This is part of a four part series. If you haven’t read or watch part one, click here first.
Hi there and thank you for stopping by today. Welcome to part two of questions to ask a potential financial planner.
My name is Tina Anders. I am the owner and founder and certified financial planner for Anders Wealth Management located in Petaluma, California serving Sonoma and Marin counties and the greater area.
Here’s one question that you can ask a potential financial planner, how will you get to know me in order to give me high quality understanding of my personal goals, and dreams, and hopes? And what you’re looking for here is we’re going to give you a data questionnaire, great. We all need a data questionnaire but what you’re listening for is, are you going to sit with me? Are you going to be a high-quality listener? Or are you just going to be in the back of your mind thinking about what questions to ask me next, without giving full empathy and curiosity to the financial situation? When I say financial situation, I mean things that apply to a financial situation now, but also a financial situation down the road.
As a certified financial planner, I’m looking at what impacts today’s living has on future living. And I’m also looking at what goals have an impact on today’s living. So, you want a full picture? You want good listening.
Another question to ask how will you provide a comprehensive and tailored solution to meet my needs, and help me achieve my goals? And the answer is experience. You’re looking for someone to tell you they’ve been in the industry for a while. They’ve seen a lot of different situations. They’ve dealt with an array of financial objectives and goals and data and scenarios. And they will help you by customizing a plan to you and you alone. Important.
Next question you might ask is, will you preserve my assets in a volatile slash down market? And the answer that you’re looking for of course, is yes! But how will you do it? One way that I use that has proven to be extremely successful, and I can speak to the success of this having gone through the 2008 Great Recession. And also here we are in COVID-19 of 2020. Clients are very happy because they have not had to adjust their lifestyles based on the markets because our build bond ladders. And a bond ladder is something I’d be happy to talk with you about at some point. A government guaranteed pension like bond ladder will give you the peace of mind that other ways of investing may not. And when it comes to preserving assets, you want that and you really want that when it comes to recessions and unfortunate COVID-19 type markets.
Another question you might ask, how will you provide me high quality, ongoing service throughout the year as questions I have, or needs arise? You are listening for someone who is on call, there for you, throughout the year at no additional charge. You want someone who’s got your information, got your plan, has you in mind, is able to field your questions. Have meetings anytime you need meetings, you want someone who’s there for you. That’s really important. It’s not a once or twice a year thing. But obviously they’re going to want to meet with you on an ongoing basis. But also, they need to be there for you when you have ongoing needs and questions.
Another question would be, how do you build relationships, relationships based on mutual respect? And do you enjoy working with your clients and your clients enjoy working with you? And the question, the answer, of course, is yes, we do build relationships based on mutual respect. And that is a back and forth mutual relationship that has built over time. Trust is a huge element when it comes to mutual respect, and especially working with a financial advisor. So that will come over time. But we, I do build relationships based on mutual respect. I have respect for my clients and their situations. They have respect for me and what I can bring to the table as well. I love working with my clients. My clients, I believe, enjoy working with me. We enjoy each other’s company. It’s a friendly and respectful atmosphere. I appreciate that very much.
Tune in to part three for questions to ask a potential financial planner. Thanks again for stopping by, I appreciate you listening in. Comment below with any questions, comments, or if you have any topics you would like me to discuss in the future, I will try to put a video out for you. Thanks again. I am in your corner.
Hi there and thank you for stopping by today. Today where I am going to talk with you about questions that you might consider asking a potential financial advisor before you sign on with this person. My name is Tina Anders. I am the owner and founder and certified financial planner for Anders Wealth Management located in Petaluma, California serving Sonoma and Marin counties and the greater area.
Today, I am going to talk with you about questions that you might consider asking a potential financial advisor before you sign on with this person.
The first question that I would ask a potential financial adviser is, are you a certified financial planner? And if the answer is yes, that’s great. If the answer is no, find out why. Because a certified financial planner has to take a minimum… well, they have to take 30 continuing education units, excuse me, every two years. Most certified financial planners that I know take well above 30 units per two years because there is so much information out there. And we have to stay abreast of it so that we can advise our clients the best possible way that we can.
Secondly, about a certified financial planner, there are 10 hours of exams to become a certified financial planner that must be passed. And so in order to pass those exams, there’s a lot of knowledge that needs to go in to preparing for the exams.
And thirdly, there’s a there’s an experience element. A certified financial planner needs to have experience in the industry in order to be certified.
So, those are just three good reasons to hire a certified financial planner versus somebody who’s not. Another question that you might ask is, are you fee only? Are you fee based? Do you work for a large brokerage firm? You’ll already know that when you talk to them.
There’s a difference between a fee only financial planner and a fee based financial planner or somebody who’s not fee related or oriented. And there those are these: a fee only advisor has taken a fiduciary oath to advise in your best interest. And so what that means is, she or he will not have any conflicts of interest when it comes to selling you things. To get advice in your best interest, you need somebody to be objective. If I’m getting kickbacks, commissions, incentives of any kind to recommend a certain investment product to you, or a certain insurance product to you. Perhaps and I’m not insinuating that people are not ethical, but perhaps there is in fact a conflict of interest there. Perhaps I will offer you something that could be helpful to you, but may not be the best advice for you, best product for you. And perhaps I’m looking at not only your situation, but my financial situation and thinking, how can we both benefit from my advice versus just you the client who is paying me?
So fee only, no sales, no commissions, no kickbacks. Fee based, yes there’s a fee for usually financial planning, but then there are sales on top of that. Sales in regards to products to invest in or products to buy for insurance purposes, annuities, things of that nature.
And then there are stockbrokers and other people who call themselves, financial advisors, probably conflicts of interest. So, just be aware of the fee only versus fee based versus neither of those and just know what you’re looking at and ask those questions. It’s important that you find out what you’re dealing with, no surprises.
Tune into Part Two for questions to ask a potential financial planner. Thanks again for stopping by, I appreciate you listening in. Comment below with any questions, comments, or if you have any topics you would like me to discuss in the future, I will try to put a video out for you. Thanks again. I am in your corner.
Hi there and thank you for stopping in. My name is Tina Anders, I am the Fee only certified financial planner for Anders Wealth Management, located here in Petaluma, California.
I’m here to talk to you today about the Secure Act. Here’s a key feature of the Secure Act, important right here. There used to be a rule that if you inherited money from an individual retirement account, you could stretch the distributions from that IRA over your lifetime. You can no longer do that. There is what’s called a 10-year payout rule. And what that means is while there will be no required distributions during the 10-year period, you must liquidate the account within a 10-year period.
There are a few people who are exempt from the 10-year payout rule. They are surviving spouses, minor children, chronically ill folks, disabled folks, folks that are fewer than 10 years younger. That’s fewer than 10 years younger of the deceased. Then you’re able to take it over your lifetime. But the thing about the minor child is the minor child can stretch it over the lifetime of the child. However, once that child reaches the age of majority, that child has to be subject to the 10-year payout rules.
And I wanted to mention to you trusts as a beneficiary to an individual retirement account. Oftentimes the reason people use a trust as a beneficiary to their IRA instead of a child or a grandchild or a grant, great grandchild is because they don’t want those beneficiaries to receive a lump sum of their individual retirement accounts. So, they make the trust the beneficiary and then the trust can pay out as the trust dictates to the beneficiary child, grandchild, great grandchild, Right?
But here’s the thing. Trusts are also now required to follow the 10-year payout rule. So, what that means is your wishes may not be honored if you have a trust as a beneficiary of your IRA. So, I encourage you to see your estate planning attorney, if you don’t know one, I can refer you to one. You want to check with your estate planning attorney who drew up your paperwork, revisit the paperwork, make sure it’s going to be set up for you so that your wishes will be honored. Should you predecease those beneficiaries.
Thank you again for stopping by. If you have any questions, comments or you have a topic you’d like me to talk about. Please either e-mail me at [email protected] or go to my contact page on my website at anderswealth.com.
And fill out as much or as little as you want on the contact page. But at the bottom, there’s a text box put in whatever you want to make sure that I see, and I will reply to you. And if you want me to talk about a topic, I will do my best to do so. Thanks again for stopping by. I’m in your corner.
Thank you for stopping in. My name is Tina Anders. I am the Fee Only certified financial planner for Anders Wealth Management located here in Petaluma, California.
I’m here to talk to you today about the Secure Act. Secure is an acronym which stands for Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement. Also want to say thank you for your patience because I am filming at home because of shelter in place. Okay, so the Secure Act has to do with many, many things. But I’m going to talk to you mostly about how it’s addressed with individual retirement accounts, which I will call IRAs,
You can contribute now, to an IRA, as long as you’re working. It used to be that even if you were working past the age of seventy and a half, you couldn’t contribute past the age of seventy and a half. Now you can contribute for your entire working career.
Secondly, that I want to point out is required minimum distributions. So, these are distributions that come from a traditional or other IRA, not Roth IRA, which are required at a certain age. It used to be seventy and a half, you can prolong that until the age of seventy-two.
Qualified charitable distributions, I will call these QCD’s. QCD’s are a great way to transfer money directly from your individual retirement account to a qualified charity. Use to be that people used these in lieu of taking required minimum distribution. However, that has been prolonged until the age of 72, required minimum distributions, RMDS. So, you can still do a QCD at the age of seventy and a half. Okay, up to $100,000. I’m going to talk about QCD’s in another video, but I just want to let you know you can do them at the age of seventy and a half.
IRA money can be taken without penalty for child births and adoptions. There are rules involved, so check with me. If you have questions about that happy to walk you through the process. foster care workers also may contribute to individual retirement accounts. The thing is, there are rules there as well. So please reach out for clarification before you make a contribution as a foster care worker because you don’t want it to end up as taxable income.
529 plans are college savings plans, and you are now able to use up to $10,000 from your 529 plan to repay student debt. You can also take money from your 529 plan, new this year, to use for apprenticeships.
I want to also talk to you about annuities, employer sponsored retirement plans, such as 401K’s, 401A’s 457, 403B’s etc, etc. So Many, you will see more annuities available in employer sponsored retirement plans. And if you want to talk about that we can certainly do so. Also, want to tell you about graduate students and postdoctoral students. If you’re receiving a stipend and or a fellowship, you are able to contribute to an individual retirement account. So, you can see that there’s a shift in that an encouragement to start putting money away.
Thank you again for stopping by. If you have any questions, comments, or you have a topic you’d like me to talk about, please either email me at [email protected] or go to my contact page on my website at anderswealth.com and fill out as much or as little as you want on the contact page. But at the bottom, there’s a text box, put in whatever you want to make sure that I see and I will reply to you. And if you want me to talk about a topic, I will do my best to do so. Thanks again for stopping by. I am in your corner.
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