2 Things Your Advisor Should Be Doing to Maximize Wealth

Have you heard the saying what got you here might not get you there. In this episode Tony and D kick off a two part series based on a white paper from Mark and break down the first two areas your advisor should have on their radar to help maximize your wealth.

First they talk about the big picture. Investing matters, but taxes, estate planning, and business strategies matter too and missing them can cost you opportunities you cannot rewind. Then they shift to how a real plan handles major economic and world changing events, from COVID to market shocks to the current AI wave, and why your advisor’s job is to pull emotion off the table and stay disciplined when headlines get loud.

If you want a smarter framework for year end planning, legacy thinking, and staying ready for whatever the market throws next, this episode is for you.

Transcript

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(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Have you heard the old saying, what got you here might not get you there. We are going to talk about four areas your advisors should have on their radar so that they're going to help maximize your wealth. Hey, good morning, Tony. How are you doing today, man? What's up, man? Happy holidays. We're in the, we're in the mix. Yeah. Holiday season, man. Here we go. Oh yeah. No, it's kind of nice. You know, like the way both Christmas and New Year's fall, you know, I think pretty much everybody gets a nice little you know, five day weekend, you know, the Wednesday, Thursday, who's coming in on Friday the day after New Year's or Christmas. So that's nice. Yeah. It should be, it should be a nice a couple of weeks here. Got a little family coming in. So, so yeah, so we're going to end the year here kind of with another two parter. Yep. So you know, basically this stems from one of the kind of the white papers that Mark has written. Yeah. So we picked out, you know, four of the topics out. So we'll do two this week and two next week. So, and what we're going to be talking about is really you know, kind of a couple of main topics that, that your advisor should be thinking about and hopefully applying to your situation to, to kind of help maximize everything. Yeah. You know, some of the things we'll talk about, I feel they're important, right? And depending on what stage you are in your accumulation or even your retirement, you know, some of it may apply to you. Some of it may not. Right. You know, so what we're going to do is talk about again, like two things that should be on your advisor's radar to help maximize your, your growth. Yep. So, all right. So let's talk, you know, we'll hit two this week and two next week. So one of them would be, your advisor ignores the big picture and maybe they, maybe it's not even the big picture. Maybe it's like an encompassing picture where we're talking about taking care of the investments, but who doesn't do that? If you're working with a wealth manager, everyone's doing that. Everyone, right? 99% of the people in that, you know wealth, you know, helping take care of your wealth, a financial advisor taking care of the investments. But what about taxes? Estate planning, business strategies, if you're a business owner. So let's talk about that. You know, like my whole thing is, is that you have to align all of these things or have, understand that, understand every aspect so that we are, we're not missing any opportunities, you know, because you, most times you can't rewind the clock or, or, you know, make an irreversible financial mistake. And it sounds worse than it is, but like sometimes you just can't undo it, right? You made a move and you can't undo it or you missed an opportunity. So that's, that's area number one. What are your thoughts, D? Yeah. You know, I'd say, you know, just in working with my clients, I'd say this kind of aspect of our business is something I get positive feedback on all the time. Just like Tony said there, you know, it kind of taking an all encompassing picture in someone's financial situation instead of just looking at the investments. And yeah, I think I touched on it even last week. You know, if, if you have, if your entire retirement plan is just to try to beat, you know, some benchmark, whether it be the S and P 500 or otherwise you know, that that's not much of a plan, right? Because it's great to make money. And obviously it's an important part of everything. Um, but you know, if, if you outperform the market this year by, by 1% is that really changing, you know, your, your lifestyle and retirement, right? You know, some, all right. So like one of the things that always pops in my head is like, obviously the investments are important. How did that, how did that advisor get to those investments? Whether it's individual stocks, maybe they're doing ETFs, mutual funds, whatever they may be doing to help help you accumulate growth. How did they get there? What was their research? You know, and, and I feel that we are extremely fortunate to have a highly competent investment team because if we make a move, whether it's right or wrong, they have a reason why they did it. You know, like there is a, there is a fall on the sword moment or, Hey, yeah, we made the right move and that's what we're here to do. Right. So there's that component in that. And then there's, then there's taxes, right? I, again, fortunate to have a CPA in house that if we have a tax strategy, I don't have to go searching throughout the, you know, the neighborhood looking for something. Can you answer this question? Can you answer this question? And then wait a week, a month or whatever, not even get called back to answer something like we have, you know, we're fortunate enough to have these assets available to us so that we can take care of our clients needs. And those two things resonate with me the most. And then, you know, we can also, the big picture is as our clients get older and just we get older in general, like the mentality for legacy planning changes. You know, I would say a lot of people are like, you know, I'm taking care of my kids enough. I'm spending every last nickel, right? Whatever that might sound like. But honestly with the market, the way it has been the last three years, we're on in uncharted territory, you know, markets up 20% three years in a row. Basically I don't, that's never happened. I think it's been up 20% two consecutive years, like four times in the last hundred. I don't think it's ever happened where it's up a almost another 20, right? So with that being said, there's, there's just more money. And, and we're starting to look at it. It's like, Hey, I, you know, sometimes I'm like, I don't know if I can spend all this because it's just, it's not in their DNA to spend money. So, okay. So like now the doc, the talks are a little bit deeper. It's like what assets or what accounts are we designing for the next generation? So that's designed for them and not, not the client. Right. It's the next generation of client. So those are some of the things that that's a big picture. Like it's like step back and look around you, right? Not just say, all right, I need to, I need to pick the next big stock, you know, to keep my client impressed. Like, no, no, it's not about that. Like, as you said, if we are missing the benchmark by 2% plus or minus, but I'm missing tax strategies or, you know, or even tax rates for the next generation, that's worth, it's, it's what at the end of the day, it's what falls at the bottom of your checking account, right? After taxes, after like all of these things. So, all right, I'm off my, I'm off my soapbox. Yeah, absolutely. No, you know, I mean right now, right, we're at the end of the year, you know, tax strategies I'm talking with my clients about you know, Roth conversion strategies. Sometimes people, especially in early retirement, you know, there's good Roth conversion opportunities, not for everyone, but that's, that's why we have the plan. You know, there's the additional senior standard deduction. Yeah. That's changed a little bit. So those are, you know, tax laws where we're trying to stay on top of you know, the tax loss harvesting on, on non-qualified accounts. You know, these are all, these are all things outside of the 1040, right? There's only so many things you can do at the end of the year when you're, you know, actually doing your taxes. But the, the tax strategies are, are can be even more impactful than a good investment strategy sometimes, honestly. Right. And you know, some of the, some of the strategies like, Hey, I'd like, I'd like to realize some additional tax this year. Are you comfortable with it? Because at the end of the day, I always say that paying, paying taxes is a penalty of success. So something went right. If we're paying taxes, whether you got a job, you got an investment debt paid out, whatever it may be. And to, to be ready for next year would be, you know, maybe we need to like reshuffle before the end of the year. So tax loss harvesting is part of that, but like there's not too many losses to harvest. So, all right. So what can we, what can we, you know, tone down, you know, like take some chips off the table, realize the tax so that we can be ready for whatever it may be. Put that into dry powder, ready for the next investment, maybe invest in things that are undervalued compared to the collective whole market. So those are things that our investment team is exceptional at right now. So, all right. Number two. Yeah. Number two. What do we got? Oh, number two. So does your advisor have a strategy for major economic events? Right. So, you know, this is I'd say this is probably one of the most important things that an advisor does is to help pull emotion off the table, you know, at emotional times. Right. And, and these major economic events, you know, whether it be you know, COVID, whether that's on an economic event, but you know, but it was, well, yeah, obviously it was had major economic impacts as well. You know, the, the lending crisis, the global financial crisis back in 2008, you know, these are things that that no one really sees coming in the mainstream. So how you react is extremely important. Yeah. And it, and you know what, it doesn't, you know, I know it's like major economic events, but it could just be major world changing events. So think about, you know, back in what the two thousands to 2008, like the internet, right. It developed, it became a thing. Right. So like that was an event. Now we're in this, in this, in this AI revolution, right. And how much is too much? Is it a bubble? Is it not a bubble? Is it the infancy? Like, is it got a ton of run the room or a ton of room to run so that where do we stand? But it's, it's almost like, you know, if, if you, if you hitched your wagon to AI stocks and, and that's all you did, you probably did very well, but all it, all it takes is maybe one bad earnings call from Nvidia and that house of cards falls quickly. I don't, I'm not predicting that. I'm just saying, be aware of it. Right. You know, again, going back to even our first thing, the big picture, like, Hey, you know, we, it's okay to, if you made a lot of money, it's okay to take some chips off the table, recalibrate, you know, if, if, if we have something that has gone parabolic or something that hasn't, right. So either that parabolic item is going to come back down to earth or everything's going to catch up to it. So, and then also like, then we do start taking a look at a lot of different events to like COVID. That was an event where I know our investment team got extremely active and where it was to the point where we went into like maybe, you know, 15 to 20% in cash in that, in that general area because we didn't know what the next move was. We had to let it play out. But I know that there were some stocks that are not going to participate in a lockdown like Boeing. Right. Right. I always use this example. Boeing was one of those companies where they were having a problem having, you know, keeping a particular plane in the sky, the 737 max, and then they weren't going to be any planes in the sky because we were going lockdown. Right. So an example of a stock that we sold and didn't buy anything with it. Just sit tight and see like, what is, how is this going to play out? Is this lockdown a couple of days, a couple of weeks, a couple of months? What did that look like? And it ended up being stay at home. So the stay at home items then became part, you know, the main part of the portfolio, the zooms of the world and you know, the internet internet commerce place, like Wayfair item, you know, stocks like that. Then you get the tariffs, you know, the tariffs really socked a lot of stocks, but there were some that didn't really heave. So if they didn't go down, if that was our team's idea to like, Hey, we're going to like, these stocks did not go down as much as everything else. Let's sell part of that and buy some of the stuff that went down for no reason at all. Right. Just because of a headline, because the backbone of the company is still strong. And those are the active management moves that our team will make. Same thing with like the big, beautiful bill, like you mentioned before, Hey, like what, what tax strategies are available because they changed mid year. Right. And there's going to be a lot more that happened that come in the, you know, come into play next year. So again, that's why having the CPA in-house, that's why having the investment team in-house, those are all, you know, those are all, we're fortunate to have that, that strategic. So, and then what is, what is your, what is your guy doing or, you know, guy, gal, whatever it is, what are they doing for the research part of this? What, what tools do they have at their exposure? What are they reading that? No one else is because everyone can hop on Google and Amazon, you know, or Yahoo and Instagram. Yeah. Get your, get your economic, if you want to buy some insurance. Yeah. I mean, you get like a, you know, you could use X as your, you know, as your research for how to invest. Well, guess what? It's going to end up learning your algorithm and telling you a bunch of stuff you want to hear. I don't want to tell you the stuff you don't want to hear. So that's that's kind of the way I view some of that stuff. How about you? Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's it's, it's during those major economic events that it is imperative that, that you have an overall strategy. Right. So like Tony was talking about before, when, when you know, people aren't aren't taking as much out of their retirement accounts as they could, you know, maybe because they built up a nice income strategy with you know, some income annuities and some, some other tools. And what that does is it leaves the remaining assets with a longer time horizon. Maybe we're, we're managing more for the next generation so we can get a little bit more aggressive. But understanding your, your overall situation and then managing towards that is, is just incredibly important. And everyone is different out there. Everyone has a different situation, different income needs, different asset levels. So that's why that, that individualized plan is so important. But you know, having, having, you know, someone who's kind of been through the, the, the down markets and the unexpected things, it's, it's, it's one, one of the most important things that you can do is, is make sure you're sticking with two-year guns, making sure you're sticking to your strategy during the downtimes. And you know, we've talked about it before, you know, Tony mentioned it a few minutes ago, three, three big years in a row. You know, there's, there's not a lot of negative data out there. I know we got, you know, some, some negative job jobs numbers. But we're still under the historic low for unemployment. Yes, we are. Yeah. You know, or the historic average, I'm sorry. But you know, when we've bubbled up so far, I'm not saying that the market's about to crash, just our, our antennas are up a little bit more. So, you know, understanding that taking a few chips off the table, not getting overly greedy, locking in a little bit of profit, all those things as part of your overall investment strategy, extremely important for success. Yep. So, uh, so yeah, it takes care of episode one. Yep. Absolutely. So, uh, take us home. Yeah. So thanks for listening. If you guys have any, uh, questions, comments, ideas for a show, hit us up at info at SWP connect.com and we'll talk to you next week. The opinions expressed in the podcast are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any investment, legal, financial, or tax strategy. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. Please consult a qualified professional about your individual needs.