On December 20, 2019, President Donald Trump signed into law a spending bill containing the SECURE Act (Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act). The new legislation took effect on January 1st of 2020, giving only 11 days (minus holidays and weekends) for everyone to adjust. This has left many financial institutions and financial professionals affected and scrambling to prepare.

When and how your clients claim Social Security benefits is one of the bigger decisions they’ll face as they transition from their working years into post-working years. For many folks, Social Security will be one of their largest retirement resources, and it’s often the most mismanaged.

Irrevocable decisions could potentially add or subtract tens of thousands of government-backed, inflation-adjusted, and tax-advantaged dollars from lifetime retirement resources.

I recently read an article on CNBC that said millennials would need to save a whopping 40% of their income over the next 30 years to be able to live off half their salary in retirement. Reading that, you might be thinking the same thing I was -- 

When you say, ‘I sell annuities’ or ‘I sell life insurance’, your prospects might say, ‘So what?’ Why? Because you haven’t positioned it in a way that matters to them.

If your overall sales or your seminar attendance, for example, has been lackluster — it could be because you’ve forgotten to include an important component in your sales message — your prospect's problem.

The term recession has gained a lot of airtime recently. Fears of an economic slowdown seem to be everywhere. And many folks are tuned in to the fearmongering, allowing it to affect their daily lives.

Without an agreed upon definition of retirement, it’s pointless to discuss strategies or financial products. Strategies and products aren’t likely to get your clients there in the most efficient manner, when we don’t know where “there” is.

You may often hear clients say, “I want to keep my money liquid, I don’t want to tie it up.” The desire to keep money liquid can be strong across all socioeconomic and political spectrums. Why do many clients insist on keeping out money in a liquid state? And what does that really mean, to keep money liquid?

 If history repeats itself, we may be headed toward a market correction and that can mean a scary time for your clients. Are you prepared to deliver a message that could save them from potentially losing retirement savings?

Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA); short for “An act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to titles II and V of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2018.” What a mouthful! I think we will stick with TCJA. One of the major areas of complexity in this new law, is its application to pass through entities. 

lFinancial professionals should first have a basic familiarity with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) to evaluate the potential strength of a split-dollar strategy. It is important to know that many clients may have more cash for family protection and retirement planning because of tax reduction. When working with businesses it can be even more important. Many businesses that could not afford executive benefits in the past are now able to afford them.