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February 2017 Newsletter

February 10, 2017 by suzies Leave a Comment

Well, it’s been a while since we’ve been able to get a newsletter to you. We’ve just been so busy making some changes around here. Small ones like database boring stuff. The the BIG ones like developing a new platform for the 2017 version that has LOTS of upgrades and enhancements. See the last page of the newsletter for some of them. All enhancements listed here.

I hope you enjoy this newsletter. We’d love to hear what you think!

Here’s the link to the whole enchilada – Feb 2017 Newsletter [Old Link Removed]

Filed Under: Basic Retirement Planning, Financial Advisors, Torrid Tech Talk

2017 – Lots of Enhancements!

February 8, 2017 by suzies Leave a Comment

When the 2017 version is fully live you will see a significant number of enhancements – maybe not initially because we still want you to “see green” and “get the red out”. But there are lots of things you’ve asked for and now they’re here! Many of these enhancements are things you have brought to our attention, requested, hoped and prayed for – we aim to please, so here’s hoping your request made the initial list.

Here’s a list of (most of) the 2017 Updates:

For ALL Editions:

Basic 2017 branding changes.
Files can now be opened and edited on both MAC and PC computers.
Updated Help file with new 2017 tax tables and Social Security changes.
Updated Social Security algorithm and related data points to 2017 data for bend points, national average earnings, maximum creditable earnings, average wage index series, and cost of living adjustment. Now using 20 year average of 2.13% for the COLA in the built-in estimate. If you do not use the built-in estimate, make sure you consider using the 2.13% COLA under Settings – Social Security.
Major improvement in the printed report using professional design, alternate shading, and color.
Added clear note “After Taxes in Today’s Dollars” for the Retirement Income Goal.
Maximizing main window now has resizable buttons.
Maximizing main window now increases font size of the Spreadsheet for better readability.
Added “Simple” Spreadsheet that only has most important color columns. Use Ctrl-R to switch to it.
The executable file has been renamed from Planner.exe to RetirementView.exe so you can find it more easily in the list of Processes if you need to.
Added a built-in Print Preview screen for the printed reports.
Added a built-in PDF printing and saving option for the printed reports.
Changed old Most Recently Used file menu items to Open Recent menu.
You can now run the plan out to age 117 – the age of the oldest person in the world. Good luck and good health!
If couples plan and one spouse still working, we now deduct Social Security Tax at 6.2% (Subject to the Max Earnings test) and Medicare Tax at 1.45% (thanks Peter Plant).
Updated EBRI.org retirement factoids that pop up if you click returns in unregistered demo mode.
Re-added the Backups routine that backs up data file changes in case you need to recover lost data.
Removed built-in AppUpdate since it failed on most computers. Now just point to online download pages.
Fixed bug where spouse was already retired but the spouse tab was not disabling job income and other “Not Applicable” fields (thanks Nick Seltun).
Fixed bug where clicking on spouse Job Income field or Retirement Age field would call SetAlreadyRetired which would by mistake set the primary client Job Income to zero (thanks Nick Seltun).
Fixed bug in print out on Investments page where the blended return BEFORE retirement did not make any sense if it was a Couples plan and one spouse was already retired. The program would average a 0% return for the retired spouse since they had no “before” retirement period. We now just print “N/A” since that return does not make any sense when the retirement has already started (thanks Nick Seltun).
Fixes long time bug for “Invalid Type Mismatch” on the secondary grid controls on Investments, Cash Infusions, and Special Expenses.
Fixes long time bug where program could not print in color if your default printer was set to “black and white” printing only (i.e. you could not switch to color and get the reports to print in color).

For the PROFESSIONAL EDITION:

Advisors with a CFP can now print the Registered Trademark symbol with their name.

For the PERSONAL/COUPLES Editions:

Added ability to use files to create multiple scenarios as needed (File New, Open, Save, Save As, Close). Note that it is still locked to the one name and/or spouse name.

Full list of all current updates and enhancements will be located on our help desk.

If you are just learning about our software, you can find us at www.torrid-tech.com. Also check out our video tutorials and our YouTube channel.

If you have any questions about our software give us a call at 888.333.5095 or email us at support@torrid-tech.com.

Filed Under: Basic Retirement Planning, Financial Advisors, Press Releases, Torrid Tech Talk

Silver Anniversary

September 8, 2016 by suzies Leave a Comment

By Tim Turner

No, I’m not talking about Torrid Tech. I’m referring to my marriage. My lovely wife and I celebrated 25 years together in August. If you are blessed enough to be married this long, you definitely will learn a few lessons that help smooth the ride. These lessons are not just for marriage but for any relationship that you care about.

Be Forgiving – It’s not easy to do, but being forgiving and not keeping a running list of past wrongs will go a long way to drawing you closer together. Being able to admit you are wrong on something is an important part of this lesson.

Be Intentional – Your spouse doesn’t always want you to “just wing it” especially when it comes to the relationship. We have little traditions that show each other we care. My wife always likes a good card for Valentine’s Day, her Birthday, and our Anniversary to name a few, but I go the extra mile and write my own poem in these cards. Yes, one that I make up myself! It doesn’t take long but it speaks volumes in intentionally telling her how much I love her in my own words.

Be Available – If you aren’t around much because you work and travel all of the time, then it makes it difficult to grow your relationship. Not impossible, but difficult. Luckily I have not had to travel too much with my work. But besides being in town, being available when you are in town is what I’m talking about. My wife and I have often met for “dates” just for breakfast. Yes, breakfast out. It’s not as crowded and it’s less expensive than dinner. Or do lunch. Every date doesn’t have to be a fancy dinner at an expensive restaurant. There’s nothing better than meeting over a meal that no one has to cook or clean up for. We also go on walks together as often as we can, usually every day after dinner. This gives us time to talk and catch up on what happened in our day while doing something else important – exercising.

Be Adventurous – For our honeymoon 25 years ago I took my wife to France. This was BEFORE the internet. I had to write letters to hotels to reserve a room and find out the exact prices. It took a fair amount of planning and work. But the adventure we had when we went on that trip made it all worthwhile.

25 years later – this summer – we went back to France and had just as much adventure as the first time. We were able to visit many wineries in the Bordeaux region, as well as castles in the Loire valley. We were able to go to Giverny to see Monet’s house and gardens, and end up in Paris for several days of site seeing including Versailles, Musee d’Orsay, Les Tuilleries, The Eiffel Tower (of course), and the Louvre. One fun adventure we had was going to a cooking class where we shopped for the ingredients and then learned how to cook a number of dishes including mussels, coq aux vin, and poached peaches with vanilla ice cream.

Be Open – By this I mean communicate”. Don’t keep everything bottled up inside. As men we typically want to keep our feelings inside and that makes it hard on your spouse. Being open also means being open to “feedback” on what you can do better and what is going great without getting all bent out of shape about it.

I could write many other lessons I have learned in 25 years of marriage but there just isn’t enough paper in this newsletter! I’m far from a perfect husband, but my best trait is that I keep on trying to do better. I guess you’d call that focused persistence. Some of these same lessons also apply to your relationship with your clients and customers. Can you see some similarities? I hope so, but keep the trips to France with just you and your spouse…

: Paris – Seine River Cruise

: Another Night in Paris

: Musee D’Orsay

: Giverny – Monet’s Water Lillies Pond

: Monet’s Poppies

Filed Under: Business Advice, Financial Advisors, Personal Travel and Holidays, Torrid Tech Talk, Uncategorized

Mystery: The Case of the Jumping Social Security Income

April 14, 2016 by Tim Turner Leave a Comment

Hello,

Glad you are here and I wanted to try to make this article a little LESS BORING by telling the story of a MYSTERY that needs to be solved.

Do you have a bit of Sherlock Holmes in you? Can you crack this case?

The taxation of Social Security is a bit of a complicated topic, but the basics are that the IRS has a specific worksheet that you can fill out to figure out the “tax” you will owe on your Social Security. Part of your Social Security is tax free, but then it can jump up to 50% or 85% taxable depending on other income and various factors.

If you want to learn how to calculate it, then consider getting the “Social Security Taxation Kit” that we offer which explains it all through video and worksheets.

Meanwhile, I wanted to share a SPECIFIC case study that an advisor sent in that shows an interesting “visual” anomaly in the RetirementView program. NOTE: this not a the real file but a copy and all identifying information has been removed.

So let’s dig in… first look at the main Retirement Income Graph below. The advisor sent this file in asking “Why does the Social Security jump up by over $4,000 for 2 years and then drop back down? ” You can see where we point out this anomaly in the following graphic:

If you are an advanced RetirementView user, think to yourself “Why would this happen?”

To search for clues about this, I flipped to the Spreadsheet to examine the numbers. If you scroll to the right you will eventually get to the royal blue Social Security columns. Indeed, we see that there are 2 years where the taxation drops from 85% to 0%. This causes the amount of income from Social Security to INCREASE. Notice that’s counterintuitive to think about… taxation DROPS but income INCREASES. I guess that’s why everyone would like lower taxes (except maybe our government).

Here is a graphic showing the spreadsheet columns that are relevant. Now this is an internal copy where we have columns for every one of the Social Security taxation lines on the IRS worksheet so we can validate our calculations.

The question is WHY is this happening. Well first you have to understand the Social Security taxation algorithm which is too much to explain here. But the revelant key is that Tax Free investment withdrawals from a Roth IRA account, do not get added into the calculation of taxes on Social Security. So when you withdraw money from your Roth IRA in retirement, it won’t affect your Social Security taxes at all.

Whereas, when you withdraw from Taxable accounts or Tax-Deferred Accounts like Traditional IRAs and 401(K) plans, then that income IS included in the taxation algorithm for Social Security.

The second clue you need to figure this out is to look at the Savings Graph. When we looked there we see that Taxable investments get depleted right before the anomaly. At that point the program begins to tap the Tax Free investment bucket to satisfy the target retirement income needs. When that happens, the taxation on Social Security drops to 0% and thus the income from Social Security increases by over $4,000!

Here is a screenshot of the Savings Graph pointing out the depletion of Taxable:

Now go back up and see the original Retirement Income Graph picture… you can see the Social Security jump up for two years.

In Retirement View the order of investment depletion is Taxable, Tax Free, Non-Qualified, then last is Qualified. So program taps the Taxable until it is gone and then switches to Tax Free. When it does so, the withdrawals reduce the taxes on Social Security which then increases the net Social Security income after taxes.

And now mystery solved! You know why this is happening.

Another retirement planning case closed. Til next time and Happy Planning!

Regards,

-Tim

Filed Under: Advanced Retirement Planning, Financial Advisors

Effortless Marketing for Financial Advisors

February 19, 2016 by Tim Turner Leave a Comment

Hey, if you are a financial advisor I highly recommend the book “Effort-Less Marketing” for financial advisors by Steve Moeller.

It has some great foundational chapters that talk about marketing without a bunch of technobabble. The nuts and bolts of the “5 Steps to a Super Profitable Business and a Wonderful Life”.

I have recommended this book before and even given it away as gifts to clients.

If you’d like to see a MIND MAP of some of the principals in the book, here you go. I think you can click to make it bigger:

Effort Less Marketing Mind Map

Filed Under: Business Advice, Financial Advisors

Redesigning Your Practices

January 30, 2016 by suzies Leave a Comment

Few situations can zap your enthusiasm like not having enough time in the day for your to-do list. Unless you get control of your schedule, you could burn a lot of energy without getting the results you want.

Performance matters. In 2014, 52 percent of compensation adjustments were based on performance, according to a PayScale study.

Writing in MONEY.com, productivity coach Casey Moore says your daily rhythms should be maintained, like doing projects in the a.m. if you’re an early riser.

Stay on track and build breaks into your day to help your brain refresh.

Tame your in-box. Average office workers spend 2.6 hours a day reading and answering email. Laura Stack author of What to Do When There’s Too Much to Do recommends setting up sound alerts to define which emails need immediate attention (the boss’s). Using filters in Outlook or Gmail, funnel away messages that are less pressing will help you avoid interruptions and avoid the need to constantly monitor your in-box.

You can multitask if you do it right. Researchers at Stanford have found that doing two things at once is a brain drain. But Bob Pozen of MIT’s Sloan School of Management says it’s OK to pair the right activities. Physical chores like tidying up while checking voicemail pair well. Or you could listen to a conference call while sorting your email.

Open office chatter can be a productivity killer. You can collectively develop a nonverbal signal (hat, headphone, sign) that discourages interruptions. Then decide what issues are worth the break-in, such as a client problem.

Filed Under: Financial Advisors, Torrid Tech Talk

Perseverance – Top Quality of Business Owners

January 27, 2016 by suzies Leave a Comment

Hello again and Happy New Year! Wishing you much success in your practice this year.

It’s time for all of us to revisit our goals both personal and professional. What goals have you already set for 2016? I often talk to advisors about their goals for bringing on new clients, growing their practice, having better time management, finally hiring new people, etc.

The trick to setting goals is to be “specific”. It’s not just about “getting new clients”. For example, getting more specific…”I want to add 5 new clients each month in 2016 for a total of 60 new clients”. Then break that goal down into the “how” you are going to make that happen.

Remember that you can’t keep doing the same old thing and expect new and better results (assuming the same old thing isn’t really working). You have to try new things. Some will fail miserably. Some will work great. Some will fall in between there somewhere.

Did you know that” perseverance” is one of the top qualities of business owners? Being able to persevere, adjust, change courses, and try new things to reach your goals.

Setting AND revisiting your goals AND working on them all are required to ACHIEVE them. Let me tell you a story about Torrid. About 3 years ago I set a goal to redo our website. It was a bit dated and a little cluttered. Too much information on the home page. It was overwhelming for people to look at. I realized we needed a complete redesign.

In 2013 I investigated our options. We have our own web developers and thought about just having them do it all, but most of them are better “coders” than “designers”. And I wanted fresh ideas anyway. By the end of 2013 I knew we wanted to use WordPress, but that was about it. I didn’t keep pushing towards the goal hard enough. I kept procrastinating and putting it off.

In 2014 it was still on the goals list. The website was still looking bad. This time I broke it down into steps. First, I ran a web design contest on 99designs.com. I described what I wanted and let the designers battle it out. It took way longer than I thought to just pick a winning design and get it tweaked.

Once the winner emerged, they just gave us the photoshop design files. We then had to convert it to actual HTML and images for the web pages. That is a bit of a special skill, so we hired a contractor to do that part. That took a couple of months right there. By this point we were already into 2015!

I doubled down determined to get this new website done. I hired another firm that was going to convert it to a WordPress template. They did that… in about 4 months. But the navigation wasn’t right. The images needed all kinds of sprucing. And on top of that, we still had to set it up on our server AND move over all the content we wanted to still keep.

Still focused, but taking a lot of time, I had to hire yet another firm that would move everything from the development firm to our server. Now luckily our own people manage our web servers and could set up the site and the WordPress and all that goes with it. These new guys moved over the template and tweaked it until we liked it, including the navigation. Then they moved over all of our pages. It took a lot of work to get that done.

Our new site rolled out in the Fall of 2015, almost 3 years after I first set the goal! So sometimes we have to “persevere”, but none of it would have happened if we hadn’t set the goal and pursued it relentlessly.

There are many ways to design a website and in retrospect I picked the “custom website” route, which is the longest, hardest, and most expensive route. Regardless we did finally hit our goal and more importantly learned many lessons on the journey.

On the “success” side of goal setting, if you didn’t see the webinar we had one in December with advisor Bill Schultheis. His firm Soundmark Financial grew 700% from $80 million to $550 million in AUM over about a 9 year period. Talk about setting goals and hitting them! If you haven’t heard his story you can see it at

www.DoubleYourAUM.com.

Filed Under: Business Advice, Financial Advisors, Torrid Tech Talk Tagged With: Goals, Perseverance, Torrid-Tech.com

How to Use Webinars to Grow Your Financial Practice by 700%

December 11, 2015 by Tim Turner Leave a Comment

OK so that may seem a bit “over the top” but one advisor we work with that uses our RetirementView software AND webinars to do periodic marketing events, grew his practice from $80 million to over $550 million in about 9 years.

You may not get the same results, but you should DEFINITELY consider doing webinars….

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT WEBINAR MARKETING

Filed Under: Financial Advisors

2015 Budget Deal KILLS the Social Security Claiming Strategies

October 28, 2015 by Tim Turner Leave a Comment

Many financial advisors and insurance agents have been going gang busters over seminars about Social Security.

Well that gravy train is now OVERRRR. Thanks to our wonderful Congress they are calling the “Social Security Claiming Strategies” a loophole that needs to be closed.

And indeed in this disgraceful budget deal they are eliminating the loophole. That means “claiming strategies” can’t be used in the future. The final closure age and birthdates may change slightly.

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW?

Well you better go back to what has worked for the last 20 years… build their total retirement picture and focus on discussing it with the client. That’s the 100% best guaranteed way to get their attention, engage them, and get them talking about their situation. Of course the RetirementView program is the best way to do this….

To read the full story on Investment News, use the link below:

http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20151028/FREE/151029902/budget-deal-would-nix-popular-social-security-claiming-strategies

Filed Under: Financial Advisors, Retirement News

Will a financial advisor’s Client Portals cause SEC fines?

October 23, 2015 by Tim Turner Leave a Comment

Hey Financial Advisors,

BLOCKBUSTER article… SEC is examining cases in which clients give advisers usernames and passwords to accounts they are not the custodian of… SEC is considering fines due to worry over “Madoff” like situations where the client’s accounts are plundered by the advisor.

Does this mean that client portals and “aggregation” is now a problem that may cause fines from the SEC?

Read this article for yourself and see what your take is on this issue.

http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20151022/FREE/151029953/sec-cracks-down-on-advisers-access-to-clients-outside-accounts?NLID=daily&NL_issueDate=20151022&utm_source=Daily-20151022&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=investmentnews&utm_term=text

Filed Under: Financial Advisors

February 2017 Newsletter

2017 – Lots of Enhancements!