- And good evening.

You've got More Than Money.

You've got Gene Dickison, your host, your personal financial advisor.

Happy to be serving you this evening.

Personal financial advisor.

Interesting term.

I use it every week.

I use it every weekend.

And yet, I mean, it makes sense.

But there's a lot of folks out there that are, hmm, as opposed to an impersonal financial advisor?

Absolutely not, of course.

But, as many of you have been hearing through the popular press in recent months, A.I.

is everywhere.

Artificial intelligence.

Unbelievable.

It's going to answer every single challenge that we have.

Nobody has to worry.

You certainly don't have to work.

You'll be millionaires, because you have A.I.

Bottom line is, artificial intelligence does some pretty interesting things.

And on the scientific side, as I understand, some staggeringly impressive things.

Personal financial advisor, on the other hand, would require significantly more, in my opinion, of course, I would be correct, significantly more interpretation, significantly more personal attention, significantly a more ability to read cues, versus simply read words.

So, while that may sound like I'm a little defensive about A.I., I'm not at all.

About ten years ago, there was a trend towards what are called robo-advisors, robotic financial advisors.

And, from an investment standpoint, they had some validity.

They had some use.

You plug in the answers to 3-4 questions, tell them how much money you want to invest, they could tell you a range, a certain selection of investments that might be useful to you.

What they couldn't do, never did, was answer questions above and beyond a very tight box of, should I invest in Apple stock or Johnson & Johnson?

Is it an exchange traded fund I should be using, or a mutual fun?

Because they didn't have the personal connection.

I will tell you, as I have laid claim for now, months, perhaps, well over a year, we are the most relevant financial show on television, without question, because you make us so.

And you make us, so added to our 780 years of experience.

Megan's bringing us the very best of what you send to us.

And my advice allows us as a team, as humans, to bring real value.

And if you are a regular viewer, you already know the vast majority of the questions are not A.I., robo-advisor, hey, Apple versus Johnson & Johnson.

They're about their lives.

They're about their families.

They're about people that they love.

They're about things they want to accomplish.

They're about, gosh, if you will forgive me for the obvious, they're about way more than money.

And yet, A.I., robo-advisor, ten years ago we were told, financial advisors would be pushed to the side within a matter of months or years.

That has not only not happened, robo-advisors' impact has lessened.

I think A.I.

will have its uses, but not here.

not tonight.

And let me give you the demonstration right out of the gate.

Megan, where does this non-intelligent... That's not what I meant to say.

All right, maybe I'm not that artificial, but how can I help our very first audience member tonight?

- That was a great opener, Gene.

Our first question tonight is a family matter.

It says, "I'm hoping you can guide us in the best way "to handle our estate, being a blended family.

"My husband and I are both retired and have been "married for 24 years.

We live in Pennsylvania.

"We each have adult children and are unsure of the best way "to deal with settling up our estate.

"Between us, we have our three homes, "our jointly-titled residence in which we live, and then, "we each have a rental property individually titled.

"Our wishes are that we would want to leave our individually "titled rental properties to our individual children, "and are unsure if it would be better to put their names on "the titles to the rental properties to do that, "or to put the property into a trust, "which would be better for a tax advantage.

"The other issue is that our jointly-titled property, "we understand that whichever of us were to pass first, "the other inherits.

"However, it is our largest asset and we would like to have "the children each receive some of the benefit from it.

"What would be the best way to set it up so that, "in the event that we both would pass away together, say, "in a car accident, how should the jointly-titled property "be titled or should that be set up in a trust?

"We know that we should find an estate attorney to handle this "for us, but we would like your insight as to what path "would have the best financial outcome for our children.

"Thank you so much for your time and your show.

"It's a pleasure to watch."

- Well, that puts a smile on my face.

That's very, very kind of you.

And you are absolutely correct.

You will, without a doubt, need to sit with a trusted, experienced estate planning attorney, there is no question, but I appreciate that you would like to have some parameters, some background, some structure to kind of think about before you get there.

In many cases, estate planning packages are put together by attorneys and kind of in a fixed fee.

Hey, we do the packages, it's $1,000, it's 2,000, whatever the number is.

But in some cases, of course, it's per hour.

And if you're sitting in front of the attorneys going, "What do you think, sweetheart?"

"I don't know.

What do you think, sweetheart?"

"Hey, you remember what your uncle did" "That was really good, right?"

"No, I don't remember."

That just eats up time and costs you a lot of money.

So having a good sense of what you're attempting to do, what your goals are, fabulous, and having at least some familiarity with what your options are, I think, is very, very wise.

Now, you asked a couple of things around the issue of being a blended family.

When I started in the advisory world 1,000 years ago, 780 years ago, blended families were not rare, but they were unusual.

20%, perhaps.

In my practice today, blended families may be 60%.

A lot of my clients are retired, soon to be retired, and even in their 60s and 70s, folks who have lost a spouse remarry, they have children, stepchildren.

Blended now has become the norm.

So understanding how these things work is not just valuable for the folks who are asking this question, but for so very many of you in our audience, it's who we are.

It's who Gene is.

Who Diane, if that is her real name, his wife, that's who we are, and we're so blessed to be.

So the direction here, perfectly appropriate to ask and very well-delineated, the individual writing the question, very, very sharp.

If you're being guided by taxes, then adding your individual children to each of the deeds on each of the individual rental homes that you want to pass on to them directly anyway, will save on estate taxes.

Now you are unlikely to be subject to federal estate tax, but in the state of Pennsylvania, 4.5% of it goes in direct lineage to your descendants.

Other states, of course, very different, check with your local tax experts in getting this guidance.

So if it's a $500,000 property, saving 4.5% is 22 grand.

It's real money.

It's seriously real money.

So adding to their names to the deed will allow them to set up properly, if it's joint tenants rights of survivorship, at the passing of, say, the husband, that property will go directly to the husband's children and the wife, as well, works out beautifully.

So pretty simple stuff.

Is it the right thing to do for other than tax reasons?

I don't know.

And the estate planning attorney you work with will ask you additional questions about, are your kids responsible?

Do they have marital conflict?

Are they subject maybe to liability or bankruptcy?

Which could throw that off kilter.

But assuming that all those things are fine, that makes good sense.

You're in good shape there.

The jointly-held residence where you live, it's far easier than you might expect.

An experienced attorney will have you create a will that has, in essence, kind of mirror provisions.

The will will say the same thing, both his and hers will say the same thing about the home.

"If I die, I want my spouse to have the home."

Perfect.

"If we die together," as this individual mentions, a coincidental death, "Here's how it split."

So even if there's two children on one side, three on the other, you can decide, do they get equal shares?

That's fine.

If you want to split it equally, maybe half of it goes to three children, half of it goes to the two children.

Those are decisions that you make.

Those are very personal.

But each will will accomplish exactly what you want to have accomplished.

And in my opinion, leaving the residence away from this kind of automatic joint titling with the children is a very good idea for other reasons.

While it may increase the taxes a little bit, I think it will preserve for you some financial options that might become very, very useful in the future.

And you're both retired.

I don't know how old you are, but in keeping with my theme, I want you to think happy, healthy hundred.

And when we think about, "Gosh, I'm retired, "I've already been retired seven years, "and I'm 70 years old, ugh, I'm retired," not, hey, 30 more years.

30 more happy, healthy years.

When you add that perspective, it may...

It should affect your decisions.

Gosh, I hope I helped.

Megan, who do we help next?

- Well, our next question is pretty straight to the point.

It says, "I want to be aggressive with my investments "and my advisor is telling me to be conservative.

"Who's right, Gene?"

- Of course I'm right.

Next!

No, kidding.

Okay, this is not an unusual question.

It comes in lots of different flavors.

"Hey, I want to get out of the market.

I'm really scared.

"My broker says, 'Hey, stay where you are.'"

"Hey, I want to get into the market.

"I think it's really high.

"It's a great time to get in the market.

"Your advisor's going, 'Pump your brakes.'"

There are often interpretations of what should or should not be done, that's in your best interest, and it's all about what's in your best interest.

So, whose money is it anyway?

It's your money.

It's your money.

If your advisor is willing to sacrifice his or her income by having you get your knickers in a twist and go, "I'm out of here.

I'm going to go get... "I'm going to somebody that'll just do what they're told," they lose a client, they lose an income stream.

If they're willing to do that, doesn't that tell you how important this really is to them?

And let's be clear.

Yes, it's your money.

You worked very hard to get it.

But did you work very hard as a financial adviser?

Have you spent, what in some cases are decades... All right, not very many, 780 years, but decades, not just actively doing this, but studying it, getting continuing ed credits, working with other advisors, getting great ideas, evolving.

So however much you know about what you want to have happen, your advisor, we have to hope, pray, has more perspective, more context, has helped dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands more, in our case, millions more, people than just you.

So it brings all of that experience to help you.

So you have to be very careful about digging in your heels, particularly when you want to be aggressive, whatever that means, typically, it means way more risk when your adviser says, "Be less aggressive."

Aggression, or lack thereof, in investments is almost always, almost always driven by your financial goals.

"I have 50 years to go, and I have a little bit of money "that I want to grow really fast," that's aggressive.

I would be with you 100%.

"I'm 60 years old.

"I haven't saved as much as I had hoped.

"So I want to be really aggressive so that, "in the next 3-4 years, I make a lot more money."

That's foolish.

That's ill-conceived.

You are taking aggression at a time in your life when modest amounts of money to invest aside, you are ill able... Is that a real word?

Eh, we'll look it up later.

You are not well-prepared to accept what could be significant declines over the next 2-4 years.

If you had retired two years ago, looking at where we are currently, as of this taping for the market, you would be in negative numbers.

And if you had retired two years ago and were taking a monthly cash flow stream and seeing the rates of return that an aggressive investment had seen, you would be down somewhere in the 30% range.

So you retired with 300,000, and now you have 200,000, in a blink.

Your financial advisor may very well be trying to avoid that for you.

I think it's a communication issue.

I think you're missing, you're not connecting appropriately, and perhaps a meeting with a another advisor as a second opinion might do one of two positive things.

Number one, it might show you in different words that your current advisor is doing a good job, and you should stick with them.

Or, in the alternative, it might show you that not all advisors communicate in exactly the same way.

Not all clients hear things the same way.

Not all advisors say things the same way.

I think I'm a great example of that.

I tend to be very straightforward.

I tend to be very easily understood.

I tend to be very practically-oriented.

I tend to be very family-oriented and values-oriented.

And for clients who hear that and embrace that, oh gosh, it's great!

And for folks who are perhaps more technically-oriented, maybe when they hear A.I., they go, "Oh, that's for me.

"I want as much of that A.I.

stuff, robo, that's for me."

Those types of folks and I would never connect.

So perhaps, sitting with a second advisor might not change how you're investing, but it might change how you're hearing things.

It might change how you communicate.

It might make things less stressful.

And, if you're married and you're stressed, I guarantee your spouse is stressed, too, and they're tired of hearing you whine about it.

So take some action, get a second opinion.

Hopefully either understand that your current advisor is doing the right thing for you, and you should be happy, or get yourself an advisor that communicates in a way that you can really embrace, and you can be a true team.

True teams are tough to beat.

You got to... Go, Eagles.

That...

Sorry, sorry.

For those of you in Southern California, go Chargers.

All right.

I don't really mean it, but I'm throwing you a bone.

Megs.

That was really good.

That was... Short question, long answer.

A lot of meat on the bone.

What do we chew on next?

- We always have a good variety.

That's what makes it great.

This next question's about Social Security spousal benefits.

It says, "Here is the situation.

"The higher-earning spouse has not yet reached full retirement "age and has not yet started collecting on his "Social Security account.

"The spouse is age 63, and has just lost her job.

"Can the spouse start collecting Social Security on "her own account now, and then apply for the higher spousal "benefits on her husband's account when she reaches "full retirement age?

Thank you for your help."

- Social Security questions, if they're not number one on our list of email questions, they're very high.

And even if they're not number one, for many of the individuals that we counsel and that we respond to, they become an important part of, an important component to consider in answering other questions.

Other questions.

So the easy answer, can this young lady claim on her Social Security earnings record for her benefit at age 63, and then convert later to her spousal benefit when her husband retires and accepts his Social Security?

The answer is yes.

Yes, she can.

Should she?

That's a little more complicated for a couple of reasons.

Number one, we are very blessed.

We have the world's best Social Security expert on our team, Mark Bacak, has decades of experience and tremendous skill at communicating answers to very complicated questions.

So one of the things that he has guided us in a very practical way is when a client asks, "When should I take Social Security?"

The answer is almost always correct if you say, "When you need it."

When you need it.

If, at 63, having lost her job, your family, you and your wife need the income, you should absolutely take it.

Absolutely take it.

Even though it will be at a pretty steep discount from what she would receive at normal retirement age, 67 or so, it will be a steep discount.

Now the word discount reduction, erosion... Discount sounds kind of nice.

No, it's not nice.

You get a whole lot less.

That discount, we're going to circle back to that here in a moment because it becomes important for another reason.

But if you need the money, all this is just, nyah, nyah, nyah.

It doesn't matter.

Take it and don't look back, and don't second-guess.

If you don't need the money, every two months that this young lady waits to accept her Social Security benefits of her own, her benefits will go up by 1% every two months.

The end of the year, it's up 6%.

At the end of two years, it's up 12%.

But it's actually more than that because it's compounded and there's cost of living adjustments.

And if she waits from 63 to 67, it's going to go up dramatically.

But if you need it, you take it.

And then, only when the husband retires, only when he retires at normal retirement age or older is she then in a position to potentially get a higher benefit from the spousal benefit.

So in very simplistic terms, she retires now, her benefit is $800 a month.

If he retires at normal retirement age at some point in the future, his benefit is 4,000 a month, half of that is 2,000.

So she gets 1,200 more.

Time out.

No, she doesn't.

The word "discount" or "reduction" applies here because she accepted Social Security at an early age.

So, while her spousal amount at normal retirement age might be 2,000. because she took her benefit early.

it might be reduced by as much as a third.

Ouch.

650 bucks.

Now, will she get more?

She has 800.

She'll go to 1,300, 1,350.

Sure, that's more, but it's significantly less than you might expect.

So, be very careful.

Take it when you need it.

Examine your options.

Delay it as long as you can.

with the only exception being the only current exception being other than you need it, is be very clear about the impact your health has.

Most folks in good health should extend it as long as they can.

But if you have health concerns that will impact your longevity, your life expectancy, and shorten it, then taking it now and letting it go, probably the right idea.

It's rare.

Not often the case.

So be very, very cautious before you kneejerk to that.

But look at all your options, and then, pick the one that's best for you.

Most excellent.

Most excellent.

Megan, where do we go next?

- Our next question is kind of on theme tonight.

It says, "Why does my financial advisor explain things in "such a complicated way?"

- Oh, goodness.

What are you guys doing to me?

Let me start by saying that the vast majority of financial advisors that I have met in my 780-year career, they're wonderful.

Their hearts are pure.

They want to serve their clients.

They are very well-educated, very knowledgeable.

They communicate really, really well in their own way.

But they communicate really, really well.

And I'm talking about the vast majority of the financial advisors I've met.

Now, I understand if you've been around more than about 20 minutes, you have read about Bernie Madoff, you've read about this Sam Bicken-Bocken-meinker, whatever this guy was with the cryptocurrency fraud.

It's a fraud.

You've read about, gosh, advisors that have stolen from their churches and their ministers and their families, for goodness sakes, yes, are there bad eggs?

A lot of them, but a lot of them is a small percentage.

I don't know what the number is.

I think there's probably 500,000 financial advisers in the country.

And if there's 5,000 bad eggs, that's 1%.

99% are not criminal.

That doesn't make them good, but they're not criminal.

But gosh, I got to believe 80% are really, really good.

That doesn't mean they all communicate in the same way.

Now I have my own theory about why some advisors get really into the weeds.

They explain things in a very complicated way.

In my opinion, I think that may be an insecurity.

A lot of folks who are very, very smart around numbers, financial calculations, etc., don't have naturally good people skills.

And their lack of easy communication skills can sometimes have them revert back to default back to, "Well, let me explain all the details."

And the vast majority of you don't want all the details.

You want, of course, to understand everything you need to understand to make the best decision for yourself.

But do you actually need to know...?

17 years ago, this index fund had a blip because the inverse ratio of long-term interest rates that... Oh my gosh, I'm falling asleep, and I'm the one talking!

So, the vast majority of folks don't want complicated.

I have said maybe more than once on air that making things complicated takes no genius whatsoever.

Making complicated things understandable, that takes some real skill.

And, yeah.

80%, they're great.

20% have exceptional people skills.

10% can explain anything to anybody.

So they're not common, but that doesn't make them necessary.

So if you're communicating in such a way with your advisor that you're really not getting it, it's too complicated, a second opinion meeting with another advisor to see if their communication skill is better is not a bad idea at all.

But I would hesitate, I would stop you, I would suggest that before you do that, talk to your current advisor.

Maybe he or she just doesn't realize that what they're doing makes it hard on you, and that they need to get better at their job.

Their job is to explain things in ways that you understand.

And you might be able to really turn that person around, gain a lot of advantage for yourself and maybe for a lot of that advisor's other clients, as well.

So, complicated, it's not necessary.

No?

Yeah.

And making complicated things simple, it's a bit of a genius.

So there's not tons of those, but there are lots of great financial advisors out there, coast to coast, border to border.

Make sure you find one.

We need to wrap!

Goodness.

The show has gone incredibly fast.

I appreciate that you have spent that time with us.

If you found yourself at any point being entertained, you have my sincerest apologies.

I'll try not to let that happen again.

Yeah, right!

Bottom line is, if you have a question, if you would like to help us stay the most relevant financial show on television, send it to me, Gene@AskMTM.com.

We answer every single question back to you.

The good ones, the tough ones, the hard ones, the silly ones.

We answer them all back, and maybe you'll see your question on a future show.

Thank you again.

You make it all worthwhile for me to be here.

And I'll be back here again right in the studio next week on our next edition of More Than Money.

Goodnight.