2022 EP0820 | Planning Matters Radio | Get To Know Peter Richon

We want you to plan for success. Welcome to Planning Matters Radio. Welcome to another edition of Rich on Planning with Peter Roshan, owner of Roshan Planning and Fiduciary in the North Carolina Pukeway-Varina area. So since you're owner of Roshan Planning, why don't you explain that a little bit of experience you have?

Sure. Yeah, so I am a full-service financial investment and retirement planner. I am an author. My book, Understanding Your Investment Options, is kind of an intro educational piece to help people understand all of the different places that they can deploy their money, all the tools they can utilize, and the specific purposes that each one of those tools serves. I am a Dave Ramsey smart investor pro. A lot of people know the name Dave Ramsey.

He's got a pretty good following, especially in North Carolina. It's kind of like God, Dave, and your mom as far as the pecking order of who you follow and listen to, and that has meant a lot to me. I actually, in a past life, got to run the board one time for Dave Ramsey. He was sort of touring the country, and I was at that time right out of college running several talk radio stations. One of them syndicated Dave's show.

He came to town to do the show out of that studio, and that was my first exposure to Dave. We really try to help people get a better understanding of their money so they can be more confident with it. Our motto and mission statement is that everyone has the ability to feel confident with their money, given proper information and education, and it's our mission at Rashawn planning to provide that. Okay, so besides you meeting Dave Ramsey, what else may have led you towards this career in being a financial advisor? Well, I think that a lot of lessons from my household growing up kind of gave me a pre-clivity to being good with money and understanding it. My mom was a single parent teacher, so making ends meet at the end of the month, not always an easy thing.

In fact, quite a challenge. Not that I grew up in poverty or struggling or anything. We did all right, but she used to sit down and balance her checkbook pretty avidly and would have me along with her for that exercise. My mom's always been good with money. If she writes my son a check for his birthday and it gets lost in the shuffle of the birthday cards, she will know that that check has not been cashed and deposited two months later. She will come and say, hey, I noticed you never cashed that $25 check. It comes from her behaviors in tracking money.

She used to sit down with me, balance the checkbook, show me how to know if the bank maybe made a mistake or an error in their favor or in hers and how to double check all the math of the transactions and make sure that we weren't spending more money than we had. Not that I hadn't made my fair share of mistakes in life, especially in those college years where they hand out free credit cards and a T-shirt if you sign up for a credit card around every corner on campus. I did come out of college with like five figure credit card debt and it took me a number of years to claw my way out of that even though I had been taught better. But about the time that I learned by touching the stove rather than by being told by smarter people not to touch the stove, this guy Dave Ramsey came to town and I was just getting my head back above water and he's like, that's not your friend. Don't get into debt. Don't use debt. Cut up your credit cards. And I'm like, this guy's smart.

This guy's right. I'm going to start following Dave Ramsey. And so really I've been a fan ever since. I was also hosting a number of these type of financial related kind of infomercials. I was hosting, I could count probably eight to 10 before I ever realized that not everybody was getting great kind of advice nor not. Everybody was very confident about their money and that I actually really enjoyed it and also enjoyed helping other people get that confidence and became a financial advisor myself. So that's kind of the background and I think what led me here to my current position and some of the things that I really enjoy and value about this profession. That's amazing. Very honorable, especially coming from your background and learning what you know.

But as I say, visit richonplanning.com or give them a call at 919-300-5886 to come to discuss with Peter Rochon. And as we move along. Hold on.

I actually, I want to give you a little bit of an intro too, right? This is Landon Holland. Landon works in the office at Rochon Planning. He actually is behind the scenes helping to produce these radio shows and the videos and the content that we put out into the public. So does a great job in editing and putting together the music and the disclaimers that have to go on everything and some of the commercials and then making sure that they all get delivered to their intended destinations. So he just graduated high school, Fuquay-Varina High School, where I have actually gone in and had some opportunities to teach the Dave Ramsey kind of lessons on a one-off basis. But this semester at Fuquay High School, we are actually sponsoring the Foundations in Financial Principles Dave Ramsey course as a full semester long course at Fuquay-Varina High School and hoping to be able to get that into a few other local area schools because that course is actually now available in 48% of high schools across the country, but none around here until we sponsored that at Fuquay-Varina High School, which is the first hopefully of several more. But Landon does a great job.

He's here on the program today to get a little in front of the camera and in front of the microphone experience. So have you picked up a few values with your money and maybe some what you feel are good habits with your money as a result of kind of being around here and seeing the financial industry? I definitely understand a lot more now about what a Roth IRA can do, what your savings should do, what your checking should do, and all those vehicles of money because yeah, it's not everything, but it really does kind of run the world. You can't do anything without it. And it helps me understand saving is just more than just saving for a car or house. It's saving for the rest of your life. So good job. That'll take you far, man. Excellent.

Excellent. And the Roth in particular, a fantastic vehicle, especially for younger folks, get that savings going. One of the things that I did at Fuquay High is showed the effects of regular investment and compound interest over time. And if you can start putting money away into those retirement accounts around 2025, you are in great shape by around 60, 65. So just get that habit going because investing is habit behavior and routine. And as long as you make that kind of part of your life style, you will do very well later in life when eventually we don't want to, or can't go to work to earn our money.

Hopefully you don't want to. Oh yeah. So obviously you're a financial advisor, a fiduciary, and you're an owner and you're an owner of Rishon Planning. What is your favorite part about owning and working in Rishon Planning? I think it is the confidence that we can help other people have with their money.

And you know, it's not always that they leave our office feeling a hundred percent confident. There are times where I say we need to do some things better. We need to control the budget, spend less, maybe work on earning more, certainly investing and saving more, you know, but I enjoy being able to help people get an understanding of that by working kind of backwards into their current situation. We talk about goals, we talk about hopes and dreams and aspirations, and what do you envision retirement to be about?

When do you want to do it? Do you envision trying to maintain your current lifestyle? What about taxes?

What about inflation? And sort of working all of those factors and variables back to where we are now, and then mapping out how to get where we want to go. I'm going to turn that question around. One of the things that I've been thinking about recently as kind of the hardest, most challenging part of this profession is trying to convince people and chase people and pester people to do things that are clearly in their best interest.

Now, that's not everybody by any means. Some people say, obviously this makes sense, obviously this will work to help me further my progress toward my goals, but there are times where we can lay out the best laid intentions plan, the fiduciary, your best interest plan, and it still is, there's hesitation, there's sometimes just an undesire to do some of the simple steps to get into a better position later on down the road, because it does take discipline, it does take some hard work, and I've just been thinking recently that that is actually one of the hardest things about this job is like, here are the step-by-step instructions, here are the things that will clearly help you improve your progress, now let's get them done. And then the disappointment in them not getting done is really tough. But there's a lot about this job that I really love, I really enjoy the educational piece, I really enjoy when people have a better understanding of their money and what it's doing for them, and I actually enjoy the trust and responsibility, the position of servitude that I have to my clients to be responsible and help them with their money achieve those goals.

I can definitely vouch for the discipline part, you have to be heavily disciplined, especially for an 18 year old that just got out of high school and not really sure what to do with it, you know, you have to be heavily disciplined. But another question, so when someone comes in and they are ready to retire, you know you've went over the statistics and everything, how do you feel when you can tell someone, sir, madam, sir or just madam, you are ready to retire? How do you feel?

Well, I think we both all feel pretty good about that, right? There's always some wiggle room and room for doubt and assumptions that a plan is based off of. But controlling risk and minimizing risk is about identifying those variables that are outside of our control and addressing or eliminating them. So, you know, ups and downs in the stock market, tax rate increases, inflation into the future, healthcare events, those are the things that can get in the way.

And I take the perspective of being Murphy's law, or actually looking at Murphy's law, you know, what can go wrong, will go wrong, and usually at the worst time, I take that perspective, or I look at that as being optimistic when I'm in the planning process. So if we can go through that planning process, and we all still feel pretty confident that you are in good shape to retire, we've probably addressed a whole lot of variables, a whole lot of what ifs, and hopefully, what assumptions the plan is based on. If we're wrong about those assumptions, you're in better shape than you expected to be. And that's kind of a difference in the plans that I think that you'll get at Rashaan planning, we call it the optimized retirement plan, versus what I see people coming in with is that I see people with a lot of very optimistic projections and assumptions, oh, the market's going to return eight or 10%. Oh, taxes are going to stay low. In fact, you'll pay lower taxes in retirement, inflation is not even going to be a factor that the amount of money you need on day one of retirement is going to be the same as your expenses are 20 or 30 years down the road. Well, what if any of those assumptions are wrong?

Right, then you're not in as good a shape as you thought. Whereas in reality, the market's only returned about 5.78%, the S&P index since the start of the 2000s, January 1, 2001, to the end of 2021, the compound annual return of the S&P was 5.78%. And if you take this little downturn at the beginning of 2022, it's below 5%. So why would you base your financial future on a plan that projects 8% steady compound rates of linear return, when the actual return has been significantly lower, and has not been steady, we didn't even earn 5% every year, there were some years where we had a negative 30% rate of return, that's going to impact your plan. So when I'm putting a optimized plan together for our clients, we look at that volatility, we say, well, what if we only get a two or 3% rate of return over time?

Does the plan still work? What if taxes go up? And spoiler alert, they are already slated to go up in law on the books currently taxes will be going up. So now's a good time to look at tax planning and how to be efficient.

What if inflation is more like what it has been over this past year, rather than what it has been historically, there's a big difference between 3% and 8% inflation. Let's put those things on paper in in writing in the written retirement income plan, part of that optimized retirement plan, and see if the plan survives. And if it does, and we all look at each other and say you can retire, you know, what I've seen is, people end up not wanting to, they actually enjoy work a little bit more knowing that they don't have to, if they decided to walk off the job the next day. But, you know, people need some motivation to keep going to keep sharp to keep active.

And I actually think retirements not for everyone, there are some people that just want to stay busy, and find idle time to be quite annoying. So, you know, if you've got the ability financially, that's one thing, but we've got to look at mental, emotional, psychological well being as well. You mentioned in briefly in past that money was not the most important thing, it's not. You got to have quality of life too, but money is a tool that provides for quality of life, and we've got to use it effectively.

Yeah. So obviously, you have been a financial advisor for years. Or you definitely have some experience under your belt, and meeting clients isn't exactly new to you for being a financial advisor for this long. Do you have any interesting stories or anything while being a financial advisor? Well, first, I'll say that meeting with clients is not new, but every client meeting is new.

Every every person's situation is a little different stories. Yeah, I've got a few. I used to travel a lot, actually, I used to go out of the office and on the road. And I remember a guy who actually ended up becoming one of my favorite clients, the first time I went to his door, he answered the door with his 38 revolver in his hand. He said, if we're going to talk about my money, I just want you to know that I have this. Fair enough. You know, I respect that. Let's let's sit down and have a conversation. You can, if you don't mind, keep that over there on the table. It can be within reach. You know, that was a pretty fun experience. But he's a great guy, a great family that have become very near and dear clients. There was the time that I went out and I was trying to get to an appointment, but there was a cow blocking traffic only in North Carolina, right?

Old Betsy was walking down the middle of the road, had a police escort, and traffic was blocked on both sides. She had gotten out somewhere that was pretty fun. I think the one that I actually I share with clients that really has kind of an impactful meaning is that early on in my career, I had a day where I had received calls from the radio program from two very different individuals. One was a oncologist, a cancer doctor at a local university hospital, and the other was a deli manager at a grocery store chain. And I had appointments with both of them in the same day, and I was more excited about one of them than the other.

And by the end of the day, I was much more excited about the other one. And I really realized who my ideal client was. It was not necessarily the person with the most money, although that helps, right?

That's always a good positive starting point. But it does not ultimately determine your financial success. Landon, if you had $10 million in the bank, and you asked me, Am I ready to retire? I said, Well, how much do you spend a year?

And you said, Well, about a million dollars a year. Sorry, buddy, you're not ready to retire, right? It's just, you can retire and enjoy yourself for maybe 10 to 12 years, but there's going to be some tough times.

And reality is going to call into the future at some point. Whereas if you've got 300,000, but your social security is going to essentially cover all of your living expenses, that money is not even necessary for you to live the lifestyle that you are accustomed to. That's a pretty confident, stable financial position to work from into retirement. And that was, I mean, not quite those numbers, but that was essentially the difference between those two situations. And I really understood at that moment and after that day that we've got to control expenses first, and then figure out a way to fill the income gap and generate the rest of whatever income is necessary, and then be able to look out in the future and make sure that that money lasts. And that's a bit of reverse engineering and backwards of the way that most of the financial industry has worked. They want to focus on this lump sum and your retirement number and what's your rate of return. All of that's important, but it's not the most important factor that's going to determine are you ready to retire?

Not like, I'm so tired of work, but ready to retire ready to retire as in financially feasible that you can remain confident and stable throughout 20, 25, 30 years or more in retirement. Well, you heard it here first, folks, your local financial advisor, Peter Rachan with Rachan Planning. To visit the website, go to www.richonplanning.com or give them a call at 919-300-5886. So, Mr. Rachan, whenever a beginning or potential client walks into Rachan Planning right here in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, how does that relationship begin? Well, it actually often begins a little bit before that with a phone call and you don't have to be in Fuquay either. We do virtual meetings and Zoom and the wonders of technology. I actually have clients spanning the world.

I've got some military families that I serve and I have enjoyed serving military families for since the beginning of my career, but I've got a few that are in Germany and Italy and we still have, you know, face-to-face air quotes there if you're listening on the radio. Face-to-face meetings over Zoom with technology, it makes it easy. We can certainly do that across town, but if desired, we are also real human beings with a real brick and mortar office building right behind the Biscuitville.

So, if you'd like to stop in and get a biscuit and a cup of coffee, we can certainly do that. Shake hands, look each other in the eyes, and talk about money. And that first conversation, a lot of times clients are not yet maybe soon to be or considering me as their advisor. Clients walk in with a stack of paperwork. Sometimes it's in a folder with dividers neatly organized.

Sometimes it's just kind of bundled together. And I'm going to need that information eventually to make recommendations, but the first conversation is really about kind of the same questions you've been asking me. Like, what's your background? What's your perspective on money? What are your strongly held beliefs about money? What do you want money to do for you?

What does it mean to you? What do you envision retirement to be about and when? And what worries you about your money?

If there was a 50% market correction in the coming year, would that be of high concern for you? You know, those kinds of questions are ones that I talk about in that first meeting. Really, you know, what's your family influences? Who do you want to take care of? I mean, I think this is for everyone, but especially as guys, like, I'm sorry, gender bias here, but I feel like I could live a very, very simple life. A lot of the decisions I actually make about money are not necessarily for me, they are to support my family, my wife, my son, I want to give them good life's lives and opportunities. If need be one day down the road, I need to provide support for more extended family. I want to be that fallback cushion. So, you know, talking those aspects over, do you envision yourself becoming a caretaker? Are you currently providing support?

What about college education, weddings down the road, big trips that you've always wanted to take? Like, those are the kind of conversations and we'll get into the money, right? Do you have a 401k with an employer match? Are you taking advantage?

Do you have any debts? Do you have your legal documents handled? I'm not an attorney, but a lot of times after the first meeting, that's the highest priority that I give clients on their checklist of items to attack on their agenda. So, you know, that's, that's kind of the conversation that we have. Those are, those are the kind of get to know you. And if we both believe that we connect and we like each other and there will be mutual benefit, we will talk about a follow-up meeting.

By the way, there is no cost, no obligation thus far. And for that next meeting, if we do want to pursue that and set that up, there wouldn't be any cost or obligation for that because that's when we will really get into the planning specifics. I will, at that point in time, look through and comb over documents and statements, come back with a report and analysis for you, and then we can go over that together. I would tell you directly what I would want to know if I woke up and all of those statements were mine.

Here's what I would do as far as my next steps based on the conversations that we've had. And then what does that look like if we work together to execute on those action items. And at that point in time, we can talk about entering into a more official advisor client relationship and everything that entails what costs or expenses or compensation looks like. And by the way, I can do any of the compensation models available to financial professionals.

There's three fee only for advice fee based on assets under management or commissions. Commission is a product sale. It's not something I have to manage, but it actually is one of the things that in my mind, I can justify being in somebody's best interest more than almost anything else, because typically that is putting proper life insurance in place. And if it is your goal to protect your family, to pay off debts, to replace income, to pay off a mortgage, to get children raised, or just to make a spouse feel confident in spending money and enjoying time together in retirement, life insurance can fill that role, not necessary for everyone, but it is part of what we can offer to our clients. And if they do believe that it would be beneficial in addressing any of those needs, then we can shop around for it. That is a commission because I'm not actually backing life.

I just shop around for it. And then that company would compensate me, but more of my clients have investment accounts, retirement accounts. IRAs, Roths, brokerage accounts that we are actually helping manage on an ongoing basis. And some want to do the management themselves. They just want to double check with a qualified experienced professional that they are doing things right.

Okay. So visit the website at richonplanning.com, richonplanning.com, or give a call 919-300-5886, 919-300-5886. So Peter Richon, when you were a beginning advisor, obviously there were probably things that you didn't know that you know now. So if you could go back in time and tell your beginning advisor self, what would you tell yourself? I was kind of lucky, I guess, because when I got into the financial industry, the first license I got kind of the easiest one to get is one where you don't put people's money at risk. So where I was bringing on clients, they were getting, you know, a guaranteed interest rate or rate of return or could not lose money.

And guess what? Then 2007, 2008, 2009 happened. So I was actually a lot of people's hero during that time because the market was down 52% and they hadn't lost anything. And then for the next six or seven years, yeah, six years, the market came roaring back.

And those same people who were very happy not to have lost anything were not as excited to not be making the gains of the market. And so I really looked at, learned that there is balance and that you need to have both. You need to have some safe, protected money.

You need to have growth as well. And that's really what understanding your investment options is all about is what is each tool good at and purposed for and where can you find that balance and downtimes in the market may be fantastic opportunities for somebody in the right position with their money positioned correctly. So we try to maintain that balance on an ongoing basis and within somebody's individual risk tolerance, minimize potential losses, capture as much of the gains as possible, and continue to monitor the plan along the way. I think those are some of the most important lessons I've learned that if I could go back and tell my younger self, hey, this is what kind of years of experience are really going to drive home for you. And that is Peter Rochon, a financial advisor, fiduciary.

Visit the website at richonplanning.com or give a call at 919-300-5886, 919-300-5886. Fantastic. Thanks, Landon. Good job.

Thank you. This has been Planning Matters Radio. The content of this radio show is provided for informational purposes only and is not a solicitation or recommendation of any investment strategy. You are encouraged to seek investment, tax, or legal advice from an independent professional advisor. Any investments and or investment strategies mentioned involve risk, including the possible loss principle. Advisory services offered through Brooks' Own Capital Management, a registered investment advisor fiduciary duty extends solely to investment advisory advice and does not extend to other activities such as insurance or broker dealer services. Advisory clients are charged a quarterly fee for assets under management while insurance products pay a commission which may result in a conflict of interest regarding compensation.