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. 

Financial 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.

There are many cash-value life insurance products for clients who are focused on protecting their loved ones, wealth accumulation and tax-free distributions. The differences between these products can significantly impact the wealth accumulation potential of the policies. Let's examine the various cash-value products available and determine the top life insurance products for this purpose. 

When I think of a retirement strategy, the first thing that comes to mind is often the accumulation of assets and investing strategies. As a fiduciary investment advisor developing and implementing retirement income strategies for my clients, I’d argue that investing is the easy part of the process.

Financial professionals often look at clients solely through the eyes of an illustration. We assume what a client looks like today will continue into eternity, instead of realizing that life changes over time. One example of this has to do with clients being able to afford higher contributions to an indexed universal life insurance (IUL) policy in the future than what they can afford today.

As more companies do away with defined benefit pension plans, the responsibility is left on individuals to ensure that they have enough income saved for retirement. The issue is many people don’t realize the importance of developing a financial strategy now or understand what needs to be done. Help your prospects and clients with a financial strategy that will help them not outlive their savings.

One of the most common risks in retirement is order of returns risk (also known as: sequence of returns risk). It is well known within the financial services industry that investing in marketable securities exposes clients to this risk. However, do your clients know that many indexed products are not immune from order of returns risk?