, and they’re happy to meet with you and talk to you a little bit about your situation and get you going in the right direction. You can also call 855-TWD-PLAN, and we’re going to link to that contact info in the description of today’s show so that you can find it. So I’ve got a few things on my list. I need a… But what was the sound effect? Not swoosh, but it was…
Tyler Emrick:
I already forgot. Well, I don’t know.
Walter Storholt:
Sound effect, all right. We may just have to take Tyler saying it and make that the sound effect. Actually, I think that would be perfect. In fact, that’s exactly what we’re going to do.
Tyler Emrick:
I don’t think that’s possible.
Walter Storholt:
We will see, but we may have a new sound effect to throw into the show next time around. Tyler and Kevin, thank you both for your time and your expertise, and I will look forward to some good shows with you coming down as we get ready to wrap up 2022 pretty soon.
Kevin Kroskey:
All right. Thanks, Walt.
Walter Storholt:
All right.
Tyler Emrick:
Yeah, see you, Walt.
Walter Storholt:
Good to speak to you. This has been Retire Smarter for Kevin, Tyler. I’m Walter. We’ll see you next time. Thanks for joining us.
Disclaimer:
Information provided is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment tax or legal advice. Information is obtained from sources that are deemed to be reliable, but their accurateness and completeness cannot be guaranteed. All performance references are historical and not an indication of future results. Benchmark indices are hypothetical and do not include any investment fees.
