How advisors are using Life Hub with their clients

welcome everyone we'll give everyone just a another minute to join in this is

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a a panel webinar that we have today it's one of our hot topics uh everyone

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every time we have a panelist webinar uh it is one of our highest attended ones

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so we appreciate everyone joining um this morning we have Justin who will be

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uh leading this webinar with two panelists Jennifer Bennett and Randy depel and so uh with that uh we do have

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a survey at the end of this webinar that asks for your feedback your suggestions

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on what we could do next time and then also uh next steps for you just to make sure we honor what you how you would

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like to be followed up with um and then last but not least we have two more

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webinars next month another lab talk Tuesday for our user base on the third Tuesday of every month and then on the

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fourth Tuesday of every month we have webinars like these so with that I will pass it over to Justin and we'll get

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started all right thank you Taylor thanks everybody for joining and especially thank you to Randy and

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Jennifer um as Taylor said uh I just love uh panel webinars um discussions

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with advisers who are you know in the trenches doing planning with with clients um and I know that um attendees

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love to hear your um best practices and and stories and things you've learned along the way so we'll get into it um so

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um I I always like to start just so that we kind of understand your background and and where you're coming from with

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some introductions so I'll I'll ask um both of you kind of to introduce yourselves give a little bit of overview

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of kind of your your background your current practice um maybe if you have a

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specific Focus or or or clientele um and maybe also a little bit about about how um how long you've been

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using income lab and and and kind of where that um came into your practice so uh Jennifer maybe we'll start with you

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sorry Jennifer one second sorry to interrupt just one thing if you do have questions along the way before I exit

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this please put them in the Q&A and if you want to hear that question among your peers please like it and the most

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liked questions will get addressed first so sorry to interrupt Jennifer the floor

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is yours thanks Justin thanks Taylor um I've been in the working as a registered

Who are your clients

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investment advisor representative for about 16 years now a little over and of

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that I've been doing financial planning directly with clients for about 10 of those years um and then more

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specifically Financial like the broad spectrum of financial planning for the last maybe like two and a half years

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whereas maybe eight of those years were uh more segmented um and not doing more

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holistic financial planning so I find uh then who are my clients my clients are

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all you know all over the board all across the board the spectrum of younger still working squarely in the

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accumulation phase all the way through I you know just Norm regularly

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unfortunately have clients pass away right it's kind of a cycle of life so I just had one actually that passed away

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last week and they were in their 80s but so but the majority of my time even though those are my clients the majority

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of my time as probably most of you can relate to imag ining is spent with the clients who are within about a 5year

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window of that actual retirement date um and I find it usually it's the people who haven't yet crossed the threshold

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into retirement that tend to be um really engaged and will proactively reach out with lots of questions wanting

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to do regular checkups making sure that they're on track to transition from retirement to I'm sorry from working

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years to retirement um and then also for the first couple of years of retirement

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um doing more frequent kind of interaction actions with those with the same client population as well so I like

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income lab a lot for for working with those clients specifically and helping them gain the confidence that they're on

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track or being able to see specifically where um kind of the areas of improvement might be in their overall

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financial plan what areas they want to focus on for the next couple of years before they actually do re retire um and

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things like that I I think I primarily um use it for that

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purpose yeah it's great I yeah I use a lot of the um I I love that it can be used as

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an aggregator basically even though like the software you can um you can connect

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it with Schwab but you can also use it to just manually indicate values for other accounts as well so I really like

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that about it too perfect Randy how about you can can

Background and practice

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you share a little bit about your background and practice sure so I've uh I've been a financial adviser for 25

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years um started my own practice in 2012 and about two and a half years ago

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really moved to focus uh almost exclusively on working with high net worth clients and that are pre-retirees

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and and people that are retired um I just I see that's that's my peer group and and they're all kind of moving into

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this phase and so I was spending more and more of my time talking about this type of the business anyway so it was

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logical that it just kind of was a nice hand and gluff fit there um I started using um income lab not

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quite a year ago um but it has made a meaningful impact uh in my business and just being able to help clients visually

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see um their spending plan and uh so one of the things I did last year is I went and got the uh retirement management

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advisor certification which talks a lot about this and how we think about distribution and decumulation your

5:53

assets in a tax efficient manner and so um income lab is very helpful in helping clients see all of that in information

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so that that's really where my focus is today yeah and I know that's uh we we'll

How do they all fit together

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talk about everything that um you know you you have to share with the with the audience but I know the the where we're

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going to start is on something both of you um mentioned which is um really kind

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of giving C clients Clarity on what's in their plan how things interact and so on

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so um we actually haven't done a webinar I think in the past um on on that part

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of the of the software just kind of the the parts like life Hub or I know Jennifer you want to talk about some of

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the um some of the main dashboard kind of um uh you know views and graphs and

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things there um but Jennifer you even called it you know it's not quite aggregation but kind of right it's sort

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of like household picture right the whole the whole thing all your all the

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pieces how do they all fit together um and I think what I've heard from

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advisers is although you know there's a lot that goes into planning in terms of

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analytics and so on um actually for a lot of clients just seeing the basics

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and how they interact can be really um really impactful um so I think there can

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be because there is so much analytics out there and you know depending on your

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uh your your personality you might even love that sort of thing it can be tempting to kind of clutter the um the

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client experience with a lot of that as opposed to sort of um you know meeting them

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where they are and and and showing them what uh what they what they need to to

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kind of understand or have that kind of aha moment so I think both of you have talked a little bit uh about that in the

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past just a point for those of you who um are already income lab users uh I'm

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sharing um a view of income lab which is actually now live in your version of income lab as as well so you you may

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notice some some slight differences in design and so on last week we went over some of these in our lab talk Tuesday um

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webinar but uh yeah don't don't be shocked if you're seeing seeing things a little bit uh differently here um so

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let's start out um I guess kind of asking both of you just to talk about um

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a little bit of how you use these kind of basic plan visuals uh in your

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practice uh So Randy I know you're a a visual guy you've got your um your your

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train board behind you there that I know you just saying the V yeah maybe share share with

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us a little bit um you know how you use life Hub or some of these other simpler views um with with your clients sure

How do you use Life Hub

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well you know I think at a very um basic level we are all visual Learners in in

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uh income lab and life Hub in particular is is a really great kind of simple Rich

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uh visual to show your clients where everything is and what it's worth and then how we're going to use it as part

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of your overall spending plan and um for me it's really an active part of our

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annual review meeting that we kind of do this time of year to kind of talk about all right so last year we spent X dollar

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this year we think we're going to spend y here's where those things should be coming from and and that's what I really

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love about uh the income part of this is that you can click through and see where are these scheduled where did we get

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this number from how did you come up with that Randy why well okay well when why why do we want to take you know

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money from the IRA this year and we can have that conversation um and that kind of spills over into some of the other

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Tech as well that that I use but at the end of the day it really just gives people a really good idea of like how

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are we going to Cobble together this income that we need to take care of all of our spending in this year um so that

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that's really how I use it most effectively with clients is to really kind of spell out for them literally $5

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from this account $1,000 from that account and so on and I know you you had a really

How do you present a plan

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helpful something I found really helpful um way of thinking about how you present

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a plan to a client and that there's sort of two um I don't know Zoom levels or

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something to it um and how yeah of course we're going to we're going to plan for you know the a longer life and

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we were all of that is taken into account but then you had a way of talking about um what people really care

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about and and using life Hub to kind of zoom into that maybe sort of the first couple years or this year and and and a

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few coming years can you talk a little bit about that yeah absolutely there there's a um you know for for all of the

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planning tools that are out there I you know it's great to have you know the 30-year plan um but I think there's

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there's a a great uh Cartoon I've seen actually from Adam Hol good friend who talked about a a professor in front of a

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whiteboard with all these calculations and everything and the client talk Bubbles at the bottom saying the the

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professor or advisor is like if you have this inflation and this expected return these assets blah blah blah then your plan works 100% of the time and then the

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client ask well what if any of these variables change at all and then well this plan is 100% wrong so while we like

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to have the long-term View and I think it's good to kind of focus on a trend and where we're going let's focus on today these are things we can control

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this year are we going to have any spending leaks like are we looking at this through the lens of oh I spend $10,000 a month and I need to make sure

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they have that guaranteed you know from all these different sources all right well that sounds great but what happens are we buying a car this year are we

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needing to put a new roof on do we should we should we Implement that is that something how are you going to finance that are you going to pay for it

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in cash should we pull it from your IRA you want to take dealer financing these are all variables that make a big

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difference in an annual spending plan so when when I look at it through that through the lens of the client I'm

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trying to help them figure out what is the best path for this calendar year and so we're going to drill down into the

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cash flow section and and even use kind of your I forget the the name of the fancy name of the flow diagram um but

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being able to turn that on for clients to say like here's where all your income is coming from and here's where it's going right does this all make sense

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does this do we want to make sure should we add should we add some more money over here for that car because if we do

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that well then we have to go back and look at our our assets and liabilities maybe a little bit more differently um

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so that that's really how I utilize the the different kind of zoom in on a year and zoom out as well y yeah and I think

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that makes a lot of sense you know it's kind of like in these early years the first few you know this is you're you're

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close enough that yeah I mean it looks like yeah next year we're still planning on social security for Adam here that'll

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be a big change right you notice that coming in from year to year you know 30 years out less less interesting maybe um

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Jennifer uh turning to you um I know you you definitely you even had some stories

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about um kind of using life Hub or the cash flow graphs um with with clients

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and some thoughts on whether to kind of do this stuff ahead of time or you know live with a client can you talk a little

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bit about how you've used um these visuals and and maybe share some of those

Trial and Error

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stories yeah um the I think it's part

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trial and error um I know for example I was thinking about that this morning and I had a client experience um well let me

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also say I uh came to a new company last year and started using income lab I

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forgot to mention this at the beginning um in around June um is when I started

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using income lab and I really kind of rolled up my sleev stove in and did a couple of lab talk Tuesdays and kind of

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mostly taught myself from just getting in there and getting experience so I had at least a couple of times where i'

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gathered information verbally from a client this is the kind of um pattern I'd always done before you go through

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you gather all of the information that you know that you'll need including their balance sheet and income statement information and then I would go and turn

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around and plug it into the software without the client present thinking that I would show them the end product

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basically afterwards like in our second meeting we talk first I'd gather information second meeting I'll do a bit

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of a presentation and either client would leave out information or I

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wouldn't remember a specific detail I know I had a client for example one time where they had a lot of rental

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properties houses that they rented out and I got so focused on Gathering some of that information that I forgot to ask

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about a few other sources of income I don't remember what the details were but a few details I forgot to ask on that

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information gathering session so I with the client doing a screen share I popped

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into the dashboard page into the part where you're inputting information and I did that with them so that they could

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see that I was inputting their um anticipated social security income and

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their current income from employment their all their different income sources just to double check and they really

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enjoyed watching that it seemed like so I started doing that a little bit with other clients to kind of Ensure to you

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know show them like look I'm putting this information and they kind of I feel like they felt reassured that they knew

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I was covering all the bases so a few times I'd put in their assets um that I

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knew that they had that we were managing and then I would go in with them and say now you know in order to look at your

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full balance sheet what other assets do you have and then they get really interested in providing all the details

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about what other accounts they own and they'll make you know I I think I don't see how it couldn't be the case that

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most people really do provide a robust list of their total asset all of their

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assets going into that because they want to see it there too so it ends up being a good tool for you know gaining

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additional business from clients because it just makes sense it kind of lends itself to that conversation um that's a

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lot of the way I do end up using that part of

Life Hub Views

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it yeah that makes sense and I know I I can I can relate you know you certainly

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want to you want to feel prepared everything is all set but but also you know sometimes things things just happen

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live I've heard that story a bunch of times um about life Hub or it sounds

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like for you even just the that kind of Ledger you know that that list of just

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clients you know in this kind of view you're looking at it and you're thinking like are all the leaves on the tree oh

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no we're missing one um and so there is sort of a discovery um piece to this as

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well that I've heard that story um definitely a lot of times um I know for for life up in

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particular do you tend to have you have you found that you know there are particular view levels you know like

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viewing it just in in the the highest level or you know the middle level or diving into the pieces like what Randy

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do you have any experience with that any suggestions for people are there kind of views that work best yeah I I like to

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really focus not so much on the assets and liability side I think um it's really more on the income and expenses

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side so they can see like where did you come up with these expenses um okay well our Baseline expenses or you told us

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here's what you spend on you know a month on this that and the other um we have some other variable expenses that

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might be specific to you know paying off a particular item or hey our our term

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life insurance policy ends here so we don't have any premiums after that going forward and that's how you can see some Tailwinds coming into your your uh your

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income stream uh your kind of net cash flow over over time um but really I I

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really focus on those two pieces and kind of diving down into the the the details inside of each little bucket as

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you click through the the life Hub there makes sense I'm going to add a Term Policy just as you're doing that I

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don't know what what he would be paying but yeah um yeah I have I have also seen kind of

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that uh you know the timeline sort of thing like or the Milestones more helpful there yep yeah I

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think for me that that's that's that's a big part of of the visualization is helping people understand and realize

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how long it's going to be for some of these events take place like your rmds are not going to happen for a long time

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time you know we have to figure out how to fund everything else that you're spending right now before those things

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kick in Social Security will might kick in beforehand there for you most cases

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um but at the same time here's what we could do instead we could do a Roth conversion we could do you know we could

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accelerate some income or some um some other type of income PL some diverted comp plans that you have let's

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accelerate some of those this year you then see if that makes sense to to fund it that way versus another way and I

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like the ability to be able to kind of save different versions of plans to show them well here's the here's the base

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plan here's the plan if you buy the house here's the plan if you sell the house um and and that is always

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effective to kind of show people you know how things might look from one year to the next yeah that I hadn't actually thought

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about that before you have this um you have these periods right so you could

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say you know the first rmds start here in 2032 so we kind of we have and they're not that high at first right so

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we have a little bit of time to kind of handle our future tax situation or you

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know here's Social Security you know for Adam it's coming soon but you could have an alternative plan that pushes that out

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and say Hey you know taxability of Social Security is also something we actually have some control over and so

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you know how we we've got this period of time and I guess the timeline is kind of showing you like hey we've got five

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years um you know here's what we can what we can do there um I like that um I

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know Randy you've also talked about um I think you talked about it in terms

20:01

of before Social Security but there's like the scary phase yeah that's right

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there there is that period from from when you stop working before all of your uh your social income kicks on right

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before I get pensions before I get Social Security before I have to take up my rmvs and and that period for many

20:19

people in retirement is something they've never really thought about well how how am I going to pay for all this stuff you've been working and working

20:26

and working and diligently saving and every tells you keep putting more money in my different accounts and you've been doing that diligently but now you're

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here and I think one of the hardest things for people to really get their head around is I I need to spend this

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money and and that that's why you've been putting it away for so long and quite honestly using some other uh tools

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as well you can show them hey you know as a married married couple you could that first $80,000 of income from a

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capital gain standpoint or something like 85 I think it is this year that's zero zero taxes if you take capital

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gains right right so how do how do you implement your spending plan with your

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tax strategy and that that tax planning element really comes into play significantly in this scary period right

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we we can we have we have a a set number of years we can actively think about how are we going to take different parts of

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different taxable or non- taxable buckets of money change their characterization or provide cash flow

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like how do we best do that so that's where I spend a lot of time walking clients through this what I the scary

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period yeah yeah and even just watching like if you just focus on portfolio withdrawals wow o 130 and then okay now

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they're getting under control again now that I'm I'm uh you know full fully into Social Security

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right Jennifer I know that you also you know speaking of kind of these you know

Income Sourcing View

21:50

uncluttered views that that you also use

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um you know the income sourcing View quite a bit um I wonder if you could

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speak to us a little bit about the you know how you use this and what um what some of the impact is for you yeah I I

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love this graph I think a lot of clients do too I think it takes them a minute to understand what's going on with it but

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then once they get their bearings I think they find it comforting because you know if I put myself in this case

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Jane's shoes or Adam shoes and I see that currently my income is obviously

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coming from salary got a little bit of a bump from a rental property and then um

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looks like they're already taking portfolio withdrawals but for a lot of people they're not taking portfolio withdrawals just yet if they still have

22:39

salary and so it's hard for them to visualize that jump from the leftand side of that graph to the right hand

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side and so this kind of helps I think with that visualization kind of how Randy mentioned we all tend to be a

22:51

little bit Visual and how that might gradually change you know looks like first she'd be it looks like would be

22:58

taking some social security and then in comes the pension and then there's this little Gap in time where their portfolio

23:04

withdrawals would be elevated before that uh Jane starts taking her social

23:10

security um it's kind of like what Randy mentioned is the scary phase and I I like that terminology but this is what I

23:16

end up kind of helping them with on that it's like yeah you're going to have elevated portfolio withdrawals right there in that little place where you see

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that gap between the purple and the black you know the pink is taking up more of that space But once you get to

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the point where that Social Security totally kicks in that's where your withdrawals are going to ease up a bit

23:33

and then you know kind of guiding them through look you're also elevated at the beginning of retirement and then you're

23:38

likely going to take less in portfolio withdrawals over time um and then that kind of also lends itself to a

23:45

conversation about um either whether we have it as level or Age based as far as

23:52

the income over time and I explain that to them and I don't personally have a bias or a preference on that I like to

23:58

kind of walk my clients through that concept and see if they care sometimes they do sometimes they don't and if they

24:03

don't I actually tend to use the age-based one just because it's a little bit more I think it is a little bit more

24:11

of a stress test on the portfolio I could be wrong in that um

24:16

but I like to just show them that and then the cash flow tables below this I always show them that too um yeah if you

24:22

push that yeah uh I love to show them this because again it kind of visual helps with that visual between Now

24:30

versus if you jump down five years the the situation is totally different um

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and I find that alleviates a lot of anxiety for clients they're like oh okay so so you have a game plan in in place

24:42

for me and I don't have to worry I think people are worried that they have to figure that all out on their own and

24:49

they think they're coming to us for investment advice yeah we're putting together a portfolio for them which is great but also like how do we actually

24:55

derive income from those Investments so this I think really bridges that gap for them

25:00

um off slightly off topic but similarly I also use the I show clients the Monte

25:06

Carlo simulation I do show them the um the Legacy page just to help them

25:12

conceive of how volatility will play A Part over time as well because that graph looks nice and smooth and even and

25:19

in reality they're invested heavily in stocks or even over 50% of their portfolio in stocks are going to need to

25:25

expect volatility and they usually haven't been paying as much attention during their working years they've been

25:32

accumulating and contributing and they you know oftentimes to help set

25:37

expectations I I really want them to understand that it's a your balance is going to bounce around and and that's

25:42

going to be okay too that's a really good point kind of connecting because liub and and and the

Layer Cake View

25:49

view we're just looking at with the the layer cake um they're super useful for

25:54

what Randy was talking about of the either the scary period the near you know the zoomed in you know what we can

25:59

control today or nearby like those numbers are probably relatively close to what will actually happen but 30 years

26:06

from now uh you know we really have no particular um idea um and so this this

26:13

plan doesn't have a legacy goal at all so it's it's kind of saying hey um let my my last check bounce um but you can

26:21

see kind of you know it's within a relatively narrow range um and by design

26:28

it's it's kind of trying to go down toward the end of the plan um so that's a good way to yeah this is a much more

26:34

realistic experience they might expect of you know up down sideways and so on

26:40

um yeah I like that a lot I know Randy you would also mentioned that you use

26:45

you know again kind of that zoom in zoom out I think you mentioned that you use the stress test sometimes for that same

26:50

kind of idea of like hey longer term this is more realistic of what your experience would be like right yeah yeah

26:57

that the the being able to to show people that hey volatility does happen and and guess what with the guardrails

27:04

approach to this when times are good you can take a little bit more but when times are bad this is probably not the year to buy the boat you know we

27:10

probably should hold off another year and see how the market does if it gives us the returns we need then yeah let's

27:15

go ahead and pull that lever if it doesn't well let's let's make and again we you've talked about it one of the

27:21

reasons I I originally signed up is just the idea of you know retirement is not is not pass or fail it's it's really a

27:28

series of micro adjustments over time and so to say hey this year we're going to we've done well um we're having a

27:36

good economy we can afford to take an extra thousand do a month or whatever that ends up being so you could take the

27:41

extra vacation this year I'm giving you the the thumbs up the green like go ahead and do that because I feel confident in the data that I'm looking

27:48

at here that you're GNA be just fine yeah so I think both of those can

27:55

be used that way you know the uh the plan Test shows seven of them so you

28:00

kind of see okay there's good there's bad you know you're kind of we by adjusting we sort of keep you on track

28:06

and then the retirement stress test because it's it's fairly relatable to

28:11

most people in the sense of like most of us remember 07 and and certainly remember 22 right which is right here

28:18

you can see that blue line going down and that didn't feel good right um but uh you know it would have kept you on

28:24

track exactly um

Gifting

28:30

I know Randy you had also mentioned that you'll you'll sometimes use life hub for

28:35

well in fact you just you just said it that you'll you'll kind of run multiple scenarios um you had mentioned gifting

28:42

to me in the past you I think you just mentioned uh was it pushing Social Security back um are there other kind of

28:48

AB testing scenario planning things you do and and how do you show that yeah so you've you've kind of populated a few of

28:55

those I think one in particular is the Roth conversion and the gifting strategies is like how how do we how do

29:01

we thoughtfully we see our assets growing over time despite all these distributions so what should we be

29:07

thinking about you know depending upon the state you're in and maybe you have no federal estate tax to worry about maybe you have a state estate tax uh to

29:15

worry about well let's let's put together a gifting strategy that shows hey we're going to push money out to our

29:20

three kids and then also send some money to the alma mater um and those are great ways to to illustrate all right so we

29:26

need for gifting and we need we have these expenses and and where is that going to go um so is that going to be

29:33

part of our variable expenses this can be part of our Baseline I think it's more of a variable expense personally

29:39

because um we might decide in any given year oh well you know I'm going to take full advantage of of my annual exclusion

29:46

this year um or for the next three or four years but once I once I you know put a $100,000 away for all the kids or

29:52

giving them that I'm going to pump The Brak that's plenty of money for them so or or along the way well now I've

29:58

changed my mind and I want to give a half a million dollars to the boy boys and girls club so okay go ahead and do that let's let's map that out and put

30:04

that out five years from now how we gonna fund that gift with a you know donor advice fund or whatever that might be so those are the type of things I

30:11

think you can really kind of create these alternative scenarios have your base case plan here's you know where we

30:18

are today and this is what we're looking at going forward but if we decide in a couple years I want to you know my

30:23

portfolio is grown I feel fine with my income sources I have asked ass I need to distribute to be tax efficient so

30:30

here's a couple ways we can do that and here's a plan and what that might look like

Roth conversions

30:36

perfect yeah and on the Roth conversions I I was trying to show as you were as you were

30:41

speaking um you know there's a bunch of ways to kind of point that out one actually just hovering here hey we'll do

30:48

them for a while and then they go away um by clicking through the first couple years kind of seeing okay we'll be

30:54

drawing a bit from both of you drawing that down you can see here we'll be kind of living on our money from taxable

31:01

account but but moving some IRA and 401K money over

31:06

yep um I know uh of course both of you use

31:13

other software in your practice as well um is there you know how does income lab

31:20

fit fit into your kind of Technology strategy are you using with everybody

31:26

just kind of a certain clientele are there other tools that you use you know kind of alongside income lab or or

31:33

in a handoff with income lab um either one of you uh you go ahead J you know I use this as

31:42

a primary source for our financial planning software there's other softwares that we use kind of in the back of the house so to speak but this

31:49

is the only thing that I'm using in a client facing capacity um we use Schwab as our custodian and of course clients

31:56

have access to the client page their client website is different from the adviser website but so other than that

32:02

uh we do have a portal that we uh is our proprietary software but for financial

32:08

planning purposes this is all we're using currently um so I find it really helpful I haven't I'd like to hear about

32:14

others experience as far as allowing clients to access it because I know whenever you're setting up a new

32:19

household you have the option of allowing the clients to access it and I haven't been brave enough because I am

32:24

concerned that clients might go in and um make a mistake or you know that the

32:30

data that I put in would be overwritten by clients but um maybe you know I've thought about that for a few times here

32:36

and there like oh maybe it would be beneficial to let clients go in and enter their own data um but I haven't I

32:42

haven't been brave enough to try that just

32:47

yet um I would say I and I know there's a lot of different um opinions on this

32:54

and I don't particularly have opinion opinions but um you can give view only

32:59

access um or actually access that really just you're using it as like an aggregation tool where they can pull in

33:05

you know uh assets held away so there are baby steps there as well Randy do

33:12

you use the client portal at all I do on a very limited basis if if

33:17

clients ask for Access then yes I'm GNA give them that view only view um but otherwise it is it's part of our you

33:24

know for the most part our uh know Zoom type meetings um and are part of that

33:30

review process um so yeah I I think that um you know it's kind of like use it use

33:35

it as you will the flexibility is really nice to have and and certainly appreciate it um for me outside of um

33:42

income lab I also use holista plan uh nitrogen AKA riskalyze uh FP Pathfinder

33:48

and asset map um asset map is is in many ways a similar type of Technology um but

33:55

it does different things in actually is very important as far as the discovery process goes for me so I'm able to to

34:01

pull over a lot of that data immediately and and populate a lot of this for the client up front um so that when we step

34:08

into the income lab we can actually kind of get our hands dirty and start messing around with the well what ifs right so

34:15

but those are those are my core Technologies okay great um I know we've got a lot of

34:22

questions here we usually don't go through all of them um but we do have one that kind of just Segways from what

34:28

Randy was speaking of okay that has the most votes uh so I'll we'll tackle that

34:34

one and then again anybody if you'd like to hear the questions answered please like them and we will address the most

34:40

liked ones so do you find the need to use and keep a traditional planning tool like e-money when using income lab or

34:47

can income lab be a replacement for a traditional tool like e-money money guide Pro right

34:55

capital I haven't used let I'll let Randy yeah

35:01

no go ahead Randy um I I've used uh all of those I I

35:06

still have right capital on on my platform um I do have that for for my

35:12

non uh retirement clients um but ultimately for for me this is the the

35:17

go-to technology for the distribution planning and and gives clients you know

35:22

we we use this uh with with all of our kind of what I'll call Core

Thoughts on using for different types of clients

35:31

clients and Jennifer it sounds like you don't currently use any of those um what

35:37

are your thoughts on um you know using for different types

35:42

of clients um I think it's helpful in the past I did I worked for a company that

35:48

had their own proprietary software that was all the financial planning software was basically part of what the company

35:54

was all about and um so that clients had more autonomy with

35:59

that just since kind of going back to my comment on I haven't set up any clients to go in and self access the platform um

36:07

which would be a stark contrast from the past experience that I had so I think

36:13

income lab is a lot more sophisticated and is most likely in my mind designed for the planner or the adviser to use

36:21

and not as much for the client to to use as a tool whereas the past experience that I had our software was um developed

36:28

primarily for the user to access so the client would be inputting all of their

36:34

data initially and then we would come in and propose a relationship and still

36:39

allow them to use that was almost like the segue to our business model is like um a lost Leader by getting clients to

36:45

jump on the free access to the software and then gaining business from doing that but this is kind of the opposite

36:52

where this is I I haven't used it in that capacity so it's a very it's very

36:57

different from that perspective and I think that you Pro in this is maybe my

37:03

opinion is that you you need to know a little bit more about um the academic

37:09

side of investing in planning before you can feel really comfortable with using

37:14

income lab so it's not as it's not as geared towards the end client in my mind

37:19

um but it's still really useful for them to see so I give them a report I produce

37:25

I offer it to any client I said well if you're not going to look at it I won't belabor you by sending you it this

37:30

report but I create a PDF I've put in I've put a report together you can cust for any of those of you that use it who

37:36

haven't done it you can go in and create your own report it's really pretty nifty um but you can design it as far as the

37:43

order of appearance of the various data that comes through the platform yep in there and I went through and just

37:48

created I have a couple of different reports that I created um iol it kind of evolved over time based on client

37:54

feedback and so at the end of our sessions I'll typically offer clients they would like the report they'll

38:00

sometimes take me up on it and um sometimes I know that they've looked at it because they'll have questions about it but that way they have like a one

38:07

snapshot in time perspective to keep and view at their Leisure and then we can

38:12

always make another one later down the road I don't think they want one more than once a year or

38:18

so that is another question yeah a great segue

38:23

into like a couple combined questions that we have so are you using native reports in income lab are you taking

38:30

screenshots and sharing those is one of them and then the other one is uh what

38:37

let me find the other one but for that question oh or it has income lab produced any marketing material we can

38:43

use such as graphs images and flyers so kind of what you what you all are using

38:49

and uh in either pre report and during and when you're

38:55

sending out there report in general that sounds like Jennifer you

39:01

you do at least offer um PDF reports um

39:07

Randy do you do any reporting just the short-term income plan it really kind of just like here's

39:12

our spending plan for this year you know it's kind of like what I'll call the uh the the game plan um and we're we're

39:18

going to you know first quarter second quarter third quarter fourth quarter um but our spending plan as as the

39:23

deliverables is a really nice way to show here's we're saying our income sources or income is going to be and we

39:30

what we can spend and here's where it's going to come from yeah yeah and uh

PDF options in Life Hub

39:35

follow up to that can you print out any of these Pages as outputs and attach them to a deliverable document so back

39:41

to life Hub you can also show the PDF option yeah this is one other so the the

39:48

main report Center that I was showing before is up here so in the new navigation basically anything that's

39:53

kind of for the whole app it's so the report Center is where you can create templates you can make reports for any

39:59

household so anything that's kind of for the whole app is up here and anything for a partic the household you're working on is in the blue over here so

40:05

that was the report Center but one other place you can generate a report is inside life Hub and the reason is that

40:12

would allow you say you wanted one for 2025 that you know only showed you know the income um you could

40:21

generate that report um if you choose the custom one page report then it'll

40:26

just you know what you've already decided to show you can show what you know decide what kind of end materials

40:32

come up here and decide if you want it landscap or portrait um so that's the other place you can do a PDF I know

40:38

there are it depends you know if you have a broker dealer affiliation or not um there are people I've heard who do

40:44

screenshots and kind of put together their own custom reports too but that depends on your kind of compliance

40:50

situation and Randy when you're using the income plan is that how do you uh generate that the just from go if you go

40:58

back to the reports and you get the toggl on I just I'm going to go through and select or go ahead I'm sorry yeah

41:04

I'm just gonna go ahead yeah exactly right yeah so this is sort of a a little

41:11

more verbose um version of that main dashboard of you know what do we have

41:17

what can we spend what would change that and what would the change look like

41:23

um okay um I have a couple questions on here that are through about the

41:29

technology but wanted to address first since we have Jennifer here um someone

41:35

asked Can you Jennifer can you describe how the integration with Schwab has worked for you was it easy and how how

41:41

does it deal how does it impact impact implemented plans so uh and maybe you

41:49

can on that too after yeah I actually haven't done it um Taylor was kind enough to tell me how and I wrote down

How many clients are using Life Hub

41:55

the steps but I haven't done it because um well I I didn't want to take the

42:02

liberty of doing that without asking uh like my firm if that was okay and I uh

42:07

haven't it hasn't been relevant to that point yet because I only have 40 clients that are using it like I just looked the

42:14

other day and saw that I have about 40 households I have about 300 clients but I have 40 households for which I've built an income lab so I haven't done it

42:21

yet so I'm so sorry that I haven't um don't have much information on that for you but I'd like to know and I like to

42:28

hear that from you guys yeah so I I custody with Schwab an altruist and um and so my uh my schwab

42:35

clients um we've had a really nice integration you know once a month uh the

42:41

the system will go through and refresh the data and you get an email to that effect saying U or actually I think is

42:47

um Justin is it is it when you log in you get that message or I can't remember if it's yeah so you get an email saying it's been updated and then on your

42:55

household list um you would have a a little flag here

43:00

if anything was calling for an for an update um so you know month to month

43:06

it's it's not typical that you'd get an update every month maybe once a year once every two years that kind of thing but it is updating uh the balances and

43:13

moving you forward in time and all that I guess that's what I meant to say is like I I'm you're getting that

43:18

notification that the ju data or whatever the December data has now been refreshed in sight so you can go in and

43:24

see like oh yeah here's here's our three managed accounts that we have with the client and all those value all those

How does Life Hub flow through the plan

43:30

balances look exactly right so that's good and how does that you know flow through the plan and you could you could

43:35

you know spend as much time as you want going through the all the analysis of all the inputs um but it will will show

43:40

you you know it's going to make a little bit of a difference in that plan maybe a few dollars a month um as as values go

43:46

up and down um but yeah to be able to check in and see like over the last year like how has that changed for my client

43:54

you know well we started out with the plan in 2022 that said hey we can spend $10,000 a month and by April that plan

44:01

is like well we should probably B that back to like $9,700 or $9,300 a month so

44:07

yeah I mean that that's really the the impact that and the the effectiveness of this plan is it shows you kind of in

44:12

real time where we should be you know setting our lines yeah essentially what you're doing

44:18

when you implement a plan and the integration is really helpful here is is you're you're doing this right so like

44:24

it what you in the retirement stress test is showing you what it would have looked like if you had implemented a

44:30

plan so like in 2022 you'd be getting closer and closer to the lower guardrail this one never hit it but you can see

44:36

you know you're were less than $100,000 away from it and then kind of bounced around um so so that's what's happening

44:43

the other thing that you might see is a is an inflation adjustment so like this plan would have had an inflation

44:48

adjustment in March of 2022 that it didn't hit a guard rail it just it just purchasing power had gone down on enough

44:54

like hey now be worth worthwhile time to um to pop up from in this case 222 to

45:01

234 so you know it's a reasonably you know that's an important change for them

45:07

yep question about life Hub can you put notes on accounts that show up somewhere

Can you put notes on accounts

45:13

where so you can keep track of important things Regard in regards to that account also um and follow up to that Randy and

45:20

Jennifer how do you handle that kind of stuff uh when it comes to showing them

45:25

the life of you and keeping track of important things the answer on the software side

45:32

is not yet but that has been a a big ask from a lot of people so it uh it is

45:38

actually coming up um on our on our list of of new features um as something

45:44

that's uh becoming a higher priority so I would expect that you know within maybe sometime in the next couple

45:53

quarters I use one note um I just use like I have I'm not sure if you're familiar with one note but I love it I

46:00

use it I couldn't get by I couldn't get through a work day without it I have a page for every client that I speak with

46:06

I have a template for every client that I start working with as a new relationship like a a template that I

46:12

created that I go in copy paste into that new client page and fill it all out kind of as groundwork Discovery before

46:17

even speaking with the client so then I add my notes into there I'm assuming you're talking about notes is things

46:23

such as um you know I had the client take a look at what their potential Social Security would be currently if

46:29

they were to take it at age 62 63 64 so on whatever um or you know a note that

46:36

says client may consider taking a payout when they offer an early retirement and

46:41

he might take the severance package or you know something like that that's relevant to their plan along the way I

46:46

just keep all that in one note and have a separate place where I keep all

46:53

that yeah for me historically it's it's been asset map has that functionality inside of their little boxes and that's

46:59

where I can keep all those uh important

47:05

notes okay I can take a couple of these just that seem a little bit more on

47:10

features um that have a lot of Vates so the timeline somebody was asking like as

47:16

time passes will you you know will you still see 2024 when it's 2026 um

47:21

currently no uh that is an interesting idea and I could imagine um you know

47:26

extending at least the timeline into the past so you could see those um the the milestones and kind of see oh yeah

47:32

that's right that is when we paid off our mortgage um so I like that idea currently uh it does not um someone

47:39

asked about okay you know income and expenses are calendar year totals uh

47:45

everything else is beginning of year um values and that somebody found beginning of year to be a little confusing I can

47:51

totally see why it would be uh the the price of having at the end of year would would be that the current year would be

47:57

confusing so typically people look at this for this year and uh and think wait that's not what I have right now um so

48:03

it's sort of a trade-off um there's no perfect um solution there if people want the option to toggle between them we

48:09

could we could look at that as a as a possibility uh what about the killing

48:14

off of a client as they yeah that's interesting I let's ask uh Randy and Jennifer for in terms of plan length and

48:23

Longevity planning um do you kind of Ed the the defaults and the you know we have there's a lot of meat behind this

48:30

in sense that we base it all on mortality tables and things do you use those do you set you know dates of death

48:36

for clients how do how do you do that Jennifer you want to go ahead yeah I do

Life expectancy

48:41

do I do look at that regularly with clients when I'm looking at that Legacy in the Monte Carlo Sim but um it's a you

48:49

know it's very generous the life expectancy is I I'm very in the habit of

48:56

telling clients that we want to aim for you to live longer in in case you do and

49:02

uh I don't manually change any of that I think it's my understanding is it defaults to the you know the longer so

49:08

if there's there's a younger spouse with a longer life expectancy it's going to be based on their life

49:14

expectancy um I'd like to know what that what some of those differences are because

49:19

sometimes I noticed that it instead of say being a round number it might be I want to say 33 and a half years or

49:25

something like that so I don't know where that's coming from um but we want to overestimate on life expectancy as a

49:31

practice Yeah so this is when you have two clients it's using joint life

49:37

expectancy so it's trying to do a plan that is long enough that um you know

49:42

there's an expectation at least one of them would be alive uh at the end of it um to to some kind of risk level right

49:50

so the default is um you know to put it crudely you you'll outlive 60% of your

49:57

friends um right whereas if I put it over here okay I'm going to we're going to outlive 90% um so that's that's kind

50:04

of the way to think about it um you'll notice if I switch to you know let's put a date of death for Adam now it's now it

50:12

is like you said Jennifer basing the total length only on Jane so that's you can see kind of the difference between

50:18

single and Joint life expectancy from 33 to 26 um just by doing that um

50:26

have you found I I think the the question sort of expressed some trepidation about sort of putting a date

50:32

of death in a plan um just because it can be a little awkward um do you have thoughts on

50:38

that I don't I I wouldn't put a date of death for anyone because that's a little odd um and sounds like it might be a

50:46

prediction or a forecast and it's just a little bit strange but I would just go with the longer more generous life

50:51

expectancy I haven't had I mean in the past I worked for a company where we would ask about their parents and their

50:58

grandparents ages at passing or if they're currently living how old they are right now and use a little bit of an

51:04

Actuarial or make it appear that way at least and generate a life expectancy and then Round Up in fiveyear increments

51:11

from there and I found in the past that clients didn't really app I mean sometimes people got really into it and

51:16

gave you a lot of Superfluous information that was completely irrelevant like their cousins but and

51:22

then in some instances people would push back saying oh I don't think I'm going to live that long um but if but by using

51:29

the default that's in here I've never had any push back people always appreciate that we're looking at aiming for a longer life expectancy and it's a

51:37

nonissue and it's helpful as a planning tool so I prefer that

51:43

method it's just for for me it's just part of the conversation every year it's kind you know we've planned out here for

51:50

a long long time do you think you do you feel like we should be planning for you you know to live past 100 oh no no no no

51:58

I if I make it to 80 I'll be lucky okay well let's show you something that's more in line with that plan here's our

52:03

Baseline it's going to stay based upon this like 100 Year 95 year projection but if we looked at it at 80 here's what

52:09

it might look like so I like to I like to I like to to couch it from the client's perspective of wow here's what

52:15

my expectation is if I lived to 80 that would be great if I live longer than that I you know I don't know what is it what what does that mean well here's

52:21

what it means yeah and a couple things just because this can be confusing to

52:26

people that income lab we sort of have this you know really robust analytics

52:31

but we try to have visuals that are simple so that clients can understand um so this would be a case you know if if

52:38

Adam or Jane dies this Social Security will change um you know in this case it

52:44

looks like Adams is higher so in most situations Jane would just kind of take that over um we're taking that into

52:50

account so even though this graph makes it look like they both live the entire plan it's not assuming that they will

52:56

because if we did assume that we we'd be overstating what they can spend because it's very unlikely that they actually

53:01

both will live to the end of this plan so there's math that's being done on the back end to make sure you're not over

53:08

promising and underd delivering but this is just kind of a simplified graphs that you don't have the wait a second you

53:14

know why did Adam Social Security stop at exactly that date are you saying that's when I'm going to die you can do

53:20

that by stating those dates of death and sometimes that's uh important you know if there's like a a terminal diagnosis

53:26

of some part there are definitely planning situations where that's where that's helpful um but that's what that

53:32

just because you see everything go through the end of the plan year does not mean that that mortality risk is not taken into

53:39

account uh one last question then we'll wrap it up uh I'm under the impression

53:44

that Baseline expenses are not factored into spending capacity how is that accounted for as a

53:52

reduction yeah so this is definitely if if you're new to the software this is one of the um the the kind of more um

54:00

you know the newer ways of of thinking um so there's there's two ways to run a plan in income lab and the default is

54:08

just put in the resources so that's basically assets and income and have the

54:14

software figure out what the spending capacity of the household is so that's

54:20

that's this this number that process doesn't require you do any expense planning you could do zero um and you're

54:27

just basically saying like well you got 171 you're going to live on that right you're going to um Can does that sound

54:32

good now that doesn't mean you shouldn't do expense planning but the next step is to add things and typically it's by

54:39

priority so if there's you know I we we talked about gifting or long-term care

54:44

or vacations you know big things paying off your mortgage certainly an important one and then eventually you might get

54:49

down to itemizing the kind of ongoing stuff um so if you're running a a a plan

54:55

that asks that question what can I spend you're right that um you actually don't need to do any Baseline expense planning

55:02

if you're using light PB heavily you probably should put something in just to you know fill the picture out a little

55:08

bit um but people are sometimes a little confused to look at this and say what's this income Surplus you know why do I

55:14

have an extra 5100 you're basically just saying well this is what you could spend this is how you've told me you're going

55:20

to spend it and you haven't accounted for $5,100 of it that's fine you're just living with within your means right um

55:27

You can however build a plan that exactly hits your Baseline expenses so

55:33

um and this will give me a chance to show the new um user interface on the expenses tab under Baseline expenses you

55:41

can see what am I doing with this plan I'm asking how much can I spend I could just change that to how

55:48

can I spend $10,000 now it's telling me that right

55:53

and now my Baseline EXP expenses really matter a lot right if I change this number to 15,000 oh now I'm going to be

56:00

shooting for that so that's there's just two kinds of plans for different purposes um uh but uh the what can I

56:08

spend plan um yeah that's that may be unique to income lab that you can do

56:13

that I love that I used to do um expenses for all my clients and then I felt like that mudded the waters because

56:21

as I had mentioned kind of by default or trial and error um ended up entering a

56:26

lot of the variables with client on the phone sharing screen with them going through that everything and then kind of

56:31

stopped at before entering the expenses saying okay well let's look at your spending capacity before we enter

56:37

expenses and that I felt like was actually more helpful for the client because then it wasn't important because

56:42

you know clients automatically I think it's natural to think about your expenses from a bottomup perspective

56:48

when you do a top- down analysis of expenses or of spending when you do that with a person who's still in their

56:53

working career and has a has earned income uh they get a better sense of what they're spending and I feel like

56:59

that really alleviates because there's a lot of un confusion around the unknown and what if I forgot an expense right

57:05

when you look at it annually from the top down clients can see that more clearly and then when this kind of in

57:11

that same Spirit shows the spending capacity clients are like okay cool I think I'll be fine because I think that

57:17

that's about what my income is now and I'm making every I'm making end meet so I'll be fine or I'll have extra or

57:22

whatever it is you don't have to think about how much you're going to spend on groceries in 10 years because that can

57:28

be stressful Randy what are your thoughts on expense planning yeah I think that

57:34

you you almost have to take it at the client level I think there are definitely clients that they want to see every little like where show me where my

57:41

mortgage stops and show me you know I've got these term insurance policies you I want to see that in my budget where you

57:48

okay all right let's go look at the the detail inside your Baseline expenses let's go look at that are how much do

57:54

you think you're spending $1,850 a month on food wow really are you sure about that um you know we can we could you

58:00

know I'm sure you've got some fancy reports but when we put these in and kind of show them line by line um it

58:07

really helps the client feel like they've been heard and that you've acknowledged and shown them yes you can

58:13

go ahead and spend that money it's in the plan it's covered you're good to go and I think that that for me is is

58:19

really one of the biggest uh impacts that income lab has had is giving clients the permission to to continue

58:27

doing what they're doing with comfort and you know peace of mind and we are at the top of the hour

58:34

thank you Randy thank you Jennifer um we do have some unanswered questions that we will get you all answers to um so

58:41

thank you all for submitting questions thank you for your engagement uh Justin anything further to add just a huge

58:48

thank you to Randy and Jennifer and everybody for for being with us I think this was awesome thank you all for

58:54

having yes yep thank you