Why Wall Street Overlooks Middle America With John Link

Gail Zugerman (0:00)

How many of you are wondering how to make your savings and income last throughout your retirement? We all want to continue Growing Older with Gusto, and this involves making our money grow too.

Welcome to Growing Older with Gusto, a podcast dedicated to showcasing people who are growing older in a positive and productive way, or helping people to grow older in that kind of way. I'm your host, Gail Zugerman.

Today, our guest is John Link, president of Link Financial and Link Wealth Management. He helps people nearing retirement to plan out how to make their money sustainable. His background includes 23 years in the grocery business where becoming a manager, he managed millions of dollars of revenue and hundreds of employees before determining this wasn't the lifestyle that he wanted. He pivoted into insurance and eventually financial planning. Three decades of building a practice has led him to this philosophy. Retirement isn't about chasing the best possible return. It's about real planning that puts people ahead of their portfolios.

We are excited to have him on the show because we know this is such an important part of Growing Older. And before we introduce our guest, John Link, I'm going to read a little disclaimer I was asked to read. John Link is an investment advisor representative of Royal Fund Management LLC and SEC registered investment advisory firm. The content for today is for informational purposes only and does not constitute personalized investment advice. Full disclosures will be provided in the description of this episode. Welcome to the show.

John Link (1:39)

Thank you, ma'am. I appreciate you reading that too. That keeps me out of trouble with the SEC. So that's good. Thank you for that. Sure.

Gail Zugerman (1:46)

So John, what is your opinion on why middle Americans with 500,000 to 3 million get overlooked by Wall Street? What's your take on that?

John Link (1:58)

Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's usually kind of all about the money, right? So in that area, depending on what part of the country you live in, whether it's one of the coasts, as you and I were discussing a while ago, or in the middle of the country, 500,000 means different things and 3 million means different things.

So in order to properly plan for people, it's important to take the person's goals and objectives into account. And I think it's just a number that things have gotten so big over time, money's gotten so large, the numbers have gotten so large that some firms can pick and choose the higher networks people to work with. There are more things to do and more ways, I guess, to make money.

Gail Zugerman (2:41)

Well, let's say somebody's thinking of retiring in their late 60s to early 70s, how much money do you think someone needs to retire at that age in order to live well? And I guess that depends on your definition of living well, but just in general. Right.

John Link (2:56)

So the important thing about planning for retirement is to have a process. And that process includes determining really how much you need to live on. And that's different again for really not just different parts of the country, but different individuals have different needs, wants, desires and so forth. Different goals for their legacy, whether that be some people, the most effective retirement plan would be to expire on the same day they spent their last penny. Other people would love to leave as much tax advantage money as they can to their heirs. And it just depends. It starts with a process. And believe it or not, this core principle to me, the building block most important is of all things, an expense plan or a budget, to know how much you need to live now. And what about factoring in vacations, taking the kids' or grandkids' places, and leaving that money to the people you want to leave it to.

It's amazing to me that people typically, if they're working with an advisor particularly, wind up with more money than they ever thought they were going to, which is a plus and a minus because we have, and you may have heard this before, it's not my own proprietary information, go-go years, slow-go years, and no-go years.

So in the go-go years, early on, when people, both people, if they're married or have a partner or whatever, feel like doing the things that they want to do. Travel is chief among them. But sometimes they hold back a little bit because they don't want to run out of money either. And so that's how people wind up with more money at the end of the day than they ever thought they would, because they don't do enough things with that money that they do have. And again, a plan, a process is paramount in planning for that and articulating not only to a planner, but to themselves and having a conversation with themselves about what's important and how they want to spend that money they've worked so hard to save.