Long Term Care and Disability Insurance
Long Term Care and Disability Insurance
Long Term Care and Disability Insurance
Life Insurance
Reduce Retirement Risk
Presented by Brian Leising “I’m too busy building wealth for my clients, why would I integrate permanent life insurance into my financial planning practice?”Sales expert Jeffrey Gitomer says “the fear of loss is greater than the desire to gain.” Think about it, how many calls do you get from concerned clients when the stock market is going up? How many do you get when it is crashing? In the retirement planning process, we usually focus on how much money our clients can accumulate in order to retire when they want with the lifestyle they want. Risk mitigation is handled through asset allocation and dollar-cost averaging. We want our clients to make enough money to be happy without losing more than they can stomach along the way.
What about the risks our clients face during their retirement years? What could erode a well-crafted retirement plan when the income is needed? The risk of stock market declines still exists but clients also face future taxes, the high costs of health care in retirement, social security considerations and the risk of simply outliving the plan YOU created.
Adding permanent life insurance into your clients’ portfolio can reduce their risk in each area.
Want to learn more? Ask about my Retirement Risk sales series. I can start sending you the 7-part series today!
[You don’t want to miss Retirement Risk #5, your clients’ most costly risk!]
Life Insurance
The Greatest Threat to Retirement Assets
Presented by Brian Leising(HINT: It’s not the stock market!)
How many of your clients have protected their assets from the greatest threat they face in retirement, the high costs of extended care? What happens to clients and their families with no protection from this risk? What excuses do clients give for not taking action and protecting their assets? What do consumers have now? Right now most people don’t have a plan at all. Some have traditional long term care insurance (LTC) policies, and others have personal funds set aside for LTC expenses. What’s wrong with that? Whether clients think they have a plan or not, they have a plan. No plan is a plan. That means they will use their own money until it runs out and they go on welfare (known by the fancy name Medicaid), leaving nothing for their spouse and children. Consumers state one of two objections to purchasing traditional LTC policies: 1) “The rates may go up”; or 2) “What if I die and never need to use my policy? I don’t want to waste my money. “ Even those with money set aside are not leveraging their funds as much as possible. What’s a possible solution? Linked-benefit life insurance policies allow clients to use their death benefit to pay for LTC expenses. The rates are guaranteed and premiums are never wasted as the full benefit is always paid to someone, themselves if they require care or their heirs if they don’t. In lump sum situations, you can double the money to heirs and triple that sum for LTC, with a return of premium option. Now you can protect your clients’ assets from the greatest threat they face in retirement; by showing them how their life insurance policy can be used for extended care expenses; so they don’t have to worry about rate increases or “wasting” premium dollars.
Long Term Care and Disability Insurance
What has 80 years of Social Security taught us?
Presented by Leonard Berthelsen Looking back on the eighty years since the creation of Social Security, the idea of retirement has changed for many of us, and in some respects, not changed anything at all for others. Understanding that in 1935 when Social Security was established, there weren’t many opportunities for workers to save for the future. Our nation was coming off the worst financial disaster in history just six years earlier and was still struggling to get people back to work and recreate faith and trust in the financial markets and the government. Now here is a president who wants people to save for the future (retirement) when folks were still struggling to put food on the table and pay for basic necessities, a bold move for any elected official. It may have been prudent back then to hold the position of waiting for the economy to improve and more folks were working. However, President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw this as an opportunity to provide some minimum protection and savings for the average American worker when they did want to retire because he knew America was on the verge of enormous growth and prosperity. The average American worker lived to be about 65 in 1935, so when you look at how the program was built it seemed to make actuarial sense. Now we see the average individual living well into their 70’s, 80’s and beyond. It’s no wonder there’s endless pressure on the system. In addition, baby boomers are retiring en masse. We have a system that hasn’t kept pace with the realities of economic changes. And we have a political environment that for over 50 years hasn’t wanted to address the real need for change to the formula or make the tough decision to increase taxes. Seems to be really negative, right? Not so fast. As I watched my grandparents retire and rely on Social Security as their full source of retirement income and then my parents, it became clear early on that it did make a difference for them and it made their quality of life better. It was a simpler time back then. They stayed in the home they bought early in their marriage through those retirement years. No mortgage payments after retirement. They did not live beyond their means and watched their expenses. They were able to take annual vacations and “splurge” every now and then on something special. As pensions became popular with many companies in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s as a way of recruiting good, hard working loyal employees, Social Security quickly became viewed as a secondary source of income for these pensioners when they retired. This was a real game changer in the eyes of many Americans. For those who weren’t lucky enough to have a pension where they worked, they were left to fend for themselves and save for retirement. For the ones who didn’t save, at least Social Security was there. We entered the era of pension elimination in many companies beginning in the 1970’s as a means of scaling back expenses for companies and eliminating the huge liability that kept many companies from expanding and growing due to their obligation on these pension plans. As the pensions slowly faded away, we were introduced to savings via the employer, with both the employer and employee contributing but the employee owning the savings plan, the 401(k) was born. The one thing through all of these changes that remained a staple was Social Security. It’s been there since 1935 providing retirement benefits to millions of American workers. For some it is their only means of financial independence; for others it simply supplements their income during retirement. Whatever group you fall into, Social Security does make a difference. This is a program that, 80 years later, is still delivering on its promises. I want to look at Social Security from the glass half-full perspective, because it is doing what it was designed to do. As we age into the next two decades, certainly some things will need to change. It is being projected that in ten years from now, there will be only three to four workers supporting every one retiree. Technology replaces workers as it has done for decades. We have to be smart and sharp with our attitudes and our actions. I believe Social Security will be there for every working American that contributed the minimum requirement, and will continue to do it through their retirement years. Will the system change, probably? Will we agree or like all the changes, maybe, maybe not? I think the one constant will always be there and that constant is Social Security. President Roosevelt saw a future where American workers could live in retirement with dignity, without worry of where their next meal was coming from, but also recognizing that each individual needed to take personal ownership in how that retirement was going to be financed. Social Security can only do so much. We need to do the rest.
Annuities