Announcer:
It’s time now on KROS for Financial Focus, brought to you by NelsonCorp 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 NelsonCorp Wealth Management are not affiliated. Cambridge does not offer tax advice. Now here’s today’s Financial Focus program.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Good morning and welcome to this week’s Financial Focus brought to you each and every Wednesday morning right here on KROS. Well, this is Nate. I got Mike back in with me this morning, bringing you back up and getting you some time on the old radio.
Mike Steigerwald:
Oh yeah, no doubt. Thanks for having me Nate.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Fun, crazy time of the year. I know we were talking on the way up kind of, it’s hard to believe that March is pretty much over, although we have seen in March in Iowa in this area, we’ve seen that six times sunny day than you wake up last Saturday, we had seven, eight inches of snow, so it looks like we got more coming this weekend.
Mike Steigerwald:
Yeah, unbelievable. You never know what you’re going to get. I mean, this time of year could be great. Could be pretty tough.
Nate Kreinbrink:
It is a fun, exciting time of the year. I mean, locally you have a track season underway for those in Iowa or if you’re in Illinois, softball baseball season is well underway. Exciting time. Want to wish all the area athletes and other activities that are going on best of luck this season. We’re also talking today that tomorrow’s opening day, an exciting time where no matter how bad your team was last year, no matter what it was, no matter trades or whatever happened, everybody is in first place tomorrow and everybody has that chance to win the World Series tomorrow, so it’s a great time.
Mike Steigerwald:
That’s great. Clean slate for everybody. It is certainly exciting. Opening day is always great. Always nice when you get one of those nice weather days on opening day to really get in the swing of things.
Nate Kreinbrink:
So yeah, it’s again, a lot of Cubs fans, a lot of Cardinals fans. I’m a Reds fan, so again, this is hopefully it’s not a start like last year for my runs, win the first game and then lose what? 21 of the next 22. So you’re pretty much out of it within the first month of the season.
Mike Steigerwald:
Yeah, I’m a White Sox fan myself. Tough year last year. Really disappointing, but new manager, new blood, hopefully some new life to the guys and could perform a little bit better than last year.
Nate Kreinbrink:
It is. Seeing the baseball on TV though is a quick reminder that we are getting closer. We will see that nice weather out. I know coaching my youngest baseball team, we’ve been pretty much inside and it’s getting to the point where we have to get outside.
Mike Steigerwald:
Wilster crazy.
Nate Kreinbrink:
There’s only so much you can do on the inside with nine year old kids with bats and balls and everything. We need to get outside. So hopefully soon. Getting into today’s program, I know Mike and I kind of threw along a bunch of different topics to talk about and kind of just wanted to go back to the beginning. I know it’s hard to believe, but almost a year, huh?
Mike Steigerwald:
Yep. Yep. I’ve been now with NelsonCorp about a year and really have gotten my feet wet and gotten used to how this organization operates and just really opened my eyes to a lot of things. So it’s been a really great transition for me and for my family.
Nate Kreinbrink:
You mentioned as far as you were coming in from the banking side of things and your role that you serve there, obviously transitioning over to NelsonCorp and thinking of investing and doing that, but again, we always talked as far as the complete services and all encompassing aspect as far as what we provide. Maybe share a little bit as far as maybe the biggest difference from coming from where you were over to here and what you’ve kind of saw from that.
Mike Steigerwald:
Sure, absolutely. I would say the biggest difference is how all encompassing we are in the services that we provide. In my prior experience working in the banking industry, having a lot of basically strictly investments were my priority, if you will. Whereas here, we look at each individual person and their situation. I mean, you could go back and listen to some of the radio segments that we’ve done and a lot to deal with taxes and tax planning and really getting everyone’s individual story so that we can make the proper recommendation. Investments are a piece of that, but it’s not everything when it comes to creating a plan and being ready for long term planning.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Right. And again, I think you hit it on the head there and we have covered this in a bunch of different shows. Obviously, we had Andy Ferguson with NelsonCorp Tax Solutions on last week, kind of going over some of the changes that he saw that have really stuck out to him when filing for your tax season this year. And also again, as that kind of pertains to the big picture with tax planning, we always harp on either tax prep or tax planning. Obviously now is tax preparation where you’re basically just looking back and reporting what it was last year.
Tax planning is looking forward and saying, “Okay, this is what my outcome was. This year, how can I change that to make it more favorable on my side?” And obviously having that piece, having that hallway basically in our building where if we’ve got a tax question or we’ve got anything, we can walk right down the hall and being able to get that answer and coordinating those pieces, the investment side and any decision that we make on any distribution, any Roth conversion, anything we do from that side is obviously going to have an impact on their tax return.
Having those answers prior to doing anything, again, that peace of mind that it gives to the clients that we work with. Again, I always joke with them, it’s like having the answers to the test before you go into it. They pretty much know what their tax outcome is going to be right now because we did all that planning back in November, December of the end of last year. And again, it’s amazing how many times within less than $100 that we are coming right down to that number as far as where we kind of projected it to be. So again, it’s a very easy thing. It’s turned coming in doing your tax season, you see people coming in that maybe haven’t done that planning and it’s a little anxiety not knowing what their outcome is going to be. They compare it to taxes and going to the dentist. Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way if again, you do some of that planning ahead of time.
Mike Steigerwald:
And truly how impactful that can be. I know you touched on it there, but just how impactful it can be to have those answers, have those questions answered prior to making decisions that can really make a difference for your and your family’s future. But having that right in-house, being able to get those answers, I think people really need to understand how just crucial that is to have that all-encompassing service. And it’s just been fantastic for me to see.
Nate Kreinbrink:
And again, I had met with the clients for the first time last night, and again, going over some of these things and it goes back to what we have said all along is sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. And again, you start bringing up the Medicare planning, the social security planning, Roth conversions, again, just all this type of things as far as how they go into it. A lot of times people don’t even realize that these are all aspects out there and that your income does impact what you pay for your Medicare premiums going forward. If you’re pre 65 and not on Medicare yet, your income will determine how many premium tax credits you get for your tax time.
So the higher income, the less credits you get and so on. So you start kind of going through these and asking questions and asking questions, and again, it’s not to kind of blow people away, but it’s again, looking at it from, again, they want to make that decision to go into retirement, but it’s again, probably mostly for people it’s their first time ever doing it, so they’re supposed to have all the answers and do it right that first time when you don’t have any experience.
We’ve kind of obviously helped people navigate through those and know some certain areas to look to make sure we avoid some of that stuff. And again, what they don’t know, we like to kind of fill in some of those gaps and make sure that when they are making decisions, okay, they’re making decisions with all the answers out on the table with them. And again, everybody’s situation is different. What is for one is maybe not quite the same for the other. And looking at it, “Okay, what are you trying to accomplish in retirement? What do you want your retirement to look like? What are your goals with your assets not just now, but okay later on. And how do we kind of formulate a thing that best fits that?” And again, obviously now you throw into the uncertainty of the markets and can your plan handle some of this volatility?
Because we always say, it’s not if it will happen, it’s just when it will happen.
Mike Steigerwald:
Right.
Nate Kreinbrink:
We’ve went through it before. We’re kind of going through it now. It will happen again. It’s just how can you sustain those time periods and can your plan kind of survive that.
Mike Steigerwald:
Absolutely. And that’s one thing you just reminded me of there, Nate, was a lot of times these decisions are so important and what we’ve found is meeting with clients and having that plan and preparing for it much easier to do it in the forefront than decisions being made and trying to fix it after the fact, because sometimes those decisions are irreversible and not much we can do to help. So if you need the help, if you’re looking for advice or planning, this is the place to come.
Nate Kreinbrink:
And we appreciate everybody that’s came in and see us. Obviously with tax time, you’ve seen a big influx of people in and out of that door, starting to remember names a little bit.
Mike Steigerwald:
Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely. There’s quite a few, but yeah, absolutely. It’s been great.
Nate Kreinbrink:
I know you came on last year and obviously a lot kind of thrown at you. At one time, we kind of had some of the activities throughout the summer, but again, you’re just kind of bombarded. And then of course your addition to the family kind of… I guess, additions to the family just made this a whirlwind of a transition and hopefully now again, through it a year, things kind of start to slow down a little bit. I know athletes always say that all the time, kind of your first year, everything is just moving so fast and you can’t even know where to look at, but the game starts slowing down and hopefully this is as well.
Mike Steigerwald:
Certainly. Certainly. Yep. It’s been a great transition.
Nate Kreinbrink:
Been a great one. We have ran out of time here, but I did want to mention that every Friday, NelsonCorp Wealth Management is wearing jeans for charity. Money raised in the month of March will be donated to the summer reading program at the Comanche Public Library. Mike, I appreciate you walking up the hill, joining me today. Mike Steigerwald with Nelson Corp Wealth Management, Nate Krenbrink, NelsonCrop Wealth Management, bringing you this week’s Financial Focus. Thanks for tuning in and have a great rest of your week.
Announcer:
Financial Focus is a production of NelsonCorp 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 NelsonCorp Wealth Management are not affiliated. Cambridge does not offer tax advice. For more information, visit our website at www.nelsoncorp.com.