Welcome to today’s CT buzz. I’m Allison Demurs. Ben Fuchs, founder of Fuchs Financial, is with us today to answer the top five questions people ask about retirement. Some of them may be questions you’ve been wondering about if you or a family member are starting to think about retirement. In addition to being a certified financial planner, Ben is also a certified private wealth advisor professional. Ben, how do you approach working with clients and how do you respond to the questions you hear most often? Yeah, I think we take it one client, one question at a time. Everyone’s different. Everybody has a different scenario and it’s our job to really listen to what they’re saying to figure out what we can do to help and then to show them why they should or should not be actually worried about that thing that’s concerning them, right? So, it’s individual. Thank you. So, now let’s go through some of the questions that you hear most often. Will I run out of money in retirement? That would be one of them. This is without a doubt the top question, the thing that people worry about the most. And I think for me, it’s not just the question of will I run out of money in retirement because anybody cannot run out of money in retirement. You just have to change everything that you’re doing and live off of canned beans. And there’s nothing wrong with that if that’s your goal. But I think for us, we need to take away the anxiety of our clients worrying about running out of money, right? The important thing is to say, “All right, listen. Let me show you why you don’t have to worry about it. Let’s let the investments generate that interest so that when you’re taking money in retirement, you’re not dwindling down your principal, you feel comfortable spending your own money.” And if we can do that, that takes away all that anxiety of running out of money. And I think that would be our job. Yes. Another question that often comes up is, “How do I lower my tax bill in retirement?” All right, so this is not like a 14-second answer. I wish it was, but taxes are intricate and the way that you take social security and/or pension money or withdrawals from your retirement account and any kind of capital gains or div money that you have from stocks or mutual funds outside of your retirement, all that combines to change your tax bill. And for us, we need to understand the mechanics of how those taxes work and then figure out what we can do for our clients to reduce that as much as possible. And also not just get focused on this year, right? We don’t want to just focus on 2025 or 2026. When I say, “All right, if we’re going to have another 30 years of retirement, how do we lower your taxes over the long haul? What can we do to put you in the best positions to pay the least amount of taxes over time?” And that’s the conversation. That’s a great conversation. You frequently hear people ask, “Should I do a Roth conversion?” Yeah. And it’s one of those things that because I think it’s been so like put together in commercials from different advisors, and I see them myself for different advisors on Instagram because I apparently get targeted with that stuff. This is great. It’s this idea that everybody should be doing a Roth conversion and it’s not the case. I spend some of my time talking clients out of doing them because we can see that if we just continue doing the same things that we’ve been doing, taking the same amount of money out, we’re not going to go over certain limits in retirement where you have to worry about paying extra money for Medicare, we have to worry about losing different deductions, right? There are new deductions with the OBBBA that come in that affect us. And so there are different income limits where if you go over a certain cap, you’re no longer getting those deductions. For us, we need to make sure that we’re aware of all of those little minefields and make sure that our clients are avoiding them and in good shape. Wonderful. Also on the list of frequently asked questions is when should I take my social security? So taking social security and doing Roth conversions kind of works hand in hand, right? The amount of income that you have affects what you pay when you do a Roth conversion. And we do a lot of them. Let’s be clear. We do a lot of Roth conversions, but there are a lot of reasons why we might delay somebody taking social security so we can control the amount of income that they show legally to the government. And for us, we need to make sure again that we’re managing that carefully, legally. No investigations. Thank you. And now rounding out the top five questions is this. What happens if the market crashes again? Listen, it’s not an if, it’s a when. The market will crash again, but we just don’t know when that will happen. It could be a year from now. It could be 5 years from now. It could be tomorrow. I mean, we just don’t have the answer. So, the goal for us is to say, you know, for our clients, if you’re comfortable not trying to get 30% every year or triple your money in 3 years, if that’s where you are and that’s really where our clients are, we’re not going for greed. We’re going for consistency and comfort. We need to make sure that we have a safety net. And that means that sometimes we don’t get that crazy growth for part of the money. But we can also sleep at night. And for my clients, taking away that anxiety, allowing them to sleep at night, knowing they have a plan. That’s the key. That’s everything. So, Fuchs Financial has offices located in Middletown, West Hartford, Mberry, and Mystic. And your initial consultation is complimentary, no obligation. People can go to our website, taxesandincome.com, or call 860-461-1709 to set up an appointment. We’d be happy to help and answer any questions along the way. That’s right. Thank you for joining us for today’s CT Buzz. I’m Allison Demurs. See you next time.
