Mastering Veteran Financial Planning
Welcome to our podcast episode featuring Korey Knepper, a seasoned financial advisor at SD Smith and a proud US Navy Veteran. In this enlightening conversation, we delve into the realm of veteran financial planning, uncovering the top three mistakes most veterans make and how to avoid them. We also explore strategies to cut through the overwhelming clutter of financial advice and provide actionable insights to help veterans make informed decisions. Additionally, Korey shares lesser-known financial products that veterans should know about. Lastly, we dive into the crucial topic of retirement planning and discuss essential steps to ensure a secure and prosperous future. Tune in to gain invaluable knowledge, empower your financial journey, and discover the key to achieving financial freedom as a veteran.
Korey Knepper SDSmith Financial Investment Advisor Representative 2200 Westport Plaza Drive; Suite 221 Saint Louis, Missouri 63146 Office: (314) 590-2120 Cell: (314) 623-3215 korey@sdsmithfinancial.com Securities and Advisory services offered through Cetera Advisors LLC, member FINRA/SIPC, a broker/dealer and Registered Investment Adviser. SDSmith Financial is independent of Cetera Advisors LLC.
In This Episode We Cover:
Top 3 biggest mistakes most veterans are making in their financial planning.
How to cut through the clutter of financial advice and not be overwhelmed.
Lesser known financial products veterans should know about
Planning for retirement
Battle Buddy Podcast Guest Links:
Transcript from Episode 107 with Korey Knepper:
Keith McKeever 0:01
Welcome back to another episode of the battle buddy Podcast. Today, I've got a financial planner on we're going to talk about, obviously, financial planning. Obviously, it's something that every single one of us really need to pay attention to. But we're not going to talk about your simple stuff like buying a couple of stocks here and there or budgeting, things like that. I've talked about that before. There's other episodes on that. My guest today wants to talk to us about some lesser known products that he that he offers. And I'm really excited to well, to learn myself about some of the different products that are out there a financial planning that maybe could be useful for you. So if you're looking to invest your money to save your money, looking at some different options you might want to pay attention today.
Korey Knepper 0:46
Welcome to the battle buddy podcast with Keith McKeever. The quarry, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Keith McKeever 0:56
Oh, glad to have you on. And well, you know, I told you right before we started I, I'm in real estate. And I don't know everything about personal finance and stuff like that. But I do kind of nerd out on I do. I do love talking about it. So I personally am excited to hear what you have to say about some of these lesser known things. But before we dive into it, tell us a little bit about your yourself and your military story.
Korey Knepper 1:18
All right, military story. Well, let's see. I graduated high school in 2011. And didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I was terrible student, I was a very undisciplined person. And it was kind of coming to a point of, I need to get my butt kicked, and I need to do it somewhere. And I don't I can't get it here. So I remember, this is where my head was at, when I decided to join the military. I said I don't want to get shot up. So I'm not doing the Marines or the army, which now I know, as a future, you know, as a veteran and everything, you know, get shot out everywhere there. So it was between Air Force and Navy for me. And I Googled where the nearest Air Force recruiter was. And I'm in the St. Louis area, they were in South County, which is about a 20 minute drive. And I Googled where the nearest Navy recruiter was, he was about five minutes down the road. So I went and joined the Navy. Now, not the best thought process for, you know, making a life changing decision. But that was all process ahead. Well, hey,
Keith McKeever 2:33
you know, five minutes is a lot closer than 20 or 25. And, you know, I can't argue with your thought process because I joined the Air Force. And my stepdad kind of said the same thing. He was Air Force during Vietnam at well, he went out with the Marines a lot. He did
some missions out on the ground, but he was like, Do you want to sleep on the ground? Do you want to get shot? Do you want to have a good quality of life? And I'm just like, Well, yeah, what kind of question is that? He's like, join the Air Force to the Navy. And so my thought process was not about you know, what's what's closer back then I would have had to use Mapquest. But but you know, I looked at it like, what sounds better? I'm like, well, the Air Force worked for him. And my friend's dad was an Air Force in Vietnam was like Air Force work for these guys. And then I was like, do I really want to float out in the middle of the ocean in a tin can surrounded by sharps? And the answer to me was like, no, no, I really don't. That does not sound appealing to me. So Air Force is the direction I went. But I think we're kind of on a very similar wave. It sounds like similar
Korey Knepper 3:37
thing where I looked at my two grandparents, both of my grandfather's served, one of them served in the Navy, one of them served in the Air Force, the one who served in the Air Force. had some issues later in life that didn't help him out a whole lot. And overall, alcoholism was a terrible thing for a lot of people. And it was a terrible thing for him. My other grandfather was a engineer at McDonnell Douglas, he helped us he was, I believe, don't quote me on this. But he said something along the lines of he was the one who helped figure out planes not getting struck by lightning. So he was that kind of engineer, way back in the 60s 70s and 80s. And he was doing great. So I was like, Well, I see this guy who went Air Force and it didn't go like his life didn't turn out as well. This guy went Navy, it's a very small sample size to choose from two different scenarios. So that was another small piece as to why I might have convinced myself Navy so yeah, I went in in 2012 and was an NS designated Seaman which if you are a if, you know, the Navy, people out there that are on the enlisted side would would recognize that those are people that you usually got told, Hey, you get to go to a ship and pick any job you want. And in reality, it is no you show up to a ship, you don't have a job. So you get to do the ones that nobody wants to do.
Keith McKeever 5:12
That's the recruiting pitch. whatever job you want. That's not the reality.
Korey Knepper 5:16
Yeah. So I did that on designated side for two and a half years, which is a year longer than you're supposed to. But it was hard to get a job title at the time. We were kind of overmanned but eventually, I was an electrician, electricians mate. So did that for the last year and a half. I got into a rough car accident, right around my third year mark. And about eight months of that military service portion was recovering. And trying to get back to a ship, I ended up getting back to my ship, pretty much in time to go, I've already enrolled at college, I am getting out. I know this is my four years is up, I know what I want to do with my life, I figured out that question that I had, whenever I was 18 years old. And I figured out that I could go to school, I could do things. That wouldn't be as as difficult. And I knew that that was the discipline that I needed. I got. And so it was a What was some of the questions I get asked how was my military service a lot? And the answer I kind of give sometimes I say is it sucked best decision ever made my life?
Keith McKeever 6:34
I would think most people would probably say about the same thing. Yeah, I was sucked. Yeah, but gladly do most of it again. Yeah. Most most certain parts of it. Dejima. Most of us would probably rather not do. But you know, in the grand scheme of it. Yeah. If push comes to shove, we do it again.
Korey Knepper 6:55
Yeah, but And now that I'm kind of at the you know, I'm I'm now eight years removed nine years removed from military service. And seeing all the benefits and stuff that I get from that, I would 110% do all of it all over again, just because I'm seeing you know, between VA home loan, which I know you your real estate you worked with a lot, I'm sure. VA, Health Care and things like that VA health care is something that has allowed me to run my own business and do these things that I was, I might not be able to do because health insurance is expensive, and especially if you are a independent business owner. And it also paid for my college. So after military service, I went to community college for a year, and then went to a school here in the St. Louis area called Maryville University, where I got a bachelor's in financial services. So my last little piece after that I went to I started working at Merrill Lynch, which was where I got trained and everything and COVID really threw a wrench in and a lot of that, as it did for a lot of people with a lot of things. So I ended up doing paycheck Protection Program loans for them, because all of our testing centers were shut down. So I became a loan specialist with zero training. And with it was very much military helped out with that, hey, you're getting deployed to something and you have no idea what to expect. A lot of people couldn't take it. But some people did well, and I think I did well with it because of military training, it definitely helped out knowing that you were kind of almost getting deployed to an area that you didn't want to go to. So that was kind of my spot. And then finally they I got my testing done, I got my training done. And then they said, Hey, we got to do better PPP funding, you're going back to doing loans, so no, I'm not. And I decided to go to the independent side. And that's where I'm at now with St. Smith financial. We're an independent broker or independent financial advising firm, located in St. Louis, that and our broker dealer, I have to do these little disclosures. So my dealer is slugterra advisors LLC, and we are independent of Sutera advisors, LLC. So the opinions that are here are my own, not to terrorists, please don't go after them. They get mad at me if you do. So.
Keith McKeever 9:34
There you go. And if you want to learn more about them, I've got a scrolling across the bottom, it'll be in the show notes as well. So as well as your your your little description there. So I totally get that. I totally understand being in real estate field. You know, there's always disclosures, disclosures upon disclosures upon disclosures and and disclosures about those disclosures. So I totally get it. So, you know, first question I wanted to ask you is
I think it's very interesting one, and I'm very curious to hear your answer, because of what you see on your end. But what, what do you see as the three biggest mistakes, or two or three for whatever you want to however you want to answer it, that you see veterans making with their money.
Korey Knepper 10:19
So most of the people that I've worked with are vets that are either they've done their military service, they are now approaching, they then they went and did the old double dip where they started working somewhere else while they got their pension. And then they're approaching retirement now. And then the other side is people who are in the middle of transitioning out of the military, either after 2030 years, the biggest mistake I've seen isn't even really as much financial side as it is. They put themselves into way too much of a workload immediately once they leave the military. So they might leave the military after I've talked with a couple of people that they leave the military. And their separation date is March 31. And they start their new job on April 4. And when you do that, and I was I was a victim of this as well, I set up my schooling to be literally I had to get my DD 214 Drive 14 hours and show up to class. Which it's just it makes the transition process to where you are so solely focused on one thing, that you miss the big picture of all of the different things that you could be adding to your situation, such as applying for VA disability, things like that, that you you should be doing, and you maybe put it off or you put off some other stuff that you should be doing, or your family gets put behind in the backburner, things like that. Because you also, you know, we talked about the recruiter pitch earlier. Well, these companies have recruiters to that's who you're talking to, is a recruiter and they're going to make it sound like the transition is going to be the smoothest thing you've ever done. And that sometimes isn't the case, I have one guy that I'm working with right now that is he's gotten sent from he got out at Scott Air Force base here in the St. Louis area and was starting a job with delta. And then he had to fly to Miami. And then he had to fly to New York. And then he was flying up to Indiana. And then he was flying back to St. Louis. And he almost missed his daughter's graduation, because he bid off a lot more than he could chew initially, instead of maybe taking a month off to really get an idea as to what they were getting into. Now, the other side that I've seen issues with, specifically with people who are retiring from the military who maybe don't have, we talked about financial literacy is something that in this country is under educated on most of the time, because they kind of expect parents to do it. And if your parents weren't financially literate, then you know, you're not. And it's kind of you have to seek that out yourself. So we've seen some people who, maybe they get out, and they've saved 150,000 in their TSP, and they have their pension, and they're like, I can live off of this, this is no problem. And they try to pull money out of their tsp. And they don't know that there's a 10% penalty that comes with that, because they're not 59 and a half. And we can kind of get into some of those IRS and IRA Rules and Regulations later into the pot. But that is kind of an area that I see a lot of people screw up because then they get back to tax time and they go holy crap, I have way more money than I thought, oh, no, no, I need to go get a job. And I need a job yesterday. And I can
Keith McKeever 14:02
totally see that on playing out. It's the taxes, the fees, those kinds of things that we do is our retirement plans. Yeah, retirement age is 65, not 40, not 35, not 30. So I can, I can totally see that. You know, people say Oh, I can just pull 10 out, I can pull 20 out and buy this new car, I can do whatever I can live off of that you're you're not going to live off 150 grand for the for the next 3040 50 Well, you get out of 40 You still have another 25 years of work. Life of your, you know, prime work years, right until the typical retirement age. Then you still if you're lucky, you still have another 1520 years left of life. So that, you know, let's just say 15 more years until the typical search of the word now. You know, life expectancy date, right? That's that's a long time to List $150,000 is not going to work $150,000 is not going to fund you, even in a retirement home.
Korey Knepper 15:07
Yeah, there's only, I've only sat down with one current military member who kind of had it set up to where, and I, this is an advice that I give to a lot of people. That is obviously it's not a blanket recommendation, it's situation specific. But if you do not want to work, after your military service, if you want to be done working after your military service, you almost always have to do 30 years, you have to get that 75% pension, that 50% pension at 20 years, you're going to have to do something now maybe if you while you were in, if you maybe invested in real estate, and you have rental income coming in, or some other form of passive income, you can maybe make that work. But typically 30 years is what you would need if you don't want to work again. Now, likewise, if you plan on working whenever you get out, and you plan on continuing to do a job that maybe you'll even pay more than what you're currently getting paid to do with the military. Which is we all kind of see that because the military's compensation package is it's not all in their base pay. Right? Some of these companies, it's all in their base pay their base pay is where their compensation packages, whereas your military it is basic housing allowance, its health care benefits that are, you know, we may we may all talk about how you know, at least on my ship, we talked about how the corpsman would if you went down there and said you were sick or something they give you ibuprofen, tell you to change your socks and send you on your merry way. Don't forget to hydrate. Yeah, don't forget to hydrate that was the other one. But at the end of the day, it is still free health care. And most of the country doesn't get that.
Keith McKeever 17:02
Yeah, it's not easy and clean to lay out if you are put it into into a spreadsheet. Because yeah, if you if you have a civilian company, and they say, Hey, we're gonna pay you just use your brain of numbers, but $75,000 a year to do this job.
With just a couple of benefits, you know, it's, it's not really you can kind of just throw the numbers in there. But the military, it's, it's not easy to kind of throw out what those benefits are for the free health care and tuition assistance and housing allowance and all and you know, other things or if you happen to deploy overseas, and now you got some tax free money, and all these different things that can be in there, it's that if you get out and if you have a disability, how many dependents Do you have? Like there's there's a lot of factors that you have to take into account a lot more columns, that spreadsheet,
Korey Knepper 17:51
for sure. And that's something that I, I've sat down with a good amount of active duty members, and we go through that cash flow analysis of okay, if you do leave the military after 23 years, what is your pension look like? What is your new job look like? What does it cost? When it comes to your? You know, are you planning on using VA health care? Are you planning on using TRICARE? Are you planning on using your employer's health care plan? Are you expecting to get VA disability? Are you expecting to, you know, what are the areas that you're looking at? And what are you expecting? And then let's also go through what if you don't get that? What if that's not like, you know, go into the what if scenarios of what if you think you can leave the military, and they're currently paying you, you know, I'll go like random numbers, they're paying you a base pay of 50k a year. And then you're also getting your basic housing allowance. And it's, you know, you're probably getting another 18 years or so after that. Let's say you're at 68,000. At that point is what your total pay is, and this company tells you, they're gonna pay you $90,000. But then they also don't give you the TSP which has a 5% match. Therefore, they don't have a 401 K plan. They don't have you know, they're they don't have any life insurance that comes with their plan like the military does. That's another piece that a lot of people leave the military and don't think about, we typically, it all depends, but typically recommend that you should have roughly eight to 12 Depending on your home situation eight to 12 times your annual income is what you should have in life insurance most of the time. Now, military might not cover that with 400,000. But they cover a heck of a lot. Most employers will cover one year salary. So if you leave and you went from having $400,000 of coverage, you now have 90 And if you were to unfortunately pass your family gets one year of your income. That's it to replace what you You had. That's why we say, typically, if you do 10 to 12, depending on the situation, we can usually use that money to drill down and get that person through to retirement. And it's also when it comes to pension setup and stuff like that. That's other stuff that we assist with, it's a little more in the weeds. But that's just kind of the area that we see with a lot of vets that are in the middle are transitioning military, I should say, whenever they're leaving, is we want to make sure the plan a looks great, but we don't make sure Plan B, C, D, E, F and G also look great.
Keith McKeever 20:37
Because most of time, it's not going to work out the way you want. And you mentioned life insurance, but health insurance is another one that I think a lot of vets kind of get hit by surprise with. And obviously those costs can be all over the place. But it's just like it can it can take a hit like a brick. It really can you know it like it said earlier, he kind of mentioned VA care. So
I'm sure you've had these conversations with the vet, like oh, no, I'm gonna get I'm gonna go to the VA, like, you know, man, you know, ABC, xy, and z are all wrong with me. And I think based on what I've seen, or what my VSO says, Man, I'm a shoo in for 70%. Okay,
definitely is no guarantee that the Raider VA is ever going to agree with you, because you got to go in there and plead your case. worthy of that, right, you may have may have those legitimate disabilities that are service connected, but you still have to plead your case. And it's a long process. Yeah. And in a in a head scratching, difficult, stressful process was zero guarantees. So like you said, you know, you got to have that plan a plan B, right, you know, so you have to, like, throw that in your budget of like, alright, if this doesn't work, like, what's it gonna cost me? Yeah, and, you know, car insurance, like all those different factors,
Korey Knepper 22:01
and VA health care wise, from what I know, and I'm not licensed to give advice or anything on VA health care stuff, but from what I can tell from talking to a lot of people, it's very localized. So depending on where you are, will depend on what kind of care you can actually get. I'm in the St. Louis area, our VA Healthcare System. Great. I mean, we have two hospitals in the area, we got multiple different clinics, with doctors, primary care, doctors, things like that. But if you live in, if you decide you want to go live on a farm, you want to go back to you know, the small town that you came from your VA healthcare, nearest facility might be 60 miles away. And if that's the case, you probably are going to want to use an employer health care plan to make sure that that piece is covered. And I got news for you healthcare only gets more expensive as you get older. Yeah, because they do have the VA does have community care. Yeah, for some people who are rural areas, I'm in one of those areas where
Keith McKeever 23:08
I'm up into Peoria, Illinois area. So I'm not that far from you. But like my VA Hospital is in Danville, it's about two and a half, almost three hours away. So if I have to go to the hospital, I got to travel that far. Now I've got a clinic where my primary care physician is, which is great, everybody there has been wonderful. But you know, those more difficult procedures or imaging and said things like that you either have to travel two and a half, three hours, or you have to get a community care and it's not quick, it's not easy. And I'm in a pretty well populated area. Yeah, if you imagine out like West Coast if gosh, I can only imagine if you're at like Montana or North Dakota or Wyoming. How many hours do you have to travel a difficult terrain to get to a even a clinic? So like, yeah, you know, your access can be difficult. Yeah, at best for some people. So
Korey Knepper 24:03
yeah, that's an area that we've planned for. And we make sure that it is going to be taken care of and especially if someone I have a couple of people that are still in there a year and a half away from from retirement, and they're planning on moving to Florida or they're moving to Alabama or something like that. So if that's the case, I make sure to ask them like, what is your plan with that now? And then we also obviously hit on the investment side a lot that is kind of that it's my bread and butter area. But and in this industry, you can't you can't be everything to everybody, because then you end up in nothing to no one. So being a resource for veterans was kind of my area to succeed in this business. And I've got people that do VA Home Loans, got people to help with VA disability filing VA disability appeals, which is I don't know if you've ever gone through a VA disability appeal out there, but holy cow they take for ever. I'm still waiting on an on an appeal that I put in in March of 2017.
Keith McKeever 25:12
Yeah, like I said earlier, they are long drawn out head scratching, frustrating processes. Yes, it's not fun any for the faint of heart. So, a lot of hurry up and wait on steroids. I mean, all you can do sometimes it's just laugh, it's, you know, the VA is what it is, it's a government organization, they do their best, they have to have their systems and their checks and balances. But you know, at the end of the day, it's it's, it's a system, you know, like they have, they have to do what they have to do, and you have to be you have to play their game. That really is what it is. Sometimes it just seems like it's way more frustrating than what it is. But they're also trying to service the roughly, I think it's 18 or 19 million veterans that are out there. Now, I know not everybody goes to the VA for care. But I mean, that's a lot of people, yeah, then have to serve us every year. So in lots of different capacities.
Korey Knepper 26:11
So. So let's, that's the biggest thing is with planning, we want to make sure that everything is taken into account. So that we can make sure that whenever you do go to that job that is going to pay you more that you know that everything is taken care of, and that your compensation is going to be increased your you should be trying to get a promotion, whenever you leave, you know, you don't want to D motion whenever you leave. That's another thing that I've seen as someone who it's hard to do 20 years and have 20 years of experience doing a certain job and then leave it and go do a different job. It is very, very hard. Now, I was an electrician for a year and a half. And honestly, for half of that I was recovering from an injury, I could change lights, I could you know change a fuse. But honestly, if you ask me to rewire your dishwasher, I don't know what I'm doing. So me going and getting finance training is different than leaving being something at in the Air Force for 20 years, and then going and trying to do something completely different. Now you do have that buffer system of being able to do that, because you will have a pension, you will have that healthcare benefit, benefit if it's available for your area, and things like that, that can help you out. But ultimately, that is kind of the area that we see. Most veterans struggle with when it comes to the transition, but every transition is different. Every single one is different.
Keith McKeever 27:48
Well, that it is. And it kind of leads into my next question, because you know, Amy is more towards the financial world, because that's worth talking about. But figuring out the finances, you know, beyond budget, because that should hopefully be pretty easy for most people to kind of take their income and do a simple budget. I hope. The world of finance is difficult. Right? It's difficult to confusing. It can be this complex thing. Some things are pretty simple. Some things are very complex. But what advice do you have for people to like kind of cut through that clutter in their mind to make sense of some things? If they're interested in it? And they're like, Alright, okay, Cory, I do need to learn a little bit more about this. I you know, maybe I've got some money packed away. Maybe I've got this tsp. Or maybe I don't have anything, I just need to start a plan, whatever. I just don't know what it is. But I'm totally confused. Like, what advice do you have for them to kind of cut through that clutter? That mental clutter?
Korey Knepper 28:50
So first thing is self identification? Okay, so where are you at, there's, there's typically, I will use typically a lot here, stages to people's financial life, there is the budgeting stage, which is where you want to basically make sure that you're affording all of your necessary things. You know, if if someone comes to me and they want to spend 120% of their income every year, and they don't see any other way of how they're going to live their life, then I can problem. Yeah. Then we get to whenever you can start stashing stuff away, we get into the asset accumulation or wealth accumulation stage. And now you can say, you got a little extra here, what do we want to do with it? Yeah, and that is usually where we see someone who's leaving the military at age, you know, in after retirement. That should still be your face that you're in, because most of that qualified money if you did 20 years, and you got in it even pointing Five and you're getting out of 45. Any qualified money, which is anything that is in a traditional tsp or a Roth TSP, you get a 10% penalty, if you take it out before 59 and a half, that is the number one tax qualification that you should know if you're talking about investing and stuff. Now, there are different ways for you to take that money out for hardship withdrawals, or you might be able to take it out for education expenses, and things like that. But there's a lot of red tape on those. And so we typically don't, we still want to be accumulating wealth while we leave, then we start getting closer to that retirement age to where we can start pulling it, and maybe we get 678 years out. And that's when we get into the wealth preservation stage or the asset preservation stage, then we get into, that's when we're going to start trying to pull back be a little safer. And we can kind of get into some stocks and bond stuff to kind of discuss that.
Keith McKeever 31:02
And now you're talking about managing risk, right? Like, yeah, like, see, if I can, if I can articulate this well enough, what you're investing in, might be a little bit safer stocks and bonds that are not going to be as volatile in the market. So you don't potentially lose everything. Because you're close to retirement, you don't want to be like, Oh, hey, I got $100,000 in here that I got invested. But I'm gonna gamble it on this on this hot new AI technology startup that fails tomorrow. And now you're broke, you know, you want to invest in something, it's like, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but like a blue chip company, something that's been around for 5060 100 years, it's steady, it's consistent. You know, you know, five years pretty darn good chance they're gonna be there still.
Korey Knepper 31:48
So we can get into this pieces, it's, I tested a lot on it, I did a lot of different tests that had to do with it. And it's the basis of most of the most of the financial industry. Now, when it comes to investing in investment styles. And it's called modern portfolio theory was developed by a guy named Harry Markowitz in the 60s, I believe, it ended up winning a Nobel Prize. And it's basically the idea that you want to have a diversified portfolio of stocks. And whenever you want to mitigate your risk, and you want to start moving from that, from that asset accumulation side to that asset preservation side, we want to start moving more towards bonds. Now bonds are the difference between stock and a bond real quick. A stock is ownership in a company, meaning you own a piece of that company. So the the example I usually give at seminars and webinars and everything is if you have $10,000, and you buy $10,000 of a share in a million dollar company, you own 1%, right? If that company is a value type company, they will pay you a dividend for owning that 1%. So they'll pay you, depending on how many shares it is, and all that they might pay you 5080 100 bucks, something like that, every year, your value of the company probably won't go up because they're spending their earnings on keeping you happy.
Keith McKeever 33:25
But you want to take your spouse out for a nice steak dinner, maybe if you're lucky.
Korey Knepper 33:30
And then we have growth companies, which might, you know, the biggest, most famous ones are Amazon, Tesla, Google. Tesla's probably the most famous story for this in the past decade. But their job is to they're not going to pay you anything. You gave them $10,000 To make their company better. And they're going to go take it make that company better now you own 1%. And if the company is now worth $5 million, you can sell that 1% of shares for $50,000. So that's kind of the difference between a stock. That's kind of what a stock itself is. Now what we do is the most famous index that we know is the s&p 500. That's the top 500 large cap companies, public companies in the United States. In order for you to quote lose all your money, every single company in the s&p 500 the top 500 companies in the United States would have to all go bankrupt within a six month period.
Korey Knepper 34:38
You're talking something bigger problems, bigger problems going on in the world than then what's going on with your 401k targets the targets your Walmart's your coals, your gas stations, y'all just close down the world has collapsed.
Korey Knepper 34:54
Yeah, that means that we're in you know, some post apocalyptic type of environment,
Keith McKeever 35:01
whatever friend do you have that's got a bunker under their house with with all the prepper stuff that's got to be really close friends with them. Yeah. So
Korey Knepper 35:12
we use that type of stuff to diversify our, in the if you're you know, people here familiar with the TSP, the C share is the s&p 500, it mirrors the s&p 500. As it goes up, your money goes up, as it goes down, your money goes down. Now, the bond side is different, the bond would be I'm loaning the company money. So similar to a mortgage company would lend you money to own the house. Now, in this situation, you might put $10,000, and you might get, you would get 10 bonds, and they might take 10 years to mature. So they will basically give you a rate of 4%, or something like that, pay you 40 bucks, or 400 bucks a year, 40 bucks per bond, until year 10. And then they'll hand you your money back. Now, that's what we call simple interest. Because all you got was interest on the money that you put in the difference between a bond and a stock is stocks pay compounding interest. So compounding interest is going to if you get 10% on a stock, or will go back to that same number of 4%. So if you get 10,000, you get 4%, you get that $400. In year one, and year two, you're gonna get 4% on 10,400, not 10,000. And that's where you can see the famous quotes from Albert Einstein where he got to ask what's the most powerful force in the universe. And he sat and thought for a second said compounding interest. Because it can I mean, Warren Buffett's a great example, Warren Buffett's worth $200 billion, he made more than half of his over 75%, I believe, don't quote me on this 100% of his net worth, he made past the age of 60. And that's because his number was compounding on a larger number than it was before. So that's an area of if you're also kind of in that 40s and 50s range, if you've got more than 1015 years before he can pull your money out before you can use it for anything anyway, because you don't want that 10% penalty, you probably want to be more aggressive and be in that stock side and just kind of ride the roller coaster that you're gonna get. So that's kind of my typical education that I'll give to some vets that come in and they're like, Well, I moved all of my money to government bonds, because I don't want to go in anywhere. And I'm like, but you can't touch it for 15 years. So it's never gonna go up. You're right, it's not gonna go down. But it's never gonna go up either. I mean,
Keith McKeever 37:57
and the stock market, correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, the stock market, if you look, historically, at least, the s&p 500. I mean, it's gone consistently up. You know, it's, it's obviously there's risk, there's a risk. Yeah, most everything, but you're relatively safe.
Korey Knepper 38:16
Yeah. So is the best time horizon is the best risk mitigator when it comes to stocks, specifically being diversified at least. So when it comes to that, we're looking at your time horizon, if it's 15 years, we've seen, we've got 97 years of s&p 500 data right now. In that time, there has been six years from January 1 to December 31, where we've seen more than a negative 20% return. So the markets gone down 20% or more. Now, 2008 is, I believe, the most recent example of that, we're down about 30%. The market has gone over returned positive 20% or more 36 times. So if you decide I'm going to be way more conservative, even though I have 15 years left, until I can take this money out. Yeah, you're probably taken away that bottom 20% you taken away those six years. But you're also taken away that 36 years, which is almost a third of the years on the s&p 500 that you could be invested in making that money back. Now. Typically, we look at eight years that we start sliding that scale towards that bond side to reduce that volatility. Now, if you look
Keith McKeever 39:51
at 97 years, he said 36 Were more than 20% and six were more than 20%. Now, that's still you know, Math off the top of my head, it's still a little bit warded pretty close to 60% of the years was, was still pretty solid growth. It's somewhere in between. So like I said, it's
Korey Knepper 40:14
changed that last year because the s&p was down 18.2 yet. So
Keith McKeever 40:19
still, you know, I mean, it's, it's because I've seen some charts and stuff on, you know, it's consistent over time. But, you know, if I get it right on video here, but anyway, you know,
camera angles, but, you know, it's yeah, you know, it's not something you want to, you know, go to trading every day, stuff like that. There's there's risks there, probably, but it's yeah, you buy it, you hold it. And, and you should see for the most part, you know, growth, obviously, yeah.
Korey Knepper 40:49
Yeah, that's called day trading. Whenever you decide to come in every day and change your companies make your trades. The big thing with that is if you're doing it in a, what's considered a brokerage account. So there's, there's three main investment accounts, there's other ones that are like education and stuff like that. But the main account types are traditional, which is, TSP has traditional 401, K's or traditional, you have traditional IRAs, these are tax deferred, meaning you're not going to pay taxes on it now, but you're going to pay taxes on it, whenever you take the money out, then there is Roth Roth is kind of an area that I really push towards, especially military retirees, because you put in the money after tax, but you get the money out tax free. And if you're planning on, I'm going to work until I'm 59 and a half, and I'm gonna start pulling this money out because I have this pension. Well, because of that pension, your tax bracket is going to be higher than someone who doesn't have a pension. So when you taking out this traditional money, your tax bracket then goes up even higher. And then that can make it where your Social Security starts getting more text. And that's where we start seeing people come into our office and going, Hey, why did I pay this much in taxes this year? And it's like, well, here's your reasons. You didn't expect that you thought Social Security was tax free. That's not true. And if you're in the state of Missouri, like I am, the state of Missouri will tax your Social Security as well, if you're in the state of Illinois, like you are, they do not. But that's kind of an area where a lot of people, there's a lot of misconceptions when it comes to how that is managed for people. So that's another area where we want to, it's not just planning for investments, but it's tax planning for being tax diversified, as well. Not just being stocks diversified, and bonds diversified. So that's kind of I
Keith McKeever 42:44
do have to keep an eye on what the government's gonna get in their piece, right? Because we all know they're gonna get their piece of the pie. Taxes don't usually go down. No, yeah, definitely not.
Korey Knepper 42:56
I mean, well,
Keith McKeever 42:58
usually. Very, very good. But I wouldn't count on that. I mean, that's, that's why. Yeah, I mean, that's, you should die, think, think about that. You know, do you want to get taxed on it now? Or do want to get taxed on it later? Especially if you're 3040 years old, do you do really want to get taxed on it? And 20 3040 years? You know, I, I sit here and think, like, I've no idea what the taxes are gonna be? Do you want to gamble on it? I mean, you could take the take the money down to the riverboat and gamble it? Yeah. I mean, who knows? Who knows what the tax rates gonna be? who it was? What, what's the government gonna need in 40 years? Yeah, I don't know.
Korey Knepper 43:40
The other question I always do get, especially with people who are in their 40s 30s range is they don't think social security will be there when they get to retirement. And if you're out there listening to this podcast right now, and you think social security, that's a pipe dream for me. I'm going to tell you right now, if if the government were to get rid of Social Security, it would take an act of Congress to do so. If Congress runs on if someone runs a political campaign on I'm gonna get rid of Social Security. Guess what, they're not getting voted in because old people vote
Keith McKeever 44:21
and you're the
Korey Knepper 44:22
one who's gonna take away their income. That's
Keith McKeever 44:26
it. And there's statistics to prove it, that the older generations vote and younger ones don't. And, you know, I've, I've heard that many times
Korey Knepper 44:34
suicide is what that would be called. If you just said
Keith McKeever 44:39
you know, I've heard this so many times, and I'm the kind of person it's like, look, I believe it. I believe it want to see it, you know, in the news, it passed, whatever, you know, okay, that's fine. I believe it but you're not the kind of person it's like, okay, hey, maybe it won't. Like, I'll just plan accordingly. I'll just try to plan like, okay, maybe it's not just playing that way. If it is is great. Yeah, if it's gone cool already planned for it. So I think you kind of answer some of my next question. But is there any other I'll say typical financial planning tools, you know that most people kind of employ because you know, the meat of the conversation here, you got some ideas and some things you want to highlight their lesser known but, you know, kind of talked about stocks, bonds, IRAs, things like that, is there anything we've missed there?
Korey Knepper 45:31
Oh, there was one piece that I wanted to get on the taxes portion of a brokerage account. So brokerage accounts do not have any 59 and a half penalty or anything like that. But if you did decide to go and daytrade, and do that, anything that you gain on that is taxed at ordinary income. So if your income is taxed at 27%, because maybe you're really good at day trading, that's going to be taxed at 27%. And that's a very, very high tax bracket, as opposed to, if you wait a year, it might be taxed at 15%. And 15%, isn't nearly as bad as 27. So good. That's one piece. And then cash flow in retirement is a big area that a lot of people want to make sure it's good. And then so but for people who have pensions, or VA does, you know, if you get someone who they did, they did 25 years in the reserves. They did, then they weren't government job, besides that they're going to have to pensions plus Social Security. And if they have, if you put your money into traditional like we talked about earlier, not only will you have like not only is it a matter of well, you're gonna get taxed on if you pull that money out, well, what if I don't pull that money out? Well, they have thought of that the government thinks of almost everything. And these have RMDs required minimum distributions. And they are going to say, Hey, you didn't pay taxes on this. Time, pay some taxes. So they will force you to take money out, they will tell you, it's either, you know, it might be something like well, your RMD is you have to take out $50,000 This year, and you have to pay your tax on it, which is going to be 1920 34 or 1920, maybe 25%, something like that. So you pay that tax on it. And they say, Well, what if I don't Well, they end up penalizing you 50% of whatever your RMD was supposed to be. So you end up having to pay 25,000 as opposed to maybe 10,000. So I don't know about you guys, but I prefer to get the government less money if I can. So
Keith McKeever 47:53
I know it's 20 20% sounds better than 25 or 30. So simple math. I'm, I'm no mathematician, but Yeah. Sounds better.
Korey Knepper 48:03
So there are certain products and stuff out there that can if you're someone who is worried about I call it Allen Iverson syndrome. Alright, so for those out there who are basketball fans, you'll remember Allen Iverson was a amazing basketball player in the early or late 90s 2000s, early 2000s. area. And he signed a deal with Adidas. It was like $45 million, or some crazy amount. His business manager knew that if there was $45 million sitting in his bank account, he was going to spend $45 million. And if you have that thought process, and you know, this is the self identification portion, if you know that if there's $200 in your bank account, that means you got 200 to spend, or there's 200,000 in your bank account, I got 200,000 to spend, then that is the perfect time to do what he did, which was they took that money bought an annuity, he's getting 900 grand a year on it, and income. Now, if if you have $45 million, I can probably get you that but if you most people don't. But if you know that you have that, then that's whenever that annuity side kind of can kick in and help out. Annuities kind of get a bad rep because I would say 98% of them are kind of not great products. But they do have their place usually, for most people would say,
Keith McKeever 49:32
Well, you know, hey, if he was going to likely spend 45 million, and he can get a return like that on it every year without spending his 45 million I'd say that's a pretty good place to put the money. So yeah,
Korey Knepper 49:42
that way he's not on one of the ESPN 30 for 30s for
Keith McKeever 49:47
on his own Allen Iverson is, is he's broken these janitor in a school now or whatever, you know, I don't know. Like, yeah, tell us. You do see quite a bit of that too. But you see that with lottery winners too, you know, people want all the money, they got all to take a lump sum. And next thing you know, they're they're flat broke and don't have anything. So
Korey Knepper 50:09
yeah, and people will come. If anybody out there is a lottery winner, people will come out of the woodwork, they will. They will want stuff you will find cousins you didn't know you have.
Keith McKeever 50:21
So make them take DNA tests prove
Korey Knepper 50:25
your 23andme report.
Keith McKeever 50:28
I don't know if that's part of your plan, a financial planning speech tool. But you might want to add that that might be a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. Prove it through DNA, DNA tests before you hand over any money to?
Korey Knepper 50:38
Yeah, so just don't answer the phone, change your phone number. If
Keith McKeever 50:41
you win the lottery, hey, that's a good one. So go change your phone number move. Don't tell anybody. That'd be the first step. Don't tell anybody and get a darn good lawyer. That's right, anyway. But yeah, just a couple things here that she wanted to talk about some lesser known stuff, retirement planning, some cash flow stuff and some equity investing. So go ahead and break those, break those down for us and give us a little little education into those.
Korey Knepper 51:05
Yeah, so I think I hit mostly on the cash flow side where we would, you know, we want to sit down and make sure that if you are deciding to retire, and you are going to pull that pension and stuff, and we're going to start doing that, know what it looks like before you do it. And there's a lot of there's all sorts of software's out there that can model it for you and show you what it looks like. Personally, what we use as a software called the money, don't buy fidelity. And it's I've been around this industry for six years, seven years now. And it's the best one that I've seen. That's why I choose to use it. And then the other thing is, I'm a investment advisor representative as my title. And we get that title from, I've passed certain quarters, certain certifications that give me the ability to say that I am a fiduciary advisor, I have to do whatever is in the client's best interest at all times. Unfortunately, there are people out there that still work in my industry that don't have that. And they basically are chasing the biggest commission that they can get most of the time. I'm sure you've seen it in real estate, you know that one guy who's selling people houses that they cannot afford, right? You got his name in his head in your head right now I can see it.
Yeah, I hit on life insurance earlier, as a piece, most of these people will sell you a giant life insurance policy and then never talked to you again. Because it's a transaction based thing. And they're they work for whatever life insurance company that's paying them to sell it, or whatever insurance company or whatever annuity company or whatever, company, they work for them, they don't work for you. And that's an area that I would if you're going to vet, a financial advisor, and you're trying to look into getting one, and maybe see if your plan is as good as you think it is, and you want to get a second opinion on it. First off, I would always say interview three, interview three different financial advisors, and see which one fits you best because most of it's a relationship based thing. And it's not a matter of just what does the plan look like. But it's also your plan, what's the plans are worthless, but planning is everything right? That's the thing that we use in the military sometimes, too. And planning is great. But we also want to make sure that our plan is going to be able to be executed, and that they're going to sit down with you once a year, or maybe call you once every six months, something like that, where they can look at it and go. Yeah, we like to think as financial advisors that you were going to be your first phone call anytime you decide to spend more than $2,000 on something. But we know that's not the case. So it's good for us to call and be like hey, what's going on with the family, what's good, what's going on with this? What's going on this because we can make this plan last. And we can adjust and move with the plan the plan is should be alive, right? That's kind of the way I put it where it should be a living, breathing thing. And the second you step out of the door after the plan is done. It might be out of date. There might be something that screws up with your life. And so having someone who's going to be consistently there is something that I would say being in this industry is something that you should value and looking for a financial advisor.
Keith McKeever 54:44
That's all good. You know, I'll add another one, too, because we're kind of similar boats. definitely agree with three. It's a good rule of thumb for anything in this life. No matter who you're hiring, interview three people but you know, assuming everything else is equal. You also want to make sure You connect with a person, right? It's assuming that, like, let's just assume all the products are the same, that you want to make sure that like, that person's personality, and the way they communicate, just connects with you, right? Because you don't want to get into a position where you're working with somebody and you're like, Man, this guy is weird. This guy's odd, like, I just can't, or they don't answer their phone, or, like, I don't know, just, you're just like, you know, I just, I don't like this guy, whatever, you know, or gal or whatever. Like, you want to make sure that like, hey, you know what, I don't really like Cory. I like him, I trust him, he communicates well, plus, Hey, I like the products and services and everything else to like, it's like the whole picture. Like,
it's all know, like, and trust, like you said, you know, but you want them there long, long term as well. So you won't be able to pick up the phone and know that, hey, this person only cares for you. You know, the awkward conversations not gonna be awkward, or weird, you know, it's gonna be like on a, you know, call somebody have known for a long time who's going to know you and get to know you and know what you really need, what's best for your, you know, for you and your family in your situation. So,
Korey Knepper 56:07
and that should be what you want, as a client in this industry, you should want to be connected well with the people that you are working with. Because if you're not then going to work every day on I had a call Jim again. And he's going to complain about the market, like I can control a war in Russia, you know, like, you don't want to work with those people and in my industry, so you want to make sure that you do have that connection in that in that relationship. And it's something that you build over time. But it's something that if it's not going well, don't be scared to pull the plug. If most people in my industry, if they've been around for at least five years, they're doing fine. You're not really taking a whole lot of food out of their mouth if you decide to move your money. Unless you maybe you're one of their like eight clients, and they only have people who are super rich or something I don't know. But one of the other products like some of the examples of being working with someone who is a financial adviser, one of the reasons why I can help is we do know different products that you won't you might not see advertised, you might not see. Unless you're watching CNBC every day, you might not have the knowledge or ability to know if it's for you or not.
Keith McKeever 57:27
It's a big assumption. And everybody's not watching CNBC everyday. Do I always have that ticket up on my screen always. Yeah.
Korey Knepper 57:36
I keep it on mute in the background, just?
Keith McKeever 57:41
Of course you do. I'm sure you do. Yeah, 99% of the rest of us don't.
Korey Knepper 57:48
And so when we see those things, you can, yes, putting money into it, I can give you some basic advice of putting money into a Roth doing this doing this doing this, no. But when it comes to things like we had recently, with the secure act 2.0, which passed in December, there's a lot of different rules and regulations that have kicked in, and a lot of people don't know about. And there's some stuff that I've had to do with new military, soon to transition military members that, hey, because of this new piece, see if your new employer offers that. See if your new employer offers this, see if you know, one thing that we've I've seen thrown out a lot is people will try to get people to purchase life insurance policies for their children with the idea that they're going to use that cash value later in life for college education. And that was a piece that was thrown out a lot to a lot of different people. And it's a good idea. But now with the secure act 2.0, you can put that money into a 529 plan. And if they decide not to go to school, which was the biggest selling point for the life insurance policy, instead, you can roll that money into a Roth IRA. Now, you couldn't do that before. And that literally that changed six months ago. And that's some stuff that if you aren't on top of it, if you don't work in the industry, it's very, very hard for you to pick up on. And another piece is like there's one specific product that I use, I've used a good amount because I like it, and it fits a good range of people. It fits people who are currently leaving the military. And it fits people who are within six years of retirement or they're within six years or more before 59 and a half when they can pull that money out. And we talked about asset preservation, you want to start moving to less risky stuff. And in doing so you typically kind of cap some of your upside and by taking away some of that downside, like we have one product. It's called a registered index linked annuity. There's multiple companies that we have used, depending on the situation they all have slightly different things with them, one might have a slightly different participation rate, one might have slightly different investment stuff. But for the most part, the one specific one I can throw out right now is it has, you can invest in the s&p 500. The Russell 2000 international market is social index one which measures the companies that are doing things to help out the environment and things like that, if that's your thing, it's not I get it, but we kind of use it for like a tech lien sometimes. And things like that, or what you can emerging markets, I think, is the other one that they have with it. And this money, this product cost $0.00, you just have to keep it in there for six years. It costs time. And if you can't pull the money out anyway, then I mean, without getting the 10% penalty, then what does it matter? So it fits really well, for people like that, because you get the upside on it is, you know, specifically I know for the s&p for this specific one product that I'm thinking of that I don't want to mention 100% What It Is it caps at 400% over six years. So in order for the s&p 500, to hit 400%, over six years, it would have to average 10% higher than its best year over that six years, it would have to average 67%. Roughly, the highest year we've seen recently in modern history was right before the.com Bubble result about 48.9%, I believe. So it would have to outperform that by a lot. And it comes with a 20% buffer. So if in that six years markets down 15%, you're down zero, if the markets down 22%, you're down 2%. If the market is up 100%, you're up on percent. So that's a product that people don't know, really, it's out there, it's not really advertised a whole lot. But it's a very, very good spot for the asset preservation stage of people's retirement and retirement plan. So that's a piece that if you don't know what's out there, you don't know what you don't know. Right? So
Keith McKeever 1:02:16
that's a pretty good offer, especially when you throw these numbers out earlier and you know, 97 year history, you know, what would you say six years, you know, that was less than 20%. So, you know, statistically speaking, and stats were not my not my strong suit in college, but, you know, that's pretty darn good protection against what's what's happened over the last 97 years. So, you know, the, the odds are, you know, well, nobody's gonna live another 97 years, but you know, it's pretty good protection. You know, if you're gonna keep the, if you keep something like that for next 2030 years. So
Korey Knepper 1:02:50
it's, that's why we say it's specifically good for if you are, since it's a six year contract, right. So, specifically, if you're 52, you're, you can't pull this money out until you're 59 and a half anyway, on six years, you're gonna be 58. And we need to preserve this asset anyway, because your retirements coming up, but we don't want to kill that growth that can come with being invested in equities. So that's kind of the area that we typically see it work with, or, you know, if you leave in the military, and you want to do something with that tsp money, you could, I'll be honest, you roll it to an investment plan that I do, I charge, typically 1% Depending on the situation. This is zero charge. So it's a good way to also mitigate costs, as well as mitigating risk and still keeping that growth. That's a big reason why I specifically like that product. And that's just an example of some of the products that a financial advisor, specifically mostly an independent all the time but most independent advisors would know about. And the independence differences. I don't work for Merrill Lynch like I once did, I don't work for Edward Jones. We don't have as much red tape as some of those people. We also don't have nearly as much overhead cost. When I worked at Merrill Lynch, we had, you know, we were in the business district of St. Louis, we had the top 1415 floors in the skyscraper, that looked great. And our office was really cool, looking at everything we had were sued every day, not wearing a suit anymore. Not doing that, but it was nice, but you needed you needed to have a lot of assets under management, and a lot of clients to be successful there. My business partner who I work with, it's been in the business for 25 years. He's got eight households. That's it. He only works with eight people. And it's very easy to do annual meetings and stay up to date with these people and what they're doing and he's makes a very comfortable living and does well for himself. So that's kind of a nice part about being on the independent side as opposed to some of the a bigger company. So if you find some, someone who's an independent fiduciary advisor, those are typically the people that have access to the most products can charge you a little bit less sometimes. I mean, I can't tell you everybody what to charge. But they can usually work with you a little bit better. And they don't need as many clients as some of these big places.
Keith McKeever 1:05:21
Well, no doubt about it, I will say somebody's not in your shoes. Everybody needs a plan. And you can't just get out of the military and just say, I got this money, I got this TSP, and I'm going to wing it, because that is not a successful formula, that is not going to suit you. Well, I alluded to it earlier, like, what do you get out of 3035 45, whatever, you still have another 1510 1520 years till your typical retirement age, then you got another 10 or 15 years until, you know that.
Korey Knepper 1:06:00
Life expectancy, life expectancy,
Keith McKeever 1:06:01
you know, rate, you know, which is I think like 78, something like that, for guys, I have no idea what this for women, but you know, you still have another 25 3040 years left, hopefully of life. And whatever you have in your TSP is not going to last you that long, you're going to need to go get another job, you need to have a solid plan, you can't just go wing it. Just like your transition, just like your job and go and get that and anything else in your life.
You got to have a plan. And also, I didn't have a financial planner until the cash like three years ago, I think something like that. I'm in my late 30s. So, you know, it's it's important, like you have to, you really have to think about it, you really have to play in it. So it's important. I should have asked myself years years before that
Korey Knepper 1:06:50
the same plan is planning to fail.
Keith McKeever 1:06:54
Exactly. You know, and you know, every year that goes by that you don't, you don't have that solid plan, you don't have that person you're communicating with, you know, every couple of months, or at least every year, that you're reviewing things and saying, here's where I'm at, here's what's happened in the last year, here's where we need to adjust things. You know, where are you? Where are you pushing the needle? Like, where are you going to end up? Especially if you're farther out, you know, if you're like, you're just talking about this product, it's safe six years out, six years isn't that law. But if you're 40, and you just retired, and you got 20 or 25 years till your full, typical retirement, that's a long time. If you procrastinate, and you put your money in the wrong place. You gotta really set yourself up for disaster. There's a lot of things you can do wrong. A lot of things. Yeah. So you have to talk to somebody. So I guess that's my point is whether you reach out to Cory? Or do you find somebody in your own neck of the woods, whatever, you know, Cory, I'm gonna throw your your stuff back up there, all your stuff will be in the show notes too. But, man, you gotta have a plan. I can't, I can't I'm doing the foot stop, you know, the military structure, foot stop, pound the table? Those kinds of things, you definitely have to, you definitely got to have a plan.
Korey Knepper 1:08:12
Yeah, that's definitely and I kind of want to real quick hit on the one of the stats that we've had in some seminars that I've always liked for explaining how long you have to prepare for when it comes to retirement. Let's say you retire at 62, the average life expectancy of a non tobacco using couple and this was using this was s, social security data from 2021, I believe I'd have to put it, I'll give you the exact notes later. But the average life expectancy of a couple that is 62 years old, is 92, meaning one of you two, on average, will live to 92 years old. So if you retire at 62, that is a 30 year retirement that you have to be prepared for. And if you're only prepared for the first 510 years, then it's it can get hairy real quick, and you can end up on Social Security. And that's it. And that's not what we want to see.
Keith McKeever 1:09:13
Yeah. And, you know, I've all my grandparents are gone. But I've you know, we had one that went into a nursing home for a short period. And another one that we explored that before she passed, but I've had clients go into nursing homes and stuff too. They are not cheap, you know, they're gonna cost you, you might get lucky and find some facility here. Yeah, you might get lucky and find something that's really on the cheap and it could be, you know, two or $3,000 a month, maybe real cheap in bare bones. All the way up to Yeah, you know, could be 789 $10,000 a month. You know, it just depends on the kind of services that they offer. Having the building is where it's at in the country, all those different things. And that's extremely expensive.
Korey Knepper 1:09:55
There's stuff for that for people out there who are interested in trying to talk to you Somebody, I'm not actually licensed to sell long term care, because I don't have a health insurance license. But you know, my, my father in law has always said, you know, there's there's the people who can afford nursing homes, there's the people who the government afford your nursing home is Medicaid, Medicare, they pay for it. And then there's everybody in the middle, and those people are screwed. Well, that's not completely true. If you're in the middle, their long term care insurance policy can cover almost all of your expenses as long as it's done properly, and you do it right. So if you are someone who is worried about being in a nursing home for 356 years, because maybe something like Alzheimer's runs in your family, or Parkinson's runs in your family, something like that, that can be a long term illness, you're either going to spend down all of your assets until Medicare and Medicaid kick in, or you can have an insurance plan that takes care of it. So those are kind of that's my last little thought that I can throw out. Before we wrap up here.
Keith McKeever 1:11:08
Either way, you got to plan for it, right.
Korey Knepper 1:11:11
So that's what we do.
Keith McKeever 1:11:15
That's what that's the whole planning part. Right? Yep. So anyway, Cory, I appreciate you coming on here sharing with us, this good nuggets in there, talking about foster financial planning a few different times here. And in a couple years of doing this, but we've explored some new and interesting ways today. And it's really, I'm really grateful that you kind of shared some new directions with us. And the guests appreciate that. So that I shared the website, but any any particular places where people can reach you,
Korey Knepper 1:11:44
oh, you get my email address, which is Korea, SD Smith financial.com. Or you can call our office at 314-590-2120. We're located in Westport in the St. Louis area. So I also am licensed in Illinois, Missouri and Hawaii, weirdly enough, and I have no problem meeting on Zoom and virtual meetings and stuff like that. So if there's something that you're interested in, and you do want to start a conversation, reach out to me on any of those channels, or you can find me on LinkedIn, that's probably my number one social media that I use. So yeah, that's where that's where I met.
Keith McKeever 1:12:24
Or if you're nice enough, and you buy a plane ticket, he might meet you a person in Hawaii.
Korey Knepper 1:12:29
Yeah, yeah, no problem.
Keith McKeever 1:12:34
Sorry, if anybody takes you up on that thing, you need a weak man to go with you. I gotcha. Okay. All right. Sounds good. Okay, because, you know, hey, do you need to battle buddy out there if you need any, you know, whatever. So anyway, I appreciate you coming on the show and share with us. Thanks for having me. Yep. There you have folks, I hope you enjoyed. Remember, check out the website for all kinds of information and resources. And as always say if there's something not on there you think should be on there. Please reach out, let me know. And if you're struggling with anything, please remember the national suicide hotline number is 988 Press one, because the most important thing is we want you here tomorrow. That is the most important thing. You can also text 838255 as well.
