Welcome to Retirement Talk with Eric Kearney. I’m Wendy Falk. I’m here with Eric Kearney, President and Senior Investment Advisor with Retirement Wealth Advisors in Cape Coral, FL. Let’s talk a little bit about there’s people are really struggling out there right now with the times that we’re in.
And I know Eric, you have seen this before and have been through this before. Yes. With the tech bubble 2008. All of those numerous pullbacks, right? How are you helping your clients at, at this time? So Wendy, we’ve been through this a multiple, you know, multiple times and the thing is, is that as human beings, we quickly forget how bad events were. And so I still remember the crash of the tech bubble and that left a lot of people devastated. I mean, they had stocks that were worth $250 that were now worth 75 cents.
And then all of a sudden you had the horrible event, like 9/11 and what happens is that people’s emotions start to take over. And they start to get all these negative thoughts that start to swirl in their head and we actually lose financial direction. And the frustrating thing to me is that I’m actually able to step back and, and help them and help them get through that and what we have to do is we have to start forecasting a financial plan. We have to start forecasting. Things are bad right now, but what we’ll recover from this okay. What’s the timeframe. How do we get out of this?
And I always talk about driving into a ditch and if you’ve ever driven into a ditch with a car, it’s not a fun experience. No. But a lot of times when we drive into that ditch and we’re down in there, the first thing we do is we put the car in reverse and we step on the gas and we hope that that gets us out but it’s the same with your investments. Sometimes the investments that you’re holding when they go down. They’re not gonna be the same investments that get you back out so a lot of times when that car is in the ditch, it’s not gonna be the same vehicle that gets you back out. It’s actually gonna be a completely different vehicle that gets you out of the hole when that comes to your investments. When you’re down, you have to take a look at your investments and say, okay, are these the correct investments that I’m holding to get me back out of the hole? A good example is after 9/11, you had large cap companies that are worth $10 billion.
Plus that between 2001 and 2011. That was known as the lost decade for large cap stocks, because they were absolutely flat guess where the majority of Americans had their money. Large caps. It was, I remember us being after 9/11, we were in gold. We were in real estate, we were in energy, completely different alternate asset classes to large caps.
And my co my clients actually thrived through those times. I remember in 2004, a gentleman filling up a suburban with $5 a gallon gas, but he is like, Hey, I’ve got that energy fund. So I’m happy. because they’re making a killing in energy. The times have changed right now. But the thing is, is that your portfolio has to evolve with the times.
So we’ve created the portfolio recovery strategy way back in 2001, and we’ve kept updating it and we updated it three months ago. What, what you’re gonna see here is in another six months, these big box firms are gonna come out. Oh, let’s do something about your portfolio. We already did that three months ago with the coronavirus.
And so we’ve been through these tumultuous events before. This is why our clients stick with us because they understand that there’s a process. They understand all the transparency that’s sitting in their actual portfolio and people wanna know, okay, Eric, what is my process now? Like, How do I get through this tough time?And so the new potential clients that we have calling to our office, they’re like, I’ve been referred to you, or I’ve heard you on TV or radio they’re coming in and they’re like, we wanna process.
And the thing is, is that, you know, you can almost hear the desperation in their voice. I was getting close to retirement. I thought my advisor had me on track, but now all of a sudden, you know, for the past 10 and 11 years, we’ve had this strong bull market run. It was pretty easy for people to make money. Oh, sure. It was. So you kind of look at your advisor and you’re like, well, I guess they’re doing a good job. But now people are truly second guessing their own advisor because they really don’t have any kind of plan and they don’t have the process that we’d have either.
And that is something that you do at Retirement Wealth Advisors. So well, is that process that you put everyone through? Right? Well, let’s take a couple of minutes and talk about the portfolio recovery strategy booklet that you have written it is. It’s beautiful and so well done. And that’s what you do for your clients and you’re right.
We know how to do this. I’ve said this before that there’s a lot of investment advisors, financial advisors out there who are licensed salespeople. They understand that they can put you in products, but they really don’t know how to manage money. This is where people are really seeking out a true money manager. They’re like, I want somebody who actually understands how to manage money.
I think probably a lot of people, maybe they had an inkling that something like this was gonna happen. People had been talking about a recession and yeah. You know, we have the election coming up and all of that. So I, you know, we kept hearing that buzz around like, oh, all of this is gonna happen.
I don’t think any of us expected what has occurred. Right. And it’s been, it’s been crippling in a lot of ways, right. With our health as well as our wealth. Yes. So your clients were ready. As I said before, that’s what you all do so well, you get people ready for things and your, your portfolio keeps them prepared and they know what’s, they know what they’ve got going on.
The thing is, is that we, we put them through the process, you know we’re putting them through an income plan, a strategic plan wealth management process. Then the concierge service, we’re putting them through that process and we’re crossing all the Ts and dotting all the I’s.
And there’s a lot of people that said. I’ve never had this told to me before I didn’t realize that this was available to me. And so there’s a lot of products and tools and planning out there that people are being missed out on and it’s a huge lost opportunity, but I think that this pullback in the market right now could be one of the biggest resets for the decade for the next decade.
And so we’re encouraging people look, take the time to put that financial plan together. There’s so many people now, and this is kind of apropo for what’s going on, but there’s a lot of people right now that are worried about their health. And if you’re really worried about your health, you’re gonna go to the doctor and you’re gonna wanna make sure that they do a very thorough analysis about your health.
And so you want to find somebody out there who you really feels is listening to you, who is transparent, who really is looking out for your best interest.
We specialize in helping people, just like you. Prepare for the retirement that they’ve always dreamed of. They’ll do exactly that by going over your current strategy to expose the weaknesses that may exist in your retirement portfolio. Plus they’ll explain potential risks and possible strategies to you and easy to understand terms and help get you reacquainted with your portfolio when income strategy, what I enjoy most about retirement planning is sitting down with you and having real conversations about your retirement dreams and goals.
And so again, we’re formulating a lifestyle income plan. Based on what you want to do. You’re gonna have social security, maybe your wife’s social security. Maybe you have a pension. Maybe you have real estate income. Okay. The average million. Seven streams of income and a lot of times we’re creating additional streams of income for that client.
Maybe they’re a tax free income stream, um, that they actually need to reduce their taxable income. Um, maybe, um, it’s a, a dividend paying income stream that we’re using for income, it just depends on the situation. But what we’re doing is, is we are building different sections of income when the markets get tumultuous and they drop down like they did in 2018.
Guess what I was able to do, I was able to turn off some of those accounts and let them rebuild in January, February, and March. And I used income from the other accounts that didn’t have any market exposure. Hmm. It was actually pretty brilliant. So what happens is, is that the, the other, other, um, accounts.
Come back when the market comes back and we turn off the fixed income and we go right back to these and keep building from that, because what we said before was you always wanna pull income from appreciated assets only? Yes. So when the market start to drop, I don’t wanna pull income from there.
And this is what people want. They wanna know that they can pay for medical expenses. They wanna know that it’s factored in for inflation. Yes. They wanna see where they are. Transparency. Yes. well, I got ahead of myself before we did that, the lifestyle portion. So let’s talk about the wealth management side and the investment side now.
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