Vicki Gunvalson: Life After Work and Financial Peace of Mind

Vicki Gunvalson joins Coach Pete to discuss Life After Work: Gaining Financial Peace of Mind in Retirement. They explore life beyond a career, women's financial questions, and preparing for the next chapter. Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700. Transcript Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate. 00:00 Each and every week I talk to very interesting people and the most important part is that I shouldn't be the only one hearing it. I really feel that if these people make sense to me that everyone out there needs to hear it. So stay tuned folks and I hope you enjoy this newest weekly segment on Coach Business. I've got a friend I've had her she's been a friend for like 10 years now or so and she maybe you've seen her Orange County Housewives it's uh well yeah about 10 years right her name is Vicki Gunvalson and if you've ever watched Orange County Housewives you've seen her on there but you won't see her anymore she has retired from that show and she's written a book and the book's title is Life After Work Gaining Financial Peace of Mind in Retirement. 00:47 Vicki you are too young to retire but I'm happy for you. Welcome in by the way. I'm not I'm not retired yet you can't kick me out of this uh crazy life that we're in with uh financial services but I did this because there are so many clients of mine that are trying to figure out what is their life going to be like after they stop working and I just felt it was a good time to get this launched thanks for having me on. Well you have a quote at the beginning of your book and it's a fascinating one because this this individual I thought about when we were building our studios about nine years ago I wanted to have Mr. Rogers neighborhood and we still are going to do that by the way but Fred Rogers and he wrote or you you quoted him often when you think you're at the end of something you're at the beginning of something else and that makes a lot of sense for this book. Yep as well as COVID right? 01:36 Oh yeah. I still love Mr. Rogers. We had to reinvent our businesses a little bit but I um first of all Pete I wanted to thank you for having me on I know you've got the successful radio show and for the listeners I just appreciate you taking the time to listen to us um but really um just excited about the new book and thought we'd talk about it. Well let's talk about I love to I'm the kind of guy and Thomas and everybody around here laughs at me because when I write books I usually come up with a title first and a book cover and then I write the book so. Oh that's good. How do you come up with the title Life After Work? You know what I was had all these crazy names in front of that I was going to put my name as part of it uh but I really just said what do my clients come to me for and when they sit down with me they say what is my life going to be like when I stop working and it just kind of fit it was in 02:27 a authentic moment I was writing down I was journaling and I just thought you know what life after work and that's what this book is about is what our life will be like after we stop working and for many of those of you that are having to retire or get forced out of work right now because of you know COVID um that's what they're facing is is what is life going to be like after work? Well yeah because life never well we don't want life to stop we want to enjoy life and actually we're working to make sure that in the future we can have fun where we don't have to worry about going to work. I love to have fun you know that yeah well look I have fun at work by the way but I mean a lot of people don't. I know now we're fortunate enough that we can meet some incredible people incredible clients and you and I did meet about 10 years or more um and we just had a great 03:15 relationship I've done a lot of videos at your incredible office there so you got an incredible staff um and so I just I just feel like we're really fortunate to be connected. Yeah well you're right and and what I like about the book it's it's not just for females but it's going to help a lot of females because a lot of females are looking for information and many times when I talk to couples it looks like the male has been the one who's been in charge of the finances but females are starting to wake up and Thomas my producer Thomas tell Vicki what the shirt that I'm wearing says right now. Yes you're wearing the women and money shirt. Yeah so because women it's important that women run about money as well. Absolutely absolutely. So you wrote about in chapter 10 of the book Female Forward Finances. What is that about? The female forward finances we have got to know as 04:01 females both of you are males I'm a female we've got to know what's going on in our finances or we're going to get caught off guard. There's an 85 to 90 percent chance we're going to die single. If you're married now that's the statistics that you're going to be alone sometime in your life. You came in this world alone you're possibly going to leave alone. Those of you that aren't married or divorced or widowed you've got to understand that this is a complicated time and maybe you've been safe and you've been saving and you've been working and now all of a sudden you're not in a good place right now because all of a sudden you've lost you've lost your job and that's what I think for women it's super important to know what we're doing. Very important and it's not as hard as I you know a lot of people just like me trying to learn a foreign language let's say French for instance I start trying to learn it or 04:48 well let's look at Chinese where they have their own symbols and I say I'm not going to learn that I'll just read what the fortune cookie says. But we lock up and we don't do things but this this book is is simple because it takes you step by step on how to learn the financial world and I love that. Yep and you know school didn't teach us sometimes it's the hard knocks of life that teaches us but you don't want to be taught by mistakes and I think that's where you and I both come from when we're doing our business is we want to avoid the pitfalls that could happen if people get a little bit too aggressive on their portfolios and then we see what happened earlier in 2020, 2008, 2000, 2002. I mean we can see that if you're too heavily you know invested in the market you could have some downturn which we 05:38 don't want to have to happen right? Yeah a long time ago someone said that smart people learn from their mistakes but geniuses well geniuses learn from other people's mistakes and that's that's the that's the the meat of the whole argument right there and folks by the way we are talking to Vicki Gunvalson and she has written a book called Life After Work Gaining Financial Peace of Mind in Retirement available everywhere books are sold. Vicki this is a tremendous book and I want to talk about a chapter here where you talk about federal fees friend or foe. Let's talk about the federal fees. Yes so those of you that may or may not know but in in 2026 we are looking at a tax increase and those people that have a 401k or haven't converted some or all of it over to a Roth we are going to be imposed much higher taxes so those federal taxes are not going to go away. Now you may be fortunate 06:29 enough to be in a non-state tax environment those of you in Florida I don't know North Carolina if you folks have state tax I believe you do. State tax yeah. Yeah so here in California where I live I mean we're taxed the minute we wake up it just doesn't go away so you know federal taxes federal fees all of those a lot of my clients are not prepared for they don't understand that that they've been kicking the can down the road for 20-30 years in their 401k that account has grown and now they expect to receive that money you know is not a high tax and it's going to be taxed it's going to get larger and larger and larger the longer the time goes on so we love doing Roth conversions we love looking alternatives through life insurance I mean you know what you and I have been trained I think we're the 07:16 best in the industry and so from that we just try to help our clients getting out of that tax environment got to get up got to get them in a in a better tax place. When you look at California's state income taxes that's higher than many people pay federal taxes in some states and that's crazy and I also have heard well there's been some rumors well yes rumors Vicki where they're going to get a even if you leave California they want to tax you for the next 10 years they've been proposing those bills that's coming so I know that's a lovely thing Pete isn't it so that's why I just bought a place in North Carolina I've got a place in Puerto Vallarta if that happens I'm out of here I'm literally out of here and so yeah it's really really disheartening our property taxes are lower here than a lot of states but we still have that huge huge you know state tax federal is the same no matter where you 08:06 go but these 401ks and IRAs you know that you're going to be taxed heavily. If they pass that'll be now I'll look at it as call I'll call it the Hotel California tax you can check in anytime you want but taxes will never leave check out anytime you want tax gonna come yeah leave your light on I might be knocking on your door someday so leave your light on as they say well no but you know these unpredictable taxes we we just have no control what you do have control is how you invest your money how you prepare for retirement and and the great thing about both of our firms in your firm especially as you create an opportunity for these people to see another side other than just you know put it in the market and walk away and hope it works. Well I'm a retirement income certified professional that's a designation by the American College very intense three courses about income and 08:54 retirement you write about income is the outcome in your book and that is vitally important explain that. Yep so the withdrawal rate a lot of advisors aren't talking about that withdrawal rate so let's say for instance you've got a hundred thousand dollars in your IRA account and your advisor you go to your advisor and say what can I withdraw from that account and never have that money be gone like it'll last for a lifetime so let's assume you live to age a hundred and he may or she may come back to you with a four percent withdrawal rate which is what was happening back in the day right Pete so we heard this four percent so that means you can withdraw four thousand dollars out of your car out of your account and you have a very probable opportunity for success right so when all this started coming about the 09:41 sequence rate of returns and the markets being so unstable we now are down to about a two and a half percent withdrawal rate so that same hundred thousand dollars safely saying you can take out twenty five hundred dollars a year and you have a probability of success now twenty five hundred dollars and a hundred thousand dollars may or may not be enough for you to live off of so we like looking at that withdrawal rate and we have vehicles that will give you a five or six percent withdrawal rate guaranteed for the rest of your life and even if you run out of money you will still get a paycheck so that's incredible and so we do that through insurance vehicles and we love those type of accounts it's like a pension you create a pension with your own account well it's important because you go from paychecks that you get when you're working and 10:30 tom hegda the famous author talks about going from paychecks to playchecks and playchecks is when your money that you put aside starts generating revenue so you can play in retirement you have to have those playchecks every single month for the rest of your life they can never go away and you are right some of the contracts out there are written a contract 100 guaranteed to give you that income for life even if your balance goes to zero how important is that well i love that i mean it's like social security one of the things when my mother was alive she always felt social security was going to be gone and i said mother you're 83 years old it's going to be okay but when i really gave her that reassurance that god forbid if social security stops and you lose your twenty five hundred dollars a month um we as five children will help you but now we've got another opportunity other than just social security to give 11:18 you that guaranteed paycheck every single month dropped into your checking account and you never have to worry about it going away it partners well with social security uh so those of you that are getting pensions don't you love your pension you pretty much can guess every single month that's going to drop in your account and pete you and i love to create pensions with people's money so i think that's the specialty that we have and a lot of advisors don't really understand it so we do vicky you know what i call those monthly or yearly checks that arrive to your house no matter what happens in the economy what's that financial fill-ups because every single year you're getting refilled and folks that's the beauty of having an author like vicky her book in your collection and folks again the name of the book was life after work gaining financial peace of mind in retirement again her name was vicky 12:06 gunvalson and vicky i write about similar things in my book the seven baby steps and folks uh for listening to this interview for the next 20 people call you're going to get that seven baby steps book at no cost or obligation if you call right now thomas give them that number out all right folks that number 800-661-7383 800-661-7383 or you can just text the word coach to 21000 coach to 21000 and special thanks to vicky and folks we'll be right back after this See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.