Announcer:
It’s time now on KROS for financial Focus, brought to you by Nelson Corp Wealth Management. The opinions voiced in this show are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. Any indices mentioned are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. Registered representative securities offered through Cambridge Investment Research Incorporated, a broker dealer member FINRA, SIPC, investment advisor representative, Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Incorporated, a registered investment advisor, Cambridge and Nelson Corp Wealth Management are not affiliated. Cambridge does not offer tax advice. Now here’s today’s financial Focus program.
Gary Determan:
Good morning, and welcome to the program. First Wednesday of the month. In fact, the first day of the month, so we’re going to go live to the bottom of the hour with Dave Nelson. He joins us by phone. Good morning, David.
David Nelson:
Good Morning, Gary. How are you doing today?
Gary Determan:
Real good. Most importantly, how are you doing?
David Nelson:
Doing much better. Feel terrific today. Making a lot of headway. Surgery over as far as … hopefully the last one. Shoulder’s rehabbing nicely. Yeah, I’m feeling kind of normal.
Gary Determan:
Well, that’s good. You drive, is it a white vehicle?
David Nelson:
No, I have a, it’s a dark, almost black looking, but it’s actually a deep blue.
Gary Determan:
Okay. I look out the back door here and I always see that white vehicle down to your location at about 6:00 in the morning. I always thought it was you coming in early.
David Nelson:
Yeah, we’ve got one of our accountants over in Fulton is here before 6:00 and then we’ve got my son that’s there with the pickup truck before 6:00 as well. Yeah, Dad’s not getting in that early.
Gary Determan:
Okay. Well, you always told me you work half days, 12 hours.
David Nelson:
Yeah. 12 hours, exactly. Yeah. My day starts pretty early at home. I’m typically up at 4:35. I try to get some exercise in early, get on the computer, start doing what I need to do there. And I roll in here anywhere from 7:30 to probably 8:00 in the normal day.
Gary Determan:
Okay. We have been dealing with COVID and the pandemic for such a long time now. It has in one regard opened up some opportunities for you to do things at home. And then of course, with your situation, that is really worked out pretty well for you I would imagine.
David Nelson:
Oh, certainly has, Gary. Clients are, we’re face-to-face people. I really liked that even though we’ve got clients in 40-plus states. We certainly like the face to face and 90% of the situation. However, because of as you said, COVID and because of the health scare that I had here, a lot of it turned into phone calls and then Zoom calls and things of that nature. Clients actually we’ve heard several that actually prefer it. And they would prefer as far as that on forward and save some time. Particular individuals that have to commute as far as to some particular location, our office, et cetera. Yeah, it’s really changed, and my mindset has changed a little bit too.
David Nelson:
Again, I want to try and accommodate clients as much as we can and if they prefer to go that path, we’ll go that path as well. We’ve got a nice set up here in the office, the ED segments that we do every week. We’ve got a studio that we’ve set up here, so it’s a very comfortable and professional looking. And we use that as far as for phone calls. We use that as far as for the TV segment. I’m on it today as far as in that particular room as well. Yeah, it’s working out great.
Gary Determan:
Let’s promote that a little bit. Of course, you’ve been on channel four for some time now. How’s that been going for you?
David Nelson:
Really well. Early on, we weren’t sure as far as the impact that it was having. It’s very much like this when we started this years ago. Goal is to try to educate. I only had one client and I think I’ve told this story before as far as a client up in Freeport. I was telling him about as far as what we were doing. This particular person wasn’t too enamored with it, with me coming on here. In essence, giving away free advice. This particular person was paying us a very large sum of money. And so I went through and explained, there’s a big difference on what we could do in this type of venue as far as pretty generic. I mean, we can talk about directions to the market and where we think things are going to go, but it doesn’t get down to the specifics as far as the client, here’s what you ought to do. Here’s what we’ll do for you, et cetera.
David Nelson:
It’s going to be more broadly speaking. And so other than that, we have had just unbelievable feedback. One of the areas that we’ve gotten a lot of feedback recently as far as the couple of the factories as far as in town that out there, they’re putting it on on a regular basis and trying to get smarter and what have you. And that’s really the goal. I feel like at times they were repeating the same things, but I’ve had so many people telling me that again, it’s like anything. You hear something the first time, you don’t really get it. Second time, it starts sinking it a little bit more. The third and fourth time, I think I understand this stuff. It’s with all of us, not just this area that we happen to be in. Whether you’re talking as far as about automobiles or about this or that, some of us aren’t as skilled as far as in those areas.
David Nelson:
We’ve had great feedback in the radio now as far as the TV. Again, early on, it was kind of blah. We weren’t really hearing much. We’d hear people comment about some of the commercials that we’re running, but we didn’t hear it about the news segments as far as what we’re doing. But recently again, we’ve made a bigger push as far as with clients, what have you, as far as tune in, because again, the stuff that we’re talking about here is not that just fluffy stuff that doesn’t mean anything. This is really important stuff, and this is the type of stuff again, for our clients that we are doing for them as far as behind the scenes. We like it that people when they tune in and they listen, it again and helps pull this stuff together and makes sense.
David Nelson:
Now I get why you did what you did there. That makes sense now. But again, prior to that, they really didn’t. The younger generation, people say, “Well, they’re younger, they’re more informed. They’re smarter.” Whatever. I’m not really sure about that. What I am sure about is that they have more interest. And so, because they have more interest, again we’re trying to fill that need as well as far as individuals that we’re working with. They want more info. We’ll give them all the info that they want. It’s just that our challenge through the years has been to try to find that balance as far as with people where you don’t bury them and overwhelm them. But you give them type of information that they can absorb and make sense out of. And again, feel more engaged as far as, and what we’re doing for them.
Gary Determan:
Again, visiting with Dave Nelson. Dave, I know you enjoy the young people. You’ve been coaching basketball for a number of years, and I know you’ve been active in teaching at the schools. And of course, again, you’ve got your school drive going on. It’s going to be wrapping up at the end of this week. But once again, you are doing all you can to help those in need in the area.
David Nelson:
Yeah, it’s so important, Gary. Again, for those that haven’t heard me with my long-winded explanation, I go back to, I grew up here. Did we have life perfect? It wasn’t by any stretch of imagination, but we had a roof over our head, had food on the table, what have you. Today, I mean, it’s getting harder and harder. There’s a lot of people out there that, again, some by choice, I don’t want to sugar coat this thing and act like everybody out there that’s on hard times, it happened to them. Some of it’s self-inflicted. I get that. I also get that it’s not the kids that did that. So the bottom line is that these drives that we do, when you hear the stories of somebody, maybe a spouse picking up and moving overnight because of the threat of being beat up or whatever and they have to leave everything.
David Nelson:
It’s just this mad rush to get out of there for safety purposes. And now the kids left all their goodies there. They don’t have access to their notebooks and their book bags and all that type of stuff. The objective with this is to not only provide those needed resources, the pens, the paper, the et cetera, et cetera. Now, as far as leading into the school year, but also as far as the school year progresses when you have these crises type situations. At the various agencies in the area, have the resources, have the assets that these people need, these kids need at that point in time.
David Nelson:
That was a real eye opener for me as far as probably 15 years ago when I was told that. And so, again, it’s been a really important thing for the office here as a whole. Not just me, but everybody here. We got to do our part. And again, we try to get the word out. We do matching type stuff. We want people to know that there’s always a need and do what you can. We understand people have limited resources, but do whatever you can.
Gary Determan:
Well, it’s great. And of course, every month you do something for a charity as well. But you do get to wear blue jeans on Friday.
David Nelson:
Yeah. It’s a little perk as far as for people. But yeah, we’re hundreds and hundreds of dollars every month that we raised. And we try to identify a small local charity that’s doing a lot of good and there’s tons of them out there. Again, I was oblivious to how many organizations were out there. And again, every one of them needs some additional cash as far as to try to fulfill as far as what they’re doing. Our objective has been and our mindset has been that we want to supply the … In most situations, we can’t supply the manpower. What we want to do is we want to supply the cash so they can do what they need to do. I was told years ago there’s a lot of people out there that can volunteer, but there’s very few people that can write the check that’s needed. So we want to be that part of the equation and provide the cash and tell the organizations go do your thing.
Gary Determan:
Again, visiting with Dave Nelson. Going to be taking a break for the weather here shortly. What are we going to continue on in the second half of the program, Dave?
David Nelson:
Yeah. More and more we’re getting questions as far as from individuals out there, as far as, “Hey, I’m retiring. What are my options?” I walked through as far as some of the different scenarios. Can I leave it there? Can I take it with, et cetera, et cetera. What are the tax issues? And so we’ll try to drill down as far as in some of that.
Gary Determan:
All right. Very good. Again, our break for the weather being brought to you by Petersen-Hagge Furniture.
Andrew Stutzke:
The best weather of the week expected to arrive as we head into your Wednesday. Mostly sunny skies and low humidity. We’ll see highs near 82. Clear skies for us tonight, cooler. Lows falling to 53 degrees. Look for a few more clouds on your Thursday. Still very comfortable with highs near 82. And it looks like a good round or some showers and thunderstorms possible as we end the workweek on Friday. That will keep temperatures cooler with a high of only 73. With your StormTrack 8, I’m meteorologist Andrew Stutzke.
Gary Determan:
Thanks so much, Andrew. Just gorgeous out there. Sunshine, 67 degrees. Our northeast winds now a little bit better than 10 miles per hour. Got a high today of 80, currently 67. Our update brought to you by Petersen-Hagge Furniture.
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Gary Determan:
NelsonCorp Wealth Management presenting Financial Focus, first Wednesday of the month. We continue to the bottom of the hour with Dave Nelson. David, you touched on it, retirement. I’m sure that’s a question a lot of people have on their minds.
David Nelson:
Yeah, it really is, Gary. Again, in the town that we live in, the area that we live in, we’ve got a lot of individuals in their fifties and sixties that are again looking to pull the plug here at some point and say, “Hey, it’s time for me to pack it in and retire.” Then they’re faced with a dilemma that the prior generation really wasn’t faced with. Prior generation, we had pensions. And so I worked for a place for 20, 30 years, and I walk out of there and I’ve got 1,000 a month, 5,000 a month, whatever the number happens to be. And again, somebody else did to worrying me.
David Nelson:
Well, we all realize 20, almost 30 years ago that the rules start changing for many of the businesses. And today if they stumble across the pension plan, it’s almost a miracle. I mean, they’re just non-existent anymore. What we have, however, is what are called 401(k) plans that again, most people out there probably have heard of. The 401(k) plan essentially did a very important function as far as for the employer. And that was it transferred the risk from the employer, basically putting aside the money and then at some future date, guaranteeing a check, to you putting away the money. They’ll give you a match, but you put the money into whatever you want to go into. And then when you retire, you’d have that lump sum of money, and you can do whatever you want with that money.
David Nelson:
Again, on the surface, it sounds fantastic because they’re not going to tell me what to do, et cetera, et cetera. But the reality is there’s a lot of risk as far as in taking the money yourself and making the correct decisions as far as pertaining to that block of money for the rest of your life. So again, as I walk off the job, there’s basically, again on the surface, people would say, there’s two options. One is I leave it in the plan, which some employers will allow you to do, some won’t. But the other will be, I’m just going to roll it out and I’m going to put it into something else.
David Nelson:
Well, you also have, you can cash it in and pay all the tax, which we’re not encouraging anyone to do out there. You could put it into a new plan. Hey, I’m going to go quit this job, but I’m going to work for a new employer and only work part-time. Chances are, they’ll allow you to roll it as far as into their plan, but it all comes back to, again, your comfort as far as overseeing and manage that money, understanding the upside as well as the downside.
David Nelson:
Because again, oftentimes you find yourself in a period of time like we’re in now where the market seems to go up every single day. People can get lulled to sleep and forget about those crises that come along on a regular basis, that can basically put you back a year or two years, five years, as far as with a good thump alongside the head. The examples that we would bring to mind would be year 2000 through 2010. Essentially, you were for that period of time, you found yourself in a 10-year period of time where you had, if you were in the market and you have all your money in the market, you basically broke even during that particular decade.
David Nelson:
You fast forward to ’07, ’08, ’09, you had a three-year period there were literally in the S&P 500, these large company stocks that were down on average from the peak in ’07 to the trough in ’08, you’re down 58%. Again, you tell people that, they don’t believe it unless they lived through it. The folks that are now retiring, most of them have been thumped a time or two and because of that, they’re a little leery as far as in leaving their money in stocks and oftentimes in the plan itself. They would like more control over it. And oftentimes that’s where they contact us. And they’ll say, “Hey, we need some help. We’re getting older, and we don’t want to roll the dice with this. You know what our options as far as what can we do?” And the beauty is when you’re outside the plan, you literally have thousands, I’m not exaggerating. You’re talking thousands of different options as far as what people can go into.
David Nelson:
Again, they don’t want to sort through all that now. I’m not saying that. But I’m just saying a typical plan, you’re going to have maybe 10, 15 options. You get outside the plan, you have a lot options. You can put some money into CDs if you want. You can put it into goals. You can put it into government bonds. You can put into mutual funds, ETFs, pretty much anything under the sun you can put it into. And again, it comes back to what are their goals? What are they trying to accomplish? Most people when they’re retiring, they’re getting a little gun shy as far as taking too much risk. That’s pretty much where we step in. Now, there’s a lot to absorb here and I’ll shut up here in a second, but I don’t want to forget this. That we’re back into the mode of trying to, I think there’s enough uncertainty out there now.
David Nelson:
You’ve got Afghanistan. People are saying, what’s that going to mean as far as to us? Obviously nobody knows for sure. We’ve got COVID that’s going nuts again. And perfect example is genesis is to capacity. These are real issues, and people need to be aware of it. What we’ve done as we’ve got a couple of dates set up for people if they want to call in. We did a whole series of these as far as prior to the last crisis, and we’re going to soak them up again. If folks want to grab a sheet of paper, I’ll reiterate this later on, but the September 23rd, we’re going to be doing two. One in the morning, 10:00 in the morning, one at 6:00. For those that don’t get enough or want a little more info, we’ll be providing that. There’ll be probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 45 minutes, depending on we’re going to take questions in advance, and we’ll try to get through a lot of those.
David Nelson:
But again, September 23rd, we’ll be doing two different events where we’re going to be talking about this type of stuff that we’re discussing today. We’ll be talking about markets, obviously trying to look into our crystal ball and give people the best advice we can give. Generically, obviously, because we can’t give specifics. We’re not talking to any individuals. This is very generic in nature. But we’ll talk taxes. We’ll talk investments. We’ll talk Roth conversions. We’ll talk about a few different things like that. And if people are interested in learning more, this would be a pretty nice way to do it. You can call the office here and we’ll fix you up with the phone number, and people can dial in and hopefully pick up an item or two.
Gary Determan:
Now, is that going to take place at your facility there, or are you going to be outside of that?
David Nelson:
I will be inside doing it and it will be, everything will be a call in and/or I think we’re trying to do a call in as well as Zoom. If that works out, fine. If not, people have handouts. So if they call in advance, we’ve got literally I think it’s 25, 30 different slides of which we’ll probably drill down hard on about 10 of them. And the others will be for people to thumb through later on that maybe will help make some sense out of this stuff to the folks. The goal is not to confuse people obviously. The goal is to try to simplify this really complicated stuff and to try to help people focus on what matters. Because unfortunately, I’m in an industry that’s obsessed with throwing out a whole bunch of stuff to try to impress people.
David Nelson:
In reality, it doesn’t really affect their pocketbook one iota. We want to talk about stuff that’s going to affect the listeners out there pocketbooks in a positive way and hopefully never a negative way. And that’s why we have these types of events. We want to not be nervous nellies as I tell people, but the bottom line is realist, because things don’t just continue to go up forever. We’re trying to prepare people. And again, I get the handouts as far as the people electronically in advance, so they can walk through it as I walk through it.
Gary Determan:
Again, visiting with Dave Nelson. We’re into the final five minutes of the program. You’re right, Dave. I mean, it can certainly be overwhelming for an individual looking at retirement. You are there to maybe help walk them through what the process might be.
David Nelson:
Yeah. And what’s nice is, I mean the type of stuff we’re going to go through our clients, do it all the time as far as to listen to these. It’s the type of stuff that we go through with them individually. This should also be something that individuals that aren’t working with us can take advantage of as well. There’s no commitment whatsoever. You’re going to just call in. We don’t have a clue as far as who you are, where you are, et cetera. We’re going to send the info to you electronically. And if you dial in, you dial in. If you don’t, you don’t. It’s just like going back to ’07, Gary. ’07, a lot of our tools said run for the hills. We on this venue here, basically we’re conveying that as far as on a weekly basis, that we really think something bad is on the horizon.
David Nelson:
And so people say to us, “Why are you doing that?” I said, “Just think about it logic.” When people lost a whole bunch of money, what does that do to the local economy? What does that do to the restaurants in this area? People feel broke. How many people that are on this call or are listening right now can remember that going back to that period of time and think that how financially this affected you and how it affected your as far as what you were doing with your money. I mean, people just hunker down. Well that didn’t help the local businesses. This is a method and a way for us to hopefully for everybody out there that wants to listen. People that aren’t working with us, hopefully impact the economy in a positive way around here, where they don’t get thumped blindly just throwing their money in and hoping that things work out.
David Nelson:
We have some tools that historically have worked quite well as far as trying to tip people off to some of this stuff. There’s no assurance, there’s no guarantee, but the tools historically have helped as far as in that regard, helped muted as far as the losses and help grab some of the gains as far as on the upside.
Gary Determan:
And finally Dave, just listening to you, it seems like you folks try to be a little more proactive rather than reactive.
David Nelson:
It’s key. Too much of this industry has coached people to just hang in there, buddy attitude. Put your money and trust me that over time, this thing will go off. I know you’re down 50%, but it’s been a no big deal. I just have never gotten that. What we try to do is we try to again take the 50%er, and keep it to 20% or what have you. There’s nobody that can keep it to zero and they get all the upside. I don’t want to imply that. And hopefully it did come through that way. But what we are trying to do and help people make informed decisions.
David Nelson:
And again, I’ll just rile that date off again. Feel free to call the office. We’ll get the information out to you. We’ll try to give you the explanation of what a lot of these graphs mean. And again, try to help get you safer through retirement. It’ll be September 23rd at 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM. It’ll be the same presentation both times. You don’t have to listen to both of them. We just have a lot of retirees, and we still have people that are working, and we want to make it a time that would work for everybody.
Gary Determan:
Okay. And as you pointed out earlier in the program, they listen at 10:00. Maybe they might want to come back at 6:00, maybe pick up something they didn’t catch that first time around.
David Nelson:
I would say that’s about a third of the ones that we’ve done in the past, what we’ve heard for people that have done that. So it’s fine. I’m a complete idiot when it comes to cars. I’m a complete idiot when it comes to having a hammer in my hand. What we are good at is this, as far as, and that is money management, tax management and things of that nature. I think I’m an okay basketball coach too, but outside of that, I’m not very good. We’ll stay in our own backyard and hopefully bring a lot of value to the table for the listeners out there. And you can listen to all of them. We don’t care. We want people informed and feeling better and being able to sleep at night.
Gary Determan:
Okay. As always, enjoyed listening to you, and Dave, take care. We’ll talk to you on October 6th. There’s going to be five weeks.
David Nelson:
Sounds great, Gary. Thank you.
Gary Determan:
Take care.
Announcer:
Financial Focus is a production of Nelson Corp Wealth Management in Clinton and Davenport. The opinions voiced in this show are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. Any indices mentioned are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. Registered representatives securities offered through Cambridge Investment Research Incorporated, a broker dealer member, FINRA, SIPC. Investment advisor representative Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Incorporated, a registered investment advisor. Cambridge and Nelson Corp Wealth Management are not affiliated. Cambridge does not offer tax advice. For more information, visit our website at www.NelsonCorp.com.