When You Excuse It, You Can’t Use it!

I recently had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Jason Selk speak at the Northwestern Mutual Regional meeting. Jason specializes in mental psychology and has worked with the St Louis Cardinals. He has written two books: Executive Toughness and 10-Minute Toughness.  In his talk he discussed 5 parts to having a good mental state that he shared with the Cardinals.

1. Mental Workout – Centering Breath
2. Performance Statement – 2 or 3 things that make you perform at the highest level
3. Personal Highlight Reel- Advanced form of visualization
4. Identity Statement
5. Centering Breath

He discussed an interaction he had with Dan Gable that helped shape Dr Selk’s way of thinking. After Dan lost a wrestling match against an inferior opponent, he developed a “no excuse” mentality. Dr. Selk says that this mindset is the most common trait of successful people. A “no excuse” mentality promotes over-achievement. Excuses promote underachieving. An example of Grable’s commitment to this is that he would go into a sauna after a workout and wouldn’t leave until he counted 250 drips of sweat roll off his fingertips. Thus what Dr. Selk referred to as the Grable Discipline was created.

1. Choose your commitments wisely
2. Attack, Always Attack…no excuses
3. If you do fail, use it!

Failure and the negative emotion from failure allows us to recognize the need for adjustment and change, and is a strong motivator to allow for change. He says what makes most professional athletes really good is that they have an obsession for improvement. Make sure that you care more about your success than anyone else cares about your success. Do whatever it takes to win.

All I Want For Christmas is…Education

Buying toys for little kids is the same every year. The child opens up the new shiny noise-making toy, plays with it for about 5 minutes and then moves on to making a fort out of the box it came in for the next few hours. After a few days the toy gets put in the giant box with all the other new shiny toys until the batteries die and becomes forgotten like a scene with Sid’s toys from Toy Story.

This Holiday Season is a perfect time to give the gift of College Education to your favorite grandchild, niece, or son! Although a child’s eyes won’t light up when they open the gift today, the gift of College Education will light up their mind and they will be much more grateful over the course of their lives!

According to SavingsForCollege.com, total cost of 4 year tuition at the University of Wisconsin will be $181,723 by the time your 3 year old goes off to college. Most of today’s generation will resort to student loans to pay for college costs. The average student borrow owes over $29,000 in loans. This has made it harder for 75% of student borrowers to buy a home, 43% to delay starting a family, 29% to put off marriage, and 27% difficulty to buy necessities. Many recent graduates are forced them to take sub-par jobs and many will move back in with their parents. Only 0.3% of college students receive enough grants and scholarships to cover all expenses. Therefore, when you should be taking a nice long vacation and patting yourself on the back for raising a successful college bound child, you will have to come up with the funds to pay for college education. The result is that 45% of parents will reduce their spending and 19% of parents will work more. But you have another option….

A college Savings 529 plan was created in 1996 to help mitigate the rising costs of education. A 529 plan will grow tax free and will remain tax free if used for college education. These funds are invested in a mutual fund company that is unique to each state. If you don’t like your own state’s plan, you may invest in another state’s 529 plan.

If you invest in your own states 529 plan, you may receive a state income tax deduction for your contribution. For example in the state of Wisconsin, if you live in the state of Wisconsin and the Voya Tomorrow’s Scholar plan is used, you could get up to a $3000 state tax deduction. With a maximum state tax rate of 6.7%, that could be a tax savings of $201.

My favorite feature of the 529 plan is that anyone can contribute to the 529 plan for any child. They don’t even have to be a relative. This makes it a perfect way for relatives to give the gift of college education this holiday season. Also, they can even send the check directly to the fund company, which saves a step for the parent.

In the state of Wisconsin, the minimum needed to get the plan started is $250. There is a $0 annual fee since the $25 annual fee is waived for being a Wisconsin Resident.  You could also set up a $25 per month automatic contribution which doesn’t require the $250 initial contribution to get started. Please comment below or reach out to me if you have any questions!

Financial Planning Process of a CFP

I recently completed the CFP certification requirements to become a Certified Financial Planner. In doing so, I had to write a description of how I work with my clients. I thought I would share this with you all.

As an Associate Wealth Management Advisor at Northwestern Mutual I work directly with financial planning process, working with clients in creating and implementing their financial plans. I am a part of a two person team with Wealth Management Advisor John Drill. When working with clients, our process is to first define the scope of the engagement with the client. This includes deciding which of us will be the point person for the client’s communication and leading the meetings. We discuss with the client the wealth management capabilities and decide on the services they are looking for. We also discuss with the client any potential conflicts of interest that may exist.

After the scope of the engagement is defined, we start the factfinding process. We put a strong emphasis on learning about the client’s hopes, goals, and dreams. We learn about the client’s previous experiences with financial planning professionals and of the current relationships they have in place. We collect all of the client’s necessary information, including all of the statements they have for their investments, employee benefits, social security, insurance, and anything else we have discovered that would be necessary to view.

Once the facfinding process is completed, we begin analyzing the information. I input everything into Northwestern Mutual’s Personal Planning Analysis program. This shows the progress the client is making on their retirement and education goals, the need they have for life and disability insurance, the impact a long term care event may have, a view of their current asset allocation compared to a recommended asset allocation, and an estate planning event. I will then continue to analyze the information in tandem with John Drill, putting our brains together to ensure that we are taking all areas of planning into account.

Once the analysis is complete, we prepare the recommendations to the client. We compare all the options available for the client.  We then review the scope of the engagement, the client’s goals and information, and the available options to come up with our recommendations. When needed, we will reach out to the many resources our home office provides, including the group of attorneys and financial advisors at Northwestern Mutual’s home office. We will also reach out to other professionals, including accountants, attorneys, bankers, insurance reps, etc. We then list out our recommendations in an easy to follow format that we present to the client. When presenting to the client, we spend a good deal of time on the education process. We want to make sure the clients understand their plan and recommendations, and have the ability to learn more if they choose to. We discuss alternative options in order to ensure the client that we have made our recommendations with their best interests in mind.

Now that the client understands both the financial plan and recommendations, we discuss and agree upon the implementation of the recommendations. This includes a discussion on who does what. The tasks will be assigned either to me, to John Drill, to the client, and to other professionals. We will then make a decision on which company’s products and services to implement. This will include more education on the various company’s advantages and disadvantages. We make sure to discuss any conflicts of interest that may exist. We then fill out any paperwork that is required for implementation. We work with both the underwriters and investment companies to assist in a smooth implementation and reduce the amount of hassle to the client during this phase. I keep the client informed with the status of the implementation along the way.

When the implementation is completed, we review the plan again and the implementation of the plan. If needed, this includes additional education to make sure the client fully understands their plan and the products and services we have implemented. We then discuss a timeframe for our first review meeting as well as the involvement that John Drill and or myself will have as defined by the scope of the engagement. We discuss any changes to the client’s goals or financial situation and any changes we need to make to the plan. If necessary we will revisit previous steps in our process. We monitor the progress of the products and services we put in place and have more education around these if necessary. We believe in the importance of strong communication throughout the whole process and the value of being easily accessible to our clients.

Portfolio Deferred Income Annuity

The Portfolio Deferred Income Annuity is a unique product to Northwestern Mutual with a patent pending on the product. The product is currently only available in the qualified world but Northwestern Mutual is hoping for a non-qualified version of the product to be released around October. The area of planning this product attempts to fill is one where clients want guaranteed growth with the ability to get a higher than the fixed income’s rate of return. By getting access to Northwestern Mutual’s general portfolio with a dividend that is a little less than that of that credited to a portfolio life insurance product, this product allows for the client to keep up with inflation in a low interest rate environment.

How this product works is a client between the ages of 18 and 75 gives Northwestern Mutual a lump sum greater than $10,000. The client then chooses its deferral period greater than 1 year and less than 40 years. The client can choose to delay the payout one time during the contract for up to 5 years. There is a death benefit option the client can tack on so that if the client dies during the deferral period their estate will receive the greater of the premium or death benefit + interest + dividends. Therefore, there is no risk to losing the entire sum while in the deferral period. If the death benefit is waived and the client dies during the deferral period, the client will receive nothing unless they chose the period certain payout. There are also different features of the product that are added on when the client chooses to tack on the death benefit. These include, being able to move the payout period up 5 years earlier, change the type of income plan (i.e. from individual life to joint life), change the joint annuitant (i.e. if the client want to make their son a joint annuitant), or decrease the payout period (i.e. going from a 20 year certain to 10 year certain).

The uniqueness and value of this product is that while your money is being deferred and while it is paying out the income stream, the money is getting credited with the Northwestern Mutual’s dividend that is similar to the dividend paid out on BOLI products. The client can choose to take this dividend in cash, can choose to invest it back into the PDIA, or do a combination. The negative side of this product is that the client has zero liquidity and can’t get at their money while they are in the deferral stage. Therefore the only money that should be considered for this product are dollars that are not needed now but need to have the ability to keep up with inflation during the income phase. You may be able to roll out money in a current active 401k if the summary plan agreement allows for a rollover into a PDIA. This may also be a good option for those who have a pension and want to maximize their payout by getting a PDIA on the spouse that can be deferred until the death of the client with the pension, which could work similar to a life insurance pension max without the need for underwriting.

If you have any questions of the product design, you can either comment or send me an email directly! I always enjoy helping people!

Annual Meeting Lessons

The other week I attended the Northwestern Mutual Annual Meeting. This is the 5th annual meeting I attended in 6 years working at Northwestern Mutual. Although I was not able to attend all of the sessions this year, I had some takeaways that I wanted to share with you. Before I get into the specifics of my takeaways, I would like to give a little basic info of the annual meeting so that you understand the backdrop of the information I am about to share.

Northwestern Mutual’s annual meeting is primary a “drink the kool-aid” meeting for new reps with some fellowship and important directional announcements sprinkled in. NML rents out the Milwaukee County Zoo to have their annual garden party and hosts various bands and fair food.  It is quite the spectacle as many “type A” personality representatives let their hair down in front of their colleagues for the first time. This celebratory atmosphere continues throughout the week and includes a mid-week concert with names like Maroon 5, Keith Urban, Kool and the Gang, Tim McGraw, and this year fun.. Milwaukee is overtaken by 10,000 of Northwestern Mutual’s conglomerate representing all parts of the country. It’s a chance to socialize while learning about the intricacies of Northwestern Mutual’s products and the transformation of Northwestern Mutual’s philosophy towards a fully fledged financial planning approach, leaving you feel motivated and ready to face the pessimistic world.

This year we had many good outside speakers with amazing success stories. One of these stories came from the brothers Bert and John Jacobs who started the “Life Is Good” t-shirt campaign. It’s a story of two brothers who fully committed their lives to their dream of selling tshirts across the country at music festivals. They allocated all of their energy to one design once they realized that it had good potential and was a good brand that could catch on. They didn’t allow anything to get in their way, especially the pessimistic outsiders who told them certain ideas would never work. One of these ideas was a Pumpkin festival. Here’s an example of the two brothers putting their energy behind something that represents the reason they got into the business to begin with: “festivals”. This year they raised close to a million dollars for their non-profit Playmakers which helps at risk youth. They’ve created an amazing culture in their company whose sole purpose is to spread joy in the world and make a ton of money doing so. Lessons: do what you are passionate about, commit to this project with 100% of your energy, be willing to be flexible and open to adjusting your business plan according to what your market wants, and don’t give into the naysayers.

Another speaker who had a strong message was General McChrystal. His message was much different than the owners of “Life Is Good”. He emphasized holding yourself to the highest integrity, open communications with people who hold certain areas of expertise, not being afraid to make mistakes as long as your intention are good but living up to those mistakes if they ever happen, and always keep in mind the important things in life: family, God, and your own integrity. He makes sure he is never associated with anything but a “Fast Ship”. He refers to a quote by Captain John Paul Jones, “I wish to have no Connection with any Ship that does not Sail fast for I intend to go in harm’s way.” If you surround yourself with the best people and resources, you will set yourself up for the best potential to succeed. This will also make you a good leader.

It is always refreshing to hear different perspectives that community leaders have. I was reminded during this meeting that people need to be led to making the correct decision based on the characteristics that matter. People don’t buy a car based on which manufacturer has the most color choices or how fancy a flier is for the car. They buy a car based on its ratings, historical performance, quality, reputation, and if it is good fit for their needs. It’s important to remind people of what their concerns should be and not what some salesperson’s pitch or brochure highlights. It’s important to always look at the fundamentals. It’s important to have strong belief in yourself and your decision. People like optimism and are attracted to positivity. Success will follow hard work and persistency. Most importantly keep a “get to” attitude!

Wealth Management Summit

Last week I attended JP Morgan’s Wealth Management Summit at JP Morgan’s home office in New York, NY. I would like to share with your few of the takeaways from the Summit in hopes that you too can get some value to help with your own investing.

The biggest takeaway is that our economy is currently in a very strong growth oriented phase right now. At 6.1% unemployment is close to market efficiency levels, which is down from the 10% unemployment we had in 2009.  However, there is still the looming concern that our labor force growth is low and currently at -.4%, bringing our total labor force participation rate to 62.8%, which was as high as 67% in 2000. A huge contributor of the unemployment rate is that the Baby Boom generation is starting to retire. As the Baby Boomers retire, the US will need to replace these workers with a strong skill set and increase productivity. Currently our productivity is a third of what it should be at. One possible solution presented at the conference is a more relaxed system for allowing educated aliens to remain in our workforce. Another solution is providing programs that will allow for current workers to improve their skill set and become employable through education reimbursement programs, etc. Currently only 3.2% of people who have a college degree is unemployed compared to 6.5% of people who have never been to college. Also, there are income differences of $32k with no college, $60k with a college degree, and $90k with an advanced degree.

A second big takeaway and large part of the discussion during this Wealth Management Summit had to do with the rising interest rate environment that we are in. The dilemma is that if we don’t increase the fed funds rate then we risk continued exorbitant growth and huge inflation. However, if we increase the fed funds rate then the bond market will tank. For example, if the fed increases the rate to 3.5%, the rate that it should be at in an efficiently running economy, the 10yr bond with a 6% note will have a loss in value of 29%. If they slowly increase the rate however and only increase it by .5% then the same bond will have a 1% gain in value. For those investors looking to get fixed income value in the rising interest rate environment that we are expecting, JP Morgan has a fund called the Strategic Income Opportunities Fund. According to the fund manager Bill Eigen, this fund is set up to get a positive return when interest rates go up. His current strategy for investing is to hold a ton of cash right now for the purpose of buying High Yield or Junk Bonds when the interest rates go up and the prices for high yield bonds are low. He owns a lot of insurance and commercial real estate bonds, and he is the biggest player in synthetics. He is also shorting China and Brazil. He looks for buying opportunities like Radio Shack and will make a lot of money on them if they simply avoid filing for bankruptcy. The biggest motivation Bill Eigen has for a strong performance with the fund is that his Mother-In-Law invests in the fund and every time the fund has lower than expected results, she lets him know! Even with Bill’s focus on the fixed income world, he did make a comment that if he wasn’t tied to regulatory and internal constraints of the fund, he would own massive amounts of high dividend paying equities.

Owning mutual funds that focus on high dividend equities was the third biggest takeaway from the JP Morgan Wealth Management Summit. With the 2008 Recession lingering over most large corporations, many are now holding onto massive amounts of cash on their balance sheet. Instead of using this cash and reinvesting into their companies, they are paying out record dividends. For people that are in the need of income, are weary of the bond market, and need a bigger return then the .1% they are getting in money markets or cds, high dividend paying stocks with a strong balance sheet are the way to go. Johnson and Johnson is an example of such a company,  where they pay a 2.65% dividend with no interest rate risk and even a potential upside growth. Alternatively, you could get a Johnson and Johnson bond paying a 2.85% interest filled with a large risk of principal through interest rate risk. I have a list of other high dividend paying stocks that I am willing to share with you if you email me or comment below.

Finally, there was some discussion of industry sectors that JP Morgan feels are a good value for investors. These include media companies, service conductor companies, auto and transportation, manufacturing, and industrials. Many of the value created is a result of the Energy Renaissance with increased energy production of oil and natural gas. Emerson is an example of a company that benefits from the increased oil production. They make the pipelines that oil companies need to transport their oil. A way to get exposure to this as well as other companies that are seen as having good value is through the JP Morgan US Equity fund. There were some other takeaways that don’t impact the economy as a whole and I will touch on these in future blogs. Please make a comment if you would like for me to expand on anything mentioned above, or if you have anything else you would like to add.

Interesting Commentary from Bill Eigen about fixed income: bit.ly/1tYASpC 

5 Techniques for Maximizing Social Security

When I am discussing Social Security with clients, I have found that many people are unaware of the many choices you have with taking the Social Security retirement benefits. I have provided 5 techniques below.

1. At age 66 a spouse can start claiming the spousal benefit of social security and continue to defer their election until age 70. At 70 they can then claim their benefit, which may be much higher. It is important to run the math for your own situation before making any elections. If you work with a financial advisor, they will do all of this for you!

2. If an individual is divorced, had been married for 10 years, and never remarried, they are able to take the spousal benefit at age 62, and defer their benefit until age 70. This could be a chance to render a bit more value out of tolerating 10 years of marriage!

3. Be aware of what is taxable income. 50% of the Social Security benefit is taxed if an individual’s combined income is over $25,000 and 85% if over $34,000. Combined income is found by taking AGI + nontaxable interest + 1/2 of social security income. One can take the excess money they need to live on from income sources that do not affect their AGI, such as Roth IRAs, basis from some life insurance or annuities, or from cd’s and money markets. Keep in mind that at age 70 1/2 required minimum distributions from IRAs begin so there may not be as much flexibility of AGI at that point. Another reason why having money in a Roth IRA is beneficial!

4. Keep a close eye on the calculation of your income for social security. Remember that they use 35 or your last 40 quarters of income. Therefore if you decided to retire at age 65 and your full social security retirement age is 66, you could still defer getting the benefit for a year. If you are under 70, you may want to defer getting payments as long as possible because each year you defer after age 66 you get an additional 8% increase per year if you were born after 1943. This means you will be getting a maximum payout of roughly $3600 instead of $2642 per month. As long as you live past 81 years old you will come out ahead.

5. Take good care of your health and live as long as you can. Once you die, the state no longer pays out the social security checks. In order to get the most out of your benefit, you must live as long as possible. Treat your body like you would treat an old corvette! Give it the best “fuel”, replace old parts, and make sure you take it out for a joy ride every once and a while!

Forming Habits

Hello! Your favorite financial and world advice blogger is back in action. I must admit, I allowed myself to break out of  the habit of blogging, however I am forcing myself back into the habit. Habit forming activities are an important piece of feeling a satisfactory level of success. The same techniques that are used for breaking habits can be used for starting habits. Some of these are instant cold turkey, hiring someone to help you, rewarding yourself with prizes, not giving yourself an alternative option, writing down the activity somewhere you see it daily, and scheduling out a a slow transition. It’s important to figure out which strategies work best for you, and it is even more important to stick with the strategy. A good rule of thumb is that habits take 21 days to create or break. Jeremy Dean has some good advice in his book “Making Habits and Breaking Habits“, it’s important to get off of autopilot and create a fun and engaging challenge for yourself. Most importantly, get out of your own way and anything can be possible!

I am changing things up a little bit for you all in hopes to get more interaction and for your continued interest in the topics I am writing about. I would like for you to comment on this blog or send me an email with a few financial topics you would like to learn about over the next year, and I will work these into my blog posts.

Interesting Article: http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/30/breaking-bad-habits-forbeslife-cx_avd_0430health.html

Wealth Generation – Maximizing Your Pension Earning Ability

Retirement decisions can be daunting. If you make the wrong decision you often times cannot change the decision later. The decision of how to take your pension payments is one of those decisions. Just this past week I was working with a client facing retirement and was trying to decide whether to take a single life payment plan in her pension or a joint and surviver payment option for her pension. The decision was between getting paid $3,026 every month for the rest of her life, or getting paid $2,784 for the rest of both her and her husband’s lives. The risk of which option to choose exists because nobody knows exactly how long they will live.

In their situation, a pension maximization idea makes sense. The pension max idea works like this. Figure out what lump sum is needed to create a lifetime single annuity payment for the spouse who does not have the pension and get a permanent life insurance policy with the pension holder as the insured for that death benefit amount. Then, choose the single life payment option. In this case it would take a lump sum death benefit of $540,000. Let’s review the following extreme scenarios of what would play out. Spouse 1 is the spouse that has the pension and spouse 2 does not.

Scenario 1: The couple lives a long life and dies at the same time. If they die at age 85, they would have received $726,240 from the pension, $540,000 would be paid out to the beneficiaries, and they would have paid $260,000 for the premiums for the life insurance. The net outcome would be $1,006,240 of wealth generated. If instead they took the joint and survivor annuity payment, they would have received only $668,160 instead. If they live to age 100, the resulting numbers are $1,387,920 with the single life annuity and life insurance versus $1,169,280 with the joint and survivor annuity options. In this scenario it makes sense for the couple to choose the pension max strategy instead of the joint and survivor payment option.

Scenario 2: Spouse 1 and Spouse 2 die right away. If they choose the pension max strategy, they would have the life insurance, and their beneficiaries would receive the $540,000 death benefit. If they chose the joint and survivor annuity option, they would receive $0. Clearly the pension max strategy is the better option here.

Scenario 3: Spouse 1 dies right away and Spouse 2 lives a long time. The surviving spouse will create a life annuity with the death benefit that mirrors the joint and survivor annuity payment. Therefore the resulting payout is the same. The difference between the two is that the surviving spouse doesn’t necessary have to annuitize the death benefit proceeds and could instead have the flexibility of receiving the money how they choose, making the pension max strategy the preferred option.

Scenario 4: Spouse 1 lives a long time and Spouse 2 dies right away. If spouse 2 dies right away, spouse 1 could either cancel or keep the insurance. If they cancel the insurance, she would have received $726,240 from the single life option and $668,160 from the joint and survivor option at age 85, and $1,270,920 with the single life option and $1,169,280 with the joint and survivor option. She could also choose to keep the insurance, in which case you would add another $280,000 of total wealth created at age 85, or $117,000 of wealth created at age 100.  Therefore again the pension max strategy is preferred.

In each scenario above, it is better to take the single life option and have the life insurance in place, than to do the joint and survivor option and not have it in place. However, this recommendation is not for every person. It only works if the clients have an abundance of cash flow and the $13,000 annual premium doesn’t affect their lifestyle. When I ran a retirement analysis for this couple, they never run out of money. They will even have a couple million dollars to pass on to their two children. A time when the pension max strategy might not be the best option is if the couple has no desire to pass money on to any beneficiaries or organizations. They will have less money to spend during their own lifetime due to the high premiums if they were to both live a long life.

The trick in the pension max strategy is to have the foresight at a young age and lock in the lower premium costs. If it is locked in as a 40-year-old, the premium would only cost $4000 a year instead of $13000. If the client is unable to afford the premium costs now, it is important to at least get some convertible term insurance in place while the client is healthy and insurable. This policy can then be converted to permanent when cash flow allows for it. If you need help figuring out if a pension max strategy is in your best interest, just reach out to your financial advisor and have them run the numbers for you.

Thanksgiving Day Activity Ideas

Thanksgiving is always one of my favorite Holidays. It’s a Holiday of reflection, family , and of course giving thanks. I look forward to stuffing my face with green bean casserole, homemade stuffing, cranberry relish, sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie, and of course turkey! When I am done I veg out on the couch to the Packers and start to think about my New Years “weight loss” resolution. The idea of the Thanksgiving Holiday (at least the version we all learned growing up) all started when the Pilgrims were struggling to survive in their new colony. With a cold winter ahead of them, the local natives reached out to these outsiders and gave them the food and supplies they needed to last through the cold winter. As you think about this story, I challenge you to think about what it is that you can do for the “Pilgrims” in your colony. Below are some ideas, please comment with other ideas or suggestions that you have.

1. Volunteering at local food shelters like The River Food Pantry.

2. Cooking desserts like a giant Sugar Free Apple Pie to pass around at a nursing home or bake cookies for a program like the Luke House.

3. Doing some yard work for an elderly lady on your block or do a highway clean up with Adopt-A-Highway.

4. On Black Friday, shop for a Christmas Angel Program or for a local Boys and Girls Club.

5. Put up plastic wrap on the windows for a nearby shelter like Porchlight or local not-as-well-off family who have many kids to care for and not enough time to do it themselves.

I want to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving! Please remember to spend some extra time having conversations with your family as you will cherish them when your Great Uncle Bob is no longer able to share the Thanksgiving meal with you. If the people you care about the most aren’t able to be at Thanksgiving with you, spend an hour to send thank you notes to those that you care about and those who have done something special for you over the last year.

Remember to comment on other volunteering ideas!

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