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Preservation Of Your Retirement Principle

My emphasis is on the preservation of your retirement principle, participation in market gains, and a lifetime of income that you cannot outlive Crown Haven planning prepares you for a retirement that you can count on. This is what we do to ensure your hard-earned money is 100% safe from any and all market losses. We simply stay away from things that can lose your money. That means we don’t use stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or variable annuities. You see, when you suffer a loss in the market, even a small loss, you have two problems.

At Crown Haven Wealth Advisors, we use our program RetireSHIELD® based on specialized financial planning that can provide first-year returns of up to 10% or more. We also include contractual guarantees that you will never suffer a loss because of stock market declines while locking in your yearly gains with no fees or loads taken from your deposit. Now on this program, my message is different from what you normally hear on financial planning shows, largely because my concepts are different.

First, when an investment loses value, that lost value is the first problem. The second problem is the time it actually takes to make back that loss. That is if you can even make it back at all. Now your money can’t be working for you. If you’re losing that money could be gone forever, destroying your opportunity for compounding for two reasons.

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What Happen To Annuities When You Die?

What happens to annuities when you die? 99% of all annuity products offer a full death benefit of the account value, or sometimes even more than the account value. I know of at least two annuities that increase your day one death benefit up to 100% of the premium and continue to grow that death benefit perpetually at a multiple of the account value growth. Without any fee, and no medical underwriting. There is only one kind of annuity that can significantly rob your beneficiaries of a death benefit. And it’s called a single premium immediate annuity, also known as a spear.

If purchased with a life only payout, nothing goes to your beneficiaries if you die. A financial professional that is skilled in laddered, inflation, hedged, guaranteed income strategies would almost never offer this type of annuity to their client.

There are very limited circumstances where it might make sense, but it’s rare. If someone is offering you a spear, you should contact us immediately because you can unintentionally disinherit your loved ones.

If you’ve already purchased a spear, you need to contact us to have a legacy rescue strategy that can potentially get all the money your beneficiaries will lose, possibly even more than they would lose back to them tax-free. Sometimes an annuity can provide a better death benefit option then life insurance, but we would need to look at your specific situation to determine that.

If you’d like a complimentary legacy review, schedule your complimentary consultation now. We will review all of your beneficiary designations on all of your investment accounts and insurance policies. To make sure your money goes where it’s intended. Upon passing away.

Have general retirement or financial planning questions we encourage you to contact us to see how we can help make sure your future is secure.

Red And Green Retirement Money

This week’s Smart Money podcast is about red money and green money and how you should diversify your financial portfolio to prepare for retirement.

Here’s a question, how much of your money is currently in the market? All of it? 50%? 80%? Did you make a conscious decision to have that particular percentage exposed to market risk? Or did it sort of just happen? Why would I be asking this? Now, as I’ve said before, the markets go up, and the markets go down. So how much of your life savings, that is exposed to market risk, is a very important consideration. That’s why I strongly encourage everyone to think of their money in terms of red money, and green money.

Now, those terms might sound a little childish or funny, but I believe they help us understand a very important concept. So let’s explain this. Red money is money that we’re willing to expose to market risk, we’re willing to do this in hopes of a higher return. We accept the possibility of losses, even significant losses, in hopes of greater gains. Red money is exposed to upside, and downside market risk. Now green money is about safety and security. With green money, we’re not willing to accept the risk of losses. So, we’re willing to accept a lower return in exchange. Green money does not have downside market risk. So if red money is exposed to upside, and downside, and green money has only upside, which one is better? Well, that’s probably the wrong question to be asking because neither one is inherently good, or bad. It all depends.

The very important questions we should be asking ourselves are these: What percentage of my money should be in red money? And what percentage of my money should be in green money? Now, if you’re at or near retirement, you should ask yourself if any of your money should be in red money? Can you afford to lose any of your retirement funds? Would you rather take two steps forward, and three steps back? Or just take one step at a time, and never take a step back? If you’d like to learn how to step forward and never backward, call for my free, Baby Boomer Retirement Boot Camp book, and my free RetireSHIELD® kit. Both of these could change your financial life for the better.

The guy that sits down at the blackjack table and freaks out when he loses, should not have been betting with that much money. The guy that sits down at the blackjack table, and loses, and gets up, and has a great evening for the rest of the night, you know it didn’t matter to him that he lost the money. So if you’re at all concerned when the market drops, shouldn’t be in red money. You don’t go to Vegas and put $500,000 on red. You just don’t do that. So it makes it easy to decide, you have to ask yourself this question. If I were to lose some, most, or all of my money in my accounts, would I be upset? If the answer is yes, then your money should be in green money.

Let me tell you what red money is good for… the young and the rich. Now, the young have time on their side, they can afford to lose money in the hopes that they’ll make it back in the future. The rich can afford to lose a little bit of their money and still live comfortably. But I’ll tell you, even our clients that have means, the folks $5 million, $6 million, they don’t want to lose it either. Because the reality is, if you’re at or near retirement, you should definitely be in the green, you don’t have a lot of time to make it back. Green money is money that cannot be lost due to market declines.

Many people, economists, well-known advisors believe that all retirement money should be green money. Personally, I think that makes a lot of sense. Many people I work with, regardless of age, want 100% green money because they know they can have upside market growth without accepting any downside losses. And they understand math. They’ve looked at it. If you go forwards and never backwards, you’re gonna go farther, quicker, than if you get a huge gain and then take half of that away. Isn’t it time for you to go green with your retirement?

Not only can you have some upside growth without any downside market risk, but you can get a first year bonus of 10% on your entire deposit, all your money, just for opening the account. You can also lock in guaranteed growth of up to 7% on the lifetime income account. How about that? No downside market risk, a bonus, and guaranteed growth on the lifetime income account of up to 7%. Contact us today and I’ll arrange to show you how it works.

3 Mid-Year Financial Planning Tips

Our very own Casey Marx was interviewed by Indianapolis Fox 59 News giving out his best 3 mid-year financial planning tips. Here is a summary of the interview.

Mid-year is a great time to look at your spending habit for the year. You can start by analyzing your budget, look at your expenses and make sure that you’re saving more than you’re spending. The pandemic last year highlighted the need for that.
Estate planning is key because you never know what will happen. That includes having a financial power of attorney a will with a named executor regardless of age, making sure they are updated with the correct information. If you don’t, your estate goes through the courts or if you’re in the hospital, the hospital is going to determine who that person is. It’s a very difficult thing to figure out on the fly. Take care of this now.
Risk capacity. Your risk tolerance changes as you get older. Maybe you don’t have money from a job coming in or another change in your life. When the utility of your money changes, you need to make sure that you are balancing the risk. It’s great if your equity positions have done well, but you want professional help to determine whether or not your investment portfolio is overweighted into any one asset class; otherwise, you could lose a lot of money all at once.

Looking for professional help managing your financial life. We created the RetireShield® financial planning approach. It covers your 401k, IRA, individual investments, tax planning, estate planning and more.

We encourage you to sign up for our complimentary financial plan review. You can meet with our team in person or via the computer. Schedule a time right now online that is convenient for you.

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Who Does Crown Haven Work With?

At Crown Haven Wealth Advisors we can work with anyone so long as they have an emergency fund in place. One of the great things about what I’ve done is I’ve been fortunate enough to travel the country and work with folks from all different demographics. The underlying theme with all them is they just want to be ok.

When you have expertise in a given field you feel this incumbent upon yourself to share that expertise. I really view myself as an educator not as an advisor or salesman or anything of that nature It’s more education first and client-centric and when you do that everything else takes care of itself so it’s not about the size of the client’s portfolio It’s about helping people achieve serenity and happiness in their retirement

If you would like to have the top financial advisory firm in Carmel, Indiana working on your side contact us today for a complimentary review of your portfolio.

What Is The Risk Involved With Retirement Planning

Things you can’t and you need to control and hold on to with every fiber of your being the things you can control because there’s so much you can. The risk has its place but you have to understand what that risk is and you also have to understand what fees you’re paying and the laws of the financial world are written as such that your your only shown those fees at the very beginning of an investment in a in a prospectus which is about 300 pages thick that nobody reads that even Alan Greenspan formerly said that if you had a doctorate in mathematics you wouldn’t be able to understand some of this stuff and that’s that way for a reason

I am personally not a proponent of mutual funds they are a watered-down version of something called the modern portfolio theory which was written in 1952 by a guy named Harry markowitz and essentially what he said was that the ideal portfolio would be let’s hold 50% of your money in a stock that pays when it rains and 50% of your money in a stock that pays when it shines it rains In his hypothesis no matter what you would end up ahead well that’s wrong If you have 50% of your money and something that pays when it rains and 50% of your money and something that pays when it shines and it rains the best you’re going to do is end up even

The problem with that is mutual funds after banking when retail in the 1980s mutual funds are watered down version where upon number one you’re dealing with a salesman so they just want to sell you something The mutual fund companies are more concerned with the adequate marketing of their accounts than actually providing you something of value and then because there’s about 15 different people that need to get paid there are astronomical fees so risk has its place but if you’re going to invest in something that has risk you need to know that risk You also need to know those fees.

It’a Just a 2% Fee, Right?

There are things you can control in other things you can’t and you need to control and and hold on to with every fiber of your being the things you can control because there’s so much you can inflation cost of goods geopolitical conflict Wall Street greed how long you live All these things you can’t control so it kills me on a daily basis clients come in and they show me their statements and then I analyze just the risk and and it’s just completely inappropriate and then the fees they’re paying.

For example a 2% fee on a deposit of $500,000 over a 15-year period reduces that investment by $487,000 over that 15-year period assuming that your advisor is a superhero and gets you 7% return annually and you never go backwards That’s insane so $500,000 would turn into $1,082,000 whereas if you didn’t have that 2% fee you would have $1,511,000 which for those keeping score at home is about the amount of your initial investment so people here are 2% fee or 1% fee or 50 basis point fee and they think that’s no big deal It’s a huge deal because it destroys the miracle of compounding interest.

Risk has its place but understand what you’re doing and quite frankly my clients are smart people they’re not stupid people It’s just not their expertise and so if I go talk to an engineer about something I’m not going to be up on his furniture I’m not going to be up on the the vernacular that is exclusive to that expertise so if you starts running around in circles around me talking about what he does and this and this and how this is so great and and he’s trained to do that You know I’m at a loss I don’t know what to do

It all comes back to education for us It’s teaching people The great thing about working with something that’s positive is that you’re not afraid to lift the curtain You lift the curtain you show people and they come to the natural conclusion that what you do is best for that and that’s a it’s a good position to be sitting in.

If you want a second opinion on your existing financial plan for retirement contact us for a complimentary consultation.

Time, Money & Energy Of Financial Planning

Time, money, energy….What is important to you? What does that pie chart look like? What’s really important to you? How do you want to balance it?

That should be defined right at the outset you know because and this change is over time too The beginning of your career you might be all about the money You might be willing to sacrifice the time. People need to sacrifice the energy but then you get to 55-60. I’ve been doing this for several years and my energy is a little bit more important to me now. My time is a little bit more important to me now. What are you doing in order to give it back to yourself because the same stuff’s not going to do it

Time, money energy This is for anybody in the business world It’s for clients getting ready to retire It’s for anybody but until you’re honest with yourself on what’s important You are like a blind man trying to find a meal It’s It’s not there and often we get told what we should be wanting by others and then we get angry at others for pursuing those things You got a choice everyday but put yourself in the position in order to achieve it and part of what we’re doing

Crown Haven is where providing people with the expertise and the tools in order to better balance their time and energy so they worry less about that money and spend more time enjoying their lives. Contact us to learn how we can maximize all your variables for retirement.

What Age Should I Start Retirement Planning?

The age is younger than you think the reality is that the national average for invested assets are investable assets at the age of retirement is just under $100,000 it doesn’t take a skilled mathematician to determine that if you’re income is $50,000 a year or $100,000 a year and you want to take from that and nothing else occurs risk doesn’t happen fees don’t occur nothing else occurs You’re going to run out of money really quickly It’s very important that people start thinking about this at a very young age.

The only reason that I’m so cognizant of it is I sat there and watched my mom lose nearly everything and as a younger person that got me really thinking about what to do for myself and that in turn led me to the businesses that that I’ve helped build.

If you would like to have the top financial advisory firm in the Indianapolis, Indiana area working on your side increasing your return while decreasing your risk contact us today for a complimentary review of your portfolio.

Retirement Can’t All Be for Nothing

I learned the hard way that retirement can’t all be for nothing by first helping my mother. Now, after nearly a decade of helping hundreds of families in the Indianapolis area step confidently into retirement, there are many mornings I reflect on just how I was able to put myself in a position to be afforded the honor of doing so.

How I got here is very easy to map out with the benefit of hindsight.

Yet I dare say that without my why, I wouldn’t be in the field of retirement planning at all.

I grew up as an only child during the ‘90s in the middle-class suburb of Mukilteo, Washington.

My formative years were spent riding my bicycle a mile up the road to “shag” golf balls from the woods at Harbour Pointe Golf Course to then sell those balls back to the golfers at the range at a discount; while my friends’ parents were driving newer, fancier luxury cars and buying bigger, fancier houses — my first car was a ’78 Cadillac Seville with a bum alternator.

Even so, my childhood was mostly ideal, and I planned to go on to attend college at Gonzaga and study medicine.

Then on May 16, 2002, my father passed away. Thank God, my dad lived below his means. On top of the loss of my dad, the family lost $100,000 in annual income, and needless to say, I wouldn’t be going to Gonzaga.

With my dad gone, I felt the need to step up and be a real partner for my mom. With this understanding, I took on two jobs in high school, and I paid my way through community college before transferring to a University on grants.

In the meantime, we had a family friend, a principal at a major brokerage house managing the family savings.

We all know what happens next. The Great Recession wiped away trillions of America’s wealth, and my family was no exception. At the low, my mother had lost over 60%. The answer she received from our family friend, the principal at that major brokerage firm when she was terrified for her future, was to “ride it out.” Even at that stage in my life, and with the limited financial knowledge I possessed, I knew that answer wasn’t good enough.

That was the day I decided to take my financial planning future into my own hands.

I never expected that my burning desire to redeem myself for my own perceived inadequacy in helping my mother as a teenager would lead to a full-fledged financial advisory practice, but it has. I have learned more about retirement planning, 401k rollovers, employee stock purchase plans (ESPP), 529 plans, IRAs, life insurance, and estate planning than I have ever dreamed.

My ‘why’ is that every day when I wake up, I’m granted the ability to live vicariously through every single client that comes through my doors and ensure that with the proper planning, they will never experience the fear and uncertainty that our family endured.

Recently, my mother and I were speaking on the phone about the growth my firm has enjoyed, and I recalled a low moment in 2012. I had just moved to Denver to pursue my business, and things weren’t going well; I had just enough money to pay for rent. In my possession were two fully-matured Series EE Bonds my dad had acquired in 1986, worth $1,000.00. It broke my heart to cash them, and I pictured them someday framed in my office as a reminder to remain resilient.

On the call, my mother, in tears, asked, “what happened with the bonds?”. The next day, I sent her a photo of the framed bonds in my office at Crown Haven.

Her text back said: “It Can’t All Be For Nothing.” I agree.