Ep 67: What To Expect When Working with RPA Wealth Management
The X's & O's
No one’s financial plan should be identical to another’s because everyone’s financial journey is going to be different.
What are your unique financial goals?
In this episode, Matthew Theal, Brent Pasqua, and Joshua Winterswyk discuss how they personalize their financial services to each of their clients to fulfill their unique financial goals and needs.
Matthew, Brent, and Joshua discuss:
An overview of services their company has to offer you
The importance of laying out your goals before creating a financial plan
Why their clients don’t need to be located in the same area as RPA Wealth Management to use their services
What you need to bring to your first financial planning session
And more
Connect With RPA Wealth Management:
The Hosts:
Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal and Joshua Winterswyk
Transcript
Welcome to the Retirement Plan Playbook with Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal and Joshua Winterswyk from RPA Wealth Management. In this podcast, we cover current events, retirement planning, straps. And provide you with the tools to help you build a successful retirement playbook in any political or financial landscape.
Join Brent, Matthew and Joshua as they navigate the issues that can make the later stages of your retirement plan, challenging and help you create the best retirement plan playbook. Now let's get to the show.
Hello, and welcome to the retirement plan playbook with Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal and Joshua Winterswyk from RPA Wealth Management. Gentlemen, how are you today? I'm doing really well. How are you, Aric? I am fantastic. I know there's two other guys with you. Are they doing good too? Well, outstanding. Yeah, we're doing good.
All right. Well, I'm excited. This is podcast number two. Um, well, the, the I'm working with you on, we're going to do a couple of these things cause I'm, I'm really coming from the audience's perspective to help the audience, get to know you as I get to know you. So I'm, I'm, I'm excited about today. We spoke about this on the last podcast that this podcast is really going to be going through what it looks like as a prospect for people that are listening to this podcast that say, you know what?
I'd like to talk to those guys. Sometimes there's some trepidation there. Sometimes there's just a little resistance to calling somebody because they just don't know what to expect. So we're going to talk about that today, but before we do Brent, I was hoping to that you could kind of give an overview of what kind of services RPA.
So we do two different services. We do both financial planning and investment management. And when we do financial planning, we essentially collect a client's facts, everything that is going on in their financial life. And then we build that into a software where it creates a plan, and then we begin a multi-step process around their.
And we start doing retirement planning, investment management, tax planning, budgeting, cashflow, insurance reviews, and estate planning. And we essentially start to build a strategy around every aspect around a person's life. And once a person actually has that financial plan built out, we can run any scenario that they want to explore in their life.
And see how it actually plays out financially. Well, one of the things we like to say, when we do financial planning is the numbers really won't lie. And it gives a person a good perspective of not only where they stand, but where they're going. So not only do we do full financial planning, but one of the other services that we do provide is we do portfolio management.
And when we manage a person's investment portfolios, whether it's a retirement accounts or post-tax brokerage account, Uh, we custody the client's assets at Schwab. So the accounts are held at Schwab and then we manage those portfolios and we have a very defined investment philosophy, uh, when we do investment management.
And that's something that we discuss in great detail with the client as we're working with them. I think one thing too from a, a perspective clients Point of view is it's really hard to do investment management without first building out a plan. Because investment management is really simple.
It really just boils down to what kind of risk are we going to take and what kind of return are we targeting? But if we haven't laid out your goals and knowing if they're achieving. It's really, really difficult to then build a portfolio without, having some projections behind it. I think it's important too, to know that investment management is just one portion of a financial plan.
Yeah. It's like the main tool we use to grow net worth. But we have to go through the goals and, you know, actually create that plan. Like you were saying, Brent, to, to really be able to impact someone's life. Yeah. I think there are a lot of complexities to investment management. But essentially, if you're going to try to simplify it, it has to start with the financial plan.
Yeah, I agree. A hundred percent. Yeah. Brent, I gotta be honest. My mind drifted to slightly, when you said something back there, uh, when you were saying that you can take the data and run any scenario that somebody can think of. Right. And my mind immediately went to. Wealthy uncle. I never knew that leaves me an island.
Do you have, can you run that scenario for me? Cause I'd love that scenario specifically, but seriously, can you give me maybe an example of a scenario that you're talking about? What, what is the scenario that somebody would say, Hey, can we check out what would happen if I did this? Right? So, um, let's say somebody was considering transitioning to retirement and let's say they're 62 years old.
Um, we could analyze whether they retired at 62. Uh, the difference of income they would have if they waited to 63 or 64 or any year, um, that they could plan to retire because once your working income stops and you're going to be on a fixed income and the longer you work, if you're going to collect social security or pension, chances are the higher, your fixed income is gonna be.
And at that point if your expenses are higher than what your fixed income is going to be, you're going to need a distribution from your portfolio. And the longer you wait, you know, that's going to change the potential distributions that you take out. So that's one example. Another example would be, let's say a client was wanting to move to a different.
And the effective tax rate in that state's different in the state that they're in. We can look at what the tax savings would be for them transitioning from one state to the other, and to piggyback on that Brent and that example, you know, I have a couple just prospects that come to mind, but reaching out to us to simulate the real estate transaction with moving as well.
Right. Selling your property or the tax implications, purchasing another property. You know, do you have to take out a new mortgage or not? Uh, and so there's a lot of different variables to, let's say, moving at a state that we can simulate and actually quantify for the client to bring more clarity to the big transaction that is looming.
Yeah. And I think what happens too is not only can we simulate it, but we can create the best strategy to accomplish it. Yeah. I mean, that's amazing. I love that. I love that you have that ability. And I think that that's a very thorough approach, obviously, and I'm sure that the, the clients. Prospects that you do work with.
Really appreciate that. And I know that we're going to break down exactly what happens when a prospect calls in, and just a moment, but Josh, I want to ask you this. When it comes to prospects, when it comes to somebody listening to this, what's a good time to reach out when is a good time for them to reach out to RPA Wealth, to begin the discussion.
That's a great question. And I have, I get that question even with family and friends and. Just someone I meet at the hotel pool. But really it starts with life events and we also call them, you could call them trigger events, but when something really changes in someone's life is really the first thing we look at it when, when you should reach out and to give an example of that, getting married, I'm getting remarried, you know, unfortunately people get divorced as well.
That's another big life event that. Financial implications, change of employment, Brett and I also just talked about moving out of state changing. You know, you could be potentially moving out of state and changing jobs. That's another, just big trigger event. Also a few more trigger events is an asset sell.
So you're selling a rental property, potentially looking to purchase other assets or property that could also be a business buying and selling of your business. Um, and then also, unfortunately, you know, passing of a spouse or family is another life event that can have a lot of big financial implications that we can definitely assist with.
Yeah. So, uh, we were working, um, I, we had a prospective client reach out at the beginning of this year and really interesting case. He he's in his late sixties and his wife's in her early sixties. And. He's been grinding at work. He's a software engineer working really hard for a big corporation. And we started working with him and we started running some analysis.
And what we found was that he could have collected social security so much earlier in his wife could have had a bit. And because they never reached out in their fifties or sixties, they never knew about it. So they lost all this money from social security just by not reaching out by waiting so long.
So it's obviously the, like Josh was saying it's the earlier the better. Yeah. And I think what's unique about their situation. It wasn't just so simple. Hey, you know, a person knows that they can start collecting at 62 and someone say that that's a bad idea, it's it? Wasn't that simple. It's when you have certain scenarios where age difference between husband and wife reaches certain ages in the way that you have all these different collection options that you can file for social security.
When we ran the data, it, because of their age difference, it made so much sense for them to begin collecting social security because. The longer they waited, they were just throwing money away because the breakeven points were so far down into their eighties or nineties, they were never going to make it up.
Had they just keep delaying everybody jokes about, you know, stimulus from the government. Since we got it in 20, 20 by 10 bucks, they call it. They literally have, government stimulus now coming in. I mean, they don't really need the money, but it's free money for them. Yes. Matt, let me ask you this, because this podcast is nationwide.
Everybody's going to be able to hear this, but does a client actually need to live in California to work with RPA wealth management? No. A client can live anywhere in the United States and we'll happily work with them for all of our meetings, um, that aren't conducted in-person we use. And they could, we pull up our computer, we have our webcams, we have our microphones, they could see us, we could see them.
And then we present to them on our screen and it works really, really well. I mean, that technology is amazing. We're also registered with the securities and exchange commission, which is a little different than some other advisors who might just be registered to a specific state. So there's no limit on how many clients we could have.
And in different states. And then another thing that's actually kind of unique about our firm is one of our specialties is helping clients move out of the state of California. Really? That's yeah. So that's a huge trend right now that we're seeing, um, California obviously is one of the most expensive states in the United States and it doesn't make a lot of sense from a retirement standpoint, for most people to stay here.
Um, property values are extremely high. You could sell your property here in cough. Move to a lower cost state, the money, your portfolio live on your social security, and you can have a really amazing, beautiful dream retirement. And like Brent was saying earlier, we use our software to simulate that and stuff, not only the tax savings, but the impact of buying the property and then how much more money you'll have at the end of your life by making that move.
We've been working with clients virtually well before. COVID actually. And the reason why is because we had so many clients that had retired and moved out of state that essentially making sure that we were on camera, they could see us, they could see our screen, we could show them all the information that became very important to us.
Well, you know, before 2020. And so we were very familiar. And so when you know, COVID did hit working virtually was second nature to us because we had been doing it for. Yeah. If there was any silver lining whatsoever to COVID, which I hate to even call it a silver lining was the technology, right?
The advancements in technology and people getting used to it. You guys, I know that, like you said, you were using these things well before COVID ever hit, but it tracked. Everybody else how to use it. It, it got people familiar with it that weren't familiar with it before. Like my parents, for instance, they never would have dreamed of using anything like that.
But we started using, you know, FaceTime. We started using zoom type stuff, so we could see each other, even though they live 20 miles away, it was just a safer option because of their age and their, you know, their, the concerns there. So, no, I love that. I love that you've got that implemented and that you've been using it for a very, very long time.
All right. Let's pick. And talk about it from kind of nuts to bolts what it looks like if, when a prospect calls in. So, Brent, let's just take that question when they reach out to you. What's the first thing that happens. So the first thing that we do is we will schedule a call with them and we'll schedule a 30 minute call.
And during that 30 minute call, we'll essentially just learn about their situation and what made them reach out. We'll get a better idea of what some of their financial facts. But we'll also spend a lot of time with them discussing what their financial goals are and what they really just want to accomplish.
And like we had talked about earlier, you know, sometimes it's a triggering event, so we'll understand what that triggering event was and discuss some of the things that will actually, you know, what's keeping them up at night and then we'll discuss and learn a little bit more about their finances, just to get a better idea of what their situation looks like.
And then at the end, Um, we'll tell them a little bit about what our process is, the services we do, both financial planning and investment management. And then once we do that, if they're interested in a second meeting, then what we'll do is we'll create a scope of work. And then that way that they can have a visual of exactly what the financial planning process looks like a little bit more into the investment philosophy.
And in that second scope of meet work meeting, we'll either do it in. Or we'll do it via zoom, just depending on where the client's at. Yeah. I think it's important to, to, to discuss the three different ways that people do reach out to us. Right? So number one is they're going to call the office and if they call the office, um, they'll either hear from our client services associate or myself, Brent or Joshua will answer the phone and we'll talk to them for, you know, five, 10 minutes, get an idea of why they're calling.
And then we'll schedule that 30 minute intro call that Brent was talking about. The other way they could reach out. Is it because you just go right to our website rpawealth.com and they can book their own intro call. There's a quick little questionnaire on there. I think it's four to five questions.
They fill that out. It goes right to our calendar and we'll give them a call, right? When the meeting is supposed to start and at the website, they're going to learn more about us already. There's just some great resources on our site that they can check out while they're there. Oh, that's true. They could listen to this podcast or they could kind of read through our process.
And then lastly, we have a contact us page on there, and a lot of people like to type it type in their own email. Very straightforward. You could tell us about your situation or just tell us, Hey, give me a call. You know, when somebody is free at the office, I'd love to learn more about RPA. And I think what's also important to know about the introduction because you are going to get someone from our direct team, right.
Mean. Matt, Brent, we're going to be on that call. We might even be two of us on that call to really understand you're going to get to talk to us directly and learn more about us in that intro call. And it is complimentary to, we should mention that as well. We don't charge for an intro calls. It's really just a get to know each other call.
All right. That's that? That was actually my next question. So I'm glad you answered that. Let me ask you this for that intro call for the 30 minute phone call. What do they need to bring? Because I know that you guys are younger than I am, but I'm pretty sure everybody in the, probably the world has a junk drawer and I've got multiple and my age, I've got multiple junk drawers.
So I've got paperwork stuff, different places. Um, what are they going to need to prepare for that 30 minute call? So the short answers, they really don't need to prepare that. But what makes the call go really, really well is if they kind of look at their accounts before they have a good idea of how, um, how their money is set up, they have an idea of their balances.
Um, they know how much money they make. You'd be surprised at the amount of people that we talked to, who don't know how much money they make, either on an annual basis or a per paycheck basis. I agree. It's really shocking to me and I have a good idea, you know, what you're reaching out for and what you're looking to accomplish by, you know, working with.
So, let me ask you about this, the scope of work meeting. That's the one that is set up after the 30 minute meeting, is that a complimentary meeting as well? Yes, absolutely. So during that meeting, it gives the client a very good idea of exactly what the financial planning process would look like. And it goes into detailed.
All of the things that we'd be solving for them during that process. And it goes into detail about discussing more about what their goals are and showing them how that financial process is about solving what they want. Um, a process that's just directed towards exactly what we want to solve. We're there to solve what they want to solve.
All. I think what's important about that second meeting too, is after the introduction call, we discuss. Well, we feel are those key planning areas for the clients. So there's some thought that goes into that scope of work and it's, you know, tailored to the client. Um, and so when you're going into that second meeting, us as advisors really have good idea of what we think, you know, you would most benefit from, from the financial planning, but it's also collaborative, right?
We're open with the client to create this scope of work for them to really providing the clarity that they're looking. Yeah, I think those key plain areas are huge. You know, let's just take a typical retiree. Somebody who's like, Hey, can I retire? Well, your first key playing area is literally, can you retire?
Is it, does it work? Like what do the numbers work? Then we start getting a little more granular. How do we optimize social security? Should you downsize your home? What happens if inflation remains elevated? Like it is right now as we're recording, how do you structure your investments to maximize the amount of income you can have happen?
Right. These are all those key plain areas that we start to drill down with with our clients. We had a client recently, um, a new client that we just started working with, reach out. And he was exhausted from working. I mean, it was wearing on him. He was, had been ready to retire. Awful. Yeah. He'd been retired.
He wanted to retire for years and he came in and he said, I just need to know, can I retire? And I need to go through this process to figure that. And within four weeks of us beginning the planning process, um, he had looked at the numbers. We had discussed in detail of the data he had put in his letter for a retirement.
Two weeks later, he was retired after that two weeks after that his house was on the market. And two weeks later, he had a new house in another state where he is now. Very, very happy. You guys are shaking things up, man. That is, that is a fantastic story. I love that. I know that you guys have been doing this for a very long time.
I love the stories. Tell me another you, who else have you had come in as a prospect that kind of maybe got that surprise or maybe they had a surprise that they didn't necessarily like, it didn't work out as well, but they, at least they came up with. Well, I have a story about a client that we helped, and it was really regarding a property that had really grown in value.
It was an investment property and the client had other goals than just to own a really high dollar investment property. Family was growing. Wealth was growing and we were able to actually run strategies and scenarios. To sell the property and actually exchange the property through a 10 31 exchange. I'm getting a little technical here, but without the confidence of understanding, again, the variables with the transaction costs and how an exchange works that clamp potentially not have, might not have made that transaction.
Right. But by doing that transaction by exchanging one investment property for another being able to purchase an upgraded primary residence. We were able to answer those questions and give them the confidence they needed to move forward. I mean, it really impacted their life in a positive way. And I think that's the only way to really do that effectively and to give a client confidence out of that is to be able to.
Have the financial plan built out, run the multiple scenarios of keeping versus selling or exchanging, and then looking at the data and numbers and making a decision about, you know, ultimately what makes them the happiest in life. Right. And, you know, I always think of it. We're going to be that think partner with you as well.
So not only are we running the data and the numbers and developing the plan, but someone to also discuss this with you, having an open conversation about the way you feel. What are those goals? Because sometimes, I mean, even myself having conversations, even with you guys helps clarify some of the future.
And I think that that's very impact impactful. I think the most rewarding thing and fulfilling thing about what we do is just seeing the things that people go and do that makes their life so much better. That sometimes they never thought they would be able to. Whether it's trips or, um, freeing up money so that they can live more comfortable or just relieving their financial stress.
But going through these times where they've never felt like they could do certain things and seeing them accomplish it and just be happy doing it. I mean, there's nothing more rewarding in life than really watching that happen. Absolutely. Well, I want to go back to what the F the first story that you told about the gentlemen that came in that you know, he was rough, right?
He'd been working a lot and he just didn't know that he, he could retire. I'm assuming that that is a lot of people's stories because in the media, we, for better, for worse in the media, we hear that people are living longer. And we know that that's true. Technology has changed. Medical sciences have changed, so people are living longer.
And I think there's an underlying fear that. You know, I'm just going to run out of money. I'm not going to have enough to retire. How often are you guys seeing that when you have prospects come in, where they, they just are so unsure and it's, it's a fear issue. It's so common. And a lot of people, I think that really fits the, if you have a pessimistic person, And they'll say, Hey, I don't have enough money to retire.
The calculator on fidelity or on ADP says, I can't retire yet. It says I need X, Y, or Z. And the truth of the matter is, is those are very simple calculators on the 401k plan that your. And if you're using that to be, to base your retirement, I mean, that's a big mistake. Financial engines. Yeah. Financial engines like Google, it's just a software program.
Right. And even Google too. Like you need to sit with a professional. Who's actually seen people retire who actually knows what it takes to have someone retire. We've transitioned. I can't even tell you how many hundreds of clients from working to return. And I've yet to see one client that we've successfully transition, regret, making that decision to retire, or even run out of money even through bear markets.
Yeah, man. That's fantastic, guys. I appreciate your time today. I love the stories. I love hearing of the successes on the next podcast we're going to carry on from here. So at the end of this podcast is really, you guys have had this meeting now it's decision time, and we're going to talk about what happens when somebody becomes a client and what that process looks like.
Is that okay with you? Yes, that sounds great. Sounds good. And thank you guys so much for the information. It has been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. You bet. And of course our last thank you goes to your listening audience. Thank you so much for tuning in to the retirement plan playbook podcast with Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal and Joshua Winterswyk.
If you have not subscribed to the podcast yet, please click the subscribe. Now button below this way. When the guys come out with a new podcast, it'll show up directly on your listing. This makes it really easy to share these podcasts with your friends and family. Again, thanks for listening today for everyone at RPA Wealth Management, this is Aric Johnson reminding you to live your best day every day, and we'll see you next time.
Thank you for listening to the retirement plan playbook, click the following button to be notified when new episodes become available to get in touch with our team, call us at nine zero nine two nine. 700 977. Or visit our website at www.rpawealth.com to schedule a complimentary consultation. The information covered and posted, represents the views and opinions of the guest and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of RPA Wealth Management.
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