Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Line from the w g y iHeart Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Welcome to the Retirement Planning Show with your host Dave
Kopek from the Retirement Planning Group. Every week, Dave and
his team discussed the ways they can help people make
informed decisions about a wide array of retirement planning information
that can support you and developing a more certain financial
future for you and your family. Now it's time for
(00:23):
Dave Copec WGY's retirement planning specialist.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Boom, bone, Oh yeah, bone, they say it's all right,
the bone. They say it's all right. Say it's all right.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Be a good time because it's all right. Whoa, it's
all right. Now we're going to move it's bone up
the lines. Look opinion. Boom, it feels like come home
because it's hard. Whoa, it's hard.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Now listen to the Good Morning, Happy travers Day. There'll
be a lot of people up there today. More in Zach.
Dave is back back from Florida. I have three out
(01:30):
of my four children now living in Florida, one in Boca,
one in Sarasota, and one in Tampa. My oldest daughter
moved to Sarasota from Nashville, and my youngest daughters in
Boca and my son is in Tampa. So Florida is
now copik Land. So had a great time settled my
(01:56):
daughter and into FAU Florida Atlantic University, which is a beautiful,
beautiful university. It's right there in Boca. I would compare
it comparable to the state campus up. I'm Washington, have extension.
It's got that kind of a vibe. And she's there,
(02:17):
she's in her apartment with her two roommates, and the
way she goes, she's got wings. I'm always amazed by
Florida folks. I always talk about the three c's corn
crete construction cranes. No matter where you go in Florida.
Love the Boca area, Love all of Florida. I shouldn't
(02:40):
say I mean there's not a lot of I mean,
I don't like the congestion in Miami and some of
the Tampa when you're driving. But it's just it's booming.
Florida is booming. I know my son loves it. David Michael,
(03:01):
So we're gonna spend a lot of time down there.
We have a lot of clients in Florida. I keep
people keep been asking me, what are you gonna open
an office in Florida. We have an office in Florida.
We're gonna start using the Regis R. E. G Us
Corporation if we have to have meetings in an office
or a conference room. Regis has offices throughout Florida. There
(03:21):
are executive suites. So instead of being just one location,
I use probably Tampa quite a bit because that's where
my son is and that's also where we have a
pretty high concentration of people in the Tampa north, south,
east and west of Tampa. So but it's good to
be back. But you know, today's travers Day, so if
(03:45):
you're if you're going, you better go because my understanding
is that all the hotels are packed and if you
want a table, you better get there quick. And as
we're all quite well aware, it's going to be a beautiful,
absolutely spectacular day in upstate New York. So you might
(04:07):
see record crowd if things go right up there. My
son's going with his girlfriend's family and his girlfriend, so
Chris and Marissa will be up there. My wife and
I are heading the Lake George. We're going to go
float on the boat. Little Housekeeping Swing for a Cure
(04:31):
is September twenty six. We are doing this in conjunction
with an organization called Life Song, and a gentleman's going
to come in at the top of the hour, doctor
Darren Barkman, to talk a little bit about Life Song,
(04:52):
their strengths, what they do. It's a pretty amazing organization.
One of our wonderful, wonderful clients brought this to our
attention and said, can you guys help out a little bit?
And I said absolutely, but he'll talk more about who
Life Song is, what they do, how they participate in
(05:14):
the community. But our swing for a cure will be
money that will be generated for the American Cancer Society
and also for Life Song, and we're proud to do
that this year. So if you're not doing anything September
twenty six, our office looks like a retail story right now.
We have so much stuff that Jim has put together,
(05:38):
as far as gifts and handouts and raffles and baskets.
It's just I think this is going to blow the
doors off this year. As far as one of our
best Jim, I tipped my hat to Jim Corkoran. He's
just done a phenomenal job putting all of this together.
So September twenty six Swing for a Cure. You'll walk
(06:01):
out of there, You'll have a fantastic meal, You'll do
something special for a lot of people. The money stays
here in the community, Here in the community. I know
that you've heard me talk about the horrific year that
we've had, Julie and I and you know, we've lost
(06:21):
five loved ones in the last eight months, two of
them to cancer. And you know, it's a horrible disease.
I've got two really good friends right now, two really
good friends that are battling this horrific disease. And it's
just it's sad to see. It's sad to see. And
(06:42):
hopefully we can find a cure for cancer and we
can put an end to this. Just it's just devastating.
It's you know, we've lost a lot of family members
and personal friends and loved ones. So September twenty sixth,
if you want to participate, if you can't make it,
you can still participate. You can still make a donation,
which would be greatly appreciated. You just called Jim and
(07:05):
to say I heard Dave on the radio and we
like to do something special for Swing for a Cure
of the proceeds go to these two our strategic partners,
and also the Retirement Planning Group picks up the cost
of this. Okay, what else do I want to do
(07:27):
a little bit? You know, as you know, I got
kind of an axe to grind here. You know, I've
been traveling a lot, so you know, I spent five
days in Florida this past week, and then we had
the opportunity to go to the track. And the track
is different. It's not like it used to be in
my opinion. You know, we used to go out in
(07:48):
the Paddock area, get a pick the table, hang out
with the family and the friends and the kids. I
emphasize kids. It's not that way anymore. I I don't
think I'll go back to me if I go to
the track, I'll go in the clubhouse because out in
the Paddock area there is this it's prone to kind
of kumbaya. Let's go have a good time. We sat
(08:10):
next to a bunch of people again this time and
they were smoking dope, drinking pretty crazy. It's just not
the environment that I'm accustomed to. I mean, I love
to go up and have a good time, but the smell,
the stench, I actually talked about this the other day
with some friends of mine. I know that there's certain
(08:32):
areas that you have to go to to the smoke.
There should be certain areas at the Saratoga Racetrack that
you have to go to in order to smoke marijuana
cigarettes because the smell, the stench, not everybody likes to
sniff it. These guys got pretty crazy after, you know,
smoking a couple of those things, and it just kind
of I couldn't wait to get out of there, to
(08:54):
be honest with you, I couldn't wait to get out
of there. I felt like saying, here's my five hundred dollars.
I'm going to lose it, you know here, you know,
to just take my money and then we'll get in
the car and we'll go back to Lake George. So
I don't know, I don't know what the answer is.
I know, you know you can't smoke in certain areas.
You shouldn't be able to smoke dope. I went up
to the guy, the security guard. He gave me the
(09:15):
same answer that he gave me. Your previous is that
you know they've been told just to stay away, let
them do whatever they're going to do unless they're you know,
causing you know, I guess a ruckus. That's my two cents,
but I won't be back. Sorry to say, but just
there's nothing for me. Nothing. Well, I got a lot
(09:38):
of good news. You got a lot of good news
as far as what's going on in the markets, and
we'll talk a little bit about it. I'm gonna take
my first break because we're almost at fifteen after But
Powell came out and there were no surprises. The surprise
was is that what how he came out and the
(10:00):
cometary which we'll talk a little bit about that. I've
been talking about bonds now for twelve eighteen months. Well
it's happening. It's happening. We're starting to get the bang
for the buck. If you're chasing coupon and yield, you
better get in there now. That's my advice to clients.
(10:20):
Sometimes things take a little bit longer, not only in life,
but also with your investment portfolio. So as they say,
you know, patient pays off. Patience pays off, especially if
you stay disciplined with your investment platform. And I'm glad
(10:40):
to say that I think that being consistent and sticking
to our guns that will be extremely beneficial for our
clients that like fixed income, that like bonds. So and
we'll be right back after this quick message. I'm Dave Kopek,
Wguy's retirement planning specialist. This is my forty third year
(11:03):
in the business. I hope to make fifty at least,
not retiring, not going anywhere. Our business is doing phenomenal.
I said to my team the other day, I think
this is the best team that I've had since I've
been in the business. Compassionate, caring, just a really wonderful,
wonderful group of people. We have five locations now here
in the state of New York. Malta, Glens Falls, Aubity, Oneana, Syracuse.
(11:29):
Will be out in Syracuse for a clam bake the
later part of September with our friends from National Grid.
We're sponsoring some of that clan bake. So I look
forward to that meeting some of our friends out there
that listen to the show. So again, if anything that
we're discussing is of interest to you, we offer a
(11:51):
complementary consultation at either any of those offices at your home. Zoom.
We're doing a ton of Zoom meeting lady lately. You
can just call our office talk to one of our
team members at five point eight five eight zero one
nine one nine today. Anything that I'm talking about. If
you want to participate, it's pretty simple. You just pick
(12:13):
up the telephone and you dial one eight hundred talk WGY.
That's one eight hundred eight two five fifty nine forty nine.
We'll be right back the eighty six percenters. Do you
know that eighty six percent of the population has no
defined benefit pension plan. For most of us, we have
to take our life savings and create a paycheck for
the rest of our lives in retirement. What is your
(12:34):
plan for retirement income distribution? How you manage your assets
during the most critical years of your lifetime. Nobel Prize
winning economist William Sharp has called retirement income distribution the nastiest,
hardest problem in finance. He points out that investment, uncertainty,
and mortality can derail the most careful laid out retirement
income plan. Call our offices today to start the process
(12:57):
of building a retirement income distribution plan. After forty one
years of being in the financial services business, you need
to start taking action to start building your own personal
retirement income distribution plan. How do you do that to
take action five one eight, five eight zero one nine
one nine. That's five one eight five eight zero one
nine one nine or RPG retire on the web. Don't procrastinate,
(13:19):
motivate and start building your retirement income Distribution plan five
one eight five eight zero one nine one nine.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
We're here live in studio. If you have any questions,
please call one eight hundred talk WGY one eight hundred
eight two five five nine four nine. Want to talk
with Dave after the show call five one eight five
eight zero one nine one nine.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
One way street.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Just all again for someone to meet one moment.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Who is the game man? Now?
Speaker 5 (14:16):
Got the feet out his.
Speaker 6 (14:17):
Nine and I want if your stepfather night.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
So I'm coming. I don't want to be live please,
I want to love you all over.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
We are back. It's good to be back. Good week,
good week in the markets. Doubt saw I gain it
(14:56):
one point three percent. It's up a little over nine
s and P five four percent for the week, up
a little over eighteen percent, NASDAK one point four positive,
it's up about nineteen percent. And here's the big one
right now, the ten year treasury point or three point
eight zero three point eight zero. Wasn't that long ago, folks,
(15:19):
that was at five. So as you can see declining
interest rates, capital appreciation of bonds. If you're a bond
investor and your patients has been challenged, you should be
looking at capital appreciation inside your portfolios, which are good okay.
(15:39):
And if you're buying individual bonds, you only realize that
if you sell okay, because bonds always mature at part,
So make sure that your financial team is monitoring those bonds.
It might make sense to harvest, harvest some of those
gains and reapers, especially right now when you've got the
opportunity to go out a little bit more on the
(16:00):
yield curve. But I guess the big thing is that
you know, of course, you know, everybody's been waiting for
Powell and what his statement was going to be in
Jackson Hole, Wyoming in regards to monetary policy, and the
(16:22):
weight is over okay. It looks like September is going
to be the date that they're going to start declining
interest rates. And the question now Wall Street is going
to be twenty five basis points or a fifty bit
fifty basis points And the markets, of course have been
(16:46):
fixated on this and I personally think that the commentary
from Powell has been consistent, you know, data dependent, and
he's been saying that for the last two three years
at least. So the FED is basically held steady for
(17:08):
almost a year now its rate And what does this
mean for you the consumer of financial products or what
does it mean to your life? Well, if interest rates
go down, that means to cost the goods and services
are going to be less. Your house is going to
(17:32):
be less as far as the interest rate. You know,
we have Druello in here a lot talking about the
fixed income market because he was in the investment banking
business for years before he got into the mortgage industry.
And you know, lower rates gives you more purchasing power,
gives you a bigger house, makes it more affordable. Right.
(17:54):
But as we talk about the FED and how far
are they going to go this year in two thoy
and twenty four, I think you're going to see at
least at a minimum two possibly three rate cuts. If
they go fifty, then I think you could see another
(18:15):
twenty five. If they do twenty five, I think you
could see three cuts twenty five, twenty five, twenty five.
But you know, basically what's been the the skeleton in
the closet that they've been worried about. Of course it's inflation.
Course CPI. I don't have to tell people I shop
for the house because I get up early in the morning.
(18:36):
I'm at you know, mark at thirty two at six
o'clock in the morning because there's nobody in there and
I can get in and out in about ten minutes.
You know, the cost of goods and services are through
the roof. Through the roof, you know, for the average
couple that has to go in and buy groceries, put
food on the table, gasoline in the car, the electric bill.
(19:00):
I mean, don't even get me into healthcare. I'm going
to bring a special guest on hopefully in the next
week or two, to talk about healthcare. Healthcare right now
is insane, the cost of healthcare. If your employer is
picking up the cost of your healthcare, you ought to
(19:21):
walk in there every Monday, shake their hand, and go
in there on Friday and slap them on the back
and say thank you so much. Healthcare. You know, as
a small independent businessman that has to deal with healthcare,
it's staggering. What's happening with healthcare. Sat next to a
(19:44):
guy the other day. I had mentioned this before in
the radio. I talked about it the other day in
the office. Him and his wife want to go to retirement.
They're in their early sixties, they're not sixty five yet,
and they looked at what it's going to cast them
on a monthly basis to pay for health care to
bridge to a Medicare Medicare supplement, and it was nineteen
(20:07):
hundred dollars a month. My own personal situation is Julie
just retired from the school district, my wife, and she
didn't work there long enough for health care for me,
but she has health care for her. So I had
to go out into the marketplace and I have to
find health care for myself and two of my children.
So I have to find a family plan. Well, it's
(20:29):
over two thousand dollars a month, and order for me
to basically duplicate what my wife had two thousand I
think it's two thousand and forty seven dollars a month
in order for me to have health care, almost twenty
five thousand dollars a year. And you wonder why there's
a deterioration of the middle class. You wonder why people
(20:52):
are trying to, you know, squeeze their nickels and dimes
together in order to you know, have quality of life.
So there has been a deterioration in my opinion about
quality of life, especially for people that are not under
a group plan, your small independent businessman. Yeah. I mean
(21:13):
there's a lot of people out there that are doing
exceptionally well, but there's a lot of what we do
a lot of work, and I'm proud to say that
because of my background from a farming background, we do
a lot of work with hard working savers. That's the
people that's our sweet spot. The guy that's out there
humping and the lady that's out there humping every single week,
(21:35):
every single year in order to basically put a little
bread and butter on the table and have enough to
set aside for their retirement years. And there's been a deterioration.
So I think this is going to be a positive.
You know. I don't think it's going to be dramatic.
I don't think it's going to happen immediately, as nothing does.
(21:57):
But I can give you some numbers here as far
as does happen in the financial markets. You already know
what my position has been on bonds. I've been talking
about that, if you've been listening to this show, I've
been a very bullish on bonds, right, depending on what
happens in this election, which happens in November. History has
(22:21):
shown us after they start cutting rates. The first rate
cut in eighty four. When they started, it was eight
point six percent. Total return. After two years it was
thirty nine percent November of eighty seven, eighteen point eight.
Two years later fifty point two percent. Well, August of
(22:42):
nineteen twelve percent after two years up fifty two point
eight percent. Now that's history. There's no guarantees that that's
going to happen. But what usually what happens? How does
the market increase in value? It's pretty simple. It's economics
one oh one, anticipation of earnings. What is the multiple?
(23:09):
More money, more profit, more earnings, higher stocks. Doesn't get
any more complicated than that unless you have something unique,
right the technology stocks which will drive your pe ratios
through the roof. So you know we've got some I
(23:31):
think some opportunity here. I don't know if it's clear sailing.
I've seen too many black swan evants events, events, events
in my life after forty three years of doing this,
so I was you know, now is the time I
(23:51):
signed up all four of us. We're going to a
conference in Boston, myself, Nico, Chris McCarthy, and my son Christopher.
Fidelity has a conference in October where they bring in
a lot of speakers, a lot of their portfolio managers.
But you know, we had to chat with them this
(24:12):
week our weekly conference call, and I think things look
pretty good here, I really do. So you know, everybody
talks about point of entry and getting into the market.
You know, be diversified. Make sure you understand the risk
that's associated with managing assets, retirement assets, because it can
(24:33):
be a bumpy ride at times. But if you're diversified
and you've got baseline income, what we talk about all
the time, baseline income, the ability to weather the storm,
not get emotional, pull your hair out of your head, right,
that's when you make bad decisions. You don't want to
(24:54):
be emotional. You don't want to make decisions based on emotion.
You want to be making decisions. You know, I'm okay,
I've got the right acid allocation, but you should be
looking at that again right now. So we're going to
be back. It's our first break. I'm Dave Kopek w
G Wise retirement planning specialists. We'll see on the other
(25:15):
side of the news.
Speaker 6 (25:16):
Why he's a curious thing.
Speaker 5 (25:42):
Make a one man, we make another man sing, do
it in a way.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
I'm gonna be in.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Cover love.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Priests like cream strong.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
A man stream a bad one.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Good your oe writers.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
You homely mind.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Don't need money, don't take same, you don't need a
credit card. Ride's trained, he said, it's grown sometimes telling
you that's a power.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
All right, I'll get you moving, the blood flowing, little coffee,
Get up, get going, get outside. I'm looking at blue skies,
green grass, eighty degrees. Tell you, folks, it doesn't get
any better than this. Life is good. Life is good.
(26:56):
So get out there and enjoy the day. Say the
hell with work, health yard. I'm doing something special with
my bride and my family, and we're going to go
out there and enjoy the day. That's what I say.
All right, you know, I want to get back a
little bit on the rate cuts because it's not a
(27:17):
cure all as we're all quite well aware. But as
I said briefly, less what we call less restrictive policy
is good news. So you're not going to see instantaneously
three percent mortgages up here, or you're not going to
see you more monetary stimulus flowing from Washington. But lower
(27:41):
rates can be supportive to the stock market and of course,
as you know, total return in the bond market. So
recognizing that we're not in a global financial crisis that
we've gone through in the past, you know, you're probably
(28:04):
on a pretty good runway now in order to get
some total return bank for your buck for the final
which I can't believe got about four months left in
the year twenty twenty four. You know, your parents used
to say, boy, time flies when you get older. Let
me tell you, they couldn't have been more correct when
(28:27):
they say that the time flies when you get older.
I look in the mirror and I figured somebody, you know,
came into my house. Who is this guy? But time
does fly, and you want to make sure that you've
got your eyes and cross your t's. You got to
make sure that everything is the way it should be.
And that leads me into a topic that I want
to talk about, and I want to get into a
(28:47):
little bit of detail about it. And if I get
long in the tooth. It's because it's a warning to
individuals out there, you know, if you were if you
listen to the sh show. We over emphasize that the
Retirement Planning Group that we are an open architect platform.
(29:09):
What that means is that we do not have a
bias towards any type of investment that is allocated to
the financial services business A to Z. You know, we
shouldn't be the person to determine if this financial product
(29:30):
that has been approved, stamped and is now out in
the marketplace available to consumers of financial services, whether it's
mutual funds, alternative investments, insurance products, annuities. I don't care
(29:50):
what it is, because there are billions now billions. There's
trillions of dollars in these assets right now, trillions. I
just wrote an article for the Saratoga Business Journal and
also for the Glennswalls Business Journal that talks about the
greatest wealth transfer in the history of mankind. We see
(30:14):
it consistently at the Retirement Planning Group. We see it
with our clients, prospective clients, and people that come in
and just have a chat with us and say, listen,
I heard you on radio. I'm pretty happy with the
person that I'm working with right now, and that God
bless Our job is not to sever the relationship. If
you're unhappy, then that's a whole different story. But if
(30:36):
you're happy, like I said, ninety nine point ninety nine
percent of the guys and gals that are working in
this business are superior, are phenomenal. Because this is a
tough business. It's not easy dealing with people's money. It's
not easy stay on top of all the things that
(30:58):
are out there that you have to be abreast of. Okay,
so we talk about all the time. The team, the team,
the team, the team. Well, the team is not just
our office. You know, we have one of the largest
investment banking firms in the world behind US Fidelity Financial Services.
We have the capability I think of second to none.
(31:21):
And if they don't have it, they have it underneath
the hood, they have it within their platform for us
to go out and get it, whether it's head funds,
you know, I'll go through the whole laundry list. Basically,
we have it all. And the reason why we have
it all is because when I started the retirement Planning group,
(31:41):
I had a vision, a vision, and the vision was this,
I never want to be in a situation where I
can I can't say yes to an individual where I
say no, I can't bring that to the table. So
I always wanted to have a platform that would allow
us to be able to have different types of investments
(32:02):
that are suitable for different types of people. Some people
are ultra conservative, some people are super aggressive, and in
between you got a whole bunch of other people. And
then you've got to find out how do you basically
build out a portfolio in order to facilitate what these
individuals are looking for. Now, we've had some people come
(32:28):
into us just recently with investments that I would say,
when I looked at it, and I looked at them,
and I looked at their net worth, they were just
not suitable for these types of investments. And I'd ask
I guess some pretty direct questions, and the first one
(32:51):
would be, this, tell me what you invested in here?
What was your understanding of this investment? And why was
the this investment selected for you? I don't know, what
do you mean? You don't know? Well, we went to
this advisor, and this advisor basically selected these types of investments,
(33:14):
and we had to trust that advisor. Okay, So you're
basically saying, is that one of your investment decisions were
being made by the advisor and you felt comfortable with that. Yes,
Well here's my position, and I know it sounds kind
(33:39):
of harsh. Maybe you need to know what you own.
And I'm going to talk about three things that I
think are critical with know what you own? Okay. The
first is this, make sure the investment that you're investing
in correlates with your RTQ, your risk tolerance questionnaire. If
(34:08):
you have an investment that basically is off the charts
as far as risk, but your RTQ says that you
are a conservative investor, chances are that's not a good fit.
The second thing is is it an investment that trades
(34:29):
on a daily basis? Trades on a daily What do
you mean by that, Dave, Well, we've seen people come
in that they can't get out of stuff, right. They're
in investments that are basically they're handcuffed to k ones,
oil and gas equipment leasing and go through the whole
(34:51):
laundry list. These are investments that they can't get out
of that's dictated by the portfolio managed. So if they
want out, they got to be patient. They can't get
out on their terms. And the third in the final
thing is I want to overemphasize this. You want investments
(35:15):
that you can get out of immediately, immediately, without a penalty,
without a surrender charge. Whatever the fair market value is,
it trades on the exchange, okay, whether it's the Nasdaq,
the Dow, whatever it may be. You want to make
sure that you have the liquidity that you're looking for
(35:37):
that day nine four boom, you're out. You got your cash. Now.
We went through a situation this week where I was
about ready to get a machine gun. I was talking
to I won't mention the company, we'll mention their name,
(35:58):
we'll mention the product. But this is what happened. A
woman comes in extremely upset and says, I can't get
anywhere with these people. And they said, well, tell me
the story, show me the investment. So I said, let
me see what I can do. You've got to stay
here and I'll see if I can at least get
(36:21):
you some answers that you're looking for. Please, can you
please help? Yes, get on the telephone. We Dolly eight
hundred telephone number, and I can tell by the accent
it's not domestic. It's not here in the United States.
Make a long story short, ass where are you located. Well,
(36:41):
we're in the Philippines. Okay, having a hard time nothing negative,
but we're having a hard time having the conversation. This
person on the other end knows absolutely one, nothing, nothing
about this investment. Okay, can I speak to someone else
(37:03):
about this? Can I talk to your supervisor? Well, we're
on hole for ten, twelve, fifteen minutes. Sorry, We'll be
very with you. Sorry, we'd be right with you. Mister David.
Mister that was my name, mister David. So when all
was said and done, after about a half an hour
forty five minutes, I basically said to this woman, we're
(37:25):
not going to get anywhere with this. Okay, this is
just we're spinning our wheels. I said, thank you so much, ma'am.
I appreciate your help. We're going to move in another direction.
So I had Chris McCarthy, our new team member who
works in this arena with this particular type of product,
who knows the background of the product, and I said,
(37:50):
can you help me out? Do you have do you
have the ability to put me in contact with like
a regional guy. Yeah, I know the guy. I said, okay, good, okay.
So I got the regional guy, we got the internal
I got the regional and then I've got somebody else where.
I don't even know where the third person was from.
I got three different answers on how to liquidate this
(38:14):
investment for this woman, three different answers. I tell the
regional guy, I got three different answers. I tell the
internal guy. I got three different answers. And this other person,
who I think was a contact that Chris now had
another answer for me too. What transpired here? What happened
(38:39):
that put this woman in this situation? Well, what transpired
was the company that she originally started with was acquired
by another company, and the other company took over her investments,
and now she's dealing only with a different company. Her
(39:02):
financial advisor is into the sunset is gone, no longer
working with her, no longer in the business, and she's
trying to figure out because she has one hundred zero
confidence and the data and the information that she's getting,
and she's about ready to jump. She's had it, She's
(39:26):
had it. This is a black guy. In my opinion
on the financial services industry, it's a black guy. Because
I've been doing it now for forty three years. And
as we sit here on Saturday morning, this has been
going on now for about three or four days. We
still don't have the answers for this woman that she's
(39:48):
looking for. So I said to her, I said, you
know what you're probably going to have to do. Okay,
You're going to have to go back to the original
office that you work through, and you're gonna have to
basically say to these people, you know, I need a friend,
I need some because they won't talk to me. They
won't talk to me. You're not the advisor, blah blah blah.
(40:10):
You know you know we're not going to talk to you. Okay, Okay,
So why do I say this? Because when you're in
a situation and you're later in life and you're trying
to get liquidity on investment and you're trying to basically
pay your bills and you can't get answers, you better
make sure that you understand exactly the platform that you're
(40:33):
working for now. I overemphasize sometimes the individuals Fidelity. I
don't say it because I'm trying to say that, you know,
we're top dogs or whatever. But most people know fidelity, right,
and I can tell you one thing. With fidelity, they
don't put up with any nonsense zero zip. They tell
(40:54):
you something. This is the path you gotta go down.
That's the path you go down. Right, every financial advisor,
like myself, that's an ira A. Not everybody gets in
the door. You got to knock on the door and
you got to basically go through a process in order
to be able to facilitate the ability for you for
you to have the opportunity to work through their distribution channel.
(41:16):
So if history repeats itself, okay, if history repeats itself
and you're in a situation where you can't get liquidity,
you can't get the answers you're dialing the telephone number.
The person that you're talking to is not the person
that you think it is, or you want that you
want to talk to, or somebody all oversees You're You're
(41:37):
gonna have to be the squeaky wheel. You're gonna have
to get on the telephone. Because right now in the
financial services industry, when I'm finding out there's more of
this is happening. For whatever reason, I don't know why.
This is like the second event that we've had in
the last couple of months. So beware, as a as
an individual that's doing financial services, as an individal that
(42:00):
has been doing it a long time, understand the platform
that you're working through. Understand the platform that you're working through,
and understand how important it is to have a good
understanding of the investments that you're purchasing through your retirement
accounts or your non qualified accounts. So that's my message
(42:22):
for this week. Beware, be proactive and be educated on
exactly where you sit as far as your overall investment platform.
I'll be right back after this message the eighty six percenters.
Do you know that eighty six percent of the population
has no defined benefit pension plan. For most of us,
(42:42):
we have to take our life savings and create a
paycheck for the rest of our lives in retirement. What
is your plan for retirement income distribution? How you manage
your assets during the most critical years of your lifetime.
Nobel Prize winning economist William Sharp has called retirement income
distribution the nastiest, hardest problem in finance. He points out
that investment uncertainty and mortality can derail the most careful
(43:06):
laid out retirement income plan. Call our offices today to
start the process of building a retirement income distribution plan.
After forty one years of being in the financial services business,
you need to start taking action to start building your
own personal retirement income distribution plan. How do you do that?
To take action? Five one eight five eight zero one
nine one nine. That's five one eight five eight zero
(43:28):
one nine one nine or RPG retire on the web.
Don't procrastinate, motivate to start building your retirement income distribution plan.
Five one eight five eight zero one nine one nine.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
We're here live in studio. If you have any questions,
please call one eight hundred Talk WGY one eight hundred
eight two five five nine four nine. Want to talk
with Dave after the show Call five one eight five
eight zero one nine one nine.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
I want to go the drug one of the more
maybe sick.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Won the all Man you cross my car I made
me feel feet.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
I want to do time one of.
Speaker 5 (44:31):
The moll Man amount too time.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
I mean my eyes to read.
Speaker 5 (44:37):
One of them all made me nervous.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
I don't what to do, but then makes.
Speaker 6 (44:42):
Me feel I got feeling I'm with you.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
When I don't know with you. All right, we are
back happy Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Next weekend is going
to be I think the last hurrah for a lot
of us, a lot of them. People will take Friday
off and have a long weekend Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday
for Labor Day. Can you believe it? Folks, we're at
(45:07):
Labor Day already, which is hard to believe. But the
summer's over with if kids are back in school, as
I said, my daughter's back at FAU Florida Atlantic University.
Kitties be getting on the bus I think third or
fourth of September, something like that, and back in the groove.
So hopefully now's the time to start thinking about your investments,
(45:32):
what you're going to do for the latter part of
twenty twenty four. And it's a good time for you
to maybe sit down with a team of financial advisors
and the Overemphasize team, because we are a team at
the Retirement Planning Group. If you want to sit in
have a chat on the telephone, face to face, you
(45:52):
can give us a call at five one eight five
eight zero one nine one nine. That's five point eight
five eight zero one nine one nine. That's our office
in Malta, our corporate headquarters, and we can meet you
either in Syracuse, Glenn's Falls, Malta, Albany, or Oneana, whichever
one is a preference to you. Great team. It's been
(46:15):
a good year. Couldn't be happier with the direction that
we're moving in. Got some announcements that are coming up
pretty soon. Kind of dot in our eyes and crossing
our teeth on a couple of things. But I'm very
optimistic about what direction we're moving in here, and I
(46:35):
just think that the more services that we can bring
to the table, we can facilitate more and more opportunities
for our clients. They're better off. Everybody's going to be. Hey, Zach,
Yankees are a game and a half up. I just
saw it at the break. Do they have the best
(46:57):
record in baseball right now? Not too sure? Too sure
if they get the best, uh the kind kind of
the dump there for a long time. They lost what
sixteen out of twenty five games or something like that.
You know who has the best record in baseball? Is
it Dodgers? Is it the Dodgers? Well, I mean they've
they've got a payroll about five hundred million dollars a year.
(47:21):
Don't they know they're only like half a game up
on the Yankees. Anyways, that's it. How many do you
have any idea what their payroll is? Just out of curiosity?
The Dodgers, it's got to be just astronomical.
Speaker 7 (47:33):
I don't know the exact number, but you're right. Astronomical.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Yeah, astronomical. I like that word. Astronomical. All right, Uh,
I only got a couple of minutes here before we're
gonna have to break. Uh, We're gonna have a special
guest come in to talk about Life Song. It's a
local organization that does some great things here in the community.
You know. One of the things that's great about the
(47:57):
Retirement Planning Group. I've been doing it for a long time,
but I have some great clients and they bring to
my attention things that need to be discussed and people
that I need to talk to, you know. You know,
I'm a major advocate of the American Cancer Society, especially
the team that they here have locally here in the
Capitol District region. And we have a golf outing and
(48:18):
I'm going to bang on this a couple of times
today because I can't tell you enough how spectacular this
GalF outing is the people that attend. We have business leaders,
we have major corporations that help us out. But it's
going to be September twenty six at fair Ways of
half Moon. It's called Swing for a Cure. It's going
(48:41):
to be the American Cancer Society. We're going to participate
with Life Song this year. We're going to bring them
to the table, try to help them out a little
bit and some of the funding that they need for
the services that they provide the individuals that they work with.
If you're familiar with them, you want to participate, it's
pretty easy when we give out our telephone number. Jim
(49:04):
Corkoran is the point person on all of this, So
if you would like to participate, you can. There's a
lot of different ways that you can make contributions. You
can make contributions right directly outside your IRA and still
not have a tax consequence. It's a pretty powerful way
in order for you to facilitate God's work. And I
(49:27):
say that in capital letters God's work. As we're all
quite well aware, there's a lot of loved ones and
people that are battling certain things that are much more
difficult than our lives and what we have to deal
with on a day to day basis. So Jim's telephone
number is five one eight five eight zero one nine nine.
(49:48):
That's five one eight five eight zero one nine one nine.
You can check us out on the web. We're going
to have some construction on that web hopefully by the
end of the month, end of September. Give it a
little more sizzle. We're gonna have more video. We're gonna
have some additional options available to you through our website,
(50:08):
which we're going through right now. But you can check
us out on the web at rpgretire dot com. Again,
that's rpgretire dot com. And again, always, always, we we
love to have chats. We have lots of locations. If
anything that I'm discussing today is peaking your interests, you
(50:29):
can give us a call at five one eight five
eight zero one nine nine. That's five one eight five
eight zero one nine nine if you're listening outside the
five one eight area code. We have a lot of
radio listeners that listen through iHeartRadio. I think there's close
to nine hundred stations that carry this. Uh. We're more
(50:50):
than happy to talk with you. If we find a
common ground, we can either fly to you do a
lot of work right now over I'm surprised. This is
the thing that's staggering to me. I saw. I talked
to a gentleman when I was in Florida who was
in the financial services industry. I made a point to
(51:10):
stop at his office. He's a gentleman that I had
met years ago and I wanted to have a chat
with him, and I did. And sixty three percent, sixty
three percent of the people that he works with now
they do it through Zoom. I mean they occasionally meet,
but even opening accounts and starting with new individuals referrals
(51:31):
that he gets throughout the country, sixty three percent of
them he does it through Zoom. That's pretty amazing, isn't it.
Isn't it the technology today that we have, But it
is amazing because you know, most of my meetings with Fidelity,
I'm not driving to Boston every week to have meetings
with Fidelity. We have all of our meetings, it'd be
like four or five represent representatives from Fidelity on the
(51:55):
Zoom meeting and Ring Central I think we use ring Central,
not Zoom. So it's the new world that we live in.
But we've got doctor Darren Barkman. That's an easy name
to remember. Barkman. He is a Life Song Dash director
and we're gonna have a chat with him and he's
gonna tell us about Life Song and why you want
(52:16):
to participate in this year's Swing for a Cure. He's
here in the studio and when we come back from break,
doctor will be with us and he's gonna educate us
on Life Song. But you got any questions or comments,
you can call one eight talk to wgy I'm Dave Kopek.
We'll see on the other side.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
Line from the wgy iHeart Studios. Welcome him to the
Retirement Planning Show with your host Dave Kopek from the
Retirement Planning Group. Every week, Dave and his team discuss
the ways they can help people make informed decisions about
a wide array of retirement planning information that can support
you and devel being a more certain financial future for
(52:57):
you and your family. Now it's I'm for Dave Goback,
w G WISE Retirement Planning Specialist.
Speaker 3 (53:21):
Good day, a little Hughey, getting us rocket and rolling
here ready to rock and roll on travers Day.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
I'm Dave Kopak. This is a special segment of today's show.
You know, I'm a big believer in giving back. You know,
I've been very fortunate in my lifetime, and my wife
and I worked very hard, but we're also uh realistic
that we've been very blessed by children with good health
(53:53):
and you know that are doing very well in society.
And you know, I think you've heard me say over
and over again CBA. Both my boys went to Christian
Brothers Academy, and I couldn't speak more highly about their
education and the principles and the values that they teach
(54:14):
down there. And my wife and I have had issues
with family members that they've bumped into, some challenges personally.
And I've got doctor Darren Barkman here today that's going
to be discussing really an organization doctor that I knew
(54:35):
really nothing about until just recently. But good morning, good
morning to you. Glad you're here, Glad to be here.
You found the studio?
Speaker 8 (54:44):
Okay, oh absolutely, yeah, this is It's funny. This is
back in the day. I mean, we're old enough to
remember when this was the old CHP.
Speaker 1 (54:53):
But that's exactly I say it all the time. I said,
where is where are the studios? I said, do you
remember Capital District Physicians Help where they used to be
and Droyce connected he wrote, yep, and that's exactly what
it was. Yep.
Speaker 8 (55:04):
My wife came here the day before our first daughter
was born. Our obg y N was here in this building.
Oh it was, and she said, yep, you're you're two
centimeters dilated. It's time for you to go to the hospital.
So did she go right down the street? No, we were, well,
it was I think it was. I forget exactly the
(55:25):
woman's hospitals right down I.
Speaker 1 (55:26):
No, no, no.
Speaker 8 (55:27):
Carissa was born at Albany met Albany mess so yeah.
But yeah, but that was twenty seven, almost twenty seven
years ago.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
So it's amazing how time goes by. Oh yeah, just
amazing time goes by. But uh, we're gonna have you
here for the full half hour. We're not going to
take any breaks. So we're gonna get a lot of
information out to the people. Tell us about Life Song,
what is it, why was it originated, and what does
it do? Absolutely well.
Speaker 8 (55:56):
Life Soong was founded in twenty eleven and Life Soong
is an organization. We're based in Clifton Park right off
Exit E and we support adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities.
Our mission is to love, enhance, encourage, and inspire to
(56:16):
equip folks with disabilities and their families to be everything
that they can be to explore their gifts and abilities.
Independence is really a key in our program as well.
To take folks adults who are coming out of high
school transition programs. They get out of those at about
(56:39):
twenty one and they're looking for the next step. They
don't really know necessarily what to do, where to go.
Maybe they still have skills that they still need to
work on before they can adapt into the community. So
that's where we fill that need. You know, folks come
in maybe they're not completely ready for employment, and yet
(57:00):
they're not ready to live on their own do things
on their own. So we provide a day program where
they will come in and work on some of the
interpersonal skills, work skills, job skills, everything from pre vocational
areas all the way to reading, writing, math, things like that.
(57:24):
And we do that through volunteering in the community. We
have fifty to sixty nonprofit organizations that our participants will
go and volunteer with every week, and that is churches, ems, firehouses,
schools and they'll go do a variety of different tasks
(57:45):
with them. We also do skill building. We were talking
about that before we came out air where at our
plaza we have different areas and different things where they
can learn about music, woodworking, photo and video. And then
we all do recreation. We go out in the community
and we'll go hiking, exercising, sports, things like that. So
(58:08):
we do that as a day program to encourage independence,
growing skills that the circle of support the family wants
the participants to work on. And then eventually we also
have a supported employment program where if they're ready to
take that next step, then we link them up with
our supported employment with a job coach and they do
(58:30):
everything from resume building, you know, kind of exploration of
where they want to go, to actually finding them jobs.
We'll go into the community and find areas, organizations, businesses
that are looking to hire, that are willing to hire
folks with disabilities, and you know, we'll support them all
the way through and the goal ultimately is to not
(58:53):
be needed anymore.
Speaker 1 (58:54):
Right, Yeah, let me ask you a quick question before.
I had a very good client for years who had
a son that participated in the workshop in Minans. Does
that still exist? Is the workshop still in Minan's I'm
not sure. I'm not really because that was a program
(59:15):
that was set up for I think similar that would
get young adults kind of acclimated to get into the workforce,
et cetera. Personally, in our own family, we have three
individuals that are a battle I can't say battling because
that's not the right word, that are dealing with autism autism.
(59:36):
Was this as prevalent in the past as it is today?
Is it or is it peaked? Is there something going
on or is it just we have more of a
realization that autism is here.
Speaker 8 (59:47):
I think it's a little bit of both. I think
there is much more recognition help support, especially in New
York State. You know, the Office of People with Developmental Disabilities,
you know, has really expanded services, and there are a
lot more organizations to support, you know, I mean, there
(01:00:10):
are some ninety thousand folks that are connected with opwd
D right now, and then there's you know a variety
of other organizations and avenues to be able to support.
So I think just here at ninety thousand in New York, Yeah,
just in New York State. Yeah, And those are those
are folks that are receiving services through the State of
New York, right, But I mean there are others who
(01:00:31):
are dealing with, you know again dealing with like you said,
but it's not really battling because I mean the folks
who a lot of the folks that we work with,
I mean, they're not battling dealing. They're they're living their
best life. I mean, they're really enjoying things.
Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
Yeah. The thing that a young adult you know, I
think about our own personal situation and clients of ours,
was the transitioning of a twenty something year old into
a home a home environment. We actually have this Nico
who works for me, a certified financial planner. His family
is dealing with that right now themselves, with an individual
(01:01:05):
that they had a place in the past twelve to
eighteen months, which was difficult at first, but it's really
kind of blossomed into this great event for them where
this individual has really kind of built their own kind
of personality.
Speaker 8 (01:01:20):
Yeah, yeah, it's it. I think one of the cool
things about working for Life Song. I mean, we have
roughly two hundred folks that we support between the day
program and supported employment.
Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
What are their ages?
Speaker 8 (01:01:33):
Anywhere from let's see the one actually graduated early, so
he's nineteen twenty, all the way up into their mid
to late sixties. We've had folks in their seventies before
they retired, as they moved on. But I think one
of the really amazing things is to see the lights
(01:01:55):
go on, like you were talking about, where you know,
they they're put in a position succeed. They're put in
a position where they can really grow as an individual,
and they kind of get it. You know, I can
I can actually hold a job. I can do this.
This is something that that I actually do have the
ability to do it. And when that starts going, you know,
(01:02:19):
you start talking about actually earning a paycheck, you start
talking about getting married. You know, we have participants who
have gotten married. Yeah, participants who are they're they're talking
about buying houses and having kids, and and when that
ball starts rolling, it really I mean, I I start crying.
Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
We start talking Yeah, my my my wife's cousin Bullsa
he got married to a female that was, you know,
in the same program that he was in. Pretty pretty
much it is it's pretty emotional. And the thing is
is that he she has passed and now he's on
(01:03:00):
his own in a home and co hoose. But the
thing is is that he worked for Price Shopper Market
thirty two is a bagger Yep for years. Yep, he's retired.
He talks now Bobby that he's retired. Yeah, he's retired.
You know, he's just he's such a really he's such
a cool guy. Yeah. But life song. So you're dealing
with with adults, young adults, older adults that have life challenges.
(01:03:27):
Is that how you would classify it.
Speaker 8 (01:03:29):
Yeah, I mean there are many you mentioned autism. We
don't deal a lot with physical disabilities, you know, ours
are more intellectual developmental, you know, where you know they'll
they might have processing issues, they might have, you know,
inability to really communicate properly with the community, you know,
(01:03:50):
verbal delays, things like that, and the idea is to
maximize their potentials, you know, to do everything we can do. Generally,
a participant will come into program with three to five
different goals that they're working on, and it's our direct
support staff's job, in the middle of volunteering, in the
(01:04:12):
middle of skill building recreation, to be working on those
goals in those services. Whether it's again it's you know,
teaching them work skills, you know, how to focus on
a task, how to do something to completion, you know,
to work independently or if it's reading, so that they
can then take those skills and.
Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Work towards the work skills.
Speaker 8 (01:04:34):
So we're meeting them where they're at on that kind
of spectrum.
Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
If you will, let me ask you a question, and
this is probably the one that comes up the most
that I think. I think about the gentlemen that introduced
us to you. You know, something happens to them, the
parents there's a single child to see, there's no other children.
You know, that's always the greatest fear for individuals that
(01:05:02):
we work with. What happens to you know, Bobby when
we pass away, is there going to be this bubble
to protect him? How is that addressed? And how is
that something that's kind of the missing link or it's
being development right now?
Speaker 8 (01:05:19):
I think every family will look at their situation differently,
you know, I mean, you deal with retirement planning, so
I mean I think there are a lot of similarities
to that. You know, where are we at financially? Where
you know, are is their family? You know, across the
country we're working with a gentleman who's who's going to
(01:05:41):
be trialing in our program. And he actually lives in
his childhood home by himself. His sister owns the house.
She lives in Rhode Island, so he is independent enough
that he can manage the home he has, you know,
he has folks come in and help them locally. But
(01:06:02):
I think, you know, when tragedy strikes, things like that happened,
you know, families you know are are my My mother
and father in law participated in family care, which is
taking folks with disabilities. Maybe they're not appropriate for group
(01:06:23):
home settings, but they don't have family really to take
care of them. So opw d D developed this, uh,
this program where folks with disabilities will just kind of
move in with families in the community. And my mother
and father in law did that for a number of years.
And the young lady is still with my brother and
(01:06:46):
sister in law because both of my in laws have
now passed away. And we jokingly say that she came
with the house, you know, because they because they it
was a package deal, you know, And and there was
no doubt that my brother and sister in law were
going to assume responsibility for her.
Speaker 1 (01:07:05):
Sure, when my mother and my father in law.
Speaker 8 (01:07:08):
Passed away in twenty ten, and then she passed away
in twenty eighteen, but there was there was no question
of where she was going to go, that my brother
and sister in law were going to assume responsibility.
Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
And they do.
Speaker 8 (01:07:20):
They are now, they're not guardians, but they do help
her with her decise.
Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
She makes it makes it a lot more difficult though,
doesn't it when there's no brother or sister, Oh for sure? Oh?
When it when a single child. Yeah, we had we
had a gentleman that has passed away and his wife
is in a nursing home right now and their son
was transitioned to a home, which is he's done well.
(01:07:46):
His name is David. He's done well. But the thing
is is that that was always the achilles heel. That
was always the thing that his father worried about. Yeah,
is that you know, where is he going to go?
Will he be safe? You know? Is it a good environment?
And I would imagine that that's probably you know, one
of the sticking points for a lot of people as
they try to figure out what's what's the short term
(01:08:09):
and long term for my child? Yeah, I think.
Speaker 8 (01:08:14):
You know, again, I think it's part of the process
of the estate is you know, okay, well, you know,
along with a house and along with all the money
and the pension and this and then the other thing
comes Johnny and you know, we have a number of families.
I you know, I'm again I mentioned you know, my
in laws, but we have a number of families. You know,
(01:08:36):
I mean our participants, you know, getting into their late
thirties and early forties. That means mom, dad, aunt, uncles
are you know, they're in their seventies. You know, they're
they're thinking, you know, what's going to happen and there
I mean, there are a lot of great residential programs
in the community, group homes where folks can move into
can transition. Again, I think everybody's situation is a lot different,
(01:08:59):
and we in Life Song, we have a number of
really wonderful families. One gentleman does construction and does some
planning and has in his mind. I'm not sure exactly
where he's at. I haven't talked to him in a while,
but to actually build kind of a hybrid senior community
where folks with disabilities can move into the town homes,
(01:09:22):
kind of neighboring with the elderly and you know, then
they can all kind of watch each other.
Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
Fantastic. Yeah, yeah, So how do you survive? How do
you pay the bills? How do you basically keep the
lights on? How we keep the.
Speaker 8 (01:09:39):
Lights on is through Medicaid funding primarily, you know, we
build the state of New York for our services, right,
but that's as with anything that's dependent on Medicaid funding,
that fluctuates. Sure, so to do a lot of the
really creative things that we like to do, a lot
(01:10:00):
of the things that we kind of dream up. Hey,
it would be really fun to take the guys to
do this. Sure that all comes from donated funds.
Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
So you're you're technically classified as a five oh one
C three not for profit not for not for profit,
so a lot of your like, we're going to participate
with you guys in the scalf outing yep. And you
know the heading of it is not you know, swing
for a Cure that it should probably have a little
bit more meet to it where you know, let's help
and support life song which we'll talk a little bit
(01:10:29):
about that. But I love your mission statement, love, enhance,
equip and inspire. You really are doing God's work. I mean,
you really are. I mean you're really doing God's work.
And I think anybody that has never been in the
situation you know that. You know. I mean, like I
said at the beginning, I've been my wife and I
have been blessed by healthy kids, and you know, my
(01:10:53):
heart is always you know, we have a cousin who
has two boys, both of them that were born. He
has two children, both of them have autism. And the
thing is is that, you know, the effort, the commitment
by the parents I think is understated for sure. Uh.
Speaker 8 (01:11:13):
You know, we have tremendous individuals in our program, and
we have amazing families. You know, just thinking about some
of them, as you mentioned that the ones that that
just everything centers around the child. And there's one young
gentleman who's going through a lot of health issues right now,
(01:11:35):
LME disease and a lot of other things that are
going on, and that's a horrible disease. Yeah, and especially
for somebody who has developmental disabilities, and there's a lot
of medical things that go along with that. And one
of the coordinators on my team was talking to mom
this week. I mean she's just in tears, you know
how do I, you know, how do I work?
Speaker 1 (01:11:57):
How do I? You know?
Speaker 8 (01:11:58):
They they want him to go for days the infusions
for like the next like three months or something like that,
and it's like, what do I do?
Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
You know?
Speaker 8 (01:12:06):
I you know, she's she's divorced and she's on her own. Yeah,
I mean, it's a horrible situation. Yeah, and what does
she do? Well, Fortunately, there are grant programs, and there's
wonderful care management on the participant end that can navigate
and work on grant programs and work on a lot
(01:12:26):
of these different things funding areas for them. So you know,
we kind of point back to care management. But the
fella that she was talking to was a former care manager,
so he knows some of the ins and the outs,
and he's like, well, maybe you should try this, or
maybe you could talk to your care manager about so
on and so forth, and we do what we can.
I mean, we were we were talking to again. He
(01:12:50):
was talking to the mom and saying, you know, the
the infusion is at this point and I have to
be to work over here, and I don't know what
to do in the meantime, and I guess she has
other family issues things going on, and we looked at
the schedule and we realized, oh, well, he's actually going
to be doing a class at the Plaza that day,
so they could actually drop him off at a different time,
(01:13:14):
you know. So, I mean it's it's all kind of
on the fly and or you know, you're kind of figuring,
you know, what can we do? I mean, you know,
our scope is limited as a day program. Sure, you know,
we can't do some of the things that care management
can do. But I mean there there are a lot
of options. There are a lot of things available. You
just you have to know what rock to look under,
and you have to know what questions to ask.
Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
The Your facility is at Exit eight, but I saw
something in you're brochure here. You also have some kind
of a facility at the Sacondaga or you go to
the I mean, well, we have done camping in the past.
Is that what it is? Yeah?
Speaker 8 (01:13:50):
Yeah, the last couple of years we've actually been down
in the Catskills.
Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
So how do you do that? You just take a
group down for weekends or for a week or it's usually.
Speaker 8 (01:13:59):
Four from Monday through Thursday, and it's an overnight program.
And our i mean, our amazing direct support staff they
they step up to take the guys with our day program.
They'll go into the community and they'll pick up three
to four guys and then go to those volunteer sites
and do the skill building. So what they do is
(01:14:21):
they go through, they pick up the guys, all their
camping gear, all their stuff, and they'll drive down to
the cat Skills and they'll do activities. They'll do archery,
they'll do swimming, they'll do hikes, and they'll play games.
They'll just run these guys ragged for a few days,
you know, camp out and they'll they'll do barbecue and
they'll do burgers, and they'll do all sorts of differences,
(01:14:43):
doing all the things they should be doing.
Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
And it is it's a it's a highlight for the guys.
Speaker 8 (01:14:46):
We do a guys camp and a girls camp every
year and it is it's it's making memories. You also
do a dash, we do the Life Song Dash. It
is our main community of and it's usually the second
Saturday of June every year, which is interesting this year
because it was the day of the Belmont this year,
(01:15:07):
so that was fun. You know, people were saying, well
you should move it. I'm like, well, why we picked
it first, you know, the States and n Iris got
to move their day. But yeah, we we have the
five k at half Moontown Park and yep, so we
had a record number. We had three hundred and seventy
two runners and walkers this year, and we had a
(01:15:29):
number of businesses organizations support us. We raised over forty
thousand dollars this year. That's fit and it's it is
tremendous and not just the race, but then we have
the guys get up and they one of our groups
of guys sings the national anthem and they sing and
we do dancing and it's it really is. It's just
it's an amazing party day we set up. We set
(01:15:52):
it up like a like a a carnival almost, you know,
we wanted to be a party and then have a
five k on top of that.
Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
So well, and you're one of your last paragraphs here,
your investment in life song strengthens our ability to love, enhance,
equip and inspire This deserving popular couldn't be. You couldn't
written that better. Yeah, you couldn't written that better. Because
they are They've always got smiles on their faces. They
always seem to be happy and content. Oh, I know
(01:16:20):
sometimes that isn't the case, but for I'm going to
say that the bulk of the time they are. So
we're going to participate with you for this this year
September twenty six. I don't know, you've got about a
thousand people coming or.
Speaker 8 (01:16:34):
We've been we've been pushing it, you know, I mean
we have we have a great network.
Speaker 1 (01:16:40):
Well, they can make a contribution. They just don't have
to you know, they don't have to come. They can
they can make a contribution, just like our listening audience.
Well we've got we've got golfers too. I mean, I
haven't picked up a club in twenty years. I don't
even want me to play. But the joke in my
office is the safest place to stand when David's going
to drive the ball is in the middle of the fairway.
(01:17:01):
I hear that. I hear that. Yes, yeah, well, doctor,
let's kind of summarize a little bit. Okay, sure, we're
gonna be participating. We're gonna try to raise some good
money for you this year. You know, if someone wants
to reach out to you that this kind of touched
their heart today and maybe they want to participate, or
they have a loved one that wants to look at
(01:17:21):
your services, how do they get a hold of you?
Speaker 8 (01:17:23):
They can check out the website. It's Life Soong inc
Dot org. So Life Soong Like Life Soong Incorporated, Life
Soong i NC dot org. There you can see about
the day program about supported employment. There's a whole dash
page for the five K lots of pictures. We did
that on purpose. You can see a lot of our
(01:17:43):
guys and their element and what they do and our
phone number. We're five one eight four oh six five
one five seven, five one eight four oh six five
one five seven And uh yeah, if anybody is interested,
I'll give that out a few times.
Speaker 1 (01:17:58):
That'd be great. And then all so, how about an
employer that wants to look at your services to bring
one of the you know, XYZ Corporation that wants to
bring some of your individuals in to possibly work through
their distribution channel or their offices. Is that available? Also?
Absolutely is?
Speaker 8 (01:18:19):
We have We have a lot of folks in our
supported employment that are still looking, you know, they're still
kind of in the process and they can use that
same number four oh six, five one five seven and
just look for supported employment.
Speaker 9 (01:18:33):
It's one of the one of the choices. Okay, once
you do that, well, I want to thank you for
coming in. Thank you having us very much. We're very proud.
Speaker 1 (01:18:43):
You know. Dennis is a very good friend of mine
and I think the world of him and his family.
So this is this is something that we love to
do and we're more than happy to do it. So
we'll see on the twenty sixth of September, and thank
you for coming. Thank you for having us. We really
appreciate the support.
Speaker 5 (01:19:08):
A better fan dancer down in South Southerner than Hill.
She was running from a foutall Man seven sal the
seven here now, I was tying, save.
Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
Me when I'm doing all right?
Speaker 3 (01:19:34):
The best that I gave just another father bando.
Speaker 5 (01:19:43):
Chiming up through the nine by.
Speaker 1 (01:19:55):
Step what a I thank doctor Darren Barkman coming in.
He is the dash director Life Song. I didn't know
that much about it until just recently. They're going to
(01:20:16):
participate with us in our Swing for a Cure. You know,
this is something that's close to Julie and I because
we have family members that have had some issues. And
I'm going to talk a little bit on this side
of the fence. If it's touched your heart and you
(01:20:40):
want to make a contribution to this wonderful organization. How
you can do it through donations And it's possible for
those that are listening to donate IRA assets and you
(01:21:02):
can do it during your lifetime so you can see
the beauty of what you've created by making those distributions
to a charity five OHO one C three which they
are a nonprofit and it allows you. This is the key, folks.
(01:21:24):
This is like a double double banana split with sixteen
cherries on top. You don't have to pay any income
tax on it. So if you're older and you've got
lots of IRA money and you say to yourself, jeez,
I really don't need this money. It's going to be
(01:21:46):
a tax liability. Why would I want to have this
tax liability this year? You don't. If you're over the
age of seventy and a half, you can contribute up
to one hundred thousand dollars from an IRA directly to
a charity and avoid paying income taxes on the distribution.
(01:22:10):
And this is known as a qualified charitable distribution. But
here's the key. It is limited to iras people who
are over the age of seventy and a half or
older can contribute up to one hundred thousand dollars from
their IRA directly to a charity and avoid paying income
(01:22:34):
taxes on the distribution. This is known as a qualified
charitable distribution. It is limited to irays. So you have
X number dollars in an IRA, you don't want to
satisfy the distribution with the taxman. You don't want to
split it up. It also allows you to satisfy your
(01:22:58):
RMD and still not have a tax consequence. Okay, donating
to a charity upon your death. I don't know if
you want to do that or not. But when you
name a charity as a beneficiary to receive your IRA
or some of your IRA or part of your IRA,
(01:23:20):
neither you where your air has to pay any tax
liability on those distributions. Because charities pay no income tax.
The full amount goes to the charity which will directly
benefit the charity of your choice, such as Life's Song.
(01:23:43):
As I said, it's possible divide your retirement assets between
charities and heirrors. We've done this with a lot of individuals.
So you've got Bobby and Susie and Billy, and you've
got Life Song. The percentages you choose, that's who goes
to This is a heartfelt This is something that you
(01:24:05):
do from you know, the bottom of your heart because
you see that the opportunity that you're going to be
able to create for this wonderful organization. It's not just
Life Song. You can do this with a lot of
other organizations. Also, what's the advantages of making upon death
(01:24:28):
your IRA assets. It's going to a organization, whether it's
Life Song or a college. We've had individuals that have
(01:24:51):
done significant contributions to humane societies. If any of this
is of interest to you and you want to get started,
we have the ability to sit down with you and
have a chat and just say, listen, I heard Dave
(01:25:12):
on the radio talking about Life Song. Remember what their
tagline is, Love, Enhance, equip and aspire, inspire, you know,
just as a highlight here. Okay, this is something that's
(01:25:33):
very close to Julie and I because of our loved
ones and we have family members that are being in
a situation with autism and it's uh, it's it's you're
you're doing something I would say extremely meaningful. And Fidelity
(01:25:59):
actually has a charitable organization a department that is specifically
set up to help us facilitate these kind of contributions.
So I'll give out my telephone number. Say I listened
to Dave on the radio. I want to make a
contribution to this organization. It's pretty easy. Just call five
(01:26:23):
one eight, five eight zero one nine nine. That's five
one eight five eight zero one nine nine and again
do a little search on the web. Life song. I
want to thank doctor for coming in, doctor Darren Barkman,
(01:26:43):
and let your heart lead the way. Folks, if this
is something that you want to do, we're here to
facilitate it and to say I want to make a donation.
And I will say this to you. I look forward
to hearing from you. These people are doing God odds work.
We'll be right back after this quick message the eighty
(01:27:04):
six percenters. Do you know that eighty six percent of
the population has no defined benefit pension plan. For most
of us, we have to take our life savings and
create a paycheck for the rest of our lives in retirement.
What is your plan for retirement income distribution? How you
manage your assets during the most critical years of your lifetime.
Nobel Prize winning economist William Sharp has called retirement income
(01:27:26):
distribution the nastiest, hardest problem in finance. He points out
that investment, uncertainty and mortality can derail the most careful
laid out retirement income plan. Call our offices today to
start the process of building a retirement income distribution plan.
After forty one years of being in the financial services business,
you need to start taking action to start building your
(01:27:46):
own personal retirement income distribution plan. How do you do that?
To take action? Five one eight five eight zero nine nine.
That's five one eight five eight zero one nine one
nine or RPG retire on the web. Don't procrastinate, motivate,
start building your retirement income distribution plan five eight five
eight zero one nine.
Speaker 4 (01:28:07):
If you would like to hear more information on navigating
your way to retirement from Dave Kopek. Remember you can
listen to this show and past shows anytime and anywhere
on the free iHeartRadio app, or go to iHeart dot
com and search retirement planning show.
Speaker 5 (01:28:44):
This tarner.
Speaker 1 (01:28:51):
A pardon team turner.
Speaker 5 (01:29:13):
That's what.
Speaker 1 (01:29:23):
Travers day. Everybody's probably on the road getting ready to
rock and roll. I think the I think, I think,
I think the races start early today. They got like,
I don't know a bunch of races today. I think
(01:29:44):
you probably know because you're the sports guy.
Speaker 7 (01:29:45):
I don't really know because I'm always working on the weekend,
so I don't pay attention that much to that.
Speaker 1 (01:29:49):
Well, you got to take a day off, man, Hey,
you're like me. I enjoy your company.
Speaker 7 (01:29:54):
I can't take a day off. We're soul brothers, Zax
my man or my father from another father, and.
Speaker 1 (01:30:10):
I love you brother. The bottom line is is that
today is a beautiful day, and then please go out
and enjoy it. It's you know, it's hard to believe.
We gonna blink our eyes. The kids are going to
be back in school. Good thing about September though, guess
what football? Football starts. Love my football, love watching it.
So I want to go over a couple of things.
(01:30:33):
You know, we were kind of heartfelt here talking about
things that can get done for you know what I
call God's work. Don't forget September twenty sixth Swing for Cure,
American Cancer Society and Lost Life Song Ink and they're
right here in the Capitol District region and they do
God's work. So if you want to participate in the golf,
(01:30:56):
Audie called Jim five eight five eight zero nine five
one eight five eats zero one nine one nine and
say I heard Dave on the radio. Sign us up.
You don't have to come. There's a dinner. If you
don't want a golf there's a dinner. You can just
come for the dinner. Or you can say you know
what that means something to me? It kind of touched
(01:31:19):
my heart. I'd like to take some of my IRA
money and make a contribution. And oh, by the matter
of fact, if you're at a certain age, you're not
going to have any tax liability. That sounds good, huh,
no tax liability, and you're sending money for people that
are doing God's work. So the key takeaway hopefully you
(01:31:40):
got from this is that, you know, when we talk
about retirement at the retirement Planning Group, I talked today
a little bit about open architecture and how important it
is to us. But as you all know, every family's different.
Everybody has different things that are important to them. Children
that have possibly issues you may you know, want specific
(01:32:03):
things set up for a child that has maybe autism
or has some challenges with drug addiction. And there's no
cookie cutter approach to that. I'm always flabbergasted by people
who want to work through an eight hundred telephone number.
You know, we bring all the services, all the benefits
of working through fidelity, but you have a team at
(01:32:25):
the retirement Planning Group. But remember the good news is this,
whatever your situation is, Whatever your situation is, I believe
at the retirement planning group we can help improve not
only your retirement readiness, but also the obstacles that you
(01:32:46):
faced during your pre and post retirement years, because there
can be many many, as we're all quite well aware,
I think we live in a society today. I don't
know what's going on. I just had this chat last
night with some friends of ours. We've got a lot
of people that are dealing with cancer, too many. I
(01:33:07):
got two really good buddies right now that are being
challenged right now. I talk to a friend of mine
at Stuart's this morning when I got my coffee. Another
friend of ours has just been diagnosed with cancer. It's just,
it's just I don't know. I don't know what's going on.
Don't know what's going on. But the thing is is
that anytime you get into a retirement plan, you got
(01:33:32):
to not only think about the good times what we
call the go go years, but you also want to
talk about the slowgo, the no go years. And how
much flexibility do you have? How much flexibility do you
have with your plan? Because that is critical in order
to basically go through the landscape of life, this path
(01:33:53):
that we have to go down as far as the
obstacles that we face. We take great pride in sitting
down with our clients and prospective clients, not only addressing
the investment side of it, which I called one peg
love your investment plan. How many legs do you have
(01:34:14):
on your retirement planning? Stool man? Do you have a pension?
Does your pension continue for your spouse, significant other, loved ones? Right?
If you don't have a pension, is there ways for
you to create a pension in order to have lifetime income.
(01:34:34):
Let's say you have a child that's challenged. How do
you set it up that there's going to be money
there in the future that will last a lifetime. Well,
there's ways to do that, folks, And it's all guaranteed.
It's all guaranteed, no questions asked. The only guarantee what
will be the final number? As far as income, we
(01:34:56):
can give you a baseline that can only go up
from there, it can't go down. And then of course
growth potential purchasing power with your investment program. You know,
I don't have to tell you what's happened in the
last ten, fifteen, twenty years for people that retired at
fifty five. They're still fairly young, seventy seventy five years
(01:35:17):
of age. We just had a couple in the other day,
just had a couple in the other day. He was fortunate.
He retired at age fifty seven, has been living the
good life for about fifteen years now, he's seventy two
years of age, and now he's looking at RMD and
how it's going to affect his income plan. So we're
(01:35:39):
creating and we're managing an investment program now at age
seventy two that was entirely different than his plan that
he had at fifty seven. He had player stock options,
He had an investment overall philosophy that was probably a
little bit more aggressive than we would have had, you know,
(01:35:59):
as a standard cookie cutter approach that you would probably
take with a sixty forty portfolio. This guy wanted one
in the stock market. Wasn't afraid of it, wanted to be,
you know, actively involved in stocks. He did do some
cult consulting on the side, which brought in some additional revenue,
(01:36:20):
but the thing it worked out well for him. And finally,
be flexible. You got to be flexible. You know. We
talked about understanding all of the nuts and bolts of
your investment program. Does the investment suit your overall investment philosophy,
(01:36:42):
your RTQ, your risk tolerance. Does it have liquidity? Does
it have liquidity if you want out, can you get
out right nine point thirty to four o'clock or can
you send in a letter and say, you know what,
liquidate these investments. Some don't give you that. You have
(01:37:03):
to stay until the portfolio manager basically liquidates the portfolio
or gives you the option to take the cash. So
I always talk about the five steps to consider when
you're starting building out your overall retirement income distribution plan
and also your legacy plan eighty trillion dollars eighty plus
(01:37:31):
trillion dollars will pass over the next twenty to thirty years.
Identify your personal goals Number one this story today life soong.
Do you have charitable intent? Do you have the ability
(01:37:57):
to establish income streams for your children because of the
success that you've had in your lifetime. Is it important
for you to do that? Do you have enough money
in the pot right now in order to make these
(01:38:18):
kind of distributions? I know a lot of times. I
remember Judge Copple of Its they used to be on
another radio station with me. Used to always see was
a navigate. You keep your money until you pass away.
Then then the children receive the assets because you never
know what's coming down the path for healthcare events. So
(01:38:43):
how much do you have allocated in emergency funds? How
much do you have for income protection if it's important
for you and also for your loved ones. And here's
the key which a lot of you I don't think
think about out who will manage your assets when your
(01:39:03):
financial advisor goes into the green pastures. I mean that's
something that I've addressed in the past year. I've got Nico,
I've got Chris McCarthy, and I have my son Christopher.
I know that if something happens to me, my business
(01:39:24):
does not change a bet because I got the three amigos.
And then, finally, the biggest thing that I see all
the time, implement, don't procrastinate, implement the plan, put it
(01:39:45):
in place. I'm sitting down in Florida the other day
and I'm talking to a guy and he says, yeah,
I'm trying to put everything together. I'm trying to figure
this out and how I want to diversify my assets
and the moneies that I want to keep, maybe the
moneyes I want to get the way And I said,
how long have you been thinking about it? He says
too long? He said a couple of years. I said,
(01:40:06):
what happens to you if or your family, what happens
to your family, Something happens to you today. He goes, well,
it's probably not going to be a good situation. So
I said, at a minimum, at a minimum, do something,
you know, get the documents in place. I have a
(01:40:31):
situation on Tuesday of this week. Wonderful client. He's been
a client for probably thirty years. Lisa calls me yesterday
on my cell phone. It says, mister X needs to
(01:40:51):
talk to you asap. He has an emergency. So I
call him up, talk to him. What's going on? My
son in law is on death story. He's had some
(01:41:15):
health issues, went into the hospital. He was deceased on
the table technically for twelve minutes. They brought him back,
but he's only going to be back for a short
period of time. What can I do for you, my
good man, How can I help you? He says, they
(01:41:38):
have nothing in place. They have no will, no durable
power of attorney, no health care proxy, they have no
legal documents at all. So I said, I can't see
it Monday, but I can see a Tuesday. So he's
bringing his daughter in on Tuesday morning at ten am
to see what we can do with nine planning. Called
(01:42:03):
the attorney that I felt comfortable with that I think
can address this the quickest way. Spoke to him. He's
going to be involved in the meeting through a conference call.
He can't physically be there. But the reason why I'm
bringing this up is not to sound pompous like I'm
(01:42:31):
this great guy and I'm patting myself in the back.
But the reason why I'm bringing this up, too many
of you are in this situation where you haven't buttoned
it up, you haven't dotted your eyes and crushed your
te's and when something does happen, which it usually does
happen when we least expect it all hell breaks loose,
(01:42:52):
and that's not really what we want for our loved
ones and our family members. So when I talk about
the five steps, I think the most critical one of
all of them, of all of them is just to
do it. Just do it. Stop procrastinating, stop sitting on
(01:43:15):
the fence. You know, just do it. Might not be
one hundred percent correct, but ninety five percent or ninety
nine percent correct is going to be a hell of
a lot better than one hundred percent being a total mess.
So to end today's program, start a conversation with your
(01:43:41):
spouse and loved ones, figure out exactly where you are
in your overall financial life. And if you want to
build out a wealth management program, we're here to help.
First couple appointments for all ears. Mouth doesn't move too much.
(01:44:07):
Nico lass about that, he says, Dave, you can't shut
your mouth. But the bottom line is that the first
couple conversations we should be all ears, and then we
facilitate what needs to be done as far as taking action.
So if any of this that I've talked about today,
(01:44:28):
if you want to help out our good friends at
Life Song, you want to participate on Swing for a
cure September twenty six. We would love you to participate
in any capacity that you can do. All you have
to do is call my office at five one eight
five eat zero one nine nine five eight five eat
(01:44:51):
zero one nine one nine. Talk to the big cheese
Jimmy Corkoran. He's the guy that's the director of all
of this, who does a phenomenal job. Say I heard Dave.
We want to help life song out. We want to
come to the golf outing, we want to come to
the whatever it is. Whatever it is, we would greatly
appreciate it. You guys, have a great weekend, enjoy yourself,
(01:45:13):
be safe. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 (01:45:17):
Thank you for listening to The Retirement Planning Show, hosted
by Dave Kopek, w g wise retirement Planning Specialist. If
you would like to talk with Dave or someone at
the Retirement Planning Group, call five one eight five eight
zero one nine nine. That's five eight five eight zero
one nine one nine during business hours, or visit RPG
(01:45:37):
retire dot com. The Retirement Planning Group has five convenient
offices located in Albany, Malta, Glens Falls, Syracuse, and Oneana.
Tune in again next week for retirement planning Strategies with
Dave Kopek right here on WG Wise Retirement Planning Show.
The information our services discussed on this show is for
(01:45:59):
informational purposes only and is not intended to be personal
financial advice. The investments and services offered by US may
not be suitable for all investors. If you have any
doubts as to the merits of an investment, you should
seek advice from an independent financial advisor.
Line from the w g y iHeart Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Welcome to the Retirement Planning Show with your host Dave
Kopek from the Retirement Planning Group. Every week, Dave and
his team discussed the ways they can help people make
informed decisions about a wide array of retirement planning information
that can support you and developing a more certain financial
future for you and your family. Now it's time for
(00:23):
Dave Copec WGY's retirement planning specialist.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Boom, bone, Oh yeah, bone, they say it's all right,
the bone. They say it's all right. Say it's all right.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Be a good time because it's all right. Whoa, it's
all right. Now we're going to move it's bone up
the lines. Look opinion. Boom, it feels like come home
because it's hard. Whoa, it's hard.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Now listen to the Good Morning, Happy travers Day. There'll
be a lot of people up there today. More in Zach.
Dave is back back from Florida. I have three out
(01:30):
of my four children now living in Florida, one in Boca,
one in Sarasota, and one in Tampa. My oldest daughter
moved to Sarasota from Nashville, and my youngest daughters in
Boca and my son is in Tampa. So Florida is
now copik Land. So had a great time settled my
(01:56):
daughter and into FAU Florida Atlantic University, which is a beautiful,
beautiful university. It's right there in Boca. I would compare
it comparable to the state campus up. I'm Washington, have extension.
It's got that kind of a vibe. And she's there,
(02:17):
she's in her apartment with her two roommates, and the
way she goes, she's got wings. I'm always amazed by
Florida folks. I always talk about the three c's corn
crete construction cranes. No matter where you go in Florida.
Love the Boca area, Love all of Florida. I shouldn't
(02:40):
say I mean there's not a lot of I mean,
I don't like the congestion in Miami and some of
the Tampa when you're driving. But it's just it's booming.
Florida is booming. I know my son loves it. David Michael,
(03:01):
So we're gonna spend a lot of time down there.
We have a lot of clients in Florida. I keep
people keep been asking me, what are you gonna open
an office in Florida. We have an office in Florida.
We're gonna start using the Regis R. E. G Us
Corporation if we have to have meetings in an office
or a conference room. Regis has offices throughout Florida. There
(03:21):
are executive suites. So instead of being just one location,
I use probably Tampa quite a bit because that's where
my son is and that's also where we have a
pretty high concentration of people in the Tampa north, south,
east and west of Tampa. So but it's good to
be back. But you know, today's travers Day, so if
(03:45):
you're if you're going, you better go because my understanding
is that all the hotels are packed and if you
want a table, you better get there quick. And as
we're all quite well aware, it's going to be a beautiful,
absolutely spectacular day in upstate New York. So you might
(04:07):
see record crowd if things go right up there. My
son's going with his girlfriend's family and his girlfriend, so
Chris and Marissa will be up there. My wife and
I are heading the Lake George. We're going to go
float on the boat. Little Housekeeping Swing for a Cure
(04:31):
is September twenty six. We are doing this in conjunction
with an organization called Life Song, and a gentleman's going
to come in at the top of the hour, doctor
Darren Barkman, to talk a little bit about Life Song,
(04:52):
their strengths, what they do. It's a pretty amazing organization.
One of our wonderful, wonderful clients brought this to our
attention and said, can you guys help out a little bit?
And I said absolutely, but he'll talk more about who
Life Song is, what they do, how they participate in
(05:14):
the community. But our swing for a cure will be
money that will be generated for the American Cancer Society
and also for Life Song, and we're proud to do
that this year. So if you're not doing anything September
twenty six, our office looks like a retail story right now.
We have so much stuff that Jim has put together,
(05:38):
as far as gifts and handouts and raffles and baskets.
It's just I think this is going to blow the
doors off this year. As far as one of our
best Jim, I tipped my hat to Jim Corkoran. He's
just done a phenomenal job putting all of this together.
So September twenty six Swing for a Cure. You'll walk
(06:01):
out of there, You'll have a fantastic meal, You'll do
something special for a lot of people. The money stays
here in the community, Here in the community. I know
that you've heard me talk about the horrific year that
we've had, Julie and I and you know, we've lost
(06:21):
five loved ones in the last eight months, two of
them to cancer. And you know, it's a horrible disease.
I've got two really good friends right now, two really
good friends that are battling this horrific disease. And it's
just it's sad to see. It's sad to see. And
(06:42):
hopefully we can find a cure for cancer and we
can put an end to this. Just it's just devastating.
It's you know, we've lost a lot of family members
and personal friends and loved ones. So September twenty sixth,
if you want to participate, if you can't make it,
you can still participate. You can still make a donation,
which would be greatly appreciated. You just called Jim and
(07:05):
to say I heard Dave on the radio and we
like to do something special for Swing for a Cure
of the proceeds go to these two our strategic partners,
and also the Retirement Planning Group picks up the cost
of this. Okay, what else do I want to do
(07:27):
a little bit? You know, as you know, I got
kind of an axe to grind here. You know, I've
been traveling a lot, so you know, I spent five
days in Florida this past week, and then we had
the opportunity to go to the track. And the track
is different. It's not like it used to be in
my opinion. You know, we used to go out in
(07:48):
the Paddock area, get a pick the table, hang out
with the family and the friends and the kids. I
emphasize kids. It's not that way anymore. I I don't
think I'll go back to me if I go to
the track, I'll go in the clubhouse because out in
the Paddock area there is this it's prone to kind
of kumbaya. Let's go have a good time. We sat
(08:10):
next to a bunch of people again this time and
they were smoking dope, drinking pretty crazy. It's just not
the environment that I'm accustomed to. I mean, I love
to go up and have a good time, but the smell,
the stench, I actually talked about this the other day
with some friends of mine. I know that there's certain
(08:32):
areas that you have to go to to the smoke.
There should be certain areas at the Saratoga Racetrack that
you have to go to in order to smoke marijuana
cigarettes because the smell, the stench, not everybody likes to
sniff it. These guys got pretty crazy after, you know,
smoking a couple of those things, and it just kind
of I couldn't wait to get out of there, to
(08:54):
be honest with you, I couldn't wait to get out
of there. I felt like saying, here's my five hundred dollars.
I'm going to lose it, you know here, you know,
to just take my money and then we'll get in
the car and we'll go back to Lake George. So
I don't know, I don't know what the answer is.
I know, you know you can't smoke in certain areas.
You shouldn't be able to smoke dope. I went up
to the guy, the security guard. He gave me the
(09:15):
same answer that he gave me. Your previous is that
you know they've been told just to stay away, let
them do whatever they're going to do unless they're you know,
causing you know, I guess a ruckus. That's my two cents,
but I won't be back. Sorry to say, but just
there's nothing for me. Nothing. Well, I got a lot
(09:38):
of good news. You got a lot of good news
as far as what's going on in the markets, and
we'll talk a little bit about it. I'm gonna take
my first break because we're almost at fifteen after But
Powell came out and there were no surprises. The surprise
was is that what how he came out and the
(10:00):
cometary which we'll talk a little bit about that. I've
been talking about bonds now for twelve eighteen months. Well
it's happening. It's happening. We're starting to get the bang
for the buck. If you're chasing coupon and yield, you
better get in there now. That's my advice to clients.
(10:20):
Sometimes things take a little bit longer, not only in life,
but also with your investment portfolio. So as they say,
you know, patient pays off. Patience pays off, especially if
you stay disciplined with your investment platform. And I'm glad
(10:40):
to say that I think that being consistent and sticking
to our guns that will be extremely beneficial for our
clients that like fixed income, that like bonds. So and
we'll be right back after this quick message. I'm Dave Kopek,
Wguy's retirement planning specialist. This is my forty third year
(11:03):
in the business. I hope to make fifty at least,
not retiring, not going anywhere. Our business is doing phenomenal.
I said to my team the other day, I think
this is the best team that I've had since I've
been in the business. Compassionate, caring, just a really wonderful,
wonderful group of people. We have five locations now here
in the state of New York. Malta, Glens Falls, Aubity, Oneana, Syracuse.
(11:29):
Will be out in Syracuse for a clam bake the
later part of September with our friends from National Grid.
We're sponsoring some of that clan bake. So I look
forward to that meeting some of our friends out there
that listen to the show. So again, if anything that
we're discussing is of interest to you, we offer a
(11:51):
complementary consultation at either any of those offices at your home. Zoom.
We're doing a ton of Zoom meeting lady lately. You
can just call our office talk to one of our
team members at five point eight five eight zero one
nine one nine today. Anything that I'm talking about. If
you want to participate, it's pretty simple. You just pick
(12:13):
up the telephone and you dial one eight hundred talk WGY.
That's one eight hundred eight two five fifty nine forty nine.
We'll be right back the eighty six percenters. Do you
know that eighty six percent of the population has no
defined benefit pension plan. For most of us, we have
to take our life savings and create a paycheck for
the rest of our lives in retirement. What is your
(12:34):
plan for retirement income distribution? How you manage your assets
during the most critical years of your lifetime. Nobel Prize
winning economist William Sharp has called retirement income distribution the nastiest,
hardest problem in finance. He points out that investment, uncertainty,
and mortality can derail the most careful laid out retirement
income plan. Call our offices today to start the process
(12:57):
of building a retirement income distribution plan. After forty one
years of being in the financial services business, you need
to start taking action to start building your own personal
retirement income distribution plan. How do you do that to
take action five one eight, five eight zero one nine
one nine. That's five one eight five eight zero one
nine one nine or RPG retire on the web. Don't procrastinate,
(13:19):
motivate and start building your retirement income Distribution plan five
one eight five eight zero one nine one nine.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
We're here live in studio. If you have any questions,
please call one eight hundred talk WGY one eight hundred
eight two five five nine four nine. Want to talk
with Dave after the show call five one eight five
eight zero one nine one nine.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
One way street.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Just all again for someone to meet one moment.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Who is the game man? Now?
Speaker 5 (14:16):
Got the feet out his.
Speaker 6 (14:17):
Nine and I want if your stepfather night.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
So I'm coming. I don't want to be live please,
I want to love you all over.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
We are back. It's good to be back. Good week,
good week in the markets. Doubt saw I gain it
(14:56):
one point three percent. It's up a little over nine
s and P five four percent for the week, up
a little over eighteen percent, NASDAK one point four positive,
it's up about nineteen percent. And here's the big one
right now, the ten year treasury point or three point
eight zero three point eight zero. Wasn't that long ago, folks,
(15:19):
that was at five. So as you can see declining
interest rates, capital appreciation of bonds. If you're a bond
investor and your patients has been challenged, you should be
looking at capital appreciation inside your portfolios, which are good okay.
(15:39):
And if you're buying individual bonds, you only realize that
if you sell okay, because bonds always mature at part,
So make sure that your financial team is monitoring those bonds.
It might make sense to harvest, harvest some of those
gains and reapers, especially right now when you've got the
opportunity to go out a little bit more on the
(16:00):
yield curve. But I guess the big thing is that
you know, of course, you know, everybody's been waiting for
Powell and what his statement was going to be in
Jackson Hole, Wyoming in regards to monetary policy, and the
(16:22):
weight is over okay. It looks like September is going
to be the date that they're going to start declining
interest rates. And the question now Wall Street is going
to be twenty five basis points or a fifty bit
fifty basis points And the markets, of course have been
(16:46):
fixated on this and I personally think that the commentary
from Powell has been consistent, you know, data dependent, and
he's been saying that for the last two three years
at least. So the FED is basically held steady for
(17:08):
almost a year now its rate And what does this
mean for you the consumer of financial products or what
does it mean to your life? Well, if interest rates
go down, that means to cost the goods and services
are going to be less. Your house is going to
(17:32):
be less as far as the interest rate. You know,
we have Druello in here a lot talking about the
fixed income market because he was in the investment banking
business for years before he got into the mortgage industry.
And you know, lower rates gives you more purchasing power,
gives you a bigger house, makes it more affordable. Right.
(17:54):
But as we talk about the FED and how far
are they going to go this year in two thoy
and twenty four, I think you're going to see at
least at a minimum two possibly three rate cuts. If
they go fifty, then I think you could see another
(18:15):
twenty five. If they do twenty five, I think you
could see three cuts twenty five, twenty five, twenty five.
But you know, basically what's been the the skeleton in
the closet that they've been worried about. Of course it's inflation.
Course CPI. I don't have to tell people I shop
for the house because I get up early in the morning.
(18:36):
I'm at you know, mark at thirty two at six
o'clock in the morning because there's nobody in there and
I can get in and out in about ten minutes.
You know, the cost of goods and services are through
the roof. Through the roof, you know, for the average
couple that has to go in and buy groceries, put
food on the table, gasoline in the car, the electric bill.
(19:00):
I mean, don't even get me into healthcare. I'm going
to bring a special guest on hopefully in the next
week or two, to talk about healthcare. Healthcare right now
is insane, the cost of healthcare. If your employer is
picking up the cost of your healthcare, you ought to
(19:21):
walk in there every Monday, shake their hand, and go
in there on Friday and slap them on the back
and say thank you so much. Healthcare. You know, as
a small independent businessman that has to deal with healthcare,
it's staggering. What's happening with healthcare. Sat next to a
(19:44):
guy the other day. I had mentioned this before in
the radio. I talked about it the other day in
the office. Him and his wife want to go to retirement.
They're in their early sixties, they're not sixty five yet,
and they looked at what it's going to cast them
on a monthly basis to pay for health care to
bridge to a Medicare Medicare supplement, and it was nineteen
(20:07):
hundred dollars a month. My own personal situation is Julie
just retired from the school district, my wife, and she
didn't work there long enough for health care for me,
but she has health care for her. So I had
to go out into the marketplace and I have to
find health care for myself and two of my children.
So I have to find a family plan. Well, it's
(20:29):
over two thousand dollars a month, and order for me
to basically duplicate what my wife had two thousand I
think it's two thousand and forty seven dollars a month
in order for me to have health care, almost twenty
five thousand dollars a year. And you wonder why there's
a deterioration of the middle class. You wonder why people
(20:52):
are trying to, you know, squeeze their nickels and dimes
together in order to you know, have quality of life.
So there has been a deterioration in my opinion about
quality of life, especially for people that are not under
a group plan, your small independent businessman. Yeah. I mean
(21:13):
there's a lot of people out there that are doing
exceptionally well, but there's a lot of what we do
a lot of work, and I'm proud to say that
because of my background from a farming background, we do
a lot of work with hard working savers. That's the
people that's our sweet spot. The guy that's out there
humping and the lady that's out there humping every single week,
(21:35):
every single year in order to basically put a little
bread and butter on the table and have enough to
set aside for their retirement years. And there's been a deterioration.
So I think this is going to be a positive.
You know. I don't think it's going to be dramatic.
I don't think it's going to happen immediately, as nothing does.
(21:57):
But I can give you some numbers here as far
as does happen in the financial markets. You already know
what my position has been on bonds. I've been talking
about that, if you've been listening to this show, I've
been a very bullish on bonds, right, depending on what
happens in this election, which happens in November. History has
(22:21):
shown us after they start cutting rates. The first rate
cut in eighty four. When they started, it was eight
point six percent. Total return. After two years it was
thirty nine percent November of eighty seven, eighteen point eight.
Two years later fifty point two percent. Well, August of
(22:42):
nineteen twelve percent after two years up fifty two point
eight percent. Now that's history. There's no guarantees that that's
going to happen. But what usually what happens? How does
the market increase in value? It's pretty simple. It's economics
one oh one, anticipation of earnings. What is the multiple?
(23:09):
More money, more profit, more earnings, higher stocks. Doesn't get
any more complicated than that unless you have something unique,
right the technology stocks which will drive your pe ratios
through the roof. So you know we've got some I
(23:31):
think some opportunity here. I don't know if it's clear sailing.
I've seen too many black swan evants events, events, events
in my life after forty three years of doing this,
so I was you know, now is the time I
(23:51):
signed up all four of us. We're going to a
conference in Boston, myself, Nico, Chris McCarthy, and my son Christopher.
Fidelity has a conference in October where they bring in
a lot of speakers, a lot of their portfolio managers.
But you know, we had to chat with them this
(24:12):
week our weekly conference call, and I think things look
pretty good here, I really do. So you know, everybody
talks about point of entry and getting into the market.
You know, be diversified. Make sure you understand the risk
that's associated with managing assets, retirement assets, because it can
(24:33):
be a bumpy ride at times. But if you're diversified
and you've got baseline income, what we talk about all
the time, baseline income, the ability to weather the storm,
not get emotional, pull your hair out of your head, right,
that's when you make bad decisions. You don't want to
(24:54):
be emotional. You don't want to make decisions based on emotion.
You want to be making decisions. You know, I'm okay,
I've got the right acid allocation, but you should be
looking at that again right now. So we're going to
be back. It's our first break. I'm Dave Kopek w
G Wise retirement planning specialists. We'll see on the other
(25:15):
side of the news.
Speaker 6 (25:16):
Why he's a curious thing.
Speaker 5 (25:42):
Make a one man, we make another man sing, do
it in a way.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
I'm gonna be in.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Cover love.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Priests like cream strong.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
A man stream a bad one.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Good your oe writers.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
You homely mind.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Don't need money, don't take same, you don't need a
credit card. Ride's trained, he said, it's grown sometimes telling
you that's a power.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
All right, I'll get you moving, the blood flowing, little coffee,
Get up, get going, get outside. I'm looking at blue skies,
green grass, eighty degrees. Tell you, folks, it doesn't get
any better than this. Life is good. Life is good.
(26:56):
So get out there and enjoy the day. Say the
hell with work, health yard. I'm doing something special with
my bride and my family, and we're going to go
out there and enjoy the day. That's what I say.
All right, you know, I want to get back a
little bit on the rate cuts because it's not a
(27:17):
cure all as we're all quite well aware. But as
I said briefly, less what we call less restrictive policy
is good news. So you're not going to see instantaneously
three percent mortgages up here, or you're not going to
see you more monetary stimulus flowing from Washington. But lower
(27:41):
rates can be supportive to the stock market and of course,
as you know, total return in the bond market. So
recognizing that we're not in a global financial crisis that
we've gone through in the past, you know, you're probably
(28:04):
on a pretty good runway now in order to get
some total return bank for your buck for the final
which I can't believe got about four months left in
the year twenty twenty four. You know, your parents used
to say, boy, time flies when you get older. Let
me tell you, they couldn't have been more correct when
(28:27):
they say that the time flies when you get older.
I look in the mirror and I figured somebody, you know,
came into my house. Who is this guy? But time
does fly, and you want to make sure that you've
got your eyes and cross your t's. You got to
make sure that everything is the way it should be.
And that leads me into a topic that I want
to talk about, and I want to get into a
(28:47):
little bit of detail about it. And if I get
long in the tooth. It's because it's a warning to
individuals out there, you know, if you were if you
listen to the sh show. We over emphasize that the
Retirement Planning Group that we are an open architect platform.
(29:09):
What that means is that we do not have a
bias towards any type of investment that is allocated to
the financial services business A to Z. You know, we
shouldn't be the person to determine if this financial product
(29:30):
that has been approved, stamped and is now out in
the marketplace available to consumers of financial services, whether it's
mutual funds, alternative investments, insurance products, annuities. I don't care
(29:50):
what it is, because there are billions now billions. There's
trillions of dollars in these assets right now, trillions. I
just wrote an article for the Saratoga Business Journal and
also for the Glennswalls Business Journal that talks about the
greatest wealth transfer in the history of mankind. We see
(30:14):
it consistently at the Retirement Planning Group. We see it
with our clients, prospective clients, and people that come in
and just have a chat with us and say, listen,
I heard you on radio. I'm pretty happy with the
person that I'm working with right now, and that God
bless Our job is not to sever the relationship. If
you're unhappy, then that's a whole different story. But if
(30:36):
you're happy, like I said, ninety nine point ninety nine
percent of the guys and gals that are working in
this business are superior, are phenomenal. Because this is a
tough business. It's not easy dealing with people's money. It's
not easy stay on top of all the things that
(30:58):
are out there that you have to be abreast of. Okay,
so we talk about all the time. The team, the team,
the team, the team. Well, the team is not just
our office. You know, we have one of the largest
investment banking firms in the world behind US Fidelity Financial Services.
We have the capability I think of second to none.
(31:21):
And if they don't have it, they have it underneath
the hood, they have it within their platform for us
to go out and get it, whether it's head funds,
you know, I'll go through the whole laundry list. Basically,
we have it all. And the reason why we have
it all is because when I started the retirement Planning group,
(31:41):
I had a vision, a vision, and the vision was this,
I never want to be in a situation where I
can I can't say yes to an individual where I
say no, I can't bring that to the table. So
I always wanted to have a platform that would allow
us to be able to have different types of investments
(32:02):
that are suitable for different types of people. Some people
are ultra conservative, some people are super aggressive, and in
between you got a whole bunch of other people. And
then you've got to find out how do you basically
build out a portfolio in order to facilitate what these
individuals are looking for. Now, we've had some people come
(32:28):
into us just recently with investments that I would say,
when I looked at it, and I looked at them,
and I looked at their net worth, they were just
not suitable for these types of investments. And I'd ask
I guess some pretty direct questions, and the first one
(32:51):
would be, this, tell me what you invested in here?
What was your understanding of this investment? And why was
the this investment selected for you? I don't know, what
do you mean? You don't know? Well, we went to
this advisor, and this advisor basically selected these types of investments,
(33:14):
and we had to trust that advisor. Okay, So you're
basically saying, is that one of your investment decisions were
being made by the advisor and you felt comfortable with that. Yes,
Well here's my position, and I know it sounds kind
(33:39):
of harsh. Maybe you need to know what you own.
And I'm going to talk about three things that I
think are critical with know what you own? Okay. The
first is this, make sure the investment that you're investing
in correlates with your RTQ, your risk tolerance questionnaire. If
(34:08):
you have an investment that basically is off the charts
as far as risk, but your RTQ says that you
are a conservative investor, chances are that's not a good fit.
The second thing is is it an investment that trades
(34:29):
on a daily basis? Trades on a daily What do
you mean by that, Dave, Well, we've seen people come
in that they can't get out of stuff, right. They're
in investments that are basically they're handcuffed to k ones,
oil and gas equipment leasing and go through the whole
(34:51):
laundry list. These are investments that they can't get out
of that's dictated by the portfolio managed. So if they
want out, they got to be patient. They can't get
out on their terms. And the third in the final
thing is I want to overemphasize this. You want investments
(35:15):
that you can get out of immediately, immediately, without a penalty,
without a surrender charge. Whatever the fair market value is,
it trades on the exchange, okay, whether it's the Nasdaq,
the Dow, whatever it may be. You want to make
sure that you have the liquidity that you're looking for
(35:37):
that day nine four boom, you're out. You got your cash. Now.
We went through a situation this week where I was
about ready to get a machine gun. I was talking
to I won't mention the company, we'll mention their name,
(35:58):
we'll mention the product. But this is what happened. A
woman comes in extremely upset and says, I can't get
anywhere with these people. And they said, well, tell me
the story, show me the investment. So I said, let
me see what I can do. You've got to stay
here and I'll see if I can at least get
(36:21):
you some answers that you're looking for. Please, can you
please help? Yes, get on the telephone. We Dolly eight
hundred telephone number, and I can tell by the accent
it's not domestic. It's not here in the United States.
Make a long story short, ass where are you located. Well,
(36:41):
we're in the Philippines. Okay, having a hard time nothing negative,
but we're having a hard time having the conversation. This
person on the other end knows absolutely one, nothing, nothing
about this investment. Okay, can I speak to someone else
(37:03):
about this? Can I talk to your supervisor? Well, we're
on hole for ten, twelve, fifteen minutes. Sorry, We'll be
very with you. Sorry, we'd be right with you. Mister David.
Mister that was my name, mister David. So when all
was said and done, after about a half an hour
forty five minutes, I basically said to this woman, we're
(37:25):
not going to get anywhere with this. Okay, this is
just we're spinning our wheels. I said, thank you so much, ma'am.
I appreciate your help. We're going to move in another direction.
So I had Chris McCarthy, our new team member who
works in this arena with this particular type of product,
who knows the background of the product, and I said,
(37:50):
can you help me out? Do you have do you
have the ability to put me in contact with like
a regional guy. Yeah, I know the guy. I said, okay, good, okay.
So I got the regional guy, we got the internal
I got the regional and then I've got somebody else where.
I don't even know where the third person was from.
I got three different answers on how to liquidate this
(38:14):
investment for this woman, three different answers. I tell the
regional guy, I got three different answers. I tell the
internal guy. I got three different answers. And this other person,
who I think was a contact that Chris now had
another answer for me too. What transpired here? What happened
(38:39):
that put this woman in this situation? Well, what transpired
was the company that she originally started with was acquired
by another company, and the other company took over her investments,
and now she's dealing only with a different company. Her
(39:02):
financial advisor is into the sunset is gone, no longer
working with her, no longer in the business, and she's
trying to figure out because she has one hundred zero
confidence and the data and the information that she's getting,
and she's about ready to jump. She's had it, She's
(39:26):
had it. This is a black guy. In my opinion
on the financial services industry, it's a black guy. Because
I've been doing it now for forty three years. And
as we sit here on Saturday morning, this has been
going on now for about three or four days. We
still don't have the answers for this woman that she's
(39:48):
looking for. So I said to her, I said, you
know what you're probably going to have to do. Okay,
You're going to have to go back to the original
office that you work through, and you're gonna have to
basically say to these people, you know, I need a friend,
I need some because they won't talk to me. They
won't talk to me. You're not the advisor, blah blah blah.
(40:10):
You know you know we're not going to talk to you. Okay, Okay,
So why do I say this? Because when you're in
a situation and you're later in life and you're trying
to get liquidity on investment and you're trying to basically
pay your bills and you can't get answers, you better
make sure that you understand exactly the platform that you're
(40:33):
working for now. I overemphasize sometimes the individuals Fidelity. I
don't say it because I'm trying to say that, you know,
we're top dogs or whatever. But most people know fidelity, right,
and I can tell you one thing. With fidelity, they
don't put up with any nonsense zero zip. They tell
(40:54):
you something. This is the path you gotta go down.
That's the path you go down. Right, every financial advisor,
like myself, that's an ira A. Not everybody gets in
the door. You got to knock on the door and
you got to basically go through a process in order
to be able to facilitate the ability for you for
you to have the opportunity to work through their distribution channel.
(41:16):
So if history repeats itself, okay, if history repeats itself
and you're in a situation where you can't get liquidity,
you can't get the answers you're dialing the telephone number.
The person that you're talking to is not the person
that you think it is, or you want that you
want to talk to, or somebody all oversees You're You're
(41:37):
gonna have to be the squeaky wheel. You're gonna have
to get on the telephone. Because right now in the
financial services industry, when I'm finding out there's more of
this is happening. For whatever reason, I don't know why.
This is like the second event that we've had in
the last couple of months. So beware, as a as
an individual that's doing financial services, as an individal that
(42:00):
has been doing it a long time, understand the platform
that you're working through. Understand the platform that you're working through,
and understand how important it is to have a good
understanding of the investments that you're purchasing through your retirement
accounts or your non qualified accounts. So that's my message
(42:22):
for this week. Beware, be proactive and be educated on
exactly where you sit as far as your overall investment platform.
I'll be right back after this message the eighty six percenters.
Do you know that eighty six percent of the population
has no defined benefit pension plan. For most of us,
(42:42):
we have to take our life savings and create a
paycheck for the rest of our lives in retirement. What
is your plan for retirement income distribution? How you manage
your assets during the most critical years of your lifetime.
Nobel Prize winning economist William Sharp has called retirement income
distribution the nastiest, hardest problem in finance. He points out
that investment uncertainty and mortality can derail the most careful
(43:06):
laid out retirement income plan. Call our offices today to
start the process of building a retirement income distribution plan.
After forty one years of being in the financial services business,
you need to start taking action to start building your
own personal retirement income distribution plan. How do you do that?
To take action? Five one eight five eight zero one
nine one nine. That's five one eight five eight zero
(43:28):
one nine one nine or RPG retire on the web.
Don't procrastinate, motivate to start building your retirement income distribution plan.
Five one eight five eight zero one nine one nine.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
We're here live in studio. If you have any questions,
please call one eight hundred Talk WGY one eight hundred
eight two five five nine four nine. Want to talk
with Dave after the show Call five one eight five
eight zero one nine one nine.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
I want to go the drug one of the more
maybe sick.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Won the all Man you cross my car I made
me feel feet.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
I want to do time one of.
Speaker 5 (44:31):
The moll Man amount too time.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
I mean my eyes to read.
Speaker 5 (44:37):
One of them all made me nervous.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
I don't what to do, but then makes.
Speaker 6 (44:42):
Me feel I got feeling I'm with you.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
When I don't know with you. All right, we are
back happy Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Next weekend is going
to be I think the last hurrah for a lot
of us, a lot of them. People will take Friday
off and have a long weekend Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday
for Labor Day. Can you believe it? Folks, we're at
(45:07):
Labor Day already, which is hard to believe. But the
summer's over with if kids are back in school, as
I said, my daughter's back at FAU Florida Atlantic University.
Kitties be getting on the bus I think third or
fourth of September, something like that, and back in the groove.
So hopefully now's the time to start thinking about your investments,
(45:32):
what you're going to do for the latter part of
twenty twenty four. And it's a good time for you
to maybe sit down with a team of financial advisors
and the Overemphasize team, because we are a team at
the Retirement Planning Group. If you want to sit in
have a chat on the telephone, face to face, you
(45:52):
can give us a call at five one eight five
eight zero one nine one nine. That's five point eight
five eight zero one nine one nine. That's our office
in Malta, our corporate headquarters, and we can meet you
either in Syracuse, Glenn's Falls, Malta, Albany, or Oneana, whichever
one is a preference to you. Great team. It's been
(46:15):
a good year. Couldn't be happier with the direction that
we're moving in. Got some announcements that are coming up
pretty soon. Kind of dot in our eyes and crossing
our teeth on a couple of things. But I'm very
optimistic about what direction we're moving in here, and I
(46:35):
just think that the more services that we can bring
to the table, we can facilitate more and more opportunities
for our clients. They're better off. Everybody's going to be. Hey, Zach,
Yankees are a game and a half up. I just
saw it at the break. Do they have the best
(46:57):
record in baseball right now? Not too sure? Too sure
if they get the best, uh the kind kind of
the dump there for a long time. They lost what
sixteen out of twenty five games or something like that.
You know who has the best record in baseball? Is
it Dodgers? Is it the Dodgers? Well, I mean they've
they've got a payroll about five hundred million dollars a year.
(47:21):
Don't they know they're only like half a game up
on the Yankees. Anyways, that's it. How many do you
have any idea what their payroll is? Just out of curiosity?
The Dodgers, it's got to be just astronomical.
Speaker 7 (47:33):
I don't know the exact number, but you're right. Astronomical.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Yeah, astronomical. I like that word. Astronomical. All right, Uh,
I only got a couple of minutes here before we're
gonna have to break. Uh, We're gonna have a special
guest come in to talk about Life Song. It's a
local organization that does some great things here in the community.
You know. One of the things that's great about the
(47:57):
Retirement Planning Group. I've been doing it for a long time,
but I have some great clients and they bring to
my attention things that need to be discussed and people
that I need to talk to, you know. You know,
I'm a major advocate of the American Cancer Society, especially
the team that they here have locally here in the
Capitol District region. And we have a golf outing and
(48:18):
I'm going to bang on this a couple of times
today because I can't tell you enough how spectacular this
GalF outing is the people that attend. We have business leaders,
we have major corporations that help us out. But it's
going to be September twenty six at fair Ways of
half Moon. It's called Swing for a Cure. It's going
(48:41):
to be the American Cancer Society. We're going to participate
with Life Song this year. We're going to bring them
to the table, try to help them out a little
bit and some of the funding that they need for
the services that they provide the individuals that they work with.
If you're familiar with them, you want to participate, it's
pretty easy when we give out our telephone number. Jim
(49:04):
Corkoran is the point person on all of this, So
if you would like to participate, you can. There's a
lot of different ways that you can make contributions. You
can make contributions right directly outside your IRA and still
not have a tax consequence. It's a pretty powerful way
in order for you to facilitate God's work. And I
(49:27):
say that in capital letters God's work. As we're all
quite well aware, there's a lot of loved ones and
people that are battling certain things that are much more
difficult than our lives and what we have to deal
with on a day to day basis. So Jim's telephone
number is five one eight five eight zero one nine nine.
(49:48):
That's five one eight five eight zero one nine one nine.
You can check us out on the web. We're going
to have some construction on that web hopefully by the
end of the month, end of September. Give it a
little more sizzle. We're gonna have more video. We're gonna
have some additional options available to you through our website,
(50:08):
which we're going through right now. But you can check
us out on the web at rpgretire dot com. Again,
that's rpgretire dot com. And again, always, always, we we
love to have chats. We have lots of locations. If
anything that I'm discussing today is peaking your interests, you
(50:29):
can give us a call at five one eight five
eight zero one nine nine. That's five one eight five
eight zero one nine nine if you're listening outside the
five one eight area code. We have a lot of
radio listeners that listen through iHeartRadio. I think there's close
to nine hundred stations that carry this. Uh. We're more
(50:50):
than happy to talk with you. If we find a
common ground, we can either fly to you do a
lot of work right now over I'm surprised. This is
the thing that's staggering to me. I saw. I talked
to a gentleman when I was in Florida who was
in the financial services industry. I made a point to
(51:10):
stop at his office. He's a gentleman that I had
met years ago and I wanted to have a chat
with him, and I did. And sixty three percent, sixty
three percent of the people that he works with now
they do it through Zoom. I mean they occasionally meet,
but even opening accounts and starting with new individuals referrals
(51:31):
that he gets throughout the country, sixty three percent of
them he does it through Zoom. That's pretty amazing, isn't it.
Isn't it the technology today that we have, But it
is amazing because you know, most of my meetings with Fidelity,
I'm not driving to Boston every week to have meetings
with Fidelity. We have all of our meetings, it'd be
like four or five represent representatives from Fidelity on the
(51:55):
Zoom meeting and Ring Central I think we use ring Central,
not Zoom. So it's the new world that we live in.
But we've got doctor Darren Barkman. That's an easy name
to remember. Barkman. He is a Life Song Dash director
and we're gonna have a chat with him and he's
gonna tell us about Life Song and why you want
(52:16):
to participate in this year's Swing for a Cure. He's
here in the studio and when we come back from break,
doctor will be with us and he's gonna educate us
on Life Song. But you got any questions or comments,
you can call one eight talk to wgy I'm Dave Kopek.
We'll see on the other side.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
Line from the wgy iHeart Studios. Welcome him to the
Retirement Planning Show with your host Dave Kopek from the
Retirement Planning Group. Every week, Dave and his team discuss
the ways they can help people make informed decisions about
a wide array of retirement planning information that can support
you and devel being a more certain financial future for
(52:57):
you and your family. Now it's I'm for Dave Goback,
w G WISE Retirement Planning Specialist.
Speaker 3 (53:21):
Good day, a little Hughey, getting us rocket and rolling
here ready to rock and roll on travers Day.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
I'm Dave Kopak. This is a special segment of today's show.
You know, I'm a big believer in giving back. You know,
I've been very fortunate in my lifetime, and my wife
and I worked very hard, but we're also uh realistic
that we've been very blessed by children with good health
(53:53):
and you know that are doing very well in society.
And you know, I think you've heard me say over
and over again CBA. Both my boys went to Christian
Brothers Academy, and I couldn't speak more highly about their
education and the principles and the values that they teach
(54:14):
down there. And my wife and I have had issues
with family members that they've bumped into, some challenges personally.
And I've got doctor Darren Barkman here today that's going
to be discussing really an organization doctor that I knew
(54:35):
really nothing about until just recently. But good morning, good
morning to you. Glad you're here, Glad to be here.
You found the studio?
Speaker 8 (54:44):
Okay, oh absolutely, yeah, this is It's funny. This is
back in the day. I mean, we're old enough to
remember when this was the old CHP.
Speaker 1 (54:53):
But that's exactly I say it all the time. I said,
where is where are the studios? I said, do you
remember Capital District Physicians Help where they used to be
and Droyce connected he wrote, yep, and that's exactly what
it was. Yep.
Speaker 8 (55:04):
My wife came here the day before our first daughter
was born. Our obg y N was here in this building.
Oh it was, and she said, yep, you're you're two
centimeters dilated. It's time for you to go to the hospital.
So did she go right down the street? No, we were, well,
it was I think it was. I forget exactly the
(55:25):
woman's hospitals right down I.
Speaker 1 (55:26):
No, no, no.
Speaker 8 (55:27):
Carissa was born at Albany met Albany mess so yeah.
But yeah, but that was twenty seven, almost twenty seven
years ago.
Speaker 1 (55:35):
So it's amazing how time goes by. Oh yeah, just
amazing time goes by. But uh, we're gonna have you
here for the full half hour. We're not going to
take any breaks. So we're gonna get a lot of
information out to the people. Tell us about Life Song,
what is it, why was it originated, and what does
it do? Absolutely well.
Speaker 8 (55:56):
Life Soong was founded in twenty eleven and Life Soong
is an organization. We're based in Clifton Park right off
Exit E and we support adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities.
Our mission is to love, enhance, encourage, and inspire to
(56:16):
equip folks with disabilities and their families to be everything
that they can be to explore their gifts and abilities.
Independence is really a key in our program as well.
To take folks adults who are coming out of high
school transition programs. They get out of those at about
(56:39):
twenty one and they're looking for the next step. They
don't really know necessarily what to do, where to go.
Maybe they still have skills that they still need to
work on before they can adapt into the community. So
that's where we fill that need. You know, folks come
in maybe they're not completely ready for employment, and yet
(57:00):
they're not ready to live on their own do things
on their own. So we provide a day program where
they will come in and work on some of the
interpersonal skills, work skills, job skills, everything from pre vocational
areas all the way to reading, writing, math, things like that.
(57:24):
And we do that through volunteering in the community. We
have fifty to sixty nonprofit organizations that our participants will
go and volunteer with every week, and that is churches, ems, firehouses,
schools and they'll go do a variety of different tasks
(57:45):
with them. We also do skill building. We were talking
about that before we came out air where at our
plaza we have different areas and different things where they
can learn about music, woodworking, photo and video. And then
we all do recreation. We go out in the community
and we'll go hiking, exercising, sports, things like that. So
(58:08):
we do that as a day program to encourage independence,
growing skills that the circle of support the family wants
the participants to work on. And then eventually we also
have a supported employment program where if they're ready to
take that next step, then we link them up with
our supported employment with a job coach and they do
(58:30):
everything from resume building, you know, kind of exploration of
where they want to go, to actually finding them jobs.
We'll go into the community and find areas, organizations, businesses
that are looking to hire, that are willing to hire
folks with disabilities, and you know, we'll support them all
the way through and the goal ultimately is to not
(58:53):
be needed anymore.
Speaker 1 (58:54):
Right, Yeah, let me ask you a quick question before.
I had a very good client for years who had
a son that participated in the workshop in Minans. Does
that still exist? Is the workshop still in Minan's I'm
not sure. I'm not really because that was a program
(59:15):
that was set up for I think similar that would
get young adults kind of acclimated to get into the workforce,
et cetera. Personally, in our own family, we have three
individuals that are a battle I can't say battling because
that's not the right word, that are dealing with autism autism.
(59:36):
Was this as prevalent in the past as it is today?
Is it or is it peaked? Is there something going
on or is it just we have more of a
realization that autism is here.
Speaker 8 (59:47):
I think it's a little bit of both. I think
there is much more recognition help support, especially in New
York State. You know, the Office of People with Developmental Disabilities,
you know, has really expanded services, and there are a
lot more organizations to support, you know, I mean, there
(01:00:10):
are some ninety thousand folks that are connected with opwd
D right now, and then there's you know a variety
of other organizations and avenues to be able to support.
So I think just here at ninety thousand in New York, Yeah,
just in New York State. Yeah, And those are those
are folks that are receiving services through the State of
New York, right, But I mean there are others who
(01:00:31):
are dealing with, you know again dealing with like you said,
but it's not really battling because I mean the folks
who a lot of the folks that we work with,
I mean, they're not battling dealing. They're they're living their
best life. I mean, they're really enjoying things.
Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
Yeah. The thing that a young adult you know, I
think about our own personal situation and clients of ours,
was the transitioning of a twenty something year old into
a home a home environment. We actually have this Nico
who works for me, a certified financial planner. His family
is dealing with that right now themselves, with an individual
(01:01:05):
that they had a place in the past twelve to
eighteen months, which was difficult at first, but it's really
kind of blossomed into this great event for them where
this individual has really kind of built their own kind
of personality.
Speaker 8 (01:01:20):
Yeah, yeah, it's it. I think one of the cool
things about working for Life Song. I mean, we have
roughly two hundred folks that we support between the day
program and supported employment.
Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
What are their ages?
Speaker 8 (01:01:33):
Anywhere from let's see the one actually graduated early, so
he's nineteen twenty, all the way up into their mid
to late sixties. We've had folks in their seventies before
they retired, as they moved on. But I think one
of the really amazing things is to see the lights
(01:01:55):
go on, like you were talking about, where you know,
they they're put in a position succeed. They're put in
a position where they can really grow as an individual,
and they kind of get it. You know, I can
I can actually hold a job. I can do this.
This is something that that I actually do have the
ability to do it. And when that starts going, you know,
(01:02:19):
you start talking about actually earning a paycheck, you start
talking about getting married. You know, we have participants who
have gotten married. Yeah, participants who are they're they're talking
about buying houses and having kids, and and when that
ball starts rolling, it really I mean, I I start crying.
Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
We start talking Yeah, my my my wife's cousin Bullsa
he got married to a female that was, you know,
in the same program that he was in. Pretty pretty
much it is it's pretty emotional. And the thing is
is that he she has passed and now he's on
(01:03:00):
his own in a home and co hoose. But the
thing is is that he worked for Price Shopper Market
thirty two is a bagger Yep for years. Yep, he's retired.
He talks now Bobby that he's retired. Yeah, he's retired.
You know, he's just he's such a really he's such
a cool guy. Yeah. But life song. So you're dealing
with with adults, young adults, older adults that have life challenges.
(01:03:27):
Is that how you would classify it.
Speaker 8 (01:03:29):
Yeah, I mean there are many you mentioned autism. We
don't deal a lot with physical disabilities, you know, ours
are more intellectual developmental, you know, where you know they'll
they might have processing issues, they might have, you know,
inability to really communicate properly with the community, you know,
(01:03:50):
verbal delays, things like that, and the idea is to
maximize their potentials, you know, to do everything we can do. Generally,
a participant will come into program with three to five
different goals that they're working on, and it's our direct
support staff's job, in the middle of volunteering, in the
(01:04:12):
middle of skill building recreation, to be working on those
goals in those services. Whether it's again it's you know,
teaching them work skills, you know, how to focus on
a task, how to do something to completion, you know,
to work independently or if it's reading, so that they
can then take those skills and.
Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Work towards the work skills.
Speaker 8 (01:04:34):
So we're meeting them where they're at on that kind
of spectrum.
Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
If you will, let me ask you a question, and
this is probably the one that comes up the most
that I think. I think about the gentlemen that introduced
us to you. You know, something happens to them, the
parents there's a single child to see, there's no other children.
You know, that's always the greatest fear for individuals that
(01:05:02):
we work with. What happens to you know, Bobby when
we pass away, is there going to be this bubble
to protect him? How is that addressed? And how is
that something that's kind of the missing link or it's
being development right now?
Speaker 8 (01:05:19):
I think every family will look at their situation differently,
you know, I mean, you deal with retirement planning, so
I mean I think there are a lot of similarities
to that. You know, where are we at financially? Where
you know, are is their family? You know, across the
country we're working with a gentleman who's who's going to
(01:05:41):
be trialing in our program. And he actually lives in
his childhood home by himself. His sister owns the house.
She lives in Rhode Island, so he is independent enough
that he can manage the home he has, you know,
he has folks come in and help them locally. But
(01:06:02):
I think, you know, when tragedy strikes, things like that happened,
you know, families you know are are my My mother
and father in law participated in family care, which is
taking folks with disabilities. Maybe they're not appropriate for group
(01:06:23):
home settings, but they don't have family really to take
care of them. So opw d D developed this, uh,
this program where folks with disabilities will just kind of
move in with families in the community. And my mother
and father in law did that for a number of years.
And the young lady is still with my brother and
(01:06:46):
sister in law because both of my in laws have
now passed away. And we jokingly say that she came
with the house, you know, because they because they it
was a package deal, you know, And and there was
no doubt that my brother and sister in law were
going to assume responsibility for her.
Speaker 1 (01:07:05):
Sure, when my mother and my father in law.
Speaker 8 (01:07:08):
Passed away in twenty ten, and then she passed away
in twenty eighteen, but there was there was no question
of where she was going to go, that my brother
and sister in law were going to assume responsibility.
Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
And they do.
Speaker 8 (01:07:20):
They are now, they're not guardians, but they do help
her with her decise.
Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
She makes it makes it a lot more difficult though,
doesn't it when there's no brother or sister, Oh for sure? Oh?
When it when a single child. Yeah, we had we
had a gentleman that has passed away and his wife
is in a nursing home right now and their son
was transitioned to a home, which is he's done well.
(01:07:46):
His name is David. He's done well. But the thing
is is that that was always the achilles heel. That
was always the thing that his father worried about. Yeah,
is that you know, where is he going to go?
Will he be safe? You know? Is it a good environment?
And I would imagine that that's probably you know, one
of the sticking points for a lot of people as
they try to figure out what's what's the short term
(01:08:09):
and long term for my child? Yeah, I think.
Speaker 8 (01:08:14):
You know, again, I think it's part of the process
of the estate is you know, okay, well, you know,
along with a house and along with all the money
and the pension and this and then the other thing
comes Johnny and you know, we have a number of families.
I you know, I'm again I mentioned you know, my
in laws, but we have a number of families. You know,
(01:08:36):
I mean our participants, you know, getting into their late
thirties and early forties. That means mom, dad, aunt, uncles
are you know, they're in their seventies. You know, they're
they're thinking, you know, what's going to happen and there
I mean, there are a lot of great residential programs
in the community, group homes where folks can move into
can transition. Again, I think everybody's situation is a lot different,
(01:08:59):
and we in Life Song, we have a number of
really wonderful families. One gentleman does construction and does some
planning and has in his mind. I'm not sure exactly
where he's at. I haven't talked to him in a while,
but to actually build kind of a hybrid senior community
where folks with disabilities can move into the town homes,
(01:09:22):
kind of neighboring with the elderly and you know, then
they can all kind of watch each other.
Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
Fantastic. Yeah, yeah, So how do you survive? How do
you pay the bills? How do you basically keep the
lights on? How we keep the.
Speaker 8 (01:09:39):
Lights on is through Medicaid funding primarily, you know, we
build the state of New York for our services, right,
but that's as with anything that's dependent on Medicaid funding,
that fluctuates. Sure, so to do a lot of the
really creative things that we like to do, a lot
(01:10:00):
of the things that we kind of dream up. Hey,
it would be really fun to take the guys to
do this. Sure that all comes from donated funds.
Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
So you're you're technically classified as a five oh one
C three not for profit not for not for profit,
so a lot of your like, we're going to participate
with you guys in the scalf outing yep. And you
know the heading of it is not you know, swing
for a Cure that it should probably have a little
bit more meet to it where you know, let's help
and support life song which we'll talk a little bit
(01:10:29):
about that. But I love your mission statement, love, enhance,
equip and inspire. You really are doing God's work. I mean,
you really are. I mean you're really doing God's work.
And I think anybody that has never been in the
situation you know that. You know. I mean, like I
said at the beginning, I've been my wife and I
have been blessed by healthy kids, and you know, my
(01:10:53):
heart is always you know, we have a cousin who
has two boys, both of them that were born. He
has two children, both of them have autism. And the
thing is is that, you know, the effort, the commitment
by the parents I think is understated for sure. Uh.
Speaker 8 (01:11:13):
You know, we have tremendous individuals in our program, and
we have amazing families. You know, just thinking about some
of them, as you mentioned that the ones that that
just everything centers around the child. And there's one young
gentleman who's going through a lot of health issues right now,
(01:11:35):
LME disease and a lot of other things that are
going on, and that's a horrible disease. Yeah, and especially
for somebody who has developmental disabilities, and there's a lot
of medical things that go along with that. And one
of the coordinators on my team was talking to mom
this week. I mean she's just in tears, you know
how do I, you know, how do I work?
Speaker 1 (01:11:57):
How do I? You know?
Speaker 8 (01:11:58):
They they want him to go for days the infusions
for like the next like three months or something like that,
and it's like, what do I do?
Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
You know?
Speaker 8 (01:12:06):
I you know, she's she's divorced and she's on her own. Yeah,
I mean, it's a horrible situation. Yeah, and what does
she do? Well, Fortunately, there are grant programs, and there's
wonderful care management on the participant end that can navigate
and work on grant programs and work on a lot
(01:12:26):
of these different things funding areas for them. So you know,
we kind of point back to care management. But the
fella that she was talking to was a former care manager,
so he knows some of the ins and the outs,
and he's like, well, maybe you should try this, or
maybe you could talk to your care manager about so
on and so forth, and we do what we can.
I mean, we were we were talking to again. He
(01:12:50):
was talking to the mom and saying, you know, the
the infusion is at this point and I have to
be to work over here, and I don't know what
to do in the meantime, and I guess she has
other family issues things going on, and we looked at
the schedule and we realized, oh, well, he's actually going
to be doing a class at the Plaza that day,
so they could actually drop him off at a different time,
(01:13:14):
you know. So, I mean it's it's all kind of
on the fly and or you know, you're kind of figuring,
you know, what can we do? I mean, you know,
our scope is limited as a day program. Sure, you know,
we can't do some of the things that care management
can do. But I mean there there are a lot
of options. There are a lot of things available. You
just you have to know what rock to look under,
and you have to know what questions to ask.
Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
The Your facility is at Exit eight, but I saw
something in you're brochure here. You also have some kind
of a facility at the Sacondaga or you go to
the I mean, well, we have done camping in the past.
Is that what it is? Yeah?
Speaker 8 (01:13:50):
Yeah, the last couple of years we've actually been down
in the Catskills.
Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
So how do you do that? You just take a
group down for weekends or for a week or it's usually.
Speaker 8 (01:13:59):
Four from Monday through Thursday, and it's an overnight program.
And our i mean, our amazing direct support staff they
they step up to take the guys with our day program.
They'll go into the community and they'll pick up three
to four guys and then go to those volunteer sites
and do the skill building. So what they do is
(01:14:21):
they go through, they pick up the guys, all their
camping gear, all their stuff, and they'll drive down to
the cat Skills and they'll do activities. They'll do archery,
they'll do swimming, they'll do hikes, and they'll play games.
They'll just run these guys ragged for a few days,
you know, camp out and they'll they'll do barbecue and
they'll do burgers, and they'll do all sorts of differences,
(01:14:43):
doing all the things they should be doing.
Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
And it is it's a it's a highlight for the guys.
Speaker 8 (01:14:46):
We do a guys camp and a girls camp every
year and it is it's it's making memories. You also
do a dash, we do the Life Song Dash. It
is our main community of and it's usually the second
Saturday of June every year, which is interesting this year
because it was the day of the Belmont this year,
(01:15:07):
so that was fun. You know, people were saying, well
you should move it. I'm like, well, why we picked
it first, you know, the States and n Iris got
to move their day. But yeah, we we have the
five k at half Moontown Park and yep, so we
had a record number. We had three hundred and seventy
two runners and walkers this year, and we had a
(01:15:29):
number of businesses organizations support us. We raised over forty
thousand dollars this year. That's fit and it's it is
tremendous and not just the race, but then we have
the guys get up and they one of our groups
of guys sings the national anthem and they sing and
we do dancing and it's it really is. It's just
it's an amazing party day we set up. We set
(01:15:52):
it up like a like a a carnival almost, you know,
we wanted to be a party and then have a
five k on top of that.
Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
So well, and you're one of your last paragraphs here,
your investment in life song strengthens our ability to love, enhance,
equip and inspire This deserving popular couldn't be. You couldn't
written that better. Yeah, you couldn't written that better. Because
they are They've always got smiles on their faces. They
always seem to be happy and content. Oh, I know
(01:16:20):
sometimes that isn't the case, but for I'm going to
say that the bulk of the time they are. So
we're going to participate with you for this this year
September twenty six. I don't know, you've got about a
thousand people coming or.
Speaker 8 (01:16:34):
We've been we've been pushing it, you know, I mean
we have we have a great network.
Speaker 1 (01:16:40):
Well, they can make a contribution. They just don't have
to you know, they don't have to come. They can
they can make a contribution, just like our listening audience.
Well we've got we've got golfers too. I mean, I
haven't picked up a club in twenty years. I don't
even want me to play. But the joke in my
office is the safest place to stand when David's going
to drive the ball is in the middle of the fairway.
(01:17:01):
I hear that. I hear that. Yes, yeah, well, doctor,
let's kind of summarize a little bit. Okay, sure, we're
gonna be participating. We're gonna try to raise some good
money for you this year. You know, if someone wants
to reach out to you that this kind of touched
their heart today and maybe they want to participate, or
they have a loved one that wants to look at
(01:17:21):
your services, how do they get a hold of you?
Speaker 8 (01:17:23):
They can check out the website. It's Life Soong inc
Dot org. So Life Soong Like Life Soong Incorporated, Life
Soong i NC dot org. There you can see about
the day program about supported employment. There's a whole dash
page for the five K lots of pictures. We did
that on purpose. You can see a lot of our
(01:17:43):
guys and their element and what they do and our
phone number. We're five one eight four oh six five
one five seven, five one eight four oh six five
one five seven And uh yeah, if anybody is interested,
I'll give that out a few times.
Speaker 1 (01:17:58):
That'd be great. And then all so, how about an
employer that wants to look at your services to bring
one of the you know, XYZ Corporation that wants to
bring some of your individuals in to possibly work through
their distribution channel or their offices. Is that available? Also?
Absolutely is?
Speaker 8 (01:18:19):
We have We have a lot of folks in our
supported employment that are still looking, you know, they're still
kind of in the process and they can use that
same number four oh six, five one five seven and
just look for supported employment.
Speaker 9 (01:18:33):
It's one of the one of the choices. Okay, once
you do that, well, I want to thank you for
coming in. Thank you having us very much. We're very proud.
Speaker 1 (01:18:43):
You know. Dennis is a very good friend of mine
and I think the world of him and his family.
So this is this is something that we love to
do and we're more than happy to do it. So
we'll see on the twenty sixth of September, and thank
you for coming. Thank you for having us. We really
appreciate the support.
Speaker 5 (01:19:08):
A better fan dancer down in South Southerner than Hill.
She was running from a foutall Man seven sal the
seven here now, I was tying, save.
Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
Me when I'm doing all right?
Speaker 3 (01:19:34):
The best that I gave just another father bando.
Speaker 5 (01:19:43):
Chiming up through the nine by.
Speaker 1 (01:19:55):
Step what a I thank doctor Darren Barkman coming in.
He is the dash director Life Song. I didn't know
that much about it until just recently. They're going to
(01:20:16):
participate with us in our Swing for a Cure. You know,
this is something that's close to Julie and I because
we have family members that have had some issues. And
I'm going to talk a little bit on this side
of the fence. If it's touched your heart and you
(01:20:40):
want to make a contribution to this wonderful organization. How
you can do it through donations And it's possible for
those that are listening to donate IRA assets and you
(01:21:02):
can do it during your lifetime so you can see
the beauty of what you've created by making those distributions
to a charity five OHO one C three which they
are a nonprofit and it allows you. This is the key, folks.
(01:21:24):
This is like a double double banana split with sixteen
cherries on top. You don't have to pay any income
tax on it. So if you're older and you've got
lots of IRA money and you say to yourself, jeez,
I really don't need this money. It's going to be
(01:21:46):
a tax liability. Why would I want to have this
tax liability this year? You don't. If you're over the
age of seventy and a half, you can contribute up
to one hundred thousand dollars from an IRA directly to
a charity and avoid paying income taxes on the distribution.
(01:22:10):
And this is known as a qualified charitable distribution. But
here's the key. It is limited to iras people who
are over the age of seventy and a half or
older can contribute up to one hundred thousand dollars from
their IRA directly to a charity and avoid paying income
(01:22:34):
taxes on the distribution. This is known as a qualified
charitable distribution. It is limited to irays. So you have
X number dollars in an IRA, you don't want to
satisfy the distribution with the taxman. You don't want to
split it up. It also allows you to satisfy your
(01:22:58):
RMD and still not have a tax consequence. Okay, donating
to a charity upon your death. I don't know if
you want to do that or not. But when you
name a charity as a beneficiary to receive your IRA
or some of your IRA or part of your IRA,
(01:23:20):
neither you where your air has to pay any tax
liability on those distributions. Because charities pay no income tax.
The full amount goes to the charity which will directly
benefit the charity of your choice, such as Life's Song.
(01:23:43):
As I said, it's possible divide your retirement assets between
charities and heirrors. We've done this with a lot of individuals.
So you've got Bobby and Susie and Billy, and you've
got Life Song. The percentages you choose, that's who goes
to This is a heartfelt This is something that you
(01:24:05):
do from you know, the bottom of your heart because
you see that the opportunity that you're going to be
able to create for this wonderful organization. It's not just
Life Song. You can do this with a lot of
other organizations. Also, what's the advantages of making upon death
(01:24:28):
your IRA assets. It's going to a organization, whether it's
Life Song or a college. We've had individuals that have
(01:24:51):
done significant contributions to humane societies. If any of this
is of interest to you and you want to get started,
we have the ability to sit down with you and
have a chat and just say, listen, I heard Dave
(01:25:12):
on the radio talking about Life Song. Remember what their
tagline is, Love, Enhance, equip and aspire, inspire, you know,
just as a highlight here. Okay, this is something that's
(01:25:33):
very close to Julie and I because of our loved
ones and we have family members that are being in
a situation with autism and it's uh, it's it's you're
you're doing something I would say extremely meaningful. And Fidelity
(01:25:59):
actually has a charitable organization a department that is specifically
set up to help us facilitate these kind of contributions.
So I'll give out my telephone number. Say I listened
to Dave on the radio. I want to make a
contribution to this organization. It's pretty easy. Just call five
(01:26:23):
one eight, five eight zero one nine nine. That's five
one eight five eight zero one nine nine and again
do a little search on the web. Life song. I
want to thank doctor for coming in, doctor Darren Barkman,
(01:26:43):
and let your heart lead the way. Folks, if this
is something that you want to do, we're here to
facilitate it and to say I want to make a donation.
And I will say this to you. I look forward
to hearing from you. These people are doing God odds work.
We'll be right back after this quick message the eighty
(01:27:04):
six percenters. Do you know that eighty six percent of
the population has no defined benefit pension plan. For most
of us, we have to take our life savings and
create a paycheck for the rest of our lives in retirement.
What is your plan for retirement income distribution? How you
manage your assets during the most critical years of your lifetime.
Nobel Prize winning economist William Sharp has called retirement income
(01:27:26):
distribution the nastiest, hardest problem in finance. He points out
that investment, uncertainty and mortality can derail the most careful
laid out retirement income plan. Call our offices today to
start the process of building a retirement income distribution plan.
After forty one years of being in the financial services business,
you need to start taking action to start building your
(01:27:46):
own personal retirement income distribution plan. How do you do that?
To take action? Five one eight five eight zero nine nine.
That's five one eight five eight zero one nine one
nine or RPG retire on the web. Don't procrastinate, motivate,
start building your retirement income distribution plan five eight five
eight zero one nine.
Speaker 4 (01:28:07):
If you would like to hear more information on navigating
your way to retirement from Dave Kopek. Remember you can
listen to this show and past shows anytime and anywhere
on the free iHeartRadio app, or go to iHeart dot
com and search retirement planning show.
Speaker 5 (01:28:44):
This tarner.
Speaker 1 (01:28:51):
A pardon team turner.
Speaker 5 (01:29:13):
That's what.
Speaker 1 (01:29:23):
Travers day. Everybody's probably on the road getting ready to
rock and roll. I think the I think, I think,
I think the races start early today. They got like,
I don't know a bunch of races today. I think
(01:29:44):
you probably know because you're the sports guy.
Speaker 7 (01:29:45):
I don't really know because I'm always working on the weekend,
so I don't pay attention that much to that.
Speaker 1 (01:29:49):
Well, you got to take a day off, man, Hey,
you're like me. I enjoy your company.
Speaker 7 (01:29:54):
I can't take a day off. We're soul brothers, Zax
my man or my father from another father, and.
Speaker 1 (01:30:10):
I love you brother. The bottom line is is that
today is a beautiful day, and then please go out
and enjoy it. It's you know, it's hard to believe.
We gonna blink our eyes. The kids are going to
be back in school. Good thing about September though, guess
what football? Football starts. Love my football, love watching it.
So I want to go over a couple of things.
(01:30:33):
You know, we were kind of heartfelt here talking about
things that can get done for you know what I
call God's work. Don't forget September twenty sixth Swing for Cure,
American Cancer Society and Lost Life Song Ink and they're
right here in the Capitol District region and they do
God's work. So if you want to participate in the golf,
(01:30:56):
Audie called Jim five eight five eight zero nine five
one eight five eats zero one nine one nine and
say I heard Dave on the radio. Sign us up.
You don't have to come. There's a dinner. If you
don't want a golf there's a dinner. You can just
come for the dinner. Or you can say you know
what that means something to me? It kind of touched
(01:31:19):
my heart. I'd like to take some of my IRA
money and make a contribution. And oh, by the matter
of fact, if you're at a certain age, you're not
going to have any tax liability. That sounds good, huh,
no tax liability, and you're sending money for people that
are doing God's work. So the key takeaway hopefully you
(01:31:40):
got from this is that, you know, when we talk
about retirement at the retirement Planning Group, I talked today
a little bit about open architecture and how important it
is to us. But as you all know, every family's different.
Everybody has different things that are important to them. Children
that have possibly issues you may you know, want specific
(01:32:03):
things set up for a child that has maybe autism
or has some challenges with drug addiction. And there's no
cookie cutter approach to that. I'm always flabbergasted by people
who want to work through an eight hundred telephone number.
You know, we bring all the services, all the benefits
of working through fidelity, but you have a team at
(01:32:25):
the retirement Planning Group. But remember the good news is this,
whatever your situation is, Whatever your situation is, I believe
at the retirement planning group we can help improve not
only your retirement readiness, but also the obstacles that you
(01:32:46):
faced during your pre and post retirement years, because there
can be many many, as we're all quite well aware,
I think we live in a society today. I don't
know what's going on. I just had this chat last
night with some friends of ours. We've got a lot
of people that are dealing with cancer, too many. I
(01:33:07):
got two really good buddies right now that are being
challenged right now. I talk to a friend of mine
at Stuart's this morning when I got my coffee. Another
friend of ours has just been diagnosed with cancer. It's just,
it's just I don't know. I don't know what's going on.
Don't know what's going on. But the thing is is
that anytime you get into a retirement plan, you got
(01:33:32):
to not only think about the good times what we
call the go go years, but you also want to
talk about the slowgo, the no go years. And how
much flexibility do you have? How much flexibility do you
have with your plan? Because that is critical in order
to basically go through the landscape of life, this path
(01:33:53):
that we have to go down as far as the
obstacles that we face. We take great pride in sitting
down with our clients and prospective clients, not only addressing
the investment side of it, which I called one peg
love your investment plan. How many legs do you have
(01:34:14):
on your retirement planning? Stool man? Do you have a pension?
Does your pension continue for your spouse, significant other, loved ones? Right?
If you don't have a pension, is there ways for
you to create a pension in order to have lifetime income.
(01:34:34):
Let's say you have a child that's challenged. How do
you set it up that there's going to be money
there in the future that will last a lifetime. Well,
there's ways to do that, folks, And it's all guaranteed.
It's all guaranteed, no questions asked. The only guarantee what
will be the final number? As far as income, we
(01:34:56):
can give you a baseline that can only go up
from there, it can't go down. And then of course
growth potential purchasing power with your investment program. You know,
I don't have to tell you what's happened in the
last ten, fifteen, twenty years for people that retired at
fifty five. They're still fairly young, seventy seventy five years
(01:35:17):
of age. We just had a couple in the other day,
just had a couple in the other day. He was fortunate.
He retired at age fifty seven, has been living the
good life for about fifteen years now, he's seventy two
years of age, and now he's looking at RMD and
how it's going to affect his income plan. So we're
(01:35:39):
creating and we're managing an investment program now at age
seventy two that was entirely different than his plan that
he had at fifty seven. He had player stock options,
He had an investment overall philosophy that was probably a
little bit more aggressive than we would have had, you know,
(01:35:59):
as a standard cookie cutter approach that you would probably
take with a sixty forty portfolio. This guy wanted one
in the stock market. Wasn't afraid of it, wanted to be,
you know, actively involved in stocks. He did do some
cult consulting on the side, which brought in some additional revenue,
(01:36:20):
but the thing it worked out well for him. And finally,
be flexible. You got to be flexible. You know. We
talked about understanding all of the nuts and bolts of
your investment program. Does the investment suit your overall investment philosophy,
(01:36:42):
your RTQ, your risk tolerance. Does it have liquidity? Does
it have liquidity if you want out, can you get
out right nine point thirty to four o'clock or can
you send in a letter and say, you know what,
liquidate these investments. Some don't give you that. You have
(01:37:03):
to stay until the portfolio manager basically liquidates the portfolio
or gives you the option to take the cash. So
I always talk about the five steps to consider when
you're starting building out your overall retirement income distribution plan
and also your legacy plan eighty trillion dollars eighty plus
(01:37:31):
trillion dollars will pass over the next twenty to thirty years.
Identify your personal goals Number one this story today life soong.
Do you have charitable intent? Do you have the ability
(01:37:57):
to establish income streams for your children because of the
success that you've had in your lifetime. Is it important
for you to do that? Do you have enough money
in the pot right now in order to make these
(01:38:18):
kind of distributions? I know a lot of times. I
remember Judge Copple of Its they used to be on
another radio station with me. Used to always see was
a navigate. You keep your money until you pass away.
Then then the children receive the assets because you never
know what's coming down the path for healthcare events. So
(01:38:43):
how much do you have allocated in emergency funds? How
much do you have for income protection if it's important
for you and also for your loved ones. And here's
the key which a lot of you I don't think
think about out who will manage your assets when your
(01:39:03):
financial advisor goes into the green pastures. I mean that's
something that I've addressed in the past year. I've got Nico,
I've got Chris McCarthy, and I have my son Christopher.
I know that if something happens to me, my business
(01:39:24):
does not change a bet because I got the three amigos.
And then, finally, the biggest thing that I see all
the time, implement, don't procrastinate, implement the plan, put it
(01:39:45):
in place. I'm sitting down in Florida the other day
and I'm talking to a guy and he says, yeah,
I'm trying to put everything together. I'm trying to figure
this out and how I want to diversify my assets
and the moneies that I want to keep, maybe the
moneyes I want to get the way And I said,
how long have you been thinking about it? He says
too long? He said a couple of years. I said,
(01:40:06):
what happens to you if or your family, what happens
to your family, Something happens to you today. He goes, well,
it's probably not going to be a good situation. So
I said, at a minimum, at a minimum, do something,
you know, get the documents in place. I have a
(01:40:31):
situation on Tuesday of this week. Wonderful client. He's been
a client for probably thirty years. Lisa calls me yesterday
on my cell phone. It says, mister X needs to
(01:40:51):
talk to you asap. He has an emergency. So I
call him up, talk to him. What's going on? My
son in law is on death story. He's had some
(01:41:15):
health issues, went into the hospital. He was deceased on
the table technically for twelve minutes. They brought him back,
but he's only going to be back for a short
period of time. What can I do for you, my
good man, How can I help you? He says, they
(01:41:38):
have nothing in place. They have no will, no durable
power of attorney, no health care proxy, they have no
legal documents at all. So I said, I can't see
it Monday, but I can see a Tuesday. So he's
bringing his daughter in on Tuesday morning at ten am
to see what we can do with nine planning. Called
(01:42:03):
the attorney that I felt comfortable with that I think
can address this the quickest way. Spoke to him. He's
going to be involved in the meeting through a conference call.
He can't physically be there. But the reason why I'm
bringing this up is not to sound pompous like I'm
(01:42:31):
this great guy and I'm patting myself in the back.
But the reason why I'm bringing this up, too many
of you are in this situation where you haven't buttoned
it up, you haven't dotted your eyes and crushed your
te's and when something does happen, which it usually does
happen when we least expect it all hell breaks loose,
(01:42:52):
and that's not really what we want for our loved
ones and our family members. So when I talk about
the five steps, I think the most critical one of
all of them, of all of them is just to
do it. Just do it. Stop procrastinating, stop sitting on
(01:43:15):
the fence. You know, just do it. Might not be
one hundred percent correct, but ninety five percent or ninety
nine percent correct is going to be a hell of
a lot better than one hundred percent being a total mess.
So to end today's program, start a conversation with your
(01:43:41):
spouse and loved ones, figure out exactly where you are
in your overall financial life. And if you want to
build out a wealth management program, we're here to help.
First couple appointments for all ears. Mouth doesn't move too much.
(01:44:07):
Nico lass about that, he says, Dave, you can't shut
your mouth. But the bottom line is that the first
couple conversations we should be all ears, and then we
facilitate what needs to be done as far as taking action.
So if any of this that I've talked about today,
(01:44:28):
if you want to help out our good friends at
Life Song, you want to participate on Swing for a
cure September twenty six. We would love you to participate
in any capacity that you can do. All you have
to do is call my office at five one eight
five eat zero one nine nine five eight five eat
(01:44:51):
zero one nine one nine. Talk to the big cheese
Jimmy Corkoran. He's the guy that's the director of all
of this, who does a phenomenal job. Say I heard Dave.
We want to help life song out. We want to
come to the golf outing, we want to come to
the whatever it is. Whatever it is, we would greatly
appreciate it. You guys, have a great weekend, enjoy yourself,
(01:45:13):
be safe. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 (01:45:17):
Thank you for listening to The Retirement Planning Show, hosted
by Dave Kopek, w g wise retirement Planning Specialist. If
you would like to talk with Dave or someone at
the Retirement Planning Group, call five one eight five eight
zero one nine nine. That's five eight five eight zero
one nine one nine during business hours, or visit RPG
(01:45:37):
retire dot com. The Retirement Planning Group has five convenient
offices located in Albany, Malta, Glens Falls, Syracuse, and Oneana.
Tune in again next week for retirement planning Strategies with
Dave Kopek right here on WG Wise Retirement Planning Show.
The information our services discussed on this show is for
(01:45:59):
informational purposes only and is not intended to be personal
financial advice. The investments and services offered by US may
not be suitable for all investors. If you have any
doubts as to the merits of an investment, you should
seek advice from an independent financial advisor.
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