Financial Planning with Jason Totedo

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Well, happy Saturday everyone, and welcome to Answers for Elders radio show. We had such an amazing week last week talking about estate planning from our guest Mr. Steve Walter, who is a estate planning attorney, and I am so fortunate today that we are joined by a gentleman by the name of Jason Totedo, and Jason is a financial advisor for AGP Wealth Advisors. Jason, welcome to the program thank you so much for having us. You know, Jason, one of the things I am so impressed in your background, and I’d like to just go in a little bit about your background. First, you’ve been working here in the Greater Seattle area and Wealth Advisors for about twenty five years. Having to absolutely start of my career in one thousand nine hundred and ninety three to Philadelphia Stock Exchange. Wow, right out of college, I had said that’s incredible. And so coming here in the in the great you’ve seen a lot of waves and you know changes happen and I know that you know as as you being a wealth advisor. There’s right now. I’m one of the issues that I think is really important that we talked about today is this whole idea of multigenerational estate, you know, financial planning because again, you know, you’re seeing a lot where families are coming together more. I know according to AARP, I think there’s been a forty percent increase over the last, you know, five six years in what’s called multigenerational living, and a lot of adult children are now making decisions and helping to facilitate their own parents financial planning along with their own. And I’m sure you know, are you running into that a lot these days? Absolutely. I think you touched on it. This was probably one of the biggest inflection points we’ve seen in the industry in a long time. Everybody’s familiar with the the demographics of the baby boomer and the retirees. Now something like 10,000 baby boomers a day or going to be retiring for the next fifteen years. One. I’ve heard also that baby boomers right now control eighty percent of the wealth of this country right now. Is that correct? Absolutely so. This idea of multigenerational financial planning is very important. You know, there’s a lot of focus in the media on the investment component, so the transactional nature of buying and selling, particularly stocks, but the landscape for financial planning is so much broader than that. Not just stocks, but bonds, life insurance plays a role in that. Long Term Care. There’s a lot of different elements to it and, as you mentioned, the integration of one generation with the next, particularly in a living environment, makes that even more important to kind of understand what what the plan is and how to manage that well. And oftentimes that’s just thrust in our lap. If, for example, you know mom or dad has a heart attack and all of a sudden, your an adult child are faced with US situation where you’re not only managing your own portfolio, but you’re looking at you know, what about dad’s or what about moms? Or you know, if father passes away, what how does that affect mom? There’s all kinds of different scenarios that we, as baby boomers, are obviously dealing with. Absolutely there’s so many different scenarios that it really it really makes sense to invest in a proper plan or a road map for the parents in conjunction with with their children, and understand what does that look like? The best time to put that planning in places when you have a little bit of time to think about it. You’re not under a pressurized situation. So when we look at it, we like to think about it this way. If you focus on a proper plan and have that in place, you’re able to understand what do people need, sure, versus the flip side of that, in a crisis type of situation, the focus always tends to be on cost. What does it cost? How is that going to packed us, versus the need. So really having a solid plan in place allows us to do that. You know, that’s really interesting because obviously every family is different. Their assets are different, their legacy is different, their values are different, their culture is different. I’m sure, I’m sure you can give me examples of how that has played out in in the clients that you’ve served. Sure can. So I sit inside of a tax practice within Bellevue. So basically our organization AGP wealth partners with a lot of professionals in the estate planning, the tax planning and obviously where the wealth planning component of that. So I got introduced to a husband and wife that work at Microsoft mid s. After spending a year to working with them, I come to find out that their parents, who are very well to do business owners down in the the Auburn area didn’t have any estate plan in place at all and as well as as amazing as that might sound, it’s not that uncommon, sure. So you have a situation where you have maybe five or ten million dollars of net worth that’s not protected by any type of an estate plan. So, through the introduction from his son and his wife, was able to really engage the parents and understand what it is that they’re trying to accomplish, what they have available to them, and then build out the pieces that they had not really focused on. What would like to say is that a lot of these entrepreneurs spend so much time in the business that they don’t have a chance to step back and focus on the blind spots that they’ve created by being very successful and, you know, by not having a state plan. I’m sure that affects taxes in a huge way. Absolutely how can give me an example of that? Well, I guess the most specific example would be, as everybody knows, in Washington state we don’t have any state income tax, correct. So that’s that’s the good news. The flip side of that is the fact that upon death there’s what’s called an estate tax. Do so for our families that have a net worth over two or four million dollars, there’s a state of Washington is due a portion of that overage, anywhere between twelve and twenty percent. So if you have somebody with a five or ten million dollar net worth, they’re looking at and the state tax liability of somewhere between a half a million and a million dollars. Wow. So planning for that and understand how that looks as something that we spend a firm on a time on when we have these multigenerational cases which are can be complex and shouldn’t be handled alone. Absolutely. And then, you know, as far as is that piece and making sure there’s also the whole attitude, I’m sure, with father being protective over, you know, his own financials, just as far as I don’t necessarily want to share all these things with my son, but it’s kind of nice to have that neutral party, you that dad can go sit down and meet and talk about his values, or mom talked about her values and where they’re at with somebody that is completely a neutral party. Touch on to two great points. Number One, obviously that father son relationship. In this particular example that I’m that I’m thinking about the father did not want the son’s to know the extent of his wealth that was created. And ultimately they’ll find out, but at this point in time, you know, again still feeling like he’s in control of a lot of which he was. He didn’t he didn’t include the sons in that conversation. But I think equally as important is the idea that the husband and the wife may have different ideas about what the future looks like for them and having an advisor like someone at a GP wealth that can kind of coordinate the wealth, the tax and the estate planning implications. As you say, that third party, that neutral, that’s right, can really be invaluable during times of calm, but equally is important during times of crisis. An unexpected death would be a good example. So we are talking with Mr. Jason Totedo of AGP Wealth Advisors, and Jason, tell me about your company. Now you have several locations throughout Washington state. Is that correct? Yes, yes, we do. So AGP wealth is locally owned and operated. Our founder has been in the pewter sound area for thirty years, is a U-DUB graduate. We have built a relatively unique model where he’s invested heavily in various specialists. So the traditional model of wealth planning is a one advisor, sure meeting with a client and minor products. Yeah, very much. So. What we’ve built out is a comprehensive approach, not only across various geographic markets, but really specialists within our organization, where they be a college planning, social security expertise, long term care, health insurance and navigating those types of questions in conjunction with the partners that we have external to our organization. So we do we do tax analysis, we do estate planning analysis within our organization, but we also partner with best of breed providers in the Bellevue puget sound area in general. Around Estate Planning, you need to get a will, power of attorney, a trust, revocable, irrevocable, and I know you guys are great partners with Mr Steven Waltart, who was on last week. Absolutely we do a lot of work with Steve as well as other estate planning attorneys and and CPAs as well. The that’s the tax prep piece, is very, very important because that’s where a lot of the data is and that’s where we can make the biggest impact during life. is on the tax profile and you know, I am so amazed and relieved to hear about a company like yours. I know when I was taking care of my mom, you know, I didn’t really think about what I should do when it came to her money. When she sold her home, was going into assisted living. Those expenses started to climb dramatically as her needs started to increase. She didn’t have long term care insurance. That would have helped a lot had she had those kind of policies or that kind of policy. But again, you kind of are, as an adult child, kind of lost about what to do and you don’t even know the questions to ask and you go to a provider that only has one line of products and it’s like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and a lot of things. I think, Jason, that that happens with families today is they don’t know the right questions to ask, they don’t know what they need, and so I think having a firm like yours that is so versatile is so key and this process, well, we have a lot of resources to help answer those questions. We have a lot of tools to help guide those discussions and welcome the opportunity for an of the listeners today to come in and sit down and kind of have a discussion around what it is that they have at they’re available to them and what type of things we can do to help shore up that process. That’s incredible. How do we reach you, Jason? So again, I sit in the tax practice in Bellvue. Our main number is four to five, two to eight, onezero. I can reach by email, which is on your website as well, but it’s [email protected] and we look forward to to get a chance to sit down and what’s your website? AGPWealthAdvisors.com. Jason, thank you so much for being on the program and we look forward to having you back again soon. It’s our pleasure. Thank you.