Welcome to How to Retire, the show where we take your retirement problems and turn them into retirement opportunities. I’m Jackie Post, joined as always by Ben Fuchs, the head of Fuchs Financial. Ben, welcome back. Good to see you. Good to see you too. Thank you for hanging out with me. Yeah, I love hanging out with you. I’m honored. Yeah, I really do. Do you want to tell people that you were sad that we were so far apart in this episode? I was. Well, I felt like I was looking at you from afar. Normally, we’re like bumping elbows. Yes, yes. But it’s okay. A little room. I think it’s better for the interviewers. Yeah, you can stay over there. I appreciate that. I will wear more deodorant next time. Arms length, arms length. Got it. All right. Well, today we do have a special guest, which is pretty exciting. He’s going to come on later in the show to talk us through his own retirement. But right now we’re going to walk through some of the main things that need to be done before you retire. So what are some of the key considerations, Ben, that you take into account when you start working with a person or on what their retirement should look like? I think the key considerations are always like, you know, Bake it down to the first three things. What do you have? How much is it earning? And then what are you saving? And then within those pieces, we have to account for things like longevity, inflation, lifestyle. How much do we want to be spending? And then we need to adjust the target when it needs to be adjusted because of whatever life events come out. So I would say that that’s the basics and that’s where we start. Okay. So let’s talk about the final stretch because obviously the 5 to 10 years before retirement, some things can possibly come up. So what are some of the smart strategies for people in that phase? You want to focus on trying to save as much as you can. You want to focus on trying to make sure that you’re living as you plan to live in retirement. So first of all, I’m glad that Tony is our guest coming on because… Between you and I, I don’t think that Tony will ever retire. He’s one of those people that just likes to continue doing things. He enjoys it. But, you know, it’s almost, it’s interesting because the same advice that I’d look that you go into retirement is the same advice that I’d use to anybody before making a big life decision. You know, you’re in college and you move out with your roommates and you have to go from sharing rent to going on your own. Live like you’re spending that extra money. Right. And see if you actually enjoy that lifestyle. right before you go from renting to buying that house live without that mortgage and your monthly income right put that extra money away get used to that and be comfortable and if you plan to spend less money in retirement because a lot of people go into retirement expecting to spend less Why don’t we try that before we pull the trigger? Right. What does it look like? Right. Because if not, it’s a lot harder to go back. But within that, we have to do extra savings. We have to be comfortable. But we want to kind of live that lifestyle before we jump on it. And then there’s obviously the things that come up that are unexpected, whether it’s illness or divorce or whatever it might be that can really… put a damper on things. Yeah. I mean, you know, I’ve had a lot of clients that unfortunately have had to deal with their children’s divorce, right? So all of a sudden the child’s moving back into the house and didn’t expect that. Oh, they’re bringing their grandkids with them. Wonderful. You know, and, or, you know, I got to take care of them. So there’s always things that come up, but you know, we wouldn’t be good planners unless we accounted for a few obstacles along the way. We always have to make sure that we’re not just cutting it right at that razor’s edge. We have to have a good buffer. So I can’t believe I’m saying this, but, um, tax season is upon us. Doesn’t it feel like it’s always tax season? It just feels like it’s always tax season. To be fair, in my world, it always is tax season. I don’t know if a day has gone by where I haven’t said the word tax. It’s probably the most said word within our profession. So what should people think about when they’re thinking about their retirement and taxes? So as you’re… your taxes right as you’re getting ready to gather all that information you have income coming in from different sources Those are the things that we want to look at and begin to clean up. You know, you might have Income from the job right and then income from interest CDs and bank you might have stocks that are giving off dividends or Things that got sold inside of mutual fund capital gains You have all these different pieces of income and we want to look at that and say all right Are there ways for us to bring that together and to reduce what you’re actually spending? You know, what can we do to reduce your taxes, to do it in a functional way so that we’re still growing the money? We don’t want to get so caught up in taxes that we reduce the overall growth. But we need to have that accountable. Is it ever too late to do that? Or can you always kind of review your taxes and go through that? No, it’s never, ever too late to do that. I mean, there are certain things where it’s like, hey, it would have been better if we had done this before. But here we are. And so all we can do at any point is go forward and create the best scenario. So let’s talk about the streams that people draw from in retirement. What are some of those different streams that you see? Well, I mean, it used to be pensions, right? Pensions used to be the thing. You get a pension, you work for 30 years, you get the gold watch, and it’s not the case. Now it’s, you know, you’re working for five years at a company and then you go work for five years at another company and you cobble together like six different 401ks. That’s what we do. But we can count on Social Security. Probably. Hopefully. And then what you saved and then any other type of income that you have. So if you want guaranteed income, some people will look at annuities as another option. We like to show people the projections, right? Here’s what you would get if you did an annuity. Here’s what you get if you didn’t. And then you can make the decision whether you want to give up some of the use of the money, right? You put money into an annuity. Yes, you’re getting some guarantees and that’s great. But you’re also giving up a lot of control over that money. you know an annuity will always kind of wind down that money it’s meant to be spent down and to not be there anymore versus the plan where you’re trying to make sure that you’re protecting your principal and make sure you’re keeping your nest egg those are two different goals for two different types of people But it all depends on what you want. Right. And it’s always custom is what I’m getting from that. It’s always a custom plan. No, no, no, no. We have a cookie cutter. We put you in. We do the exact same thing with everybody. Stop putting words in. Yes. It is always custom every single time. Everyone gets the same thing now. Okay. So how should you adjust your investments before retirement? So you need to make sure that we’re not taking too much risk before retirement. Everybody’s relationship with risk is different. We have clients that don’t want to take any risk and I have to like pull them prod to show them how they can do it. And we have. those conversations and then have other people that say oh man I’ve made so much money in my 401k I can’t imagine taking less risk and then we have to go through models and show them how we had times in the late 90s where it seemed like the stock market went up by 20% every year until it didn’t and then it went down by 40% over three years. We have to show how these things could affect the way that you’re living and make sure that you’re able to retire on your terms. My goal isn’t necessarily to make you more money than the S&P 500 or the Russell 2000 or any other index. It’s to make sure that nothing in the market is going to keep you from being able to retire the way that you want on your terms. So if the market crashes, you don’t have to worry about it. And to me, that’s really important because I don’t want to lose any more hair than I have to. Right. And doing that for all of my clients keeps the majority of the hair on my head. You have a nice head of hair, actually. Yeah, that’s why I try not to bring down too much. You can’t see the bald spots. Okay, so here’s a big one. How do you turn your life savings into a paycheck? And how do you think about drawing down those 401ks? What’s the strategy? Sure, it all depends. So in a lot of cases, our goal isn’t necessarily to draw down the money. We want to make sure that we’re creating… an income bucket where we can generate income even when the market is down 10 15 20 percent but still maintain principle so there are certain investments that we use where our expectation is to net our clients about eight percent after our fees so if we have half a million dollars we’re looking to get about forty thousand dollars a year and we use that to live off of that works most of the time market really crashes, goes down by like 30% or more, then we have to use something else. We need to have a safety bucket in case that kind of catastrophic event happens. And it happens like every seven, eight, nine, 10 years, right? Dot-com bubble, great recession, COVID, right? We have things that have caused the market to really crash. So we need to make sure that that doesn’t affect you. But once we’ve taken care of your income, your monthly paycheck, and we’ve taken care of that safety net, then we can put a lot more money into growth and we don’t have to worry about being overly conservative. So it doesn’t matter who you are. I’ve got a client who’s 91 years old that I talked to the other day and still putting money in the market, still wants me to do it. And he can do it because a market crash won’t affect the way that he lives. So it’s okay, and he likes the risk. Retirement goals. Yeah, I’m with you. 91. I love it. Listen, I think we need to go to break, but I’m really excited because after this, I’m going to be interviewing my friend Tony. He’s a client of ours. He’s been a client for a number of years, and he has a unique perspective that I think everyone can really learn from. I really look forward to meeting Tony. All right, so more with Ben and Tony after the break. We know the market is going to get worse from here. This is the biggest monthly decline in 10 years. People’s 401ks today. My investments are tanking. My retirement isn’t going as planned. I can’t believe I let my kid talk me into buying crypto. I mean, what is that anyway? This was the fourth worst contraction in history. So how are you two doing? Your financial future doesn’t have to be uncertain. Plan your retirement right. Call now for your own complimentary portfolio review and tax analysis. I am happy to be joined by my friend and client, Tony DiNicola. The reason I think Tony is an important person to talk with is because Tony may never retire. Tony, tell me why you might never retire. What’s the point? I enjoy what I do, and I don’t know, I’m just worried that if I end up retiring, I’m not sure what I’d be doing. But I am getting older, so you never know. I may surprise you one day. That you might retire? I think I might retire before you do. Well, it’s possible, but I don’t know. Okay. So I would say that you have a unique perspective when it comes to saving and money. How did you get into the mindset that you have with saving, and where did that come from? Well, my father was an immigrant from Italy, and I remember hearing a story when we were young. that my grandfather wanted to get us, myself and my sisters, a swing set in his backyard. Okay. And my father said, no, my wallet’s empty right now. When I have the money, I’ll buy the swing set. And he always saved money, so I just started doing that, including when I was 12 years old. I bought a snowblower and gets my parents’ wishes. which I still have today, by the way. So you went against your parents’ wishes, I assume, that you would just do everything that your parents ever asked you. And I had this tagline that said, save your heart, use mine. And I used to do dryways for $3 a driveway, and I always liked the $1 bills because it made my wallet look fatter. And I’ve always done it. How did you, at 12 years old, save enough money to buy a snowblower? It was $385. How did you get that money? I don’t know. I guess it was gifts or whatever. Okay. And what actually ended up happening in reality is when I did all that, my father said, I’ll buy you the snowblower, but you give me half of what you make. Oh, so you had an investor. So I actually did that, and I didn’t know it at the time, but he just took that money and put it in the bank account for me. That’s awesome. But that’s maybe how it started. Okay. I think when I was a few years younger, I was doing lawns, and… you know, for a dollar or two a lawn. And so how did you, you know, people think about starting a business, and I, you know, I may have done that, but the hardest part about starting a business to me is like, where do you get your clients from? So how did you get clients for your snowblower business when you were 12? So I went out one day, up and down the street right next to where I lived, and my parents knew almost everybody on that street, small town. And I signed up, I think it was 11 or 12 customers. My parents would not let me get a snowblower because I wanted to get one. They said, no, you’re too young, this and that. But I went up and I signed up all these people. And I remember, went home, we’re having dinner. My mother says, what were you doing? I said, I’m going to do the snow. I said, how are you going to do all that? You’re going to kill yourself. I said, well, whatever. You won’t let me get a snowblower. I guess that’s going to happen. And that’s really how I ended up getting a snowblower. Okay. All right. So I got the clients first, and they were all friends of theirs. Okay. And I ended up doing it. And I did it for, I don’t know, I started at 12, and I think I stopped at 18 or 19. I don’t know if people know this about you, but when you have any kind of bottle. You just throw it away, right? Or you recycle it. That’s your approach, right? You don’t worry about things. You know me better than that. Oh, I’m sorry. I take my bottles back for the dime. But my driver there is, first of all, to me, it’s remembering your roots. My kids do it. If I don’t return that bottle, it goes back to the state. And I don’t care what you call it. It’s a tax. You’ll never hear anybody call it a tax, but it’s a tax. I’ll pay my fair share, but not a penny more. Okay. And to the extent, there’s going to be another Tony DiNicola come along the lines. My kids, they’ll be at their whatever their friend’s house, whatever there’ll be drinks. And, you know, the bottles normally get thrown away. All their friends know enough. They say, give it to the DiNicolas. So, but the driver is, so it doesn’t go to the state. Got it. Okay. Well, I mean, for the record, we just today instituted a new policy where we’re going to do the dinacola and we’re going to make sure we save our bottles. That way we don’t give anything away. And you can always donate them to some other organization to do it, but, you know, get the money. Okay. Now you also have a certain mindset. I remember you were doing some work, you had a solar project, and then you had a contractor that was doing some work for you, and then you told the contractor to leave. So I built my house. Okay. But I know my limits. Okay. All right. The roof, I won’t go on. Okay. But everything else, I literally did the plumbing, electrical. I think when I first met you, my wife wanted the bathroom repainted. And it was literally a couple weeks before Thanksgiving. And I can’t just do that. I ended up remodeling the whole bathroom, replacing everything. And you said to me, Why don’t you just hire somebody? It’s not going to break you. I don’t remember that. That doesn’t sound like me. Yeah. And I said, I can’t. I just do it myself. And so to give people some context, what do you do for work now? What is your actual, I mean, aside from remodeling the kitchen and shoveling driveways. So my profession is I actually negotiate IT contracts, big IT contracts for a company here in town. And I deal with companies like IBM, Cisco, big companies. big contracts microsoft okay um so i have a team team of people that that does it so that’s my day job so i mean i can imagine that somebody that uh is saving the bottle and bringing it back to the store is also a stickler when it comes to negotiations do you feel like that mindset that you learned from when your father you know didn’t buy the swing set until he had the money as well do you feel like that has carried through this. You’ve been a very good saver. You’ve done a great job, you know, putting together your accounts. You like to ask questions just to see if I know the answers, right? That is. Sometimes. Yeah, I was worried when I hired an accountant. I’m like, oh man, like, is Tony going to know more? Because you like to test and I respect that. Which, by the way, is honored why you’ve been a client. You’ve been a client for over four years now. But, you know, how has that carried through? Like, what was that lesson that you were taught that kind of carried you through and I think to get everywhere you are now? For when I was small my father if you make money you gotta you gotta save at least half of whatever you make and I just It’s just me. I tend to live below my means But I don’t think I’m missing anything. Yeah, I happen to drive an old car. How old? 2005. Okay, but it’s only has a hundred It just turned a hundred two hundred ten thousand miles. So it’ll be 21 years. It’ll be 21 years. Great It’s transportation. So your car can legally drink? It takes me, yes. And it does. It drinks gas. Good, good. It takes me home to work. I don’t need anything fancy. And when it breaks down, I fix it myself. Because, you know, if you go to one of these mechanics, they charge a lot of money. So I just, you know, I’ll do it, whether it’s the brakes or just this weekend, it wouldn’t start. I need a new battery. After 21 years? The battery was seven and a half years old, so I threw a battery in it. So I still have that. So that’s my daily driver. My wife, she hurts a little bit. No, her car is only four years old. Got it. I’ll be putting brakes on that this weekend. After all the upbringing, after everything we’ve talked about, what is your approach to money in your day-to -day life? I buy what I need. It’s not this big wish list. I don’t need that big, fancy car. Yes. You heard me say I have that old car. I will be buying a new car soon. I believe you. And I’m going to buy a nice car. I’ll probably spend, you know, I don’t know, $70,000, $80,000. But then I’ll have that car for 10 years or more. If I’m alive by then, who knows. But I’m not going to go out and buy, you know, I got friends of mine that say, you got the money, why don’t you go buy like a Lamborghini or something? What do I want that for? I even heard that when I was younger because I’ve been a saver all my life. And I can remember friends of mine, they knew I was saving money. They wanted me to go out and buy this Camaro once because they all wanted to ride in the Camaro. And I said, I’m not going to do that. Even though I had that desire, I was like, oh, that’d be cool. I never did it. So… Like why? Like what’s the reason behind that? What’s the point? To me, it’s like a thrill in the beginning. But then, who cares? Like, I used to have a motorcycle. And parts of me, I want a motorcycle. But I know if I get a motorcycle, I’m going to ride it for about a week. And then it’s like, I’m not going to ride it anymore. So I just never did it. Like every toy I may have gotten for my kids during the holidays. Same kind of thing. I try to look at and project. My son bought a house. Actually, I bought it. He’s going to buy it from me. It needed a lot of work. And you hired somebody else to do all the work? It’s been my project. It’s been our project, my son and myself, over the last two and a half years. Okay. And now as his interest rates come down a little bit, he’s going to be buying the house. But, I mean, we’ve done everything in that house. I mean, it’s a completely new house. And why? Could I have had somebody do it? Yeah, but it’s just, I mean, that’s a satisfaction. Yeah. I don’t know. And it’s… i mean listen i think it’s cool that you have the skills to be able to do that i mean i remember vividly uh my father couldn’t figure out how to how to get like a light fixture out from the light bulb and i was able to change the light bulb and my father called me a genius you know the idea of like you know reworking the house doing the play to all the things that you do beyond me when i was younger a friend of mine was getting married and i went and I bought an odd type of wedding present. I don’t think I was married to Tanks. My wife wouldn’t let me do it, but I bought some tools. Included in those tools were a set of screwdrivers. And as I’m talking to him, I said, oh, you’re right-handed. I got to return those and get you. Those are left-handed screwdrivers. I got to get you right -handed screwdrivers. And he was like, oh, OK. He had no clue. Got it. But for me, it’s just. I gotta tell you, when I was younger, I wanted to be a carpenter, to be fully transparent. And my father was, it was his desire, and maybe the old Italian heritage, I wanted to please my parents. He says, you’re going to college. When you get out of college, you want to be a carpenter, you be a carpenter. I went to college, had a degree in accounting. And I’m thinking that I did pretty good. I said I have this I might as well I might as well do something with it And here I am but I never lost I mean that’s just something I just enjoy doing it’s different than work You do something you build something you can see it Versus you write a contract. You have a contract. Okay. It’s just another contract We’re talking about work like how does what you do in your job affect your money? Like how does like how do the lessons that you learn from your job? Because it seems like those two translate. Well, you’re always trying to get the best deal for the company, and you’re trying to reduce risk in every deal. So I think there’s a correlation there. I want to kind of reduce risk. I know you’re going to say sometimes I’m not, how I’m investing. I wouldn’t dream of saying anything about that. I probably should be a little more conservative in some places. I do try to reduce risk and then try to get the greatest returns. I would say that my goal isn’t to try to reduce the risk. My goal is always to have enough of a safety net to where a market crash or anything isn’t going to affect the way that you live. And as long as we have that, I don’t care how much we risk we taste afterwards. We always have to have a safety net and then we can kind of go from there. But the other thing is there are certain areas where it’s… We’ll leave that alone. I don’t want to jump into it. But I don’t know. I got to just say thank you for being on. I’m grateful that you were here. You know, I appreciate it. Before we go, any questions now that we’re on camera, any questions that you have for me? Anything that you feel like, like, let me get Ben. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity. How can I get him? Oh, Ben, I wouldn’t do that to you. Okay. I’m on it. You’ve been great. I will say this. When I first signed up, I was wary. I was with one of the big brokerage houses, and they were managing some of my accounts. And coming to you was definitely the right decision. Thank you. And you’re not even paying me to say that. Yeah, I was going to say, I’m not paying him to say that. Thank you. I wasn’t actually… You know, it’s interesting because… You know, when we first came on, I feel like we met a number of times. So I think we had three, four or five meetings because every time we leave, there’s OK, I have this question and then we come back and all right, now I’ve got another question. And now and I mean, I enjoyed the process because to me, you know, the more questions that somebody asks before they become a client, the more comfortable they’re going to be when they’re here and they know what to expect. And. You know, since you negotiate big contracts, I’m honored that I could pass the negotiation. You remember where we met? Yeah, I remember where we met. Yeah, we met at Farmington Country Club. Yeah, I don’t remember if there was an offhand comment that was said, but I’m glad that you came on and I’m honored. So thank you. Tony DiNicola, thank you for being here. We’ll be back with Jackie after the break. Congratulations, Nancy and Mark. You’ve been chosen to play the retirement game. All right, first question. How long will you live? Too slow. Spin the longevity wheel. Nancy, will inflation eat your savings alive? I hope not. Let’s spin the slot machine and find out. Which strategy will you pick? At Fuchs Financial, we don’t spin wheels. We build real plans. Personalized, adaptable, and clear. Welcome back to How to Retire. Ben, what a treat to meet Tony. Yeah. I think I could hang out with him and have fun. You can. Seems like a great guy. I can promise you. I want to tell you I’m nothing like him, though. Really? I don’t save the cans. I don’t bring the cans back. Car is at least 21 years old? Nope. My car is not 21 years old, although I would like it to be fancier. I would buy the Ferrari or something fancy. I like to buy nice things. I’m wasteful. You know, all the things that he’s not. I mean, there are comments that I can’t make because I can’t talk about it. And you know what? I’m just going to stay in my lane. But I like the idea of a Ferrari, but I don’t think that I could actually fit. That is true. You’re too tall. I feel like I would have to slide in. And I don’t know if I’d be able to get back out. Yeah, it might be awkward. Yeah, and embarrassing. But embarrassing is actually good now because I have an 11-year-old daughter. And anything that I can do to embarrass her is amazing. It’s a good time. I hear you. No, I really loved how he talked about how he was really entrepreneurial at a young age. Kind of resonated with me. My son does a lot of around-the-neighborhood work and has made a lot of money doing that. So I think it’s a good thing to instill in kids, for sure. Without question. But I think that’s always his drive. He’s always had the drive. He negotiated the contract, right? He saw something that he wanted to do. He got the clients first. He figured out how to do it. He kind of backed his parents into a corner a little bit, right? Because he said, well, I got to make this commitment. And then he got an investor in half of his business at 12 years old. I mean, you think about that and it’s like, that’s just. Inherent like that’s boring. I think there are certain things and you know and having the example with the parents and I think one of the problems is that there aren’t enough conversations between parents and kids about money. I agree. One of the interesting facts that I learned when taking the CPWA the certified private wealth advisor is that like 90% of parents expect the schools to teach the kids about money and 90% of kids expect their parents to teach them about money. Oh that’s interesting. And so there’s always that disconnect but because he got the lessons from his parents He was able to instill that in himself from a very young age. He’s a good example of how to be. So be like Tony, not like me. Listen, I couldn’t do that. I mean, there’s no way that I could do any kind of work at all. I mean, aside from painting the room, which is about as far as I can go. So you’re not changing brakes on the car or anything like that? Oh, man. No, I wish I could. Yeah, me too. I’d love to be able to do that because there is a knowledge gap. But I will say there was a time when I was having some, like, pipes removed from my basement. And he was like, oh, just send me a picture and I’ll come over. He’ll just do it himself. He’s a jack of all trades in the truest form. I love it. I got a problem with the contractor. He’ll probably come in and take it, but I couldn’t. There’s a certain amount of pride. I can’t have you do that. He’s great. He is great. Well, it was it was great to listen to you guys together. So appreciate that. Well, I certainly enjoyed Tony. He was a great guest to have today. We’re lucky that he would come and hang out with us. All right. Well, that’s all the time that we have for today. We hope you learned a few things that will lead to an easier retirement for you down the line. I’m Jackie Post. And of course, on behalf of my co -host, Ben Fuchs, we want to let you know that a good retirement involves real conversations, smart strategies and a shared goal. Need any help along the way? financial will be there for you we’ll see you next time
