Bogleheads® Chapter Series – PlanVision and eMoney demo

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Welcome to the "Bogleheads" Chapter Series.

00:00:08.300 | This episode was jointly hosted by the Tampa Bay

00:00:10.980 | and South Florida Chapters and recorded June 22nd, 2021.

00:00:15.480 | It features Mark Zorrell and Jason Lynch

00:00:17.940 | demonstrating the PlanVision service and e-money platform.

00:00:21.740 | Bogleheads are investors who follow

00:00:23.200 | John Bogle's investing philosophy

00:00:25.080 | for attaining financial independence.

00:00:27.360 | This recording is for informational purposes only

00:00:29.960 | and should not be construed as investment advice.

00:00:32.520 | Welcome everybody to this joint meeting

00:00:38.800 | of the Tampa Bay and South Florida Bogleheads Chapters.

00:00:41.920 | We're pleased to have Mark Zorrell and Jason Lynch

00:00:44.640 | joining us again, this time to demo their PlanVision service

00:00:48.800 | and the e-money advisor platform.

00:00:52.320 | They were with us back in April for our joint meeting.

00:00:54.760 | At that time, they presented a number of financial topics

00:00:57.480 | for consideration both before and during retirement,

00:01:00.800 | as well as their perspectives on the future of technology

00:01:03.720 | in the financial advice sector.

00:01:05.820 | This meeting is for informational purposes only

00:01:10.160 | and should not be construed as personalized investing advice.

00:01:13.960 | I wanna thank Miriam, the South Florida coordinator

00:01:16.320 | for assisting us this evening.

00:01:18.120 | And we will be taking questions

00:01:20.520 | throughout the presentation,

00:01:22.520 | but please hold them until we have a break.

00:01:26.000 | For brief background, Mark Zorrell,

00:01:29.000 | who's the founder of PlanVision around 2012, I believe,

00:01:32.720 | has 27 years of experience

00:01:34.560 | in the financial services industry.

00:01:36.760 | He started his career helping smaller companies

00:01:38.840 | establish employer-based retirement plans.

00:01:41.760 | And subsequently, his efforts have evolved

00:01:44.200 | to primarily helping individuals plan

00:01:46.080 | and prepare for their financial futures.

00:01:49.040 | Jason Lynch joined PlanVision in February, 2020,

00:01:52.600 | after spending the last 18 years in private accounting,

00:01:55.480 | as well as 12 years in public accounting,

00:01:58.040 | working with taxes for high net worth clients

00:02:00.840 | and their businesses.

00:02:02.480 | He's been indexing since the mid '90s

00:02:04.400 | and is a true Boglehead,

00:02:05.680 | having attended the National Conference in 2016

00:02:08.760 | and being a regular presenter

00:02:10.000 | at his local Michigan Bogleheads chapter.

00:02:12.000 | So without further ado,

00:02:14.760 | I'll turn this over to Mark and Jason.

00:02:17.720 | - I'll provide an overview of PlanVision

00:02:22.080 | and kind of our approach,

00:02:23.840 | and then we'll go into the money, the program,

00:02:26.360 | and I'll make some comments about how we use that

00:02:28.960 | and how it can be used kind of as a tool

00:02:31.440 | for people to help plan for their future.

00:02:33.920 | You wanna flip forward?

00:02:36.840 | Yeah, so that's just the front page of our website.

00:02:44.320 | Some comments that I would make,

00:02:45.920 | if you wanna go on to the next slide, Jason.

00:02:49.040 | Yeah, so our view is very much a Boglehead type,

00:02:53.760 | mentality that investors can have great portfolios,

00:02:58.520 | simple, low cost financial planning investment advice.

00:03:01.480 | Not only do we think that the financial services industry

00:03:05.000 | grossly overcomplicates investing

00:03:08.160 | so that people think they need their services,

00:03:10.120 | but also when it comes to financial planning advice,

00:03:13.880 | we think that can be done very quickly and very efficiently

00:03:17.640 | if you're independent and you use technology well.

00:03:20.800 | So that's a big part of how we go about

00:03:23.280 | what we do here at PlanVision.

00:03:25.720 | And e-money is a critical part of that.

00:03:27.760 | We use e-money as basically our hub for client information,

00:03:34.560 | and they have a great client portal we'll go through.

00:03:37.880 | And also in our interactions with our clients,

00:03:41.360 | we use Salesforce a lot.

00:03:43.760 | We have integrations built between a company called Alchemy

00:03:47.880 | and Salesforce so that their data flows into our system.

00:03:51.200 | It's not personal data.

00:03:52.760 | It's more their investing and guidance preferences.

00:03:56.880 | We have clients in 50 states.

00:03:59.520 | And then we work with over a hundred nationalities.

00:04:02.400 | And I think it's, gosh, it must be more,

00:04:04.440 | almost approaching a hundred countries around the world.

00:04:06.560 | So a lot of what are called expatriates,

00:04:09.080 | and there probably are some people here even on the session

00:04:12.000 | that might end up wanting to move overseas later in life.

00:04:15.160 | We work with a lot of those folks

00:04:18.120 | to help them navigate those challenges.

00:04:23.120 | And I should also mention that about 2 1/2 years ago

00:04:28.400 | as an advisor, I reached out to Vanguard

00:04:30.840 | and spoke with the folks on their international,

00:04:33.880 | and in their international areas,

00:04:35.600 | they believe to be their highest growth area.

00:04:38.160 | And what's happening is the message

00:04:40.320 | of this kind of investing, index-based investing,

00:04:44.680 | the bogo head philosophy is going around the world.

00:04:47.480 | In fact, our largest clientele out of the US

00:04:52.000 | is out of the UAE.

00:04:53.360 | We are promoted, or are promoted,

00:04:55.080 | but we're very well known in the UAE

00:04:57.000 | through a bogo head group there,

00:05:00.120 | the Simplify Bogo Head community.

00:05:01.840 | So that's pretty cool.

00:05:03.080 | So next screen, please.

00:05:07.360 | Yeah, so eMoney Advisor is a system

00:05:12.880 | that we license as an advisory firm.

00:05:16.140 | It has a huge range of capability that's built into it.

00:05:21.140 | We're not even, 3,500, I think, give or take.

00:05:28.340 | We've worked with far more than that.

00:05:29.540 | We have about 3,500 clients right now.

00:05:31.380 | There was a question here.

00:05:32.580 | (indistinct)

00:05:35.000 | So eMoney has a broad range of capability,

00:05:41.100 | both in the platform.

00:05:42.260 | It's incredibly robust and powerful.

00:05:44.060 | A lot of the work we do on our side,

00:05:46.260 | our clients can do some modeling on their side.

00:05:49.300 | It was acquired by Fidelity in 2015.

00:05:52.100 | Important comments about eMoney.

00:05:55.640 | The client is not the...

00:05:59.700 | The client is not our client.

00:06:03.100 | We are the eMoney client.

00:06:05.140 | So we interface directly with them.

00:06:07.820 | Our clients cannot interface directly with eMoney.

00:06:11.960 | I hope to someday,

00:06:13.160 | and I kind of joke with our clients about this,

00:06:14.920 | I hope to someday not actually have to interact

00:06:16.800 | with our clients using eMoney on their own.

00:06:20.320 | And we're actually coming out with a new website

00:06:23.640 | later on this year,

00:06:24.480 | where we hope to give a lot more of the tools

00:06:26.720 | to help our clients use eMoney more directly on their own,

00:06:29.880 | a lot more videos and explanations.

00:06:31.720 | But it is run by us, the advisors.

00:06:36.680 | We do the deep modeling.

00:06:38.240 | Our clients can do some minimal modeling.

00:06:39.840 | So with that, we'll go ahead and get into it.

00:06:42.240 | We're gonna go through,

00:06:48.160 | just to remind you,

00:06:49.000 | it is an advisor-based platform, as I went into.

00:06:51.280 | We'll go into the client functionality

00:06:53.440 | and then the advisor functionality as well.

00:06:55.960 | But we'll kind of walk you through

00:06:58.800 | the screens that we go through with our clients

00:07:00.680 | and show some of the things that we help them accomplish.

00:07:06.280 | This is the client portal.

00:07:08.040 | So this is what your screen looks like.

00:07:09.160 | And this will change over time as they come out with new,

00:07:11.520 | nevermind, there may be some of our clients on the call

00:07:14.880 | or people that have used eMoney as well.

00:07:16.760 | And this is just the basic client portal.

00:07:19.600 | They are updating this.

00:07:20.880 | I think you can get a little more information on this,

00:07:24.120 | depending upon how you set up the portal for yourself,

00:07:26.840 | but this is the home screen for the client portal.

00:07:29.280 | And then you go on to the next screen, Jason.

00:07:34.520 | And then you go on to the next screen, Jason.

00:07:36.760 | So this is the organizer.

00:07:39.280 | Now, when our clients begin the process,

00:07:43.160 | they go to the organizer

00:07:44.840 | and they go into the account section.

00:07:46.640 | I think you have a screen on that one too, Jason.

00:07:49.600 | Yeah, you go into the account section

00:07:51.080 | and you can integrate all of your accounts

00:07:54.280 | into the platform.

00:07:55.400 | Now you can do one of two ways.

00:07:57.040 | One is you can actually link them,

00:07:58.680 | which is what most of our clients do

00:08:00.240 | that requires a user ID and password,

00:08:02.560 | or you can add them manually.

00:08:04.200 | If you link them,

00:08:06.040 | then they will be updated for the most part

00:08:10.640 | on a regular basis.

00:08:12.160 | Some of these connections will break periodically.

00:08:16.480 | Some of the larger ones need to go through overhauls

00:08:19.120 | every once in a while,

00:08:19.960 | where they'll just kind of have to clean them up

00:08:22.040 | and then our clients have to go reconnect them.

00:08:24.160 | But you can have the data current and live.

00:08:26.320 | What is interesting to see,

00:08:31.840 | if your data is live

00:08:34.080 | and you're one of our clients that logs in every day

00:08:36.560 | to see how close retirement's getting,

00:08:38.920 | if your data is live and the markets go down a lot,

00:08:42.640 | oh gosh, your graphs will look quite a bit different.

00:08:45.200 | This happened in March of last year.

00:08:47.520 | People thought retirement was a year or two years away.

00:08:49.880 | All of a sudden it looked pretty grim.

00:08:52.000 | So if you're connected,

00:08:53.240 | you'll see that kind of activity in the reporting area.

00:08:56.640 | But also if you do it manually,

00:08:57.920 | a lot of clients just prefer doing it manually.

00:08:59.840 | They're uncomfortable with the security

00:09:01.880 | and they're very comfortable just doing it themselves.

00:09:04.240 | It's pretty easy to log in and update your accounts here

00:09:07.560 | manually in the organizer.

00:09:08.880 | Another tab in the organizer area

00:09:12.120 | is your income expenses and savings.

00:09:14.480 | A comment that I would make here is that

00:09:18.560 | for many of our clients,

00:09:19.680 | and I'll get into a few of the areas

00:09:21.200 | where you can do your own modeling,

00:09:24.280 | for many of our clients,

00:09:27.120 | they will think to themselves,

00:09:29.160 | I do wanna retire someday in the future,

00:09:31.360 | but I'm not gonna fully retire.

00:09:34.840 | I wanna go work part-time or make some income.

00:09:37.400 | And in the annual income,

00:09:38.960 | that is an area that they can do their own modeling.

00:09:41.000 | They can pick different,

00:09:43.440 | making different levels of income

00:09:45.080 | for different periods of time.

00:09:47.000 | They can also enter pensions in here

00:09:48.680 | and then different salary structures.

00:09:50.880 | The savings you'll see down at the bottom

00:09:52.440 | are just any sort of savings

00:09:54.440 | that represent annual contribution towards their future.

00:09:57.960 | Okay, and here is where our clients,

00:10:02.560 | this is another area where our clients can model

00:10:05.120 | the retirement date.

00:10:05.960 | You can go here and change your retirement date

00:10:07.800 | and then go look at the reports.

00:10:09.280 | In this case, this client has two children.

00:10:12.280 | They're putting in their future educational expenses.

00:10:14.960 | The educational planning program,

00:10:16.560 | any money is quite robust.

00:10:19.320 | It's a module that's integrated.

00:10:22.720 | Excuse me, the data is integrated,

00:10:24.600 | but there are separate college planning reports

00:10:26.760 | that are produced by eMoney.

00:10:28.960 | And also it can identify expenses by college.

00:10:32.480 | If you really wanna get into

00:10:33.960 | how some level of precision on your expenses

00:10:37.880 | for college expenses.

00:10:39.800 | Now, the major expenses you're seeing down there,

00:10:42.560 | that's a really critical component of any projection.

00:10:45.840 | These represent the expenses

00:10:47.600 | that you think you're going to have

00:10:49.800 | either if you're in retirement

00:10:51.920 | or if you're projecting out towards retirement.

00:10:55.680 | There's a lot of variation in this.

00:10:57.240 | You can pick expenses for certain periods of time

00:11:00.720 | and that's fairly valuable.

00:11:02.560 | We believe most retirees

00:11:05.000 | are going to wanna have graduated expenses

00:11:07.320 | during retirement.

00:11:08.400 | Maybe have a higher level from 55 to 65,

00:11:11.240 | maybe a lower level from 65 to 75 and so on.

00:11:15.440 | And you can do all of this on your own

00:11:17.040 | if you really enjoy doing some additional modeling

00:11:19.920 | here in the future goals area of the organizer.

00:11:24.440 | (indistinct)

00:11:26.680 | So the vault,

00:11:27.760 | a lot of our clients will share their information with us.

00:11:31.240 | Some of us send basically all the documents

00:11:33.800 | they've ever had

00:11:34.640 | or accumulated in their entire life to the vault,

00:11:37.680 | but it is secure and so you can upload documents there.

00:11:41.880 | Jason does a lot and he'll talk about this later.

00:11:43.760 | He does a lot of tax planning with our clients

00:11:46.080 | and our clients will upload their 1099s or their tax forms

00:11:49.840 | and he'll be able to use those by sharing them here.

00:11:53.240 | (mouse clicking)

00:11:55.440 | So this is the reporting area.

00:11:56.960 | Now the reporting,

00:11:58.240 | eMoney produces a very broad array of reports.

00:12:03.520 | Now, when we do presentations,

00:12:04.920 | we concentrate on about three to four of them,

00:12:07.560 | but there's a lot if you wanna pick through here

00:12:09.960 | and you can also have your own favorites

00:12:12.680 | as far as reports that you might wanna see more frequently.

00:12:15.800 | The ones that are the most valuable

00:12:17.320 | and we'll see those a little bit on the side

00:12:18.760 | that we go through tonight would be the cash flow report.

00:12:22.480 | That is far and away the best report for planning purposes.

00:12:25.840 | The balance sheet is useful

00:12:27.280 | if you're interested in seeing where your net worth is

00:12:28.960 | and there's actually a few different balance sheets

00:12:30.440 | you can look at.

00:12:31.880 | Your assets, we're gonna go into the assets report as well.

00:12:34.760 | There's a really nice tax type report.

00:12:36.980 | Yeah, we will get into that

00:12:39.840 | about the Roth conversion planning.

00:12:41.600 | And then there's a few more.

00:12:44.080 | Actually, if you see the little elevator shaft

00:12:47.320 | to the right of the dropdown report,

00:12:49.560 | that goes down pretty far.

00:12:51.240 | Very nice income tax reports.

00:12:53.240 | In fact, Jason had a nice project with a client of ours

00:12:56.840 | where he really had to delve into depth

00:13:00.160 | on the different data points

00:13:02.720 | that were being produced by e-money,

00:13:04.460 | but it was quite revealing for this client

00:13:06.400 | as far as how his income taxes were being calculated

00:13:09.160 | and how it was integrating his capital gains,

00:13:11.160 | his dividends, the whole nine yards into the program.

00:13:13.760 | So, yeah, I think that that's it.

00:13:20.840 | Now, I'm gonna use this as a break.

00:13:22.800 | We talked earlier about maybe a natural break.

00:13:26.940 | This is, I finished going through the client portal.

00:13:30.700 | So if there were any questions here,

00:13:32.440 | I think there was at least one question

00:13:34.200 | about Roth conversion planning, and I'm going,

00:13:37.120 | Jason and I will go into that on the other side.

00:13:39.520 | I can't recall if there were any other questions.

00:13:43.040 | Barry had a question?

00:13:44.100 | Do I need to open the chat?

00:13:49.360 | Oh, I'm sorry.

00:13:50.200 | If anybody, if I can interrupt,

00:13:51.960 | if anybody wishes to ask their question directly on the mic,

00:13:55.280 | please use the raised hand icon

00:13:58.280 | and you'll float to the top of the screen

00:14:00.500 | where we can see you.

00:14:01.340 | We'll alternate that with questions submitted via the chat.

00:14:05.440 | - Okay, he's at the top of the class.

00:14:07.280 | - All righty, Barry?

00:14:09.720 | - Yeah, so I had a quick question

00:14:10.920 | about how you handle 401k plans,

00:14:13.640 | which have like collective investment trusts

00:14:15.520 | where you're not gonna have a public ticker,

00:14:18.320 | might not be able to get some market data so easily.

00:14:21.620 | - Yeah, that's actually quite common.

00:14:23.560 | So let me just also rephrase that question

00:14:27.920 | for everyone else.

00:14:29.680 | The question's about a 401k plan,

00:14:32.160 | collective investment trusts are not publicly traded.

00:14:34.640 | In fact, in many, in many retirement plans,

00:14:39.640 | they just, they brand these things

00:14:41.600 | and you can't get a ticker on them anyway,

00:14:43.480 | even if they're like, you know,

00:14:44.520 | General Electric's 401k plan,

00:14:46.200 | they'll have their own S&P 500.

00:14:48.440 | What we can do in the,

00:14:49.800 | and actually some of our clients can do this.

00:14:51.800 | They can actually pick the asset class.

00:14:54.120 | If they can't do it, then we can do it for them.

00:14:56.600 | So we can identify what is the correct asset class

00:15:00.720 | for that holding.

00:15:01.700 | Somebody had a question about who enters the data.

00:15:07.240 | Good question, I hadn't thought about doing that.

00:15:11.480 | When you subscribe for our service,

00:15:14.080 | what we do is we send you the link from eMoney

00:15:17.520 | and we send you this email that says,

00:15:19.680 | hey, you signed up for us, you're doing the homework.

00:15:22.140 | So you have to go to the website,

00:15:24.280 | watch the videos and enter all the data.

00:15:26.640 | So I think when we roll out our $2,000 program,

00:15:30.440 | then we'll start to take entry.

00:15:32.240 | But $189, it's going to be up to the clients

00:15:35.560 | to do the data entry.

00:15:36.720 | I have heard from many of our clients

00:15:39.040 | that they actually kind of like the process

00:15:40.820 | of going through this.

00:15:41.660 | It's a way for them to get their head around

00:15:45.860 | what their assets are and kind of clean things up.

00:15:48.360 | Now there were some more things in the chat here.

00:15:53.720 | I don't know if those are questions that I can answer.

00:15:56.200 | - Whether you could add your own information to the program.

00:15:59.720 | - I'm sorry, Miriam, is that a question?

00:16:03.900 | - Yeah, that was one of the questions in the chat.

00:16:06.220 | Let me see if it was,

00:16:10.600 | that clients can add their own information

00:16:14.680 | in terms of data entry.

00:16:16.260 | - Yes, they can.

00:16:20.040 | They'll be able to log in their side and see if they can.

00:16:22.760 | First of all, they'll see if the connections are working

00:16:24.500 | or not working.

00:16:25.340 | You'll get a message if they're broken.

00:16:27.000 | Or if you just want to update a manual,

00:16:28.580 | you can do that anytime.

00:16:30.260 | You know, I mentioned that we have all these expats.

00:16:33.340 | We do financial plans for people

00:16:37.880 | that are getting paid in Korean won and Japanese yen.

00:16:41.780 | I mean, it's like a hundred million dollars,

00:16:44.100 | a hundred million yen is what they're.

00:16:45.540 | So they can do it.

00:16:46.860 | All of those folks do it manually.

00:16:48.620 | So they type in, they just update their stuff manually.

00:16:51.380 | There's a question, a couple of questions more.

00:16:54.580 | - Which reports can the client run unassisted?

00:16:57.760 | - Is there a capability of?

00:17:01.780 | - They can run all of the reports that are shown here.

00:17:05.180 | There's well over 200.

00:17:07.700 | Many of them don't apply.

00:17:09.160 | There's a lot of stock option reports,

00:17:11.160 | but clients can run all of the reports

00:17:15.160 | without contacting us.

00:17:17.020 | - Yeah, what they'll do a lot of times,

00:17:19.760 | there's a button here.

00:17:20.600 | I don't even think it's showing up.

00:17:22.420 | It might be hidden right here where you can do,

00:17:24.660 | you can just do a web print that will print that.

00:17:27.780 | Now we'll get into this.

00:17:30.120 | We're going to get some of the stuff on the other side here,

00:17:31.920 | but we will produce a lot of reports on our side

00:17:35.960 | and we immediately drop them in the vault

00:17:37.640 | if they're reports that we're doing.

00:17:39.560 | Can e-money keep track of TIA traditional?

00:17:42.060 | If you link your TIA account,

00:17:45.720 | TIA had a huge break.

00:17:47.080 | I think it was a year and a half,

00:17:48.080 | but lasted for like four or five months,

00:17:50.280 | but now it's working again,

00:17:51.720 | but it will connect the TIA account.

00:17:53.280 | We can label it as a fixed account.

00:17:55.600 | Is there a capability of one-time changes?

00:17:57.560 | Yes.

00:17:58.400 | This is a good question.

00:18:00.420 | Downsizing or a windfall such as an inheritance?

00:18:03.420 | Yes.

00:18:04.260 | So in e-money that's called a buy-sell transaction

00:18:07.620 | if you're downsizing.

00:18:08.460 | We sell the house and we buy a new one.

00:18:10.660 | That's programming we would do on our side.

00:18:13.060 | Inheritances are handled quite effectively in e-money

00:18:16.380 | in that we can introduce assets later in life.

00:18:19.140 | We can have them show up in the future.

00:18:21.020 | So that's a part of the robustness that e-money has.

00:18:24.720 | That's kind of behind the scenes that we do a lot of.

00:18:27.840 | If I were to recommend,

00:18:29.540 | is there anything I should tell that he should get together

00:18:33.180 | or will tell them they need to do data entry?

00:18:35.780 | Well, yeah, they're going to have to enter

00:18:37.820 | their finances basically.

00:18:39.380 | I mean, if they want us to do a plan,

00:18:41.860 | they'll want to enter their accounts

00:18:46.660 | and when they think they're going to retire

00:18:47.900 | and that kind of thing.

00:18:49.300 | I'm a Fidelity customer and have done some.

00:18:51.400 | Here's a question about Fidelity customer

00:18:57.620 | and have done some e-money simulation.

00:19:00.060 | My understanding of this is that the version

00:19:04.780 | that's used by Fidelity is a more limited version

00:19:09.580 | than this one.

00:19:10.400 | Like there's, I think that they want you to work out,

00:19:15.000 | reach out to their advisors and use them.

00:19:16.500 | That's all I'm aware of.

00:19:18.780 | Would like more control and hope it's separate.

00:19:21.140 | Well, you have control of the client portal

00:19:25.220 | and you can do some of the planning we just went through

00:19:27.880 | to do the detailed planning.

00:19:30.500 | Oh, here's a follow-up question.

00:19:34.200 | I'm sorry, my question is whether there's anything

00:19:35.680 | a tenant needs to organize or get, no.

00:19:37.700 | No, you don't need, no, you just got to have it.

00:19:41.600 | - You have all your financial information,

00:19:44.200 | if you're going to enter manually or even aggregate it,

00:19:46.400 | you need to have all your account information

00:19:48.120 | and make sure you're organized in advance,

00:19:50.140 | but your process walks people through that.

00:19:52.320 | So they can do it over time.

00:19:55.160 | It doesn't have to be necessarily all at once.

00:19:57.560 | - Yeah, we've had clients that have taken over a year

00:19:59.520 | to get around to getting their stuff in.

00:20:01.160 | Others will do it on a, like an evening.

00:20:03.520 | So it can vary depending upon how excited.

00:20:06.580 | - Here's another question which asks,

00:20:10.520 | when you mentioned, Mark, about doing a plan,

00:20:13.480 | you doing a plan, what does that mean?

00:20:18.480 | - I think, well, I guess the way I would answer the question

00:20:23.200 | is a plan, it depends on where people are coming from,

00:20:27.760 | but generally speaking, it might be an assessment

00:20:29.600 | of where you're at today, you know,

00:20:32.840 | how healthy are you financially?

00:20:34.300 | What is your savings potential?

00:20:35.480 | Is your insurance covered?

00:20:36.680 | We can do that pretty quickly if the data is entered,

00:20:39.320 | but doing a plan, generally speaking,

00:20:42.880 | is a projection out to the future.

00:20:44.620 | How are you standing for your goal?

00:20:46.620 | Which for virtually all of our clients

00:20:49.300 | is retirement planning.

00:20:51.720 | And then it just has a,

00:20:54.320 | the way it naturally unfolds when you do a plan

00:20:57.640 | is you would address what are the right place,

00:21:00.200 | you know, what are the right accounts to be saving money in?

00:21:02.480 | Should I do pre-tax Roth or pre-tax Roth in my foreign case?

00:21:06.320 | Should I do Roth conversions?

00:21:07.880 | Where should I, what assets might I sell

00:21:12.440 | when I need to access the funds?

00:21:15.120 | That's all part of the plan,

00:21:16.860 | but it's just a general financial plan.

00:21:18.960 | And we certainly do discuss how we feel

00:21:22.240 | about our clients' insurance needs.

00:21:24.160 | We'll provide comments on that.

00:21:25.720 | - I've got a question, Mark, if I can interject.

00:21:30.520 | I'm sure a lot of people are probably wondering

00:21:31.880 | for being such a low price point,

00:21:34.520 | what is the typical amount of time

00:21:38.080 | that you would spend with a client

00:21:40.080 | and how would they organize themselves over time

00:21:43.500 | to best use your service?

00:21:48.440 | - Well, that second one,

00:21:51.400 | I'll have to think of an answer there.

00:21:54.000 | I would say in the first year, probably two to three hours.

00:21:59.000 | And that, you know, I have normally with all of our clients,

00:22:04.780 | we have a 50 minute full planning session

00:22:07.640 | and we can cover most of the detail of their plan.

00:22:11.200 | And that's where, when I mentioned earlier,

00:22:12.840 | I think that the financial services industry

00:22:14.640 | overcomplicates financial planning

00:22:17.180 | is with a tool like this, it's getting easier.

00:22:19.080 | And we can do that on a more timely basis.

00:22:21.160 | So anyways, but there's upfront work they need to do

00:22:24.160 | with Jason or Christian to get the plan clean.

00:22:27.000 | They have a meeting with me

00:22:27.840 | and then there may be some follow-up work.

00:22:29.660 | Jason has had, depending upon our client's complexity,

00:22:33.600 | he's had multiple follow-up sessions with clients.

00:22:36.080 | So some clients can take more time.

00:22:37.840 | Other clients, frankly, it's just really simple.

00:22:39.760 | There's not a lot of chit-chat in their situation.

00:22:42.600 | But I would say probably an hour and a half to three hours

00:22:45.700 | the first year, maybe, I don't know,

00:22:50.700 | a half an hour going forward every year.

00:22:54.520 | Some people, you know,

00:22:56.460 | some people have more questions than others.

00:23:00.260 | What was your second question, Alan?

00:23:03.720 | I'm sorry.

00:23:04.840 | - Well, based on how to prioritize,

00:23:06.600 | I guess from my perspective as a fairly new client as well,

00:23:11.120 | I tried to focus on a few key questions that I had

00:23:14.000 | and I figured I would follow up

00:23:15.780 | with less lower priority things down the road.

00:23:19.500 | 'Cause obviously there's a limited amount of time

00:23:21.180 | that we can spend face-to-face virtually on this.

00:23:24.560 | - Well, I guess the way that we leave it with our clients

00:23:30.220 | when we do plans with them is that they can simply reach out

00:23:33.300 | to us anytime they have questions or needs

00:23:35.940 | and they set up a session with us.

00:23:38.340 | We almost, I mean, I can think of maybe,

00:23:43.340 | I've been doing this quite a while now,

00:23:48.020 | the high volume of clients, maybe less than five clients

00:23:51.980 | that just kept on coming back and back

00:23:54.180 | with more and more questions.

00:23:55.980 | And of course, in any client base,

00:23:57.860 | you're gonna have more and more,

00:23:58.860 | you're gonna have some of that.

00:24:00.540 | But most of our clients seem to,

00:24:05.020 | they kind of get that this is not a thing

00:24:07.540 | where you need to sit down with us every quarter

00:24:10.340 | and go over stuff.

00:24:11.860 | So they seem to be able to figure out the questions

00:24:14.940 | that make the most sense for their situation.

00:24:17.380 | Not sure if I'm adequately answering the question, but.

00:24:20.460 | - That's good.

00:24:21.300 | There's a couple more chat questions that have come in.

00:24:22.980 | I'll go ahead and pick up some of these.

00:24:24.960 | One of them, let's see,

00:24:27.100 | somebody's asking if plan vision can link

00:24:29.580 | to some of the newer brokerages

00:24:30.940 | such as Wealthfront or M1 Finance.

00:24:33.620 | I would think so, but.

00:24:34.800 | - Well, Wealthfront, I think so.

00:24:36.620 | M1, no, and Robinhood, no.

00:24:39.180 | And what we've been told by eMoney

00:24:42.380 | is they don't wanna connect with eMoney, right?

00:24:44.460 | I don't know if that's true or not,

00:24:45.620 | but that's what we've been told.

00:24:47.460 | - Yeah, but folks could also manually enter

00:24:49.100 | in their holdings.

00:24:49.940 | - Yeah, they could.

00:24:51.500 | - And also, can financial plans be tailored

00:24:53.540 | to the specific needs of unmarried couples

00:24:56.020 | or people with disabilities?

00:24:58.420 | Or would you say those concerns are too specifically complex

00:25:01.540 | for a high volume business like yours,

00:25:03.580 | high volume model business like yours?

00:25:05.180 | - Well, the unmarried couples,

00:25:06.620 | if you're just talking about different tax planning,

00:25:08.980 | the system will handle that perfectly fine.

00:25:11.180 | We have a lot of clients

00:25:15.740 | that are not married and filed separately.

00:25:17.620 | We do have several clients.

00:25:18.840 | Jason has interacted with clients

00:25:20.540 | that have children that have disabilities.

00:25:23.140 | We don't wanna pretend that we can help them

00:25:25.740 | in more of the advanced planning needs of that area,

00:25:27.900 | but we can certainly help them do financial planning.

00:25:30.500 | Even though our business is high volume,

00:25:34.860 | man, we get into some details with our clients.

00:25:37.940 | So we can go pretty far.

00:25:39.700 | I don't think you're gonna...

00:25:41.180 | I think there's a...

00:25:43.780 | I think if you were to find a financial advisory firm

00:25:47.140 | that's specialized in families

00:25:49.700 | with children of disabilities,

00:25:51.740 | then they would be a better suited to meet your trust needs

00:25:55.380 | and that kind of thing.

00:25:56.620 | That's just something we're not aware of.

00:25:58.420 | But when it comes to actual planning,

00:25:59.700 | we can really go into detail.

00:26:01.300 | - Yeah, very good.

00:26:03.380 | - Here's a good question here also.

00:26:05.080 | What type of individual or planning questions

00:26:08.140 | would not be a good fit for your company?

00:26:10.500 | - Well, people...

00:26:21.220 | I don't think there's gonna be anybody on this call,

00:26:23.220 | but people that think that e-money

00:26:28.220 | will tell them how their life

00:26:32.180 | is gonna unfold financially the next four years.

00:26:35.140 | And we've had clients like, "It's not a match."

00:26:37.780 | And I will get some of those from the FHIR community,

00:26:40.300 | not that many, but they wanna know if saving,

00:26:43.980 | let's say $300 a month or 310 is like the...

00:26:48.100 | What is the exact dollar amount I need to save to get there?

00:26:50.380 | So if there's a level...

00:26:51.740 | And I think they would actually...

00:26:53.220 | I don't even think they're a match for many other advisors,

00:26:55.040 | but depending on how much,

00:26:56.740 | how precise they wanna be in their planning,

00:26:58.620 | they may not be a good match.

00:27:00.660 | Yeah, if they wanna visit with us every two months or so,

00:27:03.740 | just update their plan or go over it in depth,

00:27:06.380 | they're not gonna be a good match.

00:27:08.080 | Now, there's another...

00:27:11.660 | I mean, I don't know how...

00:27:13.060 | Maybe just the software engineers out there,

00:27:14.980 | but those people that wanna really do it themselves,

00:27:19.980 | they want to run the plan.

00:27:22.460 | They're gonna end up being dissatisfied.

00:27:24.020 | I just had a guy by yesterday, he sent me an email saying,

00:27:27.060 | "Well, Mark, how far can I actually look?"

00:27:28.740 | If you really think you're gonna do all the planning,

00:27:30.340 | you're just gonna be frustrated with this program

00:27:31.860 | 'cause it's a great program,

00:27:33.300 | but we will do the detailed planning for you.

00:27:36.120 | Is it, yes.

00:27:39.820 | Is it possible to start with manual and...

00:27:42.020 | Yeah, you can do that for sure.

00:27:43.580 | Does Jason do any tech?

00:27:45.420 | No. (laughs)

00:27:47.540 | No, we don't do any tech.

00:27:50.780 | - No, thank you.

00:27:51.880 | (Mark laughs)

00:27:53.700 | - And one thing, you mentioned a Christian

00:27:55.060 | and that's another assistant you have,

00:27:58.260 | an associate who walks through with the client

00:28:01.180 | to make sure that e-money has been properly filled out

00:28:03.940 | with the information you need.

00:28:05.620 | So that's an important first step really

00:28:08.020 | in massaging the data

00:28:09.820 | and making it all presentable and thorough.

00:28:12.140 | - Yeah, thanks, Alan.

00:28:13.820 | So the process is you buy the service,

00:28:15.840 | you load all your data and then you submit this checklist.

00:28:19.060 | And the checklist is really a tool for us

00:28:21.260 | and for you to kind of track how you're coming along.

00:28:23.980 | But then once you submit the checklist,

00:28:25.580 | that's telling us you think you've entered

00:28:26.980 | as much as you can with e-money.

00:28:28.740 | Well, we certainly don't expect it to be perfect.

00:28:30.780 | And then you have a session with Christian,

00:28:32.180 | he cleans it up.

00:28:33.100 | And Jason actually has these sessions too.

00:28:35.580 | I used to do them, but since we've grown.

00:28:38.480 | And then it's relatively clean by the time it gets to me.

00:28:43.480 | So, I think that that is all of the questions.

00:28:48.820 | - Any further questions at this point?

00:28:54.180 | If not, we'll proceed.

00:28:57.580 | - Okay.

00:29:00.580 | So this is the advisor side of the platform.

00:29:03.460 | Now, when we have sessions with our clients,

00:29:05.980 | this is where we work at.

00:29:07.080 | We just show this.

00:29:07.920 | These sessions are very interactive.

00:29:09.420 | We go back and forth and I'll ask the clients questions.

00:29:12.300 | They can interject with changes,

00:29:14.180 | but this is how we work from.

00:29:15.340 | So this is what this portal looks at.

00:29:17.040 | The portal does lay out differently over here

00:29:19.940 | than it does on the advisor.

00:29:21.860 | One thing I should mention,

00:29:23.820 | I don't know if it's obvious or not,

00:29:25.540 | but I mean, where I see this whole thing going

00:29:28.920 | in the long run is that these kinds of programs,

00:29:31.540 | e-money and maybe who knows what's gonna come along next,

00:29:34.500 | are going to get easier and easier

00:29:36.300 | for the lay person to use.

00:29:39.280 | You know, where, I mean, I view plan vision

00:29:41.740 | as being a bit of an intermediary right now

00:29:43.620 | between the information that helps the client

00:29:46.020 | better understand their life and e-money.

00:29:49.700 | So we just, we provide guidance and comments on it,

00:29:52.300 | but it'd be pretty slick at some point down the road

00:29:57.000 | where the client just has access to this.

00:29:59.780 | They hire us for a few dollars

00:30:01.600 | and we just provide some insights on it

00:30:03.400 | and then they get on with their life.

00:30:05.300 | So anyways, so this is what the overview screen looks like

00:30:09.920 | on our side.

00:30:10.900 | You can go on to the next screen, Jason.

00:30:12.860 | So we work off two tabs with our clients,

00:30:17.300 | the facts tab and the reports tab.

00:30:19.300 | And the facts are just your circumstances.

00:30:21.140 | So we start there.

00:30:22.380 | We confirm everything, date of birth.

00:30:25.200 | Now, the retirement age, that's, I ask people now, is that?

00:30:28.900 | Oh, someone's asking here.

00:30:32.720 | Yeah, we charge $189 for the first year

00:30:35.420 | and then $8 each month after that, if you renew.

00:30:38.920 | The retirement age, we do ask our clients,

00:30:44.100 | is that when you want to retire

00:30:45.620 | or when you think you have to retire?

00:30:47.680 | Or did you just use that as a marker?

00:30:49.400 | So we use that as a good way to get started.

00:30:52.180 | They can enter their children in here

00:30:53.980 | and then if they have any other family

00:30:56.100 | or whomever they want to do.

00:30:57.820 | Next slide.

00:30:58.760 | So that was the basic, I'm sorry.

00:31:04.780 | That was the basic facts.

00:31:06.460 | Now we're in the advanced facts.

00:31:08.300 | And this is just the facts with a bit more detail.

00:31:11.060 | So at this point, what we'll do is we'll go

00:31:13.260 | from kind of area to area

00:31:15.460 | confirming the client's information.

00:31:17.580 | So you want to see what's next, Jason?

00:31:21.260 | Yeah, so now we're in the planning area

00:31:25.600 | and you can see we've got scenarios.

00:31:28.080 | This is for Frankie and Joanna Miller.

00:31:30.040 | Scenarios we run on our side and here's the way it works.

00:31:34.060 | And we'll do, I'll do planning with clients

00:31:36.960 | right on the spot with them.

00:31:38.360 | We don't really have a canned presentation.

00:31:43.060 | We're just kind of going over it with them.

00:31:45.380 | Anyways, in this case, for this couple,

00:31:50.380 | what we did is we ran three alternative scenarios.

00:31:53.500 | What if they delayed retirement and social security?

00:31:56.380 | What if they retired at 65 to do some part-time consulting?

00:31:59.420 | And then Roth conversions.

00:32:01.500 | Those would be relatively standard type scenarios.

00:32:03.940 | It's pretty good examples here for the sample client.

00:32:08.860 | But what we do is we go into this screen,

00:32:11.500 | we open one of these up, we go into them

00:32:14.280 | and it keeps all the base facts the same.

00:32:16.700 | And then we'll just start to change them.

00:32:18.420 | And so I'll manipulate these things

00:32:20.300 | right with our clients.

00:32:22.540 | And then we'll go, we'll look at the output

00:32:24.060 | and we'll do side-by-side comparisons

00:32:26.340 | between not delaying retirement,

00:32:28.860 | social security and then delaying.

00:32:30.380 | These are dropdowns that you can do

00:32:32.460 | to do side-by-side comparisons.

00:32:34.780 | Now we've jumped into the reporting area.

00:32:41.100 | So we saw earlier how some of the reports view on your side.

00:32:45.560 | And so, yeah, there's a lot of reports here.

00:32:49.160 | We don't go through all of them.

00:32:50.360 | The ones that we use, the cashflow report,

00:32:53.400 | which is at the top there, that's a very popular one.

00:32:56.720 | And you can see this report here is showing

00:33:00.800 | that that graph there on the right

00:33:05.640 | is displaying how your money would unfold over time.

00:33:11.040 | In this case, if the client's goal was to live to 90

00:33:15.580 | and then almost run out of money and died,

00:33:17.380 | then they're pretty successful

00:33:18.440 | because that's what's gonna happen in their plan.

00:33:20.840 | So now what you can't see is all the data right below this.

00:33:26.560 | Oh, there it is.

00:33:27.860 | So these are all the data points that go into that graph.

00:33:31.600 | And so I'll walk people through this

00:33:33.040 | so they understand the numbers of that graph.

00:33:35.820 | And we will provide context

00:33:37.580 | and interpretation on these numbers.

00:33:40.100 | What risks they have, what's the likelihood of success.

00:33:45.020 | On the right-hand side,

00:33:46.060 | you can see their total portfolio assets.

00:33:48.260 | That's the chart above, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8.

00:33:52.900 | Yep, it's growing until retirement.

00:33:55.500 | And then once they retire,

00:33:56.660 | now they're spending in their assets.

00:33:59.300 | Now, we use rates of return in this

00:34:01.380 | of 5% pre-retirement and 3% post,

00:34:03.760 | which most people would agree

00:34:05.220 | are pretty conservative numbers,

00:34:06.740 | but people can use whatever numbers they want

00:34:08.900 | if they want us to update them.

00:34:10.380 | Anyways, we have their income on the left-hand side,

00:34:13.180 | that thing called income flows.

00:34:14.500 | That's their income from their work.

00:34:16.400 | Then they stop working and there's a gap in time.

00:34:18.780 | And those might be good years to do Roth conversions.

00:34:21.420 | The plan distributions is the third column.

00:34:26.700 | For most people, those are just going to be the RMDs,

00:34:30.460 | required minimum distributions.

00:34:32.460 | For some people that have an inherited IRA,

00:34:34.300 | they may pop up there,

00:34:35.220 | or if they have like a deferred comp plan

00:34:37.460 | that they're going to get distributions from.

00:34:39.660 | Now, the total expenses column,

00:34:42.580 | which is three columns to the right,

00:34:44.380 | the number that matters there

00:34:46.580 | is the number below the blue line.

00:34:48.360 | That's the amount of money you think

00:34:49.920 | you're going to spend as a retiree.

00:34:51.660 | That is your targeted expense.

00:34:53.940 | And you can see how it's changing over time.

00:34:56.340 | So we talk through these factoids with our clients.

00:35:00.520 | And each one of those columns is a hyperlink

00:35:02.900 | you can open up and we might provide

00:35:04.820 | more explanation on that.

00:35:06.760 | So the cashflow report is the most valuable report

00:35:09.460 | that we'll use to answer the broader question

00:35:12.500 | of whether or not I'm going to run out of money.

00:35:15.220 | Go on to the next screen, please.

00:35:16.860 | This is also a useful report, total assets.

00:35:22.180 | And the total portfolio assets

00:35:27.600 | is what somebody may live off of.

00:35:29.840 | And you can see that actually down there, Jason,

00:35:35.180 | you'll see if you go down a little bit to the right.

00:35:38.320 | Yeah, that's, oh, a little bit back to your left.

00:35:40.880 | There you go, right, now the black one, yeah, right there.

00:35:44.180 | That's the same number in the cashflow report

00:35:47.400 | that we're using to show how they spent down their money.

00:35:49.940 | But in this case, the client's got

00:35:51.840 | another 1.2 million probably in properties.

00:35:54.700 | And so that's what's reflected in this chart here.

00:35:57.860 | So, and we'll talk with folks about, you know,

00:36:00.560 | you have a house and maybe you're going to sell that

00:36:03.500 | and downsize, that's $600,000 worth of equity you may get

00:36:06.980 | that will boost your retirement later in life

00:36:09.100 | if they're more squeezed, if they're more challenged.

00:36:11.820 | Next screen.

00:36:12.660 | You know what, Jason, I'm gonna have you go back if you can.

00:36:16.860 | Yeah, I don't know that we produced this report.

00:36:22.100 | Maybe it'll show up later and I apologize if we did.

00:36:24.820 | But up near the top, above the word assets,

00:36:27.460 | the big blue word, there's tax type.

00:36:30.480 | That's an awesome report that I like

00:36:32.760 | because it breaks out your assets by how they are taxed.

00:36:36.800 | And I will use that to make recommendations

00:36:39.100 | on how we think our clients should allocate their assets.

00:36:41.940 | So if you can move on.

00:36:45.080 | Okay, so here's an income tax report.

00:36:48.380 | You can see the total income tax,

00:36:53.360 | the effective income tax rate.

00:36:54.960 | What should stand out with this plan though,

00:36:58.300 | is that this graph here is the amount

00:37:01.460 | that the client's gonna have to pay in taxes.

00:37:03.200 | Man, they've got a huge period of time here

00:37:05.720 | where they're not gonna be paying anything in taxes.

00:37:08.800 | Potentially great opportunity to do Roth conversions

00:37:12.340 | or maybe harvest some gains or something like that.

00:37:16.180 | And in this case, even though I don't think

00:37:19.920 | we have it in here, in this sample client,

00:37:23.000 | back in the planning area,

00:37:24.640 | they had already run alternative scenarios for this client

00:37:28.500 | where they had done some Roth conversions.

00:37:30.700 | So they probably did it right for that gap in time.

00:37:35.020 | And they can see, oh, what if I convert 20,000

00:37:37.880 | or 50,000 or 70 or 80?

00:37:39.680 | You know, that's modeling that we do with our clients.

00:37:42.540 | So onto the next screen.

00:37:43.800 | Income tax.

00:37:48.340 | - Right, so this is just merely showing the breakdown

00:37:55.020 | from the previous slide of the income.

00:37:57.520 | I added this one.

00:37:59.360 | So what we're looking at gross total income here,

00:38:02.500 | when we hyperlink, you can click on a blue font

00:38:06.360 | and that will bring us to the underlying report,

00:38:10.620 | which is the income.

00:38:12.280 | And the income is made up of earned income,

00:38:16.800 | later on taxable social security, investment income,

00:38:20.640 | which means income tax is ordinary income,

00:38:25.700 | not necessarily pure investment income.

00:38:28.560 | Dividends, capital gains, et cetera, non-taxable income,

00:38:32.600 | any non-taxable insurance benefits.

00:38:34.960 | And then the gross total income

00:38:36.640 | will tie to the previous report, of course.

00:38:41.080 | So that just shows the detail,

00:38:43.600 | what makes up the gross income from the income tax report.

00:38:47.420 | This next report, and I'm gonna jump in,

00:38:52.480 | this is one of my favorite reports with any money.

00:38:57.760 | Where it comes from, I'm gonna go back to,

00:39:00.440 | so this column here is called regular federal income tax,

00:39:07.160 | which looks pretty nondescript,

00:39:09.520 | but by drilling down into it,

00:39:11.920 | we are presented with this report.

00:39:15.440 | This report, most of you would recognize,

00:39:19.620 | is effectively page one and two of your federal 1040.

00:39:24.120 | We've got our income, above the line deductions, AGI.

00:39:27.480 | A cool thing about e-money is that the U.S. tax code

00:39:33.760 | is directly built in, and it comprises effectively

00:39:38.760 | the entire internal revenue code.

00:39:41.520 | The exemption column does show

00:39:44.760 | sunset of the current tax law, which is current law,

00:39:48.720 | and the exemptions come back,

00:39:50.680 | and the below-line deduction is made up generally

00:39:55.380 | of the standard deduction and/or the itemized deductions,

00:40:00.040 | if they're applicable.

00:40:01.160 | Taxable income, of course.

00:40:03.760 | And then another important column here

00:40:07.560 | is called income tax base.

00:40:09.920 | Income tax base is the amount of income tax

00:40:13.760 | as ordinary income,

00:40:16.040 | with subject to ordinary income tax rates,

00:40:18.540 | because, of course, we have capital gains tax

00:40:22.680 | and income tax base.

00:40:24.520 | So, again, my favorite report,

00:40:27.880 | because it does show pages one and two of your 1040,

00:40:32.680 | e-money also has the AMT calculations,

00:40:37.040 | and will compute AMT if you're subject to the credit,

00:40:41.920 | subject to the tax,

00:40:42.960 | and allow you to carry the credit forward.

00:40:45.560 | And it does model correctly.

00:40:47.600 | So this is huge benefit of e-money

00:40:52.600 | is that the internal revenue code is built in.

00:40:56.620 | - Yeah. - Okay.

00:41:00.440 | - One thing I'll mention for those that are optimistic

00:41:05.880 | that the tax rates will stay in place when they sunset,

00:41:10.880 | that is a switch you can flip.

00:41:14.680 | We don't get many requests for that.

00:41:16.440 | It's there if you wanna go down the path.

00:41:20.120 | What's the next screen, Jason?

00:41:23.240 | You just, yeah, this is what you should talk about.

00:41:26.180 | - All right, so where we're at here,

00:41:28.880 | this is in the advanced facts section.

00:41:31.520 | And in the investment area, there are taxable accounts.

00:41:36.520 | We're able to go in on the advisor's side

00:41:40.740 | and adjust the realization.

00:41:42.960 | What the realization means is how the growth is taxed

00:41:47.960 | and treated income-wise during the year.

00:41:50.840 | So for this particular account,

00:41:53.680 | it's showing that there's about a $16,000,

00:41:57.520 | $16,000 worth of growth this year.

00:42:00.100 | We can actually model and sometimes, you know,

00:42:03.640 | have it get close to a client's 1099

00:42:07.680 | because someone may have a lot of qualified dividends.

00:42:11.360 | There may be some ordinary income tax.

00:42:14.060 | Capital gains means it's growing without being taxed.

00:42:17.220 | There could be non-taxable income.

00:42:19.160 | And the turnover estimate will generate taxes

00:42:24.160 | based on how often the account is turned over

00:42:27.860 | and how much activity there is.

00:42:30.000 | So this is, can be adjusted,

00:42:32.380 | and that will reflect better or more accurate,

00:42:37.560 | realistic numbers according to income being taxed,

00:42:41.260 | which will float through to our income tax reports.

00:42:45.540 | The income distribution says how much money

00:42:49.840 | am I taking out of that account pre-retirement or post?

00:42:54.080 | - All right.

00:42:56.320 | There were some questions that popped up.

00:42:58.720 | I think I'm gonna, maybe we can deal with those at the end.

00:43:01.720 | So can you go on to the next?

00:43:04.240 | - Okay, oh, well, here's that report

00:43:05.960 | that I jumped the gun on.

00:43:07.840 | This is the asset tax type.

00:43:11.840 | And I guess I was thinking to myself,

00:43:13.520 | man, I would have told Jason to do that one for sure.

00:43:16.360 | I really like this one a lot because it again displays

00:43:21.000 | how e-money thinks you will spend your assets in retirement.

00:43:25.560 | By the way, I don't think we have this one in here.

00:43:28.640 | There is what's called a liquidation strategy in e-money

00:43:31.580 | where we can exclude certain assets from distribution

00:43:34.140 | if you want to do that.

00:43:35.060 | I have a couple of clients

00:43:36.060 | that kind of want to do their own thing there.

00:43:38.040 | But anyways, it's showing you, if you look at, for example,

00:43:40.960 | this client here, their taxable assets,

00:43:43.800 | their cash and their brokerage account,

00:43:45.800 | e-money has them spending their money

00:43:47.840 | down very quickly in retirement.

00:43:50.640 | And then it will go over to the tax deferred assets

00:43:53.120 | then likely to the tax-free assets.

00:43:55.680 | So nice breakout here for somebody

00:43:58.360 | to see how their assets are structured.

00:44:00.040 | They may be kind of curious to see

00:44:01.760 | how all of this thing will unfold later in life

00:44:04.340 | based upon the assumptions.

00:44:05.700 | Next screen.

00:44:07.740 | Asset allocation.

00:44:10.260 | Well, this one is kind of interesting even though,

00:44:15.580 | yeah, these are actually...

00:44:19.380 | These are, it's doing a comparison

00:44:22.420 | of the exact same portfolios,

00:44:24.500 | but it is a breakout of your portfolio

00:44:27.420 | if you're interested in that kind of thing.

00:44:30.180 | By asset class, assuming that we've got

00:44:32.800 | all your accounts labeled correctly.

00:44:34.600 | I'll come back to that question in a minute.

00:44:40.080 | Now, e-money does do a Monte Carlo simulation.

00:44:43.860 | So if you want to run that, that's done on our side.

00:44:46.440 | We can just go there and quickly run the numbers.

00:44:49.060 | So it'll give you an idea.

00:44:50.520 | If you're into Monte Carlo, we can do that.

00:44:53.240 | Yeah, here's the advanced planning one

00:44:54.960 | where I mentioned earlier,

00:44:56.160 | where we go in and we'll run these alternative scenarios.

00:44:59.480 | We go in here and we'll just start to edit

00:45:01.960 | all the various different factors in your plan.

00:45:05.680 | You'll see on the right,

00:45:06.520 | the planning techniques are at a new expense

00:45:10.160 | or make a change to your retirement assumptions

00:45:12.480 | or remove certain things.

00:45:13.720 | We can do that very quickly with our clients.

00:45:16.400 | And that's how we can do, make run comparisons for them.

00:45:19.320 | Jason, did you want to comment on this one?

00:45:24.460 | - Yeah, so in the previous slide,

00:45:27.720 | Mark is showing under the plan,

00:45:31.800 | we can change how we claim social security benefits.

00:45:36.680 | So this is within that plan, e-money,

00:45:41.060 | if we show full retirement age, e-money will compute,

00:45:46.440 | based on what we put in for your benefits

00:45:50.500 | at full retirement age.

00:45:51.760 | We can run modeling to claim it at earlier ages

00:45:57.640 | or latest ages.

00:45:59.620 | And that's what we have on the pull down here.

00:46:03.560 | Note too, you can't see it too well,

00:46:05.680 | but the spouse, e-money will correctly compute

00:46:09.440 | the spousal benefit for benefits,

00:46:13.540 | both when they're both alive,

00:46:15.560 | if there are additional spousal benefits

00:46:17.680 | and then a survivor benefit, if applicable,

00:46:20.760 | e-money correctly includes all of that.

00:46:23.540 | So it's a pretty good modeling technique by e-money.

00:46:28.060 | - Yeah, and you can exclude spousal benefits too,

00:46:29.940 | if you need to.

00:46:30.780 | Oh, here we go.

00:46:35.140 | So this is a side-by-side.

00:46:37.220 | We run these frequently with our clients.

00:46:39.460 | And if you look at the top of the screen,

00:46:41.380 | it will have, it'll show you a little bit above that,

00:46:44.700 | where it says, oh, well, there you see base facts

00:46:47.120 | versus delay retirement.

00:46:48.560 | So it's doing a side-by-side and it's showing in this case

00:46:52.940 | that the client is financially healthy

00:46:56.220 | if they delay retirement and their social security,

00:46:59.180 | their plan is healthier in the long run,

00:47:01.220 | based upon all the assumptions in the plan.

00:47:03.640 | Now, the crummy part about that is they gotta work longer.

00:47:07.700 | So that's their trade-off though,

00:47:09.580 | but that's how you can show them the implications

00:47:11.620 | to the plan.

00:47:13.100 | And in this case, it's quite a big difference

00:47:15.260 | if they wanna have a lot more money

00:47:18.060 | to continue working longer,

00:47:19.780 | at least if they believe in the assumptions of the plan.

00:47:22.900 | So, and this is back to the screen

00:47:25.500 | where we developed those alternative scenarios

00:47:29.660 | to do comparisons, so.

00:47:32.020 | - So if I can jump in, I added,

00:47:35.740 | this is looking at the Roth conversions.

00:47:39.180 | I'm gonna go back here to the previous.

00:47:41.280 | So in this particular one,

00:47:45.440 | as Mark mentioned earlier,

00:47:49.220 | we don't have canned models where we just dump and run.

00:47:54.220 | It's tailored to the clients, of course.

00:47:57.380 | And in here, this is a Roth conversion

00:48:01.860 | where within eMoney, and what I'm doing

00:48:04.460 | is showing how eMoney operates on the advisor's side.

00:48:08.500 | In the Roth conversion, we're going to,

00:48:11.540 | in this plan, convert some of Frank's 401(k)

00:48:16.180 | and by then it'll be in an IRA when he's retired.

00:48:19.340 | And what we would do is actually change the destination

00:48:22.460 | to a Roth IRA account to show conversions.

00:48:26.560 | So the next tab would be the schedule here.

00:48:29.980 | And this is where either by trial and error

00:48:34.980 | or using numbers or percentages,

00:48:40.940 | we put in the amount that's being converted each year.

00:48:43.480 | And it is based on the tax bracket

00:48:47.100 | that the client might be in

00:48:48.540 | if they wanna max out up to the top of the 12% bracket,

00:48:52.340 | later the 15, the 25%, the 28% tax bracket.

00:48:57.340 | And these all feed into the plan

00:49:01.940 | in order to show where the total assets end up.

00:49:06.620 | And it may be beneficial to convert, it may be not.

00:49:12.260 | It depends on everything else going on

00:49:14.200 | in the taxpayer's life.

00:49:16.740 | This is just another comparison going back to the,

00:49:22.920 | this is delayed retirement,

00:49:24.700 | but we could also put in the comparing Roth conversions

00:49:29.000 | to the base facts.

00:49:30.180 | - Yeah, we can really confuse you.

00:49:33.060 | Next screen, Jason.

00:49:40.980 | Oh, maybe we're just wrapping up here, aren't we?

00:49:44.000 | - Yes.

00:49:44.840 | - That looks like the end to me.

00:49:46.860 | I don't know, unless there's something else.

00:49:48.640 | But there were some really good questions

00:49:50.140 | that were popping up here.

00:49:51.460 | And let's go to the questions now, Jason.

00:49:55.480 | But I do want, can you go back to the screen?

00:49:57.780 | - Which one do you wanna?

00:50:02.280 | - Let's leave it right there.

00:50:03.940 | And let's go to the questions.

00:50:08.740 | - Do you want, you and I wanna alternate asking them?

00:50:12.000 | I don't think Jim is on yet, so.

00:50:16.160 | - Okay, I see one here that was,

00:50:20.140 | can you include state income tax?

00:50:22.900 | Most definitely.

00:50:23.980 | The e-money is probably 80 to 95% accurate

00:50:28.980 | with state income tax laws.

00:50:31.800 | They don't, they can't, they don't have the ability

00:50:35.620 | to do 100% accuracy on every state,

00:50:38.700 | but I would say in the estimate,

00:50:40.740 | 80 to 95% of all state tax laws are included

00:50:44.860 | when we put the state of residence

00:50:47.500 | or the state of taxation for the person.

00:50:49.300 | - Yeah, we will indicate the state that you live in.

00:50:51.600 | And it actually recognizes, for example,

00:50:53.820 | I think in Illinois, pension benefits are not taxed.

00:50:57.020 | In New York, we just ran a case in New York

00:50:59.340 | where they understood how to handle

00:51:01.800 | the pension benefits there as well.

00:51:03.420 | So at the state level, they're pretty good.

00:51:06.020 | - There's a couple of good questions here

00:51:10.140 | that I can read off.

00:51:12.380 | Basically, can you save the comparison charge as PDFs

00:51:17.220 | during the what if scenarios?

00:51:18.820 | - Yeah, we do that frequently where we'll run the alt.

00:51:23.300 | In fact, if you look at the screen,

00:51:25.380 | that's why I wanted to have the screen up.

00:51:27.280 | You see where it says generate,

00:51:29.300 | that generate will produce a dropdown

00:51:31.120 | and I can send this right to the vault.

00:51:33.380 | And for a lot of our clients, they'll ask me,

00:51:36.980 | "Hey, Mark, can you send us a report of what we did?"

00:51:40.580 | And I will just, we do have some templates set up

00:51:44.180 | and I'll just go produce it and send it right to the vault.

00:51:46.260 | It's actually very efficient.

00:51:47.980 | But- - One thing I might,

00:51:49.940 | I'm sorry, go ahead, Mark.

00:51:52.060 | - I'm sorry, go ahead, Alan.

00:51:53.460 | - I was gonna say, one thing that can also be helpful

00:51:55.020 | because they conduct these meetings over Zoom,

00:51:57.260 | you can record your interaction with Mark and Jason

00:52:00.580 | and save the video and then watch it at your leisure

00:52:03.060 | later on as well.

00:52:04.380 | - I'm sure, yeah, that's exciting.

00:52:07.620 | You can watch it over and over again with you,

00:52:09.900 | share it with your family, put it on Netflix.

00:52:12.420 | Can you change the spending order of the assets IRA

00:52:17.140 | than taxable?

00:52:18.620 | Actually though, in truth though,

00:52:20.420 | we have recorded a lot of these for clients

00:52:22.400 | and if this is a lot of data coming at you,

00:52:24.620 | you can slow it down and watch it again.

00:52:26.880 | Can you change?

00:52:27.720 | - Yes, you can change the spending order of the assets IRA

00:52:31.320 | than taxable than Roth, yeah.

00:52:33.120 | Now, eMoney has a default, which it goes to,

00:52:36.400 | but in the liquidation area, we can exclude assets

00:52:39.080 | or we can just change the order of them.

00:52:41.160 | So, the wiki has, okay.

00:52:46.160 | Can you see- - Somebody has a question

00:52:48.680 | about what's your role working with Rick Ferry?

00:52:51.320 | - I'll get to that. - I think I asked you

00:52:55.360 | that before, he was just helped you as a consultant.

00:52:58.240 | - Yeah, we just hired Rick for now, actually for now, right?

00:53:00.400 | I may hire him again, so.

00:53:02.100 | - There is another question, it is from Mark

00:53:07.240 | and it says, for the charts that you showed

00:53:10.920 | related to income taxes and asset tax type,

00:53:15.920 | can the client pull up the same reports?

00:53:18.560 | - Yes, that one they can.

00:53:20.360 | - And can they make changes themselves

00:53:24.000 | to the inputs for those reports so they can model them

00:53:28.320 | or can only your team make those changes for model?

00:53:31.160 | - Those aren't reports that you would change the inputs to,

00:53:35.160 | those are just, that's just data.

00:53:37.860 | So, I suppose, well, here's where it could change.

00:53:42.240 | The asset tax type report would change

00:53:45.480 | if somebody did Roth conversions,

00:53:48.040 | like if we did Roth conversions.

00:53:49.680 | Now, on the client side, what they could do, I guess,

00:53:52.720 | is they would have to start like changing,

00:53:54.920 | oh, I think I'm gonna put more money in Roth

00:53:57.040 | in the future versus pre-tax,

00:53:58.760 | the numbers would change that way.

00:54:01.080 | That's not the kind of report that you, like you model,

00:54:05.800 | it's just, it's the result of another activity.

00:54:08.460 | So, I'm not sure if I'm explaining that accurately or not.

00:54:11.360 | - Mark, did that answer your question?

00:54:21.440 | Can you save the comparison to,

00:54:22.880 | I think we answered the yes, you can.

00:54:24.680 | Does e-money have a social security optimization?

00:54:28.760 | Well, let me talk about that one.

00:54:31.240 | It depends on what you mean by that.

00:54:33.080 | I mean, you know, if you live to be a hundred

00:54:38.080 | and you define optimization as getting the most money

00:54:42.640 | out of social security, we can run that easily enough.

00:54:47.440 | If you are less optimistic about your longevity,

00:54:52.120 | then your question is not, what's the best way

00:54:54.400 | for me to get the most, like most out of social security?

00:54:58.100 | It's, when can I best utilize social security

00:55:01.280 | to enjoy my life?

00:55:02.880 | So, optimization might mean a different thing

00:55:06.480 | to somebody else, but we do integrate

00:55:09.460 | and modify social security to see

00:55:11.320 | how it impacts people's plans.

00:55:13.440 | I have done plans, and I'm not kidding,

00:55:15.480 | where people live to be 90 or 95,

00:55:18.160 | they will have more money if they take social security at 62.

00:55:23.160 | They won't get more social security,

00:55:25.460 | but they'll have more money because they're living

00:55:27.640 | on assets between the ages of 60 and 66 or 67.

00:55:31.840 | And a couple of my clients kind of sensed that,

00:55:34.760 | oh, I think I'll be better off.

00:55:36.160 | And yeah, so you do have to integrate the assets together.

00:55:39.880 | So it depends on what optimization means,

00:55:41.700 | but social security reviews and analysis

00:55:44.240 | are a pretty common part of our function

00:55:46.640 | or our review with our clients.

00:55:49.200 | - Do you think, if I can interject, Mark,

00:55:51.680 | that Mike Piper's open social security calculator,

00:55:55.000 | does that sometimes differ from what E-money suggests?

00:55:58.560 | - Yeah, I think it will.

00:55:59.680 | I think, you know, I haven't actually used it,

00:56:04.680 | but I think what he's put together is a great tool

00:56:08.600 | for you to run different scenarios

00:56:10.200 | and see how much you'll get.

00:56:11.680 | But you can't overlook that we're all individuals

00:56:15.280 | and we might have different expectations

00:56:17.200 | for what we want out of social security, so.

00:56:21.080 | - Interesting.

00:56:23.160 | - Yeah, I mean, you know, you may have some people

00:56:25.200 | that decide to take social security earlier

00:56:30.280 | 'cause they wanna be more aggressive with their assets.

00:56:32.040 | They just get more peace of mind by taking it early, so.

00:56:35.300 | - Yeah.

00:56:36.140 | There's another question here from Deckard.

00:56:41.120 | Does tax planning include both NIIT and IRMA?

00:56:44.440 | - It does address and compute the additional tax for NIIT.

00:56:50.000 | It does not compute how much Medicare

00:56:55.000 | you would end up paying.

00:56:56.200 | However, you know, we look at that too,

00:56:59.360 | because look, if you hit the first or the next level of IRMA

00:57:03.600 | you're paying about another 30 bucks a month for Medicare.

00:57:07.880 | So I would say that the e-money

00:57:11.720 | does include the net investment income tax.

00:57:14.540 | E-money does not really address IRMA.

00:57:17.700 | - Does client have to enter only current data

00:57:22.240 | or do we also have to, no, you don't have to put,

00:57:24.440 | you do not have to put in historical data.

00:57:27.120 | Do you consider a potential, yes.

00:57:29.200 | This is part of tax planning that Jason would do.

00:57:31.360 | I don't know if you have anything

00:57:32.200 | you wanna add on that, Jason?

00:57:34.080 | - Yeah, the thing with the premium tax credits

00:57:39.000 | is it's solely based on, or not solely,

00:57:42.440 | one major factor is your zip code.

00:57:44.420 | So between the zip code and which plan you choose,

00:57:49.560 | but we do look at the potential impact on the subsidies.

00:57:55.960 | Yes, because look, if you have higher income

00:57:59.380 | you're gonna have less of a subsidy.

00:58:02.140 | - By our last April meeting, actually, Jason did a nice job

00:58:05.220 | explaining some of those geographic differences in the ACA

00:58:09.060 | and that recording's available on the Boglehead's main site.

00:58:12.180 | - What file formats are supported for data?

00:58:16.300 | Sorry, but there is no, they don't import data.

00:58:19.500 | You either gotta link it or type it in.

00:58:22.420 | - Yeah, and you don't have to type in your holdings.

00:58:25.340 | You know, if you have, even for a Boglehead,

00:58:28.420 | if you've got 12 or 20 different holdings,

00:58:30.900 | you don't have to enter them in

00:58:33.300 | unless you wanna have accurate allocation reports.

00:58:37.100 | You can just put taxable account at Vanguard, $150,000.

00:58:42.100 | - Yeah, that's, a lot of our clients do that.

00:58:45.060 | We can do perfectly fine financial plans or reviews for it

00:58:48.380 | if we just know the totals.

00:58:49.340 | We don't need to know the composition.

00:58:51.180 | I see there's conflicts with federal.

00:58:54.260 | Does this planner help to balance that?

00:58:57.420 | Does this planner help to balance the two?

00:58:59.540 | - I think I can answer that.

00:59:03.020 | As I mentioned, eMoney does a fantastic job.

00:59:08.020 | I would venture even to say almost perfect job

00:59:12.340 | with the Federal Internal Revenue Code.

00:59:14.980 | State taxes, it does a very good job.

00:59:18.020 | So your state may or may not be 100% accurate.

00:59:23.020 | I would guess it would be pretty accurate.

00:59:27.100 | And yeah, I mean, these seem to be

00:59:30.140 | a standard differentiation.

00:59:33.220 | Capital gains penalized.

00:59:34.580 | I'm not sure what that means

00:59:35.500 | other than paying your normal state income tax.

00:59:38.780 | If IRA withdrawals are taxed lower,

00:59:41.100 | it probably, it would depend on your state

00:59:44.900 | and what the current laws are.

00:59:47.980 | - Active duty and does eMoney

00:59:52.540 | have considered a specific tax rate?

00:59:54.660 | Yeah, for income sources,

00:59:56.580 | we can label some of them as tax-free

01:00:01.060 | and the system will treat them as tax-free.

01:00:02.540 | So we have a fair amount of military clients

01:00:04.340 | that we work with.

01:00:05.180 | Oh, there's, I have discovered some-

01:00:08.300 | - Yeah, there's a long question from Mark

01:00:09.620 | about Roth conversions.

01:00:10.780 | I can read this, but he's asking,

01:00:12.780 | I've discovered that with some

01:00:13.860 | of the Roth conversion calculators,

01:00:15.820 | the amounts recommended to convert vary greatly

01:00:18.780 | depending upon whether the system wants

01:00:20.620 | to maximize yearly spending dollars available

01:00:24.020 | or amount of money left in your estate, for example.

01:00:27.180 | For your Roth conversions modeling,

01:00:29.180 | are you just looking at income tax levels

01:00:31.140 | or additional factors as well

01:00:33.580 | when coming up with Roth conversion recommendations?

01:00:36.900 | - So I'll start with the response

01:00:39.460 | and I'm sure Mark can add to it.

01:00:41.420 | But eMoney, I don't think necessarily

01:00:44.300 | is doing optimal comparisons.

01:00:47.060 | eMoney is providing the results from inputs put in.

01:00:51.700 | So by virtue of my goals,

01:00:54.620 | do I wanna leave a lot of money for heirs

01:00:57.860 | or do I want to spend it down?

01:01:01.780 | It just depends on what the individual's goals are,

01:01:03.980 | but there's not an optimization button

01:01:06.860 | that we hit to generate the answer.

01:01:11.860 | - Yeah, that's a common sentiment

01:01:15.540 | that I get across, not just Roth conversions,

01:01:18.300 | but, oh, isn't there like the optimal way to do this?

01:01:21.500 | Well, it depends on kind of what your attitude is.

01:01:25.060 | Gosh, I think Jason, you and I were working

01:01:26.900 | with one of our clients where, man,

01:01:29.100 | he was thinking about converting a lot to a Roth.

01:01:31.580 | I was kind of surprised at how much he was gonna do.

01:01:34.100 | And I think he, I don't know if he ended up doing it,

01:01:35.540 | but I think kind of backed off when it came time

01:01:37.260 | to actually write the check to do that conversion.

01:01:39.260 | Now, in the long run, if he lives a long time,

01:01:44.260 | it might have been optimal for him to do that.

01:01:48.180 | But it's freaking him out right now,

01:01:50.900 | and that's not optimal for his quality of life right now.

01:01:53.860 | So the word optimal, in fact, I did a podcast

01:01:58.340 | where I wanted to disband that word from our clients.

01:02:00.940 | You can't use the word optimal anymore.

01:02:03.220 | There's just better, there are different ways

01:02:06.500 | of doing things, I guess is the way I would put it.

01:02:09.380 | But yeah, I will talk with clients

01:02:11.180 | about how they can use Roth conversions,

01:02:13.780 | the trade-offs that they have to make in those decisions,

01:02:18.060 | and how do they view their lifespan,

01:02:20.900 | and a lot of it can vary based

01:02:22.540 | upon how their assets play out.

01:02:24.260 | And then Jason will actually go into much more detail

01:02:26.660 | on the actual tax cost and how much,

01:02:29.980 | how far up the tax bracket you wanna go, so.

01:02:34.100 | - Yeah, and definitely, if people know exactly

01:02:37.860 | what their tax rate will be in the future

01:02:39.660 | and how much income they'll have,

01:02:41.120 | it's a lot easier for us to provide a recommendation.

01:02:44.980 | - Well, one thing about Roth conversions,

01:02:47.340 | my son did a Roth conversion, took his old 401(k)

01:02:53.900 | from a previous employer, rolled it into Vanguard,

01:02:57.580 | and then was converting it into a Roth.

01:03:00.460 | So he converted one third one year.

01:03:04.500 | The taxes were not a problem

01:03:06.060 | 'cause he's still in a low tax bracket.

01:03:08.560 | But the next year, when we looked at his account,

01:03:12.000 | it was all in the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund,

01:03:15.040 | and it was a bear market, bull market, I'm sorry,

01:03:18.320 | and all he had done is make more money.

01:03:20.680 | He had simply made more pre-tax money.

01:03:23.920 | And so it was almost better.

01:03:25.240 | He said, "Why don't I just put it all over

01:03:26.480 | "in the Roth right now, and from now on,

01:03:28.580 | "it's all after, it's non-tax money."

01:03:31.720 | And which is true, but how do you know?

01:03:35.640 | He did pay higher taxes to do it.

01:03:38.760 | On the other hand, he's gonna be working another,

01:03:40.920 | what, 30 years before he retires.

01:03:44.640 | It just seems that you're looking at your instinct

01:03:47.960 | of what is the best thing to do.

01:03:50.200 | - Yeah, and generally, people that are in the beginning,

01:03:54.880 | middle stages of their career,

01:03:57.440 | if they're on an income track,

01:03:59.200 | they're going to make more in the future.

01:04:00.680 | Therefore, typically now, yeah,

01:04:03.800 | you would use Roth at the beginning

01:04:05.640 | when you think you'll be in lower tax brackets.

01:04:07.580 | Think of doctors when they're in residency

01:04:11.900 | and when they're new attendings.

01:04:13.740 | That's probably the least amount of money

01:04:15.620 | that they're going to make going forward.

01:04:17.580 | So they probably want to be Roth.

01:04:20.380 | And then when they start earning much more money,

01:04:23.580 | they focus more on the pre-tax deductions

01:04:26.740 | being in the higher tax brackets.

01:04:28.380 | - As an alternative, just to mention this,

01:04:31.500 | however, for those people,

01:04:34.060 | they may be stressed out financially.

01:04:35.980 | They have debts they have to pay.

01:04:38.260 | They don't have a lot of extra cash.

01:04:39.860 | So even at that low income tax level,

01:04:43.840 | they may, doing a Roth conversion

01:04:45.780 | may just stress them out financially.

01:04:48.020 | - So you do it little by little, little by little.

01:04:51.480 | - All right, not surprised that there's no easy button.

01:04:56.560 | (laughing)

01:04:58.820 | Yeah, it's true.

01:05:00.900 | So that's the questions.

01:05:05.100 | So.

01:05:06.020 | - We have additional questions people would like

01:05:07.740 | to either ask or submit via chat.

01:05:10.140 | One thing that could be interesting,

01:05:17.300 | do you have more presentation material, Mark or Jason?

01:05:20.460 | - I don't think so.

01:05:21.900 | - 'Cause one thing that might be interesting,

01:05:23.780 | I imagine there are some of us that have worked with Mark,

01:05:28.360 | perhaps can offer a little bit of perspective.

01:05:31.260 | I don't know if anybody else on the,

01:05:34.060 | the Zoom call is willing to do so,

01:05:36.340 | but I was curious about plan vision

01:05:40.140 | as a do-it-yourself bogey header

01:05:42.500 | and thought I would check it as a second opinion

01:05:46.180 | kind of on what I was thinking about Roth conversions

01:05:49.140 | and retirement planning.

01:05:51.060 | And I found it very useful

01:05:52.100 | and they offered a lot of perspectives

01:05:53.700 | that I hadn't thought about.

01:05:55.860 | Most importantly, in my case,

01:05:57.300 | working mainly with Jason, ultimately,

01:05:59.460 | finding out that I was pushing myself,

01:06:01.260 | my qualified basically capital gains into a higher bracket

01:06:05.820 | because of the ratio that I have

01:06:07.900 | between my IRA and a taxable account.

01:06:12.420 | So for me, it opened up a lot of different perspectives

01:06:14.900 | that I hadn't considered

01:06:16.220 | and having just plugged stuff in on my own

01:06:18.300 | on other Roth conversion calculators,

01:06:20.140 | I missed those nuances.

01:06:22.180 | So I think there's a lot of things

01:06:23.340 | that even open social security calculator,

01:06:25.340 | Mike Piper's excellent tool,

01:06:27.220 | you know, it not punches the numbers,

01:06:29.580 | but you have to basically bear in mind

01:06:32.380 | what your needs are and your perspectives.

01:06:34.860 | And those are the things

01:06:35.860 | that maybe someday artificial intelligence

01:06:37.820 | will add a dimension that's lacking now,

01:06:40.060 | but it's nice to have the human perspective,

01:06:43.180 | especially with an experienced advisor

01:06:45.100 | who's walked through a lot of these scenarios before

01:06:47.340 | and knows what to really focus on.

01:06:49.700 | - Yeah, I'll give an example.

01:06:52.100 | One is the, we showed a chart here

01:06:54.700 | called the planned distributions, the R and Ds.

01:06:59.020 | And so in the Boglehead world and in other podcasts,

01:07:01.700 | the R and Ds are like what, you know,

01:07:03.620 | it's like, you know, cross for Dracula or whatever,

01:07:07.940 | you know, so you got-

01:07:09.780 | - R and Ds.

01:07:11.500 | - Yeah, and I will show people and I'll say,

01:07:13.620 | you know, your R and Ds,

01:07:14.940 | they're basically 1% of your net worth.

01:07:17.300 | That's what, even when you're 85,

01:07:19.140 | it doesn't mean you don't wanna be prudent

01:07:21.140 | about your assets and make smart decisions,

01:07:23.500 | but man, I'll see people obsessing about R and Ds

01:07:26.620 | and it's just, oh, you know, it's not really gonna matter.

01:07:30.020 | Now, you should still do Roth conversions

01:07:32.100 | and you still wanna try to reduce them when you can,

01:07:34.660 | but it's not really gonna move the needle all that much.

01:07:36.900 | So it does provide some relief for folks.

01:07:39.740 | It's like one less thing I need to worry about.

01:07:42.460 | - Is it good for inheritance purposes?

01:07:45.860 | - You mean-

01:07:49.900 | - The moving into the Roths, not as good as it used to be,

01:07:53.660 | but-

01:07:55.020 | - It could be, I guess.

01:07:56.700 | Yes.

01:07:58.780 | If you're asking if it's an asset

01:08:00.100 | that passes along tax-free, yes.

01:08:02.740 | - Yeah, it has advantages for the legacy part of your life.

01:08:07.740 | - Yeah, it ties into estate planning,

01:08:10.820 | so that's one of the factors.

01:08:12.620 | 'Cause you got 10 years where it can just sit there

01:08:15.420 | without having, it has to still be taken out,

01:08:17.260 | but there's no taxes,

01:08:18.300 | but you can let it sit for 9.9 years

01:08:20.940 | and then it's taken out by the individual inheriting it

01:08:24.500 | at that point.

01:08:25.340 | - There's a question here about investment advice

01:08:29.660 | and then a follow-up question, which is tied in.

01:08:31.860 | You indicated you don't need the holdings for a plan.

01:08:34.660 | But given holdings, I guess everyone can read that.

01:08:37.140 | But yes, we do give investment advice for our clients.

01:08:41.380 | Again, we focus very simple, low cost,

01:08:43.660 | broadly diversified portfolios.

01:08:45.340 | And we just tell them what we think they should do.

01:08:47.740 | It is many times driven by the numbers and what we see.

01:08:51.040 | Do they have the liberty to be aggressive

01:08:53.660 | or conservative in their plan?

01:08:55.060 | So we'll definitely provide comments

01:08:57.140 | on their investment advice

01:08:58.340 | and what we think that they should do

01:09:00.420 | to either simplify their plan or reduce their risk.

01:09:03.500 | Going over the numbers is very helpful in that process.

01:09:06.660 | The second question is,

01:09:08.460 | we don't need the holdings for a plan.

01:09:11.020 | Well, if people want us to review their mix

01:09:14.900 | and make recommendations

01:09:16.260 | and they don't link their accounts,

01:09:18.420 | a lot of times what they'll do is they'll upload

01:09:20.140 | their statements to the vault

01:09:21.260 | and we'll just look at it that way.

01:09:23.020 | But yeah, it is helpful in some,

01:09:24.580 | depending on what our clients want.

01:09:25.660 | Some people, and I will ask our clients,

01:09:27.500 | hey, do you need help with your investment advice?

01:09:29.200 | Are you okay with that?

01:09:30.040 | And they'll say, yeah, we do want some thoughts.

01:09:31.220 | Or say, no, we're pretty cool with what we've got there.

01:09:33.460 | So it depends on what they want.

01:09:35.060 | - Sandy K.

01:09:41.140 | - I'm curious, Mark.

01:09:42.640 | I'll go ahead, Miriam.

01:09:44.580 | - There's a question from Sandy K on the chat.

01:09:48.500 | What are your thoughts on the bond tent strategy?

01:09:52.020 | - Somebody's gonna have to-

01:09:53.260 | - Nearing retirement.

01:09:54.780 | - Someone would have to explain to me what the bond tent.

01:09:57.100 | - Bond tent is when you,

01:09:59.260 | before, my understanding is the bond tent

01:10:02.580 | is when you start to enter,

01:10:03.980 | you're getting into the glide path to retirement.

01:10:07.020 | You put your, the assets that you cannot lose,

01:10:11.380 | that you will need for your living expenses

01:10:15.380 | for the next X number of years.

01:10:17.420 | Let's say five years, three years before retirement,

01:10:20.480 | maybe four years, three years after.

01:10:23.100 | You put those assets, you set them aside in a tent

01:10:27.740 | that covers you.

01:10:28.580 | And the tent is of bonds.

01:10:30.420 | And you can arrange it into short-term,

01:10:32.980 | intermediate-term bonds, or you can just put a bond fund.

01:10:37.740 | You set it into there and then you take your other assets

01:10:40.900 | and you move them somewhere else and make it more,

01:10:44.620 | shall we say, stock-heavy, more aggressive.

01:10:48.380 | So you have like two different portfolios.

01:10:50.740 | - Yes.

01:10:52.640 | What are my thoughts on that?

01:10:54.780 | If we're simply talking about the idea

01:10:56.580 | that you take a portion of your portfolio

01:10:58.420 | and get more conservative with it

01:10:59.740 | as you're gonna live, absolutely.

01:11:01.060 | I mean, so my thoughts on that is

01:11:03.300 | I think that's very wise to do.

01:11:05.120 | In fact, my general comment would be,

01:11:08.740 | without going into specific details

01:11:10.540 | on actual bond-like structure,

01:11:13.060 | is that I would encourage people

01:11:14.640 | that have been financially successful,

01:11:16.940 | as they're transitioning, to default

01:11:18.740 | to being more cautious and being more aggressive,

01:11:21.380 | which would mean having more cash, having more bonds.

01:11:24.060 | Like, I think that's a better place to arrive at.

01:11:26.940 | - And the bond- - Go ahead, I'm sorry, Jason.

01:11:30.340 | - The bond tent strategy is really a variation

01:11:33.940 | of looking, in my opinion, at your asset allocation.

01:11:37.220 | I mean, that's what it is.

01:11:39.240 | And based on where your investments are,

01:11:44.240 | you look at your asset allocation

01:11:46.460 | and if you use a bond tent strategy,

01:11:51.300 | by definition, you're looking at your asset allocation

01:11:54.820 | and adjusting it to meet your situation.

01:11:57.580 | One thing to note, the proper asset allocation,

01:12:01.100 | in my opinion, is that people maintain it

01:12:04.340 | when the market goes up, down, sideways, whatever,

01:12:07.740 | because if you change your asset allocation

01:12:10.260 | based on market performance,

01:12:12.140 | then you don't have a true asset allocation

01:12:16.340 | because you would have started at that asset allocation

01:12:19.060 | before the big run or the big drop.

01:12:21.060 | - There's a question here

01:12:24.620 | about the investment policy statement.

01:12:26.820 | Do you review that as part of the plan?

01:12:30.820 | Yeah, we'll take a look at your IPS, if you want us to.

01:12:34.880 | I mean, if it's 15 pages.

01:12:37.860 | I don't know that I'm that interested in reading it.

01:12:40.260 | But yes, we have a lot of clients

01:12:41.420 | that have an excellent, nice little summary

01:12:43.400 | of what they're doing, and yeah.

01:12:46.480 | You know, we don't feel that strongly about

01:12:51.480 | having an intricate asset allocation model.

01:12:59.440 | So I like the three fund portfolio.

01:13:03.280 | I do everything in a target date fund,

01:13:04.600 | but we're happy to provide comments

01:13:05.920 | to help people either simplify their portfolio,

01:13:08.400 | or I think also for a lot of the bogleheads

01:13:10.880 | who kind of know a lot of this stuff anyway,

01:13:13.240 | but maybe they need reinforcement or maybe a few comments,

01:13:16.980 | is just to provide some broad comments on their mix.

01:13:21.340 | So what about RMD and Roth?

01:13:24.440 | Do you look at the issue of two individuals

01:13:26.480 | who both have substantial tax?

01:13:28.800 | Some point, one of them dies.

01:13:30.280 | You still have two RMD, but your tax brackets are now.

01:13:33.080 | Yeah, Jason has talked with our clients.

01:13:38.200 | You've had that conversation

01:13:39.280 | with several of our clients, I think.

01:13:40.920 | - Right, yeah, that's a great comment

01:13:42.960 | because you make your plan, you look at everything,

01:13:46.040 | and then boom, if you have one of the spouses die early,

01:13:50.320 | your RMDs now are pushing you in a much higher tax bracket.

01:13:54.440 | And eMoney actually has what if scenarios

01:13:58.280 | with an early death.

01:14:00.200 | So it can be run on the advisor's side.

01:14:03.920 | And of course, yeah, we don't look at anything in a vacuum.

01:14:08.480 | If you could give the information that you want to model,

01:14:13.400 | but look, everything is a model

01:14:15.560 | because we don't know when one of us are going to die,

01:14:18.240 | whether that be for Roth conversions or RMDs.

01:14:22.820 | - All right.

01:14:31.040 | (silence)

01:14:33.200 | - Jason, you do not do the tax forms for people.

01:14:42.640 | Is that correct?

01:14:43.480 | You don't do their taxes.

01:14:44.980 | You just advise them or lay it out.

01:14:49.720 | - Yeah, and I want to be clear

01:14:52.920 | that I don't do tax preparation.

01:14:56.040 | We don't provide tax advice.

01:14:59.000 | Tax advice is actually a covered topic for a CPA.

01:15:04.000 | So we're not doing taxes.

01:15:07.400 | We provide tax consulting

01:15:08.960 | and we provide for your tax situation,

01:15:12.760 | this is where you're at.

01:15:14.000 | There are a lot of people that are in between tax brackets.

01:15:19.920 | So we want to provide them with the information

01:15:23.100 | to see what makes sense in their situation.

01:15:27.480 | But yeah, we definitely do not provide tax preparation.

01:15:30.920 | - Here's an interesting question.

01:15:33.560 | How difficult is it to master e-money as an advisor,

01:15:35.800 | as a do it yourself,

01:15:36.960 | or I like to get my hands on the tools directly?

01:15:39.240 | Well, there's the upfront cost,

01:15:42.680 | which you might find annoying.

01:15:44.760 | I think it's 3,500, maybe it's 2,500

01:15:47.560 | if they have a scaled down version.

01:15:49.320 | And I think you might even have to be an RIA to get it.

01:15:53.840 | I don't remember anymore.

01:15:55.400 | It was so long ago that I got it.

01:15:57.800 | It would take a while to figure it out.

01:15:59.540 | You'd be on the phone, they have good support,

01:16:01.080 | but you'd be on the phone with support quite a bit.

01:16:03.240 | So, all right.

01:16:09.440 | - Curious, Mark, if somebody has a particularly

01:16:16.240 | complex situation that would ordinarily

01:16:19.560 | take a lot more time,

01:16:21.060 | is that something they work out with you guys

01:16:23.240 | on a different price structure

01:16:24.880 | for a more detailed, deep dive?

01:16:27.600 | - You know, we have done plans

01:16:35.000 | for some pretty complicated situations.

01:16:38.120 | I think I can think of clients

01:16:39.800 | that had 10 or 11 businesses

01:16:42.000 | that had some different assets

01:16:46.680 | that were coming in over time.

01:16:51.080 | We didn't charge them anything extra for that.

01:16:54.380 | So, I haven't really come across something yet that...

01:16:59.380 | I mean, I'm sure I will probably, or we will eventually,

01:17:04.300 | but stock options can get a little bit convoluted,

01:17:09.300 | but we actually encourage our clients

01:17:12.980 | to just enter those as income sources, generally speaking,

01:17:17.980 | and they work fine.

01:17:20.300 | So, I don't know, Alan.

01:17:21.380 | I guess we'll deal with that when it happens.

01:17:24.140 | - I have an analogy here.

01:17:25.660 | Mark, correct me if I'm wrong or if you don't agree,

01:17:29.060 | but I've been thinking about this.

01:17:31.100 | If you all remember the show "MASH,"

01:17:34.220 | we have triage and then we do surgery,

01:17:38.100 | and it's not meatball surgery.

01:17:40.020 | I mean, many of the surgeons

01:17:42.820 | do great work in the MASH unit.

01:17:47.140 | So, we're not doing cosmetic surgery.

01:17:49.340 | We're not doing cosmetic plans with our clients.

01:17:52.060 | We're just getting them a good, simple plan

01:17:56.020 | that makes sense for their situation.

01:17:58.380 | - Any idea why it takes someone

01:18:02.520 | to enter manually the information?

01:18:04.900 | Do you have to enter individual holdings

01:18:06.460 | or just a total amount?

01:18:08.300 | You can enter a total amount for an account,

01:18:11.140 | or you can link them if you want to, and that's...

01:18:13.640 | There's more work than you need money.

01:18:16.980 | It's not just your account entry.

01:18:18.340 | You want to enter your future expenses into e-money

01:18:22.140 | if you have pensions, maybe you have rental income.

01:18:25.420 | So, it can take somebody, depending upon the complaint,

01:18:27.260 | a little while to enter their information.

01:18:29.660 | But as I mentioned earlier,

01:18:30.500 | a lot of our clients really like the exercise.

01:18:32.740 | - All righty.

01:18:39.620 | - Okay.

01:18:41.020 | - Any further questions or comments, folks?

01:18:47.620 | If not, I want to thank Miriam for her expert assistance

01:18:51.260 | in monitoring the chat box.

01:18:53.300 | I was trying to look at the participants

01:18:55.300 | and everything else.

01:18:56.220 | You had a comment, Miriam?

01:18:57.420 | It looks like you were about to say something.

01:18:59.100 | - Just if anybody wanted to contact Jason or Mark,

01:19:01.940 | how would they do that?

01:19:03.100 | - Well, they could go to our website, planvisionmm.com.

01:19:14.900 | They could, I guess, send us an email

01:19:18.420 | at info@planvisionmm.com.

01:19:21.860 | (upbeat music)

01:19:24.440 | (upbeat music)

01:19:27.020 | (upbeat music)

01:19:29.600 | (upbeat music)

01:19:32.180 | (upbeat music)

01:19:34.800 | (upbeat music)

01:19:37.380 | (upbeat music)

01:19:39.960 | (upbeat music)