PART 3 OF 3: How To Build Up Your Money Status To Create The Retirement Of Your Dreams

Hi, I'm Jason Bergquist. I'm the owner and founder of RetirementOfYourDreams.com.

Today, I’ll discuss part 3 of my 3 Part Video Series: How To Build Up Your Money Status To Create The Retirement Of Your Dreams.

Specifically, this video is for you if you’re overwhelmed about gathering all your financial information and knowing how to use it to plan your retirement.

Before I continue, if you missed Part 1, click HERE …

… Or Part 2, click HERE and get caught up.

1. Need to know what information to gather (Hint: everything).

2. Need to know how to access your information (Answer: We have to figure that out).

3. Need to share all pertinent information. We must share that information to have a better picture of your retirement.

Let me introduce myself if we still need to meet. I'm Jason Bergquist!

I joined this business to help people create the Retirement Of Their dreams.

I've been doing this for over 20 years through the ups and downs of the markets.

My whole goal is to help educate people. Help them understand how to set up the retirement of their dreams and bring hope back into their lives.

I realized this was my calling in 2010 when I was going through a divorce. At that time, I was financially low, and I realized that I wasn't practicing what I preached.

So, I committed to practicing what I preached and became an Independent Financial Professional and a Certified Financial Fiduciary.

Thankfully, this experience has helped me understand your financial situation better.

Now, I have a team of experts helping me figure out all of the best options that are out there to empower you to create the Retirement Of Your Dreams.

Again, I’m going to cover Part 3 Of 3: How To Build Up Your Money Status To Create The Retirement Of Your Dreams:

Step 1 …

Many times, when we get to this point in the process, people generally don't know what to gather.

The simple answer is that we need to gather everything we can gather.

Why do I say that? Because the more you share, the better picture you’ll have for us to discuss all the different options for your future.

So not knowing what to gather …

… that's a simple answer.

It may not be the answer you want, but it’s simple:

Whatever you have through work or personal, Insurance, Social Security info, etc.

We must look for it all!

We’re gathering everything as you review the Retirement Of Your Dreams Blueprint™ and complete the Retirement Of Your Dreams Assessment form.

I already have it all broken down.

You'll see the dropdowns and the information we're looking for on the Retirement Of Your Dreams Assessment Form.

Still, we want to gather everything we can, including old investments you haven't looked at in forever—current investments, access to your 401k, and so on.

For example, a client of mine, as we delved into what she called her 401k, we realized that she had a 401A and a 403B in addition to her 401k.

Another just said she had an IRA, and we talked further. She did have 1 IRA account, 1 Inherited IRA account and 1 that was actually still a 401K and hadn’t even been moved to an IRA yet, and 1 ROTH IRA account.

So, one of the things we're going to get into is trying to figure out precisely what investments you have and work through them together.

And look into how each is structured because each account means different options.

A 403B is different from a 401K very similar, but there are some differences even though they are both company-sponsored plans.

Those are all the pieces that will be helpful to know.

As we go through this process with everyone …

And when we delved in even further, we discovered that she had a pension in addition to these other 3 accounts.

But the sad part was that we found out her pension had been frozen for years, and there was NO Growth.

So that was very eye-opening, as you could imagine …

… but this immediately told us that we needed to do something because this pension wasn’t growing, and we needed to grow these funds for her retirement.

Because sometimes, as we meet with people, they forget, and you might be surprised how many people forgot that they had this old 401k sitting at an old employer that's still there.

Maybe when you left an employer, you moved it to an IRA, but it's not on your mind. You're not looking at it monthly, or you're not contributing to it.

So, you need to find the information and how to access it.

You need to figure out the company it's set up through and whether you have access online. And whether or not you have a way to log in.

That's a great way to see how everything is structured and what's set up.

I can review all of it with you.

You don't have to know what these things mean.

You don't have to know how they're set up.

You don't have to understand them because that is my part in this process.

That's the job I'm doing for you!

I will walk through it with you, understand what that investment is, how it's structured, and whether you have or haven't been doing something with it.

We figured out that she had a 403B and a 401K.

She was a little overwhelmed because it was a lot of information.

And that's where you don't have to worry. As you gather that information, you're going to share that information with me.

So, I can help walk you through those details.

And the whole point of gathering and sharing that information is to create that baseline of your financial scenario … (your Money Status 🙂 )

… so, you know where you are currently and where we want to go with it.

The more information you share with me, the better picture I have to figure out what those next steps are for you and what to recommend changing or adding to.

I need a complete picture of your current finances to give you advice or recommendations.

And this brings us to … Step 2

Again, some people have old investments and must do some digging to access the details.

So, we sometimes have to find paper copies to find an account number and call the company to find out the details (once we have access to that information).

Usually, you can call that company, and they can send you something via email or snail mail.

So, we do have a way to do it, or nowadays, almost everything has a login to where you can access it electronically.

Well, sometimes we have to go back to the olden days and find paper copies and be able to gather that company information, phone number, and website to get access to the details of said investment.

So, it can be daunting, but we have to figure out what we have and where it's at.

Recently, a client of mine, as we were going through this process, she remembered that there was a pension from a previous job that she had forgotten about.

Pensions are a very pertinent piece of your financial puzzle because a pension will give you a guaranteed income for life …

… we need to make that part of our conversation!

And it circled back to when we discussed her current 401k and pension …

… and she just had this thought.

She goes, “Wait a minute!” There’s another one out there.

She had to go in.

She had to dig it up.

She had to find it.

And she was able to find it.

Then she got hold of the company so they could send her the details.

I helped her know what questions to ask to get all the information about her pension that we needed.

But it was out of the blue when she said, “Wait a minute! There's another one somewhere!”

And, often, you’ll find, as we work together, some accounts you have set up and forgotten about on purpose because you didn't want to access them.

You wanted that to be there and payout in the future.

And people have those other accounts they’ve forgotten until now!

So really, the main action is just pulling all that information together.

And this brings us to … Step 3

You don't have to know the details about the information, but we must pull it all together. Anything that you can gather electronically …

… anything that can be emailed, and if you need to …

… you can screen share when we are meeting, and I can walk you through what it is and your options.

Or it has to be paper because some accounts do things old school.

If you can download or scan and send that information to us …

… we'll help you make heads or tails of all that information.

Still, we have to be able to pull it all together.

It's my license on the line when I give recommendations, so to give the proper recommendations to my clients and prospects ...

… I can only do that if I have ALL the information!

If you share something like this, “Hey, I've got this $100,000 from an old 401K that's still sitting there, what should I do with it?”

I can't answer that question because, legally, I don't know what else you have, your goals, and what you want to accomplish.

So yes, the more information you can share, it benefits you because you are gathering and seeing that information …

… and creating that baseline to understand where you're at.

And again: I can only make recommendations if I know the whole picture, and my recommendation may not make any sense to you if I don’t have ALL the pertinent information!

If you ask that question and I don't have the whole picture …

… I might give you an answer that doesn't make sense because you wouldn't go down that road with that particular investment.

Here’s the best story regarding this …

… I had a hesitant client (they’re not anymore) …

… and I get it.

Many people need more time to share their financial information. And honestly, my client just wanted some ideas and help managing their 401k.

We discussed when they planned on retiring and what we could do with that 401k.

When they left work, I was under the impression that this was their only investment …

… and this is what we were working with.

“When you leave work, and we move this 401k over to this option, this is what it will accomplish for you.”

And lo and behold, they said, “Well, I already have one of those.”

That’s why my recommendation didn’t make sense to him, because it wasn’t suitable for him …

… because he didn't share all the information, and I didn’t know he already owned one!

That allowed us to dive in deeper and understand his situation better.
And we agreed that another option would better suit him in retirement!

In other words, let's find that information, and please share it all with me and my team so we aren’t wasting your time and helping you accomplish your goals, dreams, and desires. 🙂

Sometimes when you leave a job and get a new one, they allow you to move your 401K to your current job. But if you haven’t done that, is that account in limbo, or are you managing it?

… to go and find all your information.

Once you’ve found that information, it's about having access to it.

Can we log into it?

Can you get a PDF of that statement …

… or is it just a hard copy paper we need to scan into the system?

And then, you share that information so we can put together that overall picture.

1. Need to know what information to gather (Hint: everything).

 
2. Need to know how to access your information (Answer: We have to figure that out).

 
3. Need to share all pertinent information. We must share that information to have a better picture of your retirement.

 
So now that you understand how Money Status works …

This completes our 3 Part Series on: How To Build Up Your Money Status To Create The Retirement Of Your Dreams.

Of course, I’m working on the next series ...

Thank you for considering RetirementOfYourDreams.com as your partner on your financial journey!

I'm committed to helping you achieve the Retirement Of Your Dreams,

This is Jason Bergquist signing off for now.

I look forward to meeting you!