Hey everybody! Welcome back! Next chapter, real Estate.

Today I’ve got an awesome guest name is Lynn Toomey, and she is a financial life coach, and I am sure a lot of you could use her advice, especially when you inherit a property, whether you should sell it or if you do sell it, what to do with the funds.

But anyway, Lynn, I’m so glad you’re here.

Hi, Annie. Thanks for having me.

Yay! So you I think are going to bring such a wealth of knowledge to a lot of my audience that really a lot of times their inheritance is their retirement plan. So tell me a little bit about what you do and how you work with your clients.

Yeah, sure. So I actually own two companies. One is her retirement, which is what you see behind me, and that’s where I focus on educating women primarily and coaching them through what I call a retirement readiness program. Because so many women either have a lot that they’re doing and bringing to the table, they’ve saved, they’ve worked hard, and they’re like, okay, well what do we do next?

So they’re not really sure what to do next. They want to leave their corporate profession, maybe they do want to retire, they want to start doing more gardening and start playing with the grandkids and traveling. And then there’s other women that want to redefine retirement and maybe they don’t really technically want to retire. They want to start a business or they want to start a nonprofit, whatever it is. Whether you want to fully retire, semi-retire, never retire, her retirement is about educating you about topics that you just might not be familiar with.

We take a complete inventory of everything you have. We identify your financial gaps, your risks, your opportunities. We really give you full insight into what you have and what you might be missing well before you get to retirement so you can fill those gaps. I say assess and address the gaps is really number one. A lot of women, we’ve never retired before, so we don’t even know the questions to ask.

So I have a masterclass that I teach. It’s a free class that I teach, and then I have a seven to eight hour master course on demand that you can take. I have a book called Retirement Solved that you could purchase on her retirement web. I have a lot of other resources, a social security kit, I have an estate planning kit. Lots of information and materials to help you, as I say, know more, have more and live more.

That’s my motto for her retirement. So that’s on the her retirement side. I also co-own a financial advisory practice. We have a couple of CFPs on the team, and so really that’s about, okay, you got a 401k, how are you going to create an income for life from that 401k? How are you going to reallocate that 401k? How are you going to cut yourself a paycheck from that 401k? How are you going to make those social security decisions that need to be made? Medicare tax planning is huge.

So many people are like, okay, Roth conversions. I’ve heard about ’em. Do I do a Roth conversion? Or how do I pay less taxes? How do I figure out Medicare? That’s just a whole nother thing, estate planning. So that’s really one stop for all your retirement planning needs regardless of how you plan to retire or as I like to say, it’s all about living a work optional lifestyle is the ultimate goal, right?

Gosh, I love that.

You don’t have to work if you don’t want to. So those are the two companies. And the fact of the matter is that our populate is aging. There’s going to be 30 trillion in assets transferred from baby boomers to Gen X and millennials. And while I say to people, an inheritance isn’t a guaranteed income source in retirement, it will potentially be an income source for many, many people and women, the average age of widowhood is 59. So yeah, it’s so young. But the fact of the matter is you could be inheriting your spouse’s, your spouse’s assets, and the question is, are women in the case of her retirement and people are they prepared? And you probably see it when people inherit a house and they sell it. They might become overnight millionaires. Yes.

They person saying what to do with it,

What do I do with it? It’s like winning the lottery. Totally. Yeah. So what do we do with it? So while I say to people, when we talk to people and they say, well, I’m a perfect example. My dad has a lot and I have siblings, and when he passes, assuming he passes before us, who knows at this point we’ll get an inheritance closing in on 60. I’m like, I’m not counting on that. It’s not part of my plan. If it comes, I’m going to have a plan for what I’ll do with it. I don’t know the amount. I have no insight into that because he’s not very forthcoming. Whatever it is to me, it will be gravy, it will be what do we do with it when we get it? But for those people that have more surety, they’ve talked to their parents, they know what they’re going to get. They know the house is going to be sold. You really need to plan with everything. With everything in life. I think you need to plan, plan, particularly with money. You want to be very intentional, purposeful and have the plan. Invest in a planner if you can’t figure it out yourself, for sure.

Yeah. But gosh, I think it’s one thing you should really higher zone to help with because there are so many moving parts when you’re looking at retirement, like you said with 401k, social security, maybe life insurance from a spouse passing life. There just could be a lot of different, and I do think I always say a confused button does nothing. And it’s like, I think

It’s the same situation with people. The options they just get confused with. So they just sort of limp along thinking they’ll just take a little here, a little there, and they really have no plan. So I think having you as a resource, oh, it’s huge. Someone that can kind of look at the big picture.

Yeah, yeah, looking at the big picture. And then tax planning is a big part of it. A lot of people don’t understand tax planning and a lot of CPAs, good CPAs, but they look, a lot of them look historically at what happened and they do tax returns. They’re not really focused on retirement tax planning. So I kind of equate it analogous to you, your realtor, but you focus in on senior market and inheritance tax planning is kind of the same thing. We are very focused on how do you efficiently take your inheritance or how do you leave your money and your property efficiently in a tax savvy way to your family? And then how do you receive that and what do you do with that money or property in the most tax efficient manner? And I think for the Gen X population that will inherit baby boomer assets, like you said at the outset, this could be a big part of their retirement.

You want to be really, really smart with what you do with that. Because the whole idea of retirement, it’s not really about how much you have in assets. If you think about it, you could have an asset, we talked about this earlier. You could have an asset, but if it’s not producing income and income is what you need, income and retirement’s more important than assets with housing, turning that dead asset your home, you have housing wealth, you can turn that into income. So it’s really about don’t tell me how much you have in assets, tell me about how much income you’re producing and is it enough to fund your lifestyle? And so that’s really the strategic, I call it kind of part soul searching, part numbers crunching that we do with people in their later years.

Yeah, I know the later years is catching up to a lot of us and we’re like, wait, what? That includes me. When did that happen?

I still feel 25 in my mind.

Yeah, exactly. I think a lot of us like, wait, how did I get to be this age? And I don’t know what I’m doing. So it’s so great to have used that resource to start the planning no matter what age. If you haven’t started yet, just get on it. But I love that you guys are looking at all the pieces. It’s not just one aspect, super valuable information. And so can you help people in any state or how does that work?

Yes, we can. We pretty much because of Covid, kind of the silver lining of covid is we are located in Massachusetts. So a lot of our client base, historic client base was Massachusetts, New Hampshire, new England States, and then inevitably North Carolina, Florida because people that were clients here relocating. But with Covid, we started teaching retirement planning classes online. We teach typically once a quarter. We teach a six hour class online about retirement planning. And we do that over Zoom and we advertise it all across the country. I wouldn’t say we we’re licensed in every state, but what was the new state recently? Arkansas, I think. So it takes a week to get licensed in that state. So it’s pretty simple, easy process to do. And we meet someone and they want our help from a state we’re not licensed in, we get licensed. So as long as people are comfortable meeting us over Zoom, and then for people that are really kind of hell bent on, I want to be able to go sit across the table and actually shake the person’s hand, give them a hug, whatever it is, we are starting a network of your retirement advisor approved specialists who we can refer you to, at least in your state.

It might not be in your community down the street, but at least someone that could potentially meet with you face-to-face easier than we could. But you know what, today everybody’s doing stuff online.

Exactly, exactly. And I think so much is finding the right persons, even if they just took your six hour course first, they’ll probably, oh my gosh, I like the way they’re thinking. And then hire you. That’s a great avenue to get to know your style and how it works. They’ll probably,

Yeah, I mean we were just talking with a client. I was talking with a prospect I guess at this point, I dunno, a month ago. And she was okay working on her retirement program. I call it a retirement readiness program that I take women through. And it can be with your spouse also your partner.

But her husband was kind of like, well, I’d like someone local. And she was okay working with someone remotely. So what I said was, well, we’re going to give your husband the guide to finding the right retirement advisor for you. And if you can find someone local that checks all these boxes, because it’s not an investment advisor, it’s not that person that helped you grow your assets because that’s really what they have focused on. They don’t have the retirement training and focus. So I’m like, take the checklist. If you can find someone locally, great. Our odds are you won’t because there’s just not a lot of people.

Yeah, I haven’t heard about it much.

It’s just like you were saying, in the real estate market, people might add retirement specialists because they see 10, 11,000 people turning 65 every day and they’re like, I better get a piece of this action. They’re not just an add-on, it’s not really what they’re focused on.

And that’s so interesting. You bring that up as you in focusing on the retirement aspect versus most focused on the growth aspect. And it’s got to be two separate things. So that’s

That. Totally different strategies because when you’re younger and you’re growing your assets, the biggest thing is you can be very aggressive. You can have 90% in stocks and 10% of your portfolio in bonds because you have time on your hands. You can withstand the market ups and downs outside of other financial strategies like college funding or saving for a house. So there’s not a lack of financial planning that’s needed. You could still benefit from financial planning, but as you approach retirement, all you have to do is take a look at my milestone chart. I have a milestone chart that I provide to people, and it basically says at all these different milestones, there’s a number of decisions, a number of risks, and a number of opportunities depending upon your age. Well, as you age, these become more numerous. So there’s all these opportunities and these decisions that need to be made. Many people aren’t equipped to make those decisions. I mean, they can make the decision, but they could make a better decision that would improve their financial outcome with some help.

And it doesn’t have to be huge. The idea is fees are an issue in the absence of value. So you have to look at the value that you’re getting, and if that retirement advisor is going to help you not leave money on the table with social security is going to secure your health or a long-term care incident, insulate you from that is going to set up your portfolio. So you don’t lose any market. I mean, you don’t lose any money if the market goes down 30%. Like all these things. The whole idea as a retirement advisor can protect you from these risks. You get an inheritance and you don’t go blow it on, I dunno, a boat, maybe you want to blow it on a boat, but at least you’ve made the decision with the information. Exactly,

Exactly. Yeah. That fits your plan. The boat is fine as part of the plan, but not if you don’t have that plan. And then all of a sudden a year later realized, wow, votes are expensive to maintain and that you weren’t prepared, right? Yeah.

Had a woman who inherited a lake house and it was something that had been in the family and she wanted to preserve those memories of having the lake house. So a typical advisor might say, okay, we’ll put that down as an expense. You have maintenance and blah, blah, blah. But I kind of like to go to the next level and say, well, is keeping the house really what you want? This is an opportunity to really go deep and discover what you want. My job is to help you go to that next level and try to think about these things. And so as we got talking, she was like, well, it’s really the couple weeks in the summer bringing the family together. And I was like, okay, well, do you want to Airbnb a place for a couple weeks in the summer and use that money?

You worried about your healthcare? How about we do a health savings account or purchase an annuity or whatever it might be? And so by digging a little deeper, she came to the realization that maybe this wasn’t something that she wanted to keep. Interesting. Yeah. Or you deal with this. I’m sure I thinking about my dad and his properties, if I co-own them with my brothers and their rentals, I don’t know how that’s going to work out. I don’t think I want to be in business, the rental business with my siblings. That’s a lot of trouble. I love my siblings, I love my siblings, but we’re not in business together.

Right, right. Yeah. And that’s a whole different emotional piece of this sibling aspect of who’s in charge, who’s overstepping, who’s taking too much control. You get some rare and past emotion as a popup moving forward, you’re smarts. Think about it like that.

Yeah, I mean, I’ve even talked with people that have rental real estate and it’s been an income stream, and it could be somewhat a passive income stream, but I always say’s, we do this exercise of identifying your guaranteed income sources. And people always say, well, I want to put my rental properties on the guaranteed income side. And I’m like, oh, no, no. Because what if people move out and the house is vacant for six months or a year, and what about those maintenance expenses? It’s a job. It’s still going to be, do you want to be 70 in the middle of the night getting a call from someone renting? It’s not all it’s cracked up to be potentially. You want to get rid of that rental property, take the money and do something else with it. But oftentimes people just haven’t gone through the thinking. It’s put soul searching, part numbers, crunching. You really have to search and see what it is that you want to do. And money’s just a tool to help you do

That. Yeah, exactly. Oh, I love this. I really do love a big overview, really into retirement years. Like he said, there are a lot of people these days that don’t really want to fully retire. They just might want to put their job that they’ve had for 30 years and do some other small business or something. Having a plan and someone that can help them overlook it all and dig and see exactly what they want, I guess a huge resource. Yep. Well, I love all this, Lynn. I’m going to have all your contact information below so everybody have a look at websites to different programs. It’s never too late to start a plan. Don’t think, oh my gosh, I’m too embarrassed. I’m in my sixties and I haven’t thought about. It’s like start today. Time’s going to go by no matter when. Get a plan in place. Lynn, fantastic resourcing.

So glad we met. Likewise, I think we connected on LinkedIn, I think. Yeah, I really appreciate all this insight and love that you’re helping people on this aspect. It’s so needed.

So thank you again. And everyone reach out to Lynn.

All right, thanks, Annie.

Hey, have a good one everybody.

See you next time.