Fire Your Financial Advisor?

Show Transcript

Investing for Retirement

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: Are you preparing for retirement? Already there? Are you working with a financial advisor, but wonder if you could be doing better? Stay with us. 

[00:00:08] Greg Aler was born and raised in small town Ohio, and after attending law school, he worked at one of the largest law firms in the world.

[00:00:18] Greg went on to build three multimillion dollar companies before the age of 40, an elder care law firm, a financial services firm, a real estate company. He rethinks and rebuilds industries to help service the other 99% of America. Greg has his own tv, radio, and podcast show. It's called Expedition Retirement, and the only thing he loves more than cooking, scuba boating and laughing with friends on his back porch is being with his wife, Fernanda, and three kiddos, Lily, Lola, and Louie.

[00:00:56] I guess Greg likes Ls.

[00:00:59] Okay. Hey, we're happy to have Greg with us and lean to the left today to talk about financial planning for retirement, which is really an important topic. And I can tell you that from experience. 

[00:01:15] Greg, on your website in which you promote your book, " Fire Your Financial Advisor, 40 years of Greed and Exploitation of the American Retiree," you say this, there are wolves everywhere. Shockingly, most retirees have no idea what is going on with their money or worse what they're being charged. Can you please explain? 

[00:01:42] Greg Aler: First of all, thanks for having me, Bob. I really appreciate it having me on your show today. And happy to explain it. When I wrote Fire Your Financial Advisor, one of the things that I was shooting for was to culminate all the experience I had.

[00:01:56] I was an estate planning attorney for almost a decade, and I got to see behind the scenes what was going on with a lot of financial plans because they would have us come in. Financial advisors would bring my firm in to help do some of the legal stuff. So I gotta understand how they operated, how they worked, how they fought about people's money.

[00:02:13] Yeah. And when I started to digging, I didn't like what I saw. I, think when I wrote the book, it started off to be just a, call to action on, just highlighting some of the things people should focus on and when I laid out the history it was pretty, devious, what happened.

[00:02:30] Because if you, Bob, if you think about it, in the 1980s, no one was really retiring, right? You had pensions still. 1978 was when the 401k was invented, so people really didn't have any idea what 401ks meant what IRAs meant. And what a mutual fund was. And I don't know if you, if some of your listeners remember, but there's only like three television channels, right?

[00:02:52] No internet, no access to information. So when you have all of the power and all of the services controlled with the information being withheld, They're along for the ride. Financial advisors were dictating the market, what they charged, what they sold, and retirees didn't have any other options and didn't know what they were doing.

[00:03:14] They just knew that, Hey, I got my own account. Now I've got this statement. I don't know what any of these things are. But don't worry, I know this guy or this gal I've I they, go to church with me and, I think that's where it all started, Bob, is that, that the problem really manifested itself with a system.

[00:03:32] When the pension started to die and got replaced by these accounts, they had no access to information to check for alternatives or even know what they were being sold. 

[00:03:40] Bob Gatty: Okay.

[00:03:42] I can see even today with the information that is available is still a very confusing thing.

[00:03:48] and I know in my own case, I've been working with this firm for many years. And, I ask myself all the time am I doing the right thing?

[00:03:59] I've given them a lot of authority, a lot of power. And I watch as things happen that I cannot control, like Putin attacking Ukraine and the market taking a huge dive, which has not come back from and, in my own case, I've lost like $70,000 from my meager retirement fund. As a result, 

[00:04:26] Greg Aler: yeah. It's funny because if you really think about their model, And their model being the financial advisor model. Yeah. Their whole goal is to keep you confused and chasing a number, right? You need a million to retire. You need 750,000 to retire.

[00:04:40] You need 1.5 to retire. But what about the cost of living? What about inflation? And they have you so scared that they have you all of your nest egg in the market where it may be great if you retire in the right year. Or if you need the money in the right year, but what about the year that if you just retired in 2021 and you had your life savings and all of a sudden 25% of it's gone.

[00:05:02] These are the things we talk about all the time, and I, we always try to tell people, you don't need to drive 90 miles an hour to go to the grocery store. Yeah. You could drive 35 and you'll get there. And, that's the message this book's trying to show you is there's more than one route in retirement and you don't have to take on all this risk. A lot of times you don't need to take on any risk cuz you've already made it. 

[00:05:24] Bob Gatty: So your book makes a case that financial advisors have massively failed retirees. How is it that they've massively failed retirees? 

[00:05:36] Greg Aler: I, first I, always wanna say I'm sure there's some really nice financial advisors. I always feel like I have to give a disclaimer. I'm not saying these people are bad people. Yeah. But I do think they're part of a bad system. And Uhhuh, that system has indoctrinated the Sunday commercials, the whales, the arrows, the rocks, the Edelman, the Fishers, the Raymonds, the Edwards and, all of them circle around this dynamic of being an investment centric basically ideology for retirement, meaning everything's about selling and buying investments. And that's the only way you can, that's the only thing your financial advisor does. And they may talk about other things, but at the end of the day, their entire world is about, Hey I gotta sell you this investment.

[00:06:19] We gotta do this, we have to do this with this stock, or this mutual fund or this bond. And the way they failed retirees is they're missing the point. There's a lot of other things that have to happen in 2023 to successfully navigate retirement. The healthcare crisis where we're seeing astronomical numbers.

[00:06:37] Being an elder law attorney of Alzheimer's and dementias and, Parkinson's and, like addressing these catastrophic costs are void in of almost every financial plan we've ever seen. Yeah. Then you have IRAs that are million dollar IRAs that have huge tax liabilities that are never discussed with clients.

[00:06:55] You've gotta have the tax. And the legal and the financial kind of triangle to, work together to navigate, retire, Bob to, make it short and sweet, you have to do stuff. You actually have to have services. You can't just sell investments and call yourself a planner for retirement. 

[00:07:12] Bob Gatty: Now, many retirees have seen their IRAs and other retirement plans grow significantly. Why should they care about the fees that their financial advisor charges them to manage their retirement accounts? If they're doing well in the market, if they feel like, okay, I'm doing okay. I don't really give a crap if this guy charges me whatever it is. 

[00:07:37] Greg Aler: I think you're right. I, think for the last 2010 or 11 to 2021, that was probably a lot of people's reaction. And what I can only tell them, Bob, is the power of compounding is a pretty powerful thing. If, you're saying that you don't care what someone's charging, and let's say the average fee we see for a $500,000 IRA is around $10,000 all in a year, you got about a 1% fee of advisor fees and 1% for mutual fund investment fees.

[00:08:05] So you're paying $10,000 a year. Bob, that's $300,000 over a retirement. So I, think it's hard for people to realize that this stuff can really add up, and that's the secret, evil genius of their industry is that they take just enough so that they get the response that you just said, ah, it's not that much.

[00:08:23] I'm making some money. Why should I care? When the market goes backwards though, Bob. Guess what, they're still charging their 1%. So that's when people seem to be a little bit more in tune with what they're being charged from their advisor when they end up adding 1% loss or adding 2% to a stock market loss.

[00:08:42] And, for what again, they're just riding the markets that you could probably do for more or less free if you just bought some EDFS or ETFs on Fidelity or Vanguard.

[00:08:53] Bob Gatty: I often wonder whether or not it would be worthwhile choosing one of these companies that are, that they claim to be a fiduciary, where they're, they have to, Fisher Investments, for example.

[00:09:12] They've got an ad all the time that says that they have that they're a fiduciary. And so their responsibility is to do what's best for the client, not what's best for themselves. Is that bullshit? What the hell is 

[00:09:26] that? 

[00:09:27] Greg Aler: So let's just do some math and we'll let the listeners decide. So if, yeah. You work at Fisher, they're saying is if you do better, we do better. Yeah. And what they don't really say is, but if you do crappy, we still do pretty good. So Fisher Investments charges about 1.25%, if I recall. Maybe 1.3. Wow. On their first half a million. So I guess my mind goes to, holy moly, that's a pretty big number.

[00:09:56] How could that be in the best interest of anyone? Yeah. And, if you have a million bucks, you're paying $13,500 to your Fisher guy, just to him or her, not for the investments they could be selling you. And I would challenge anyone to say the deep, dark secret of the fiduciary lie. We always laugh when people say they're fiduciaries cause they have no idea what it means.

[00:10:19] What's best interest mean? Like I, I don't know. It's a subjective standard by the provider. At the end of the day, if you take a step back Bob and you say, you know what? What are they doing? I'm paying 1% or I'm paying 1.35% with Fisher. But here's the dynamic no one really wants to think about. If you spend your money, they take a pay cut.

[00:10:43] How can anyone ever operate in your best interest that aren't aligned with your interest? Because if you go out and buy a boat or you buy a CD cuz you want a conservative investment or put money in a money market, or go on a vacation, if you spend those dollars, that Fisher Advisor takes a pay cut and you can't convince me that doesn't influence their commercials, their advice.

[00:11:06] Why are they always saying, what about the cost of inflation? What about the cost of living? You need a million dollars to retire because they want you to keep your money in their system so that they could keep charging 1.35%. And if you take money out of their system ever, they take a pay cut. How can that be a fiduciary standard?

[00:11:24] I just don't, I just don't buy it. 

[00:11:27] Bob Gatty: Okay. I get that. So what what, are we supposed to do? People like me? I'm already retired. Long time ago and what are we supposed to do? We have to rely on help. I'm not a financial expert. Most of our listeners are probably not financial experts. We need help. We don't know what to do. 

[00:11:49] Greg Aler: I, think you go back to Bob. I believe that you've ran a successful business, had a had a successful life and, most retirees have budgeted, they've paid for their house. Yeah. They've paid for their kids' school and they didn't have someone babysitting their money. Yeah. And I'm not saying that you should do it alone, but I guess my point being is you've been able to make smart decisions based on the value of services and cost. So the first thing everyone at home should do is just figure out to the penny what they're paying their advisor and then what they're paying for their investments. And if they can't figure it out, you can obviously we have a website, get your roadmap.com. We will do the calculation for you. But if you can do it on your own, you can go through your statements. If you know what percentage you're paying, figure out what you're paying.

[00:12:35] And then from there you can sit there and say, okay, I'm paying $15,000. What else do I pay $15,000 for? Am I getting the value? And if the answer is, I don't think so, then start kicking tires because What I believe a fair way to charge for services is a flat fee. So whether you use Golden Reserve or use anybody, if you have a flat fee system, that means no matter how many zeros are in your bank accounts, I'm charging the same for everyone based on the work I'm doing, not on the value of your estate. And to me that's very fair. That just feels better. It feels better than an arbitrary 1% because they always try to make an argument. If you have more money, we do more work. But that's, that doesn't seem to be ever be the case. It just seems to be they're just pushing the same buttons and it's spitting it out in these investments and a way they go and they just get paid more.

[00:13:24] So I challenge everyone to think through that of what they're paying, and then look for that flat fee and then hopefully, if they get real lucky, they can find someone that includes legal services. We cover, we pay for our clients legal services. We pay for our clients tax returns. We build 'em a tax map.

[00:13:41] So if you can find all of those services versus a bunch of business cards they give you to call people, and then you gotta go pay and deal with some other professionals. To me, that's a recipe for disaster and, when you can get everything under one roof, that's what I would look for in addition to the flat fee.

[00:13:56] Bob Gatty: So what is, what did you say, golden? What 

[00:13:59] Greg Aler: Golden Reserve is, my company. But there's other companies like us around we're not the only people that have figured out some of this stuff. So if, the listeners can find golden reserve.com outlines the system and the services.

[00:14:12] But if, you're looking for people that are local, and I think there's a lot of other folks that are starting to think like we do, which is. Flat fees and more professional services under one roof because that's what people need to actually have a retirement plan that works. Yeah. 

[00:14:28] Bob Gatty: Way back when, I first started working with this this guy not feeling confident in my own ability to manage my own portfolio, I pretty much gave him carte blanche to do whatever he thought was the right thing to do.

[00:14:44] Now I'm thinking that's probably a mistake. 

[00:14:47] Greg Aler: It doesn't make you any different than anybody else. You shouldn't feel bad. At that time, that was probably the only option, right? There wasn't a, there wasn't an internet, right? There wasn't an ability to, find information.

[00:14:59] There wasn't msnbc, there wasn't Fox Business, there wasn't CNN Business you didn't have outlets to find and grab more information to help you navigate financial stuff. It just wasn't available. So you just relied on your circle and your inner groupings of people and they knew that. And that's why some of the fees and some of the mutual funds, and you've seen a lot of in my book I talk about the villain chapter, Edward Jones.

[00:15:23] They were sued for about a quarter billion dollars by the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice over the last. 15 years that no one talks about because of the egregious nature of some of their fees and their costs, because they went after the smaller cities across America.

[00:15:39] Bob Gatty: Okay. How can retirees increase their own financial literacy? Greg, 

[00:15:47] Greg Aler: it's a great question. I, think it you turn the corner, it's hard to find fact from fiction. There's so much white noise. There's so much stuff to click on. Yeah. But I, do think starting to do some research and understanding the dynamics of what you want in retirement? Like some people really are concerned about going in a nursing home, so you have to make sure that the, planners that you talk to actually have tools for that. There's a lot of people that are tax driven, Hey, I've got a million dollars in an ira. I gotta figure out how to take that out over my lifetime and not pay too much tax, but I want to get it out of there so my kids don't pay the tax.

[00:16:23] Okay. You gotta make sure you have a CPA involved. So when, you're going through and hopefully educating yourself there's gotta be anybody that's retired gets something in the mail probably every week from a dinner seminar or workshop, right? And I always caution those because a lot of times they're just trying to sell you a 1% fee or an annuity, but they could be a starting point.

[00:16:47] As long as you have the discipline not to just hire the first one you go to, to start educating yourself and getting a free meal. And then I think from there, just keep building on your questions and hopefully you can find a there's a lot of great literature. There's a lot of great retirement ready checklists, you see 'em all over the place. Every place has their own spiel and, spin and brand with retirement workshops. But I, think going out there, there is data now where you can start to find some good stuff. 

[00:17:18] Bob Gatty: Do you use those do you do those retirement dinner things with where you send out a notice and invite people to come and blah, blah, blah.

[00:17:27] Greg Aler: I've done about everything over the last 15 years from my estate planning shop to my financial services company. Seminars still be, are still one of the probably more engaging ways of getting people to come in. You buy 'em a steak dinner, you try to get 'em to listen. You tell the story and if you can it can be a good lead source.

[00:17:47] We do a lot more radio and TV now. But we do the occasional seminar. We still do some seminars here and there across Ohio, the old throwbacks. But you do get a lot of plate lickers. There's people that just show up just for the food, that's for sure. 

[00:18:00] Bob Gatty: Plate lickers. Oh man, I was thinking about becoming a plate licker. 

[00:18:06] Greg Aler: You should, 

[00:18:08] Bob Gatty: but I, always stay away from, going to those things, mainly because I don't want to be bored and, secondly I don't know. I just. I, don't I, don't know. I, get suspicious anytime anybody offers me anything for free. There's never anything for free.

[00:18:25] And it just yeah. So I always stay away from that. But you're saying that it's not a bad idea to go to 'em, right? 

[00:18:33] Greg Aler: You get free dinner. I say make a date night, if you gotta you've grabbed another couple, you go, and worst case scenario, you may get some good information. You may like the person.

[00:18:41] Yeah. They're really good salesman. Be careful. Yeah. They, they're those, things aren't cheap. Mailers are not cheap. Those are about $20,000 an event to get out and make happen. So those things don't pay for themselves. 

[00:18:56] Bob Gatty: 20 grand per event? 

[00:18:58] Greg Aler: Think about it. You gotta mail out.

[00:19:00] Think about the cost of postage, just do the math back your way into it. You get about a 1% response rate. All the cost of those events are all postage. 

[00:19:07] Bob Gatty: Okay. So you then it's the cost of the event too, right? You gotta pay for all these dinners. 

[00:19:12] Greg Aler: And, depending on where you're going, if it's a fancy steak place, you may have a couple grand tops.

[00:19:17] Yeah. But for the most part, all of the cost is in the mailer. 

[00:19:20] Bob Gatty: Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. 

[00:19:22] Greg Aler: Not the paper either. It's it's just posted. You got 45 cents or whatever times that by 10,000. Sure. Yeah. 20,000. Could you get about a 1% answer rate? Wow. 

[00:19:33] Bob Gatty: That's a lot. Okay. You mentioned annuity a minute ago.

[00:19:39] Is, a fixed index. What is a fixed index annuity and how can it help? 

[00:19:44] Greg Aler: Sure. So, like you have three types of annuities. You have a fixed, you have a fixed index, and you have a variable. The fixed annuity is just it sounds, it's just like a cd. Except for it's tax deferred. So I always tell people like, when you're, getting, we're getting a lot of questions.

[00:20:00] Should I get an annuity or should I get a cd? And there's reasons to do both. But one of the things about a fixed annuity or fixed index annuity if, you're there, is that it grows tax deferred. Meaning when you get a cd, you gotta pay tax on it every year. And that adds up where with the fixed index annuity or fixed annuity, it grows tax deferred. Okay? It, may not sound like a lot, but if, you put a hundred thousand annuity in a four 5%, Annuity or in a hundred thousand dollars in a cd and over the course of retirement, at the end of the retirement, your annuity's gonna beat your CD by about a hundred thousand dollars.

[00:20:35] Okay? And, it's because of the power of compounding. Because of that interest on interest is growing and getting bigger and bigger. You can grow your. Principle amount faster. But the fixed annuity, just like it sounds, Bob, it's 4% for five years, 4% for seven years, 5% for 10 years, whatever the case may be, you get a fixed rate permanently for the duration of the product.

[00:20:57] The fixed index annuity is a newer product. Fixed annuity's been around for eons. Fixed index annuity is more of a hybrid product that says, you know what, you can mirror an index. And if the index goes up, you can participate in some of it. So instead of just having a fixed rate, if the stock market goes up 10%, maybe they say you could participate up to 7%.

[00:21:20] So you're, Annuity will grow 7% that year, and then next year it resets again. But if the stock market goes down the, cool part about fixed index annuities is that you'll never lose any principles, so it'll have a 0% floor. So your fixed index annuity will never go backwards, which is, what is the appeal.

[00:21:36] That's the main appeal to, to, to folks. Fixed index annuities and fixed annuities usually both have 10% access features. Every year, unlike a cd, you could take 10% out and not have a penalty. People like that a lot of times they don't take it out and they don't use it, but it's just a nice psychological thing to have.

[00:21:52] If you want some access to an investment, it's not locked away. But those are the fixed index. Annuities are the most popular investment in the country right now. Everyone's, cuz of the interest rates, right? The Fed keeps hiking the interest rates, people are getting a little bit more bang for their buck.

[00:22:07] So everyone's driving money into CDs. Money markets and annuities. It's been the most, money's gone into annuities and it breaks records month after month because of the popularity of the higher interest rates and the fed's talking about bumping once, one or two more times this year.

[00:22:23] So I can't see that going away, at least in 2023 because people are trying to lock it in. And who knows what the stock market's gonna do. Just like a it always is. The stock market does what it does. Like you said, a war could happen, a war could not happen. Some kind of new invention can make all the difference.

[00:22:39] Sometimes it's, not even has nothing to do with politics. It's sometimes it's just the world and life. Like things just happen. And, the mortgage back crisis was a crazy thing. the.com bust in 2000. These are things that no one could have really predicted.

[00:22:56] Exactly. But they happen. 

[00:22:58] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Yeah. I just know one thing and, that is that during the course of my planning for retirement and then retirement, I had a goal and I, and I reached the goal, and then things happen Soon as I seemed like I reached that goal, shit happens. And the last time I reached that goal putin decides to go ahead and, attack Ukraine. And, the market tanked. And and I've never have recovered. So I'm not anywhere near my goal. Now my goal is oh, gone. 

[00:23:36] Greg Aler: I, I think Bob, it's a great point of like, when do you take the chips off the table? If you got to your goal, one of the things that I would say is Is making another five or 10% gonna change your retirement?

[00:23:46] How about losing 30%? And you'd be like, yeah, I don't wanna lose 30. I'd screw up my retirement, but making five. Probably not. So then you could probably put more of your eggs in something like a fixed index annuity or a CD or Right. Something that you're just like, you know what? You made it. You don't need to make money to live.

[00:24:01] Why not? Why not stop driving 90 miles an hour? 

[00:24:04] Bob Gatty: Yeah, exactly. Got it. Okay. You, threw out suggested question in the material that you sent me, and one of them is, what is a retirement planner and why should retirees work with them instead of financial advisors? What the hell's the difference?

[00:24:24] Greg Aler: It's a good question. We get it all the time. Yeah. So in our vision, you put it out there, ask me. Yeah. We, get it all the time. Sure. So we think of retirement like a mountain, to make it easy to, for people to understand. Obviously working saving. Going to the top of Retirement Mountain we, view, that's where the financial advisors usually live, right?

[00:24:44] They're, all about selling investments, trying to make your money grow as much as possible, returns. And then when you get to the top of the mountain, you're on the summit. You're looking around and saying, all right, how the heck do I get down? I got all these boulders. I got long-term care, I've got this tax liability for my ira.

[00:25:00] I've got risks that I, my, I'm not adding any more money to this. So our vision is that financial advisors help you up the mountain. Retirement planners help you down and they're two set different sets of skills. They're two different types, sets of services. They're two separate ideologies and philosophies in terms of money and planning and, I think that is why we believe most people in retirement should have a retirement planner, not a financial advisor.

[00:25:28] Bob Gatty: You consider yourself to be a retirement 

[00:25:31] planner ?

[00:25:32] Greg Aler: Absolutely. I made up the word. 

[00:25:34] Bob Gatty: You made up the word. Okay folks, this guy is a retirement planner. He is not a financial advisor. We wanna make that clear. 

[00:25:44] Greg Aler: It's a D, financial advisor's a dirty word around here. I have to get you fired if you call yourself financial advisor.

[00:25:49] Oh yeah. 

[00:25:50] Bob Gatty: All right. So what advice do you have for somebody who wants to fire their financial advisor? How do they go about doing that?

[00:25:59] Greg Aler: I wanna make sure that they have a plan in place, right? Like before you do anything rash, make sure you have a place to land safely. Yeah. Worst thing to do is to make a rash decision, then be wandering around and miss opportunities or screw something up.

[00:26:12] So make sure you have that secondary guide lined up for you. But when, you fire your financial advisor some of the challenges is that it's usually a pretty good relationship. Financial advisors are usually really nice. They're in the business of managing relationships, so they're, usually the life of the party, they're on the golf course, they're at the happy hours, they're at the coffees, and they go to your church or you've known 'em forever.

[00:26:37] So it's usually tough because it's emotional, it's personal, but it shouldn't be. So we want the mindset to be, listen, this is a business decision.. As a business owner, we make vendor changes all the time. You're at a different point in your life. You need a different vendor. And I think that's the mindset that person should take.

[00:26:53] And then from there, They have two options. They can have the tough conversation and say, you know what? I'm moving on. I'm gonna use a different advisor. And they can have that conversation, which is sometimes tough, right? No. If anyone's ever fired anyone, it's no fun. So, having that face-to-face is tough.

[00:27:12] And I always encourage people when they have that conversation to have a statement memorized, which is, thank you for everything you've done. But we made a decision to go a different direction. And that way, no matter what they say what do they do? What you know, what are they doing differently?

[00:27:27] Or where are you going? Or, I can do that. Thank you very much for what you've done. I think we're going a different direct, and if you keep saying it over and over again, it'll just stop the follow up questions because if you try to explain and justify your decision, it'll never work. People want to like have people understand.

[00:27:43] No. No one ever understands why they're fired, usually. And, it's no one's gonna feel better with you explaining it to 'em, and you're not gonna probably explain it that well. And it's going to get lost in confusion. And they're gonna make you unsure of yourself if you've got to the point that you're ready to make a decision.

[00:27:59] Just stick to your guns, thank them. Be thoughtful and move on. The alternative way of firing your financial advisors, you don't have to talk to them. You can literally just whoever you choose, I know if you chose Golden Reserve or if you chose another financial company, they can literally go in it's called an ACA, is the technical term, but you literally can just get their information and pull the money out of the accounts without that financial advisor doing anything.

[00:28:22] And at that point in time, they'll get notified that their money's leaving. So they'll definitely call you. But you can actually start facilitating leaving a system without even having a conversation. We, always say it's your money and there's like this Stockholm syndrome with people's retirement and their financial advisor.

[00:28:40] They almost feel like they're guilty spending it. They don't understand, they don't wanna leave it. And the financial advisor treats it like their money, not like yours, Bob. And it, is just it's just a weird dynamic. The psychology of retirement accounts that doesn't, that don't apply to anything else in life.

[00:28:58] But for some reason, our biggest asset, we turn the reins over and let someone do whatever they want with it, charge whatever they want. Bob, could you imagine going to the grocery store? You're going to the grocery store, you go to the, you go to the teller and they're like, Hey, you know what?

[00:29:11] You don't have to pay. I'm just gonna start taking groceries whenever I feel like it. So they're gonna start taking some groceries, and you're like, oh, I really wanted that way. Said they took that out as part of the bill and then, A week later, you see this teller in your house taking the Oreos outta your cabinet, and you're like, what are you doing?

[00:29:29] And you're like, oh no, You gave me permission to take money out of your stuff whenever I feel like it. And that's what the financial advisors do every quarter a month or, semiannually. They're just taking money out of your accounts and you don't know when and where and how much. And like that, would never happen in any other aspect of our professional lives or, retired lives yet.

[00:29:48] That's how we have these systems set up to beat you and confuse you in retirement. 

[00:29:54] Bob Gatty: All right. That's scary stuff. Greg, have you got any, other advice that you'd like to throw out to our listeners? 

[00:30:04] Greg Aler: I think just going back to the principle of you've worked so hard, I know I grew up in a house where my, old man was a factory worker.

[00:30:13] My mom was a schoolteacher, grandma was a bus driver, grandpa was a meter man. And I know what it's like to have dads working second shift and Mom saving change to pay for my basketball. She was like, I know what it they've done without to get there. And it's just not right how they have targeted the other 95 percenters to charge all the fees. I just don't think that's, that doesn't sit right with me. It's not how I grew up. And I, just want everyone to if they wanna join the fight and fight back read the book, "Fire Your Financial Advisor," and help us share the stories and, share the information.

[00:30:51] And that's the only way we're gonna start getting change and get better deals for retirees. 

[00:30:55] Bob Gatty: Greg, where can people find your book? 

[00:30:58] Greg Aler: They can go to fire your financial advisor.com. Okay. And all the information, you plug it in there and you you can get a copy of the book.

[00:31:08] Here's what it looks like. Fire your financial advisor.com. Or you go to Amazon. It's on Amazon too. It's Amazon bestseller. If you don't I believe ours is a little cheaper if you go to fire your financial advisor.com, but they're pretty close. So if you'd rather just use Amazon, cuz you have Prime you're welcome to do that too.

[00:31:25] Bob Gatty: Okay, cool. All right. Anything else before we sign off? 

[00:31:30] Greg Aler: No, Bob, appreciate the time and obviously had a lot of fun talking with you today.