Finances During COVID-19 with Anthony Camara

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Lori :
Okay. Welcome everyone to the Family Conference 2020 presented by Rhombus University. The topic covered in this presentation is finances during COVID and our speaker is Anthony Camara?

Anthony Camara:
Camara.

Lori :
Camara. Darn it. I was going to ask [crosstalk 00:00:17]-

Anthony Camara:
All good.

Lori :
So, okay. Anthony Camara. Anthony has served as a financial advisor with Thrivent for six years. He got his MBA in finance from Ooh, Gonzaga?

Anthony Camara:
Yep.

Lori :
Okay. University, he serves as a fully licensed financial advisor helping several hundred households all over San Diego community. He is acted in the community as a head football coach for his faith-based middle school and active with Habitat for Humanity. He has worked with the Family Conference for the past five years and is an expert on finances, investments, insurance, and retirement planning. And I’m happy to welcome Anthony Camara.

Anthony Camara:
Thank you so much, Lori, for that fantastic introduction. Thank you again, you guys for taking part today in the Family Conference. Good, we have some more join in here, which is fantastic. So like Lori said, I’ve been a part of this awesome event. I know Ray and Julie very well, I’ve been a huge, huge component of Rhombus over the past five years. And just a big thing of, kind of what we do here at Thrivent is just education… Crazy times kind of, especially with COVID going on and all the different finances and the stock market and the economy, and just kind of want to bring some light to all that and just answer any basic financial questions.

Anthony Camara:
So anytime I’m talking today, feel free to stop me, unmute yourself, type in the chat box, anything and keep this one very, very conversational. I don’t really want to just lecture. In my studies and everything, I didn’t like just the lecture kind of format. So if anything makes sense, you want to see, Hey Anthony, can you repeat that again? Please explain. Please feel free to reach out during this. So type in the chat box, unmute yourself, interrupt me. I don’t care at all. I’m going to go ahead and share my screen with the information we’ll go over today. So can everyone see that okay? We good?

Lori :
Yeah.

Anthony Camara:
Awesome. Okay. So let’s see here. We’ll go full screen here. Good. Okay. So just to kind of introduce Thrivent. Has anyone heard of Thrivent before?

Lori :
I have.

Anthony Camara:
Good. Yeah. So just to kind of introduce Thrivent a little more, why I picked this organization. So Thrivent is a membership-owned fraternal organization, which I’ll explain there in a second, as well as a holistic financial services organization. Provides financial advice, investments, insurance, banking generosity, which makes us real unique, that I’ll touch on here in a second and different programs to make sure that they can make the most of all that they’ve been given. So at Thrivent, we are actually a Christian faith based organization, which kind of brought me to this organization. And what makes us really unique is that fraternal side, which I’ll touch on here in a second. So Thrivent is a completely member owned company.

Anthony Camara:
What that means is we don’t answer to corporate Wall Street. We answer to our members or the people that own our products and services and work with us. Because of that, we’re a very, very strong organization. So kind of the model is for profit public companies are trying to boost their shareholder return, they’re trying to boost their stock price. Thrivent is nothing like that. We’re completely member owned. To the fraternal side, all of our members share a common bond and that they’re all Christian. Now, like Lori said, I’m a fully licensed advisor, can work with anyone out there of any faith, any denomination, but Thrivent as its whole, kind of the people that we work with is a Christian organization that serves Christian families. Now to the fraternal side, and this is kind of what brought me to Thrivent is instead of corporate taxes going to the government we’re what’s called a 501C8 or a fraternal benefit society.

Anthony Camara:
Thrivent manages $150 billion, so we’re a very profitable company, but our corporate tax dollars in the tune of $250 million does not go to the IRS and taxes but instead goes back to local churches, nonprofits, and communities and our members, or our clients decide where that money goes. So kind of to tee up just a couple programs, which makes me really excited is Thrivent action teams… And again, you can find all this info on our website, if you’re a member of Thrivent and or you work with us, you actually get $500 a year to do service projects and give back in local communities. Now, I don’t know any other financial organization that kind of does that. So super exciting, I kind of sit down with my clients and we talk every year, retirement planning, are we on track? Are we reaching our goals? And Hey, how do we want to give back? What organizations do you love and care about? Is it your church?

Anthony Camara:
We talked about Habitat for Humanity, my local inner city Christian school where I coach football and give back at. So I love learning about that part of the conversation as well. And working with Thrivent, you actually get money and resources to help your local community. At Thrivent we believe life is better when it has a purpose. So everything that we have is a gift from God. Here’s kind of just a brag sheet. So Thrivent, like I said, being member owned is worth A++ rated. So that means if you have a product or service with us, that’s our ability to, if you pass away and you have life insurance, to pay dividends in our company.

Anthony Camara:
Now Thrivents been around 117 years. Dividends are never guaranteed. However, Thrivents never missed one in 117 years. We’ve also been labeled one of the world’s most ethical companies by Ethisphere. These are just outside companies that come in and rate different organizations and we’ve got that award eight years in a row. So unfortunately, finances and ethics don’t always mix, but Thrivent is very ethical, do things the right way. And we are a huge organization, we manage 150 billion in assets and we’re a Fortune 300 company. So that’s I just kind of wanted to bring a little light to Thrivent, what makes us unique and makes us different kind of in the marketplace, but can do anything any other advisor can do. And these are the different ways we hope we touched on. Any questions in any of that so far. Again, feel free to unmute type in the chat box.

Anthony Camara:
Any question on Thrivent? Again, you can go to thrivent.com to find anything that we talked about today. So I know our presentation is titled finances during COVID 19. And I want to talk about building a retirement foundation. So what are the things that we need to have in place today? The basic steps that we can take if another COVID or an event like that have happens down the road, that we’re prepared and have something written and ready to go for that. So that’s the main thing I wanted to cover today. I want to open it up to questions. Now, you guys kind of have a lot of phenomenal resources, different things that you can reach out today. What do you want to make sure that I cover today during our time together?

Lori :
Anthony, I’d like to just mention something right now. If people are figuring out how to unmute themselves and ask you questions, I just wanted to say, I really appreciate Thrivent and because I belong to several nonprofits and help with women’s groups and organizations, and we used to get a lot of help because of that because our clients or customers, people in the group, we have several different things, we’re all members and then they were able to contribute and [crosstalk 00:07:28]-

Anthony Camara:

[inaudible 00:07:28]

absolutely.

Lori :
It was really a great thing. It really helped us being small nonprofits and always needing funds, of course.

Anthony Camara:
Yep. Yep, absolutely. And that’s kind of what Thrivent believes in. That’s why we intentionally work for those people to help those nonprofits and give some of those corporate tax dollars back to the community, through our members to help those organizations. So please, yeah. Come on guys. What do you guys want to cover? What do you want to learn about before? I just kind of start into my general talk. And then Lori, if you see anything in the chat box, do you mind just reading it to me as we go along?

Lori :
Oh yeah. So we have help with IRA and Medicare choices.

Anthony Camara:
Love it. Okay. All right. We’ll get going then, please, again, reach out, type in questions, we’ll get to them. So kind of today’s focus. What I want to talk about is your savings philosophy. So how are we saving right now? Key risk factors, things that we need to kind of take off the table when putting together a financial plan. Diversification. Now I know we hear about that all the time. There’s actually three different types that I want to touch on today. And then some real life examples. We probably won’t have time for that, but I just wanted to get through kind of these first things today in our today’s focus. Now when putting together a fun financial plan, I always joke this is not a pyramid scheme. I always make that dumb joke every time. It’s putting together a base layer of protection and a strong financial base.

Anthony Camara:
So that’s kind of things that I want to talk about today. The big thing, especially during COVID 19, that I can’t emphasize enough is having an emergency reserve. So when I talk about emergency reserve or a safety net, it’s whatever your monthly expenses are, multiply that by three to six. And we need to have that money in checking of quick money that we can get to in case… What have we experienced now, people have been out of work for three months? Your car breaks down, we have a family birthday party we need to give a gift to. We have different things that come up that we just need liquid cash available. If we change jobs, maybe we have a six month buffer to get us onto the next job. So that’s what I really wanted to hone in on today is, having a written… I use spending plan instead of budget.

Anthony Camara:
So having a spending plan of knowing where our money goes. I put my info in the chat box, if you want me to send any of these resources afterwards, I’m more than happy to do that. And also I never charge to sit down with to do any planning or answer questions too. So anything I cover today, if you want to see how it fits in your own situation, I’m happy to do that at kind of no cost. We can charge if you don’t want to ask in front of people today, so I’ll touch on that as well. But having a written spending plan of knowing where our money goes and then having that amount times three to six of our normal monthly spending.

Anthony Camara:
Now what I mean of that of, what is our mortgage and our rent? What is our utility expenses? What is our food expenses? What do we need to spend every month? Multiply that by three to six, that’s got to be in the bank, safe and conservative that we can get to before we get to our savings. Does that make sense? Any questions on that? Okay. So having a spending plan, having emergency reserve set up, having a debt management plan. Now, if we have debt, how are we going to pay that off? Kind of some quick examples I give, anything with high interest, credit cards, student loans, we really want to have a written plan of how we’re going to pay that off to get you to a financial surplus at the end of each month. Anything like mortgages, rates, the federal reserve has cut rates more and more.

Anthony Camara:
You can go out and get a mortgage now in the low threes. So anything like that, I’m okay with that debt planning. Anything credit cards, high interest, kind of anything, five, ten, more percent, we really want to have a written plan of how we’re going to pay that off. Now here’s audience participation time. What is something that can set us back in a financial plan? What’s something that could happen? A loss of job. What are other examples? What can set us back in different things that we need to plan for? Medical emergency, love it. How about a death in the family, a disability in the family?

Anthony Camara:
Now those are different things. I’ll talk about. So a medical emergency, that’s where we need to have health insurance. If we need someone to walk through what is the coverage we have at work. Medicare choices, now that’s one, I’ll kind of answer offline if how we’ll pay for that. But to touch on that now Medicare part A and B are covered, hospital expenses, certain prescriptions to a certain amount, anything kind of long-term care, we need to go in a nursing facility. We need special advanced care. That is not covered by Medicare. We need to have a plan for that. A health expense, do we have health coverage? What does that cover? What does that not cover?

Anthony Camara:
Life insurance? Does anyone know the two types of life insurance? Okay, so there’s there’s term and there’s permanent. Now I use the analogy of renting and owning a home. So term, it’s very, very cheap. If I have a 30 year level term, if I pass away in the 30 years… We’ll use someone, a new couple, just bought a house. They have a 30 year mortgage. Let’s say they owe 500,000 in San Diego, homes are expensive. If they pass away, we need to be able to pay off that mortgage, right, so that we can stay in the home. Now, permanent life insurance is the exact opposite of… It’s actually going to gain cash value and grow for you over time. So those are kind of the two types of life insurance of if someone passes away, we need to be able to replace that lost income and pay off debt.

Anthony Camara:
That’s what life insurance can do for you. What if we become disabled and can’t work or lose a job, disability insurance. That’s another thing that we need to look at. So everything I’m talking about right now is kind of that protection, that lower base. These are things we need to have in place before we start saving. So kind of to recap there, we need to have emergency reserves. So safe money in the bank, three months, especially now, we’re kind of witnessing now of COVID of people losing jobs, losing income, right. We need to have a plan for that. Having a plan to pay off debt, having a written spending plan and those things I do talked about of health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance. Now, a lot of that is covered through work, it may or may not be enough. That’s where maybe an expert can kind help you out in that area.

Anthony Camara:
Other thing I will touch on that we don’t, we won’t spend too much time on today is having a will or living trust. An attorney would need to draft that up, I don’t do that. But an attorney, if God forbids something happens to you where do your assets go? Having that kind of written out in a legal document. So what questions do we have so far? What else do we want to cover on that? Kind of the base layer of protecting our future and start saving. Risks to consider. Now, kind of to the financial pyramid. We talked about the protection layer at the beginning, so having all those things in place. Once we have all those things in place, then we talk about starting to save, to reach our goals. Some risk to consider, market volatility. I could touch on this for two hours.

Anthony Camara:
I won’t bore you guys to death, but for those of you who’ve been following the stock market, it’s been a crazy ride this year, kind of when COVID started. I mean, we had that 11% drop in one day, which is one of the biggest we’ve seen in 20 to 30 years. Guess what? We’re all the way back almost since kind of that point. Now we have an election coming up. We have different things. We won’t get into politics today. It is going to be a crazy ride. So kind of anything in the short term, that’s what I’ll touch on here is second is the different types of diversification of having a plan for market volatility. Anything that we want in the stock market, we really want it to be there long term.

Anthony Camara:
Now, you’re going to buy a house, you’re going to make a major purchase anytime in the next, I would say even a year, that money should not be in the stock market money. That should be in the stock market is retirement dollars, money that we’re not going to touch for 5, 10, 15, 20 years. So having a plan for market volatility, having a plan for inflation. Does anyone know what inflation is? Want to care to define it? Okay. So inflation is you go to the grocery store, right, things get more as things go on. We’ve kind of seen around one and a half to two and a half percent inflation. Having a plan for something that we’re going to purchase today is not going to be the same price in 15, 20 years, right. It’s going to be more expensive. So having a plan for inflation and then having a plan for tax regulation change.

Anthony Camara:
Believe it or not, we’re in a very, very low marginal tax rate. And I’ll touch on that here in a second, but having a plan for if taxes go up down the road, do we have a plan for that? So having a plan for market volatility, inflation and tax change is all very important risks to consider on our plan. And guess what, they can be mitigated, but we got to have a plan for that. Now we’ll talk about kind of the diversification. Now there’s three different types that I’ll touch on. So the first one is asset diversification. Now, when you invest into a portfolio, mutual funds, individual stocks, bonds, they need to be diversified. Now, what I mean by that is kind of one share of Amazon right now is around $2,000, one share of Google is $1,500. Now not everyone can afford that. Diversification is a way to maybe we get a mutual fund or an exchange traded fund that picks up fifty to a hundred different stocks that I couldn’t individually own on my own.

Anthony Camara:
Now, what diversification does is say one company, which we’re seeing right now, different sectors, technology, healthcare are doing very well. Sectors like energy are not doing very well at this point in time. Having a diversified portfolio of companies and all those different sectors, healthcare utilities, technology, finance, all those different companies in case one does well and one doesn’t, guess what, we’re protected. Where instead us just owning all in one individual stock and if that stock tanks, then we tank, right. We own a bunch of different positions within a diversified model then if one goes down, one goes up we’re okay, right. So that’s a way to mitigate risks. That’s kind of what asset diversification looks like.

Anthony Camara:
Rebalancing is just a topic that if some assets do really well, some don’t do as poorly. The term rebalancing means kind of shifting back to what we normally invested in. So if you have one stock that does really, really well, you actually own more of those shares, we want to rebalance that and kind of get it back and shift to your risk tolerance. Now, I can’t emphasize enough working with a financial professional of getting an idea of your risk tolerance. When I say risk tolerance, I mean how much loss can I stomach? So if the market goes down five percent, No, it can go up five, am I okay with that? Or am I very risky knowing, Hey, I’m not going to touch this money for 30 years. I’m okay to ride the ups and downs. So we have phenomenal exercises and worksheets that we can go through to get a better idea of your risk.

Anthony Camara:
Second time of diversification is actually time diversification. I touched on this a little second ago, but money should be treated for when we are going to spend it, especially now more than ever kind of during COVID, during a pandemic. Money for immediate goals needs to be very safe and conservative. Now that emergency reserve that I talked about, that’s where our immediate goals money need to be. Who has an example of an immediate goal? Maybe not that they’re working on, but just in general. Something in the year, we’ll define an immediate goal within the next year. What’s a goal that people have? So when we talk about that yeah, buying a new car, that money needs to be safe in a savings account and a checking account, not in the stock market, that we can go ahead and do it.

Anthony Camara:
What are other immediate goals we have? I’ll give some more examples paying off debt. Maybe we can do that as an immediate goal. I’ll challenge you to save to an emergency reserve, get to three to six months within this year. That’s a great immediate goal. How about putting together a spending plan or getting the right life insurance, disability insurance to protect a setback and a plan. That’s a great immediate goal too. How about a near term goal? Maybe something in the next three to five years, two to five years. What would be an example of that for some people?

Lori :
House.

Anthony Camara:
House. Love it. Yep. That could be near term, long term intermediate, but yeah. Save for a house. What else?

Lori :
What about college? Or is that more distinct [crosstalk 00:19:43]-

Anthony Camara:
College, yeah. And anything I give it can fit in any category. It’s just kind of, what is the time horizon? That’s the exercise I want to go through is when are these things coming? This is how the money needs to be treated. Now, anything near term, should be a little safer, could possibly be in the stock market. Maybe not, but maybe safer in the stock market or maybe a CD or a savings account, maybe something low interest that’s going to grow for us a little bit. Other examples I have there is maybe pay off our car, pay off our student loans, could be near term. Save college near term. Maybe I have a 12 to 14 year old that’s going to college in four to five years. We want to save for college. What are some other long term? Now we’ll say that’s kind of six plus years out. What’s a long term goal people have?

Lori :
Retirement?

Anthony Camara:
Retirement. Love it. Retirement, maybe for some that’s to buy a house, save for college, if we have the younger kids. Now, anything long term to the diversification, I’m okay with that being in the stock market. If we’re not going to touch money, now it’s never happened, but in a five year period, if you’ve owned… Robert Schuller, who’s a Nobel peace prize winning author, he went back and studied five year rolling periods of the stock market and within a five year period, if you had a 50-50 mix of stocks and bonds, you’ve actually never lost. Now I can never guarantee that’s going to happen in the future. But what I want to emphasize is money that’s in the stock market money that we with, I’m okay with that in the long term goals. Now, retirement accounts, that’s how we get the kind of rate of return.

Anthony Camara:
What are we getting in a savings account right now in the bank, near zero, right? Unfortunately with the interest rate environment that we live in, to get a decent return on your money, kind of that five, six, seven percent world, it’s stock market and real estate. So it’s kind of more riskier assets, but I want us to shift into the long term for those types of dollars. Now, a very useful exercise, I have my clients and people that I start working with go, is what are some immediate near term and long term goals.

Anthony Camara:
So as we’re kind of going through this, write down some immediate goals, what are some things I want to accomplish in the next year. Is that saving for a home, is that paying off debt, is that writing a spending plan together. Some near term goals, saving for a house, paying off debt and some long term goals, is it retirement, buying a house? Wherever those fit in for you, go ahead and write that down and then that’s how the money should be treated in those different columns. So that’s time diversification. So we went through asset time. Any questions so far, keep going? Am I losing anyone yet?

Anthony Camara:
Okay. The third type of diversification I want to touch on is actually tax diversification. Now the types of accounts, and I know we had a question on IRA planning. So I want to introduce the different types of accounts and how they’re taxed. Now, some examples of, your money can either be taxed now, it can be taxed later, or it can actually be taxed never. Now I’ll have to give a prize. There’s three tax never types of accounts where I can invest money and not pay taxes on it again. One of them is easy, the other two are hard. Can anyone name those or give a shot? So the first one is a Roth IRA. The second one is, and these are tricky ones, municipal bonds, where if I actually invest in a municipality in my area, interest on it is tax exempt.

Anthony Camara:
And the third one which I touched on earlier is actually permanent life insurance. Now life insurance companies have a different tax code that if you invest in permanent life insurance, the money as it grows, you don’t pay taxes on. And then you can actually take from those policies tax free as well. So I want to give some light on kind of… So the tax now column and you should have money in all three columns. Now what I’m doing a lot with clients right now is positioning money more into that tax never column, if we can. We’re not going to get political today, but we have a country that’s 20 plus trillion in debt. They just sent another three to 6 trillion depending on what they passed through, into stimulus, back into the economy to help small businesses, individuals, and families. And we have underfunded social security and underfunded Medicare.

Anthony Camara:
Now I don’t want to scare anyone, but likely spending has to go down or taxes may have to go up. Now I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it would be nice to take advantage of we have the current tax code until 2025. Now I know we have it this year, but the tax code sunsets in 2025, and we can do some really neat planning to shift some of your money from the tax now, tax later column into tax never so that when we retire and we want to take a $5,000 vacation, it’s all tax free. Not we have to pull from taxable accounts, pay tax on it to net a taxable distribution. Now, what I want to touch on is what kind of different accounts fit into the different tax diversification columns. Tax now, would be anything that we have in a savings account, mutual funds, stocks, bonds outside of IRAs.

Anthony Camara:
Now there’s a language, a term in the finance industry, which there’s a lot of jargon that I wouldn’t expect you to understand, is non-qualified. Now, when I say anything, that’s non-qualified, that means it’s outside of a retirement account. That means it’s not owned within an IRA, 401k Roth IRA. We just own those positions on their own. Anything that we own in that non-qualified world is we have to pay taxes on that money every year or when we sell it. That’s that tax now column. Tax later column would be traditional IRAs and 401ks. Now, when I say 401k, 403b, 457, those are all the same types of accounts in how they’re taxed, it’s just based on where you work. That’s the type of account that you have.

Anthony Camara:
So 401ks, IRAs, traditional IRAs in this middle tax later column, how these accounts work is when I put my money into them, I get a tax deduction today. Okay. So we’ll say I’m going to use the 401k. A 401k is a salary deferral plan. Now we’ll use an example of, let’s say I make $50,000 a year and I put $10,000 into my 401k plan. The 10,000 I’m putting into my 401k is I’m deferring my salary. So my taxable income that year is 40,000. So everyone understand how I kind of got there. So I make 50,000, I put 10,000 into my 401k, which I get a tax deduction for today.

Anthony Camara:
Now my taxable income is 40,000. So I lower taxable income by putting money in this tax later column, into traditional IRAs and 401ks. Now at age 59 and a half, which the IRS picks weird magic numbers, I can take from those accounts, but I have to pay taxes on all that money, okay. So anything in that tax later column, I get a tax deduction today, but I have to pay taxes on that money later.

Anthony Camara:
Kind of magic ages are 59 and a half, if I access any retirement accounts before then I have to pay taxes and an additional 10% penalty on it. Some of that is waived due to the Cares Act and COVID, what’s going on. If that’s a personal situation for you, we can talk about that. And then the last one I want to touch on is the tax never column. So the tax never, I’ll use the Roth IRA as an example. Now, remember in the tax later column, I get a tax deduction today, but it’s taxable later, right. Now, the Roth IRA is the exact opposite it’s after tax money. So money that I’ve already paid tax on. So think of money that I have in tax now and money that’s in checking, in savings. I can put into a Roth IRA and guess what? I don’t pay taxes on the money as it grows and then at age 59 and a half, it’s all tax free, got it? Versus taxable in the tax later column. Yep. Lori, go ahead.

Lori :
I was just going to say we have retirement funds to supplement social security.

Anthony Camara:
Got it [crosstalk 00:28:02]. Love it. So that would be kind of again, based on your age. So, if you have earned income meaning you have W2 1099 income from an employer, you can contribute to IRA’s Roth IRAs. You can contribute to retirement accounts. Now, if you don’t have earned income, we can still open up savings or investment accounts, they just can’t be in retirement accounts. Does that answer that question? To the individual? Do I need to explain more on that? To supplement social security and savings would be, if we wanted to contribute to retirement accounts, we have to have earned income. That’s how you can get money into those accounts. If not, we can still invest the money, it just cannot be inside retirement accounts. That’s the call out there.

Anthony Camara:
So to recap on the types of diversification, so we have asset diversification. Okay. So make sure our money’s scattered through different types of assets, real estate, stock market, different stocks of different sized companies in different sectors. Time diversification. When I’m going to spend the money, whether it’s within the next year, next year to three to four or five years to beyond that, that money should be treated differently and then tax diversification. So those different vehicles that I mentioned and how my money is taxed is very, very important in putting together a financial plan of how is all my money taxed today and how is it all going to be down the road? Okay. So question time. What questions do we have? That’s the material I had to go through today. Let’s open it up to questions. Anything that you want to cover of Anthony, what didn’t make sense? What do you want to go through a little further and we can today. So go ahead. Feel free to unmute yourself and let’s go for it.

Lori :
How to do simple IRA per my employer contributing percentage, can’t do Roth, right?

Anthony Camara:
Okay. So great question. So you can do a Roth, not through your employer. So employers would only offer a Roth 401k and most don’t. So I always say, check in with your employer. Now, a SIMPLE IRA, SEP IRA, those are… Can I ask, are you the owner of the business? Can I just maybe get a yes or no, isn’t it? No. Okay. So is there a SIMPLE IRA set up at your employer? So the simple IRA we can contribute to that, you can’t do a Roth from your employer. However, you can do a Roth IRA, and IRA stands for individual retirement account, outside of your employer. So I would say it, it would be a combination of both. So the example I always give is for employers, if they match it at all, free money. Seriously, so if they match two to three to four to five percent of your salary, please take advantage of that. Now SIMPLE has a different regulation. Do they contribute for you automatically?

Anthony Camara:
So yeah, maybe we take advantage of that and kind of everything I talk about really does need to be tailored to your situation. The Roth IRA has earnings limitations. So if you make more than, and don’t need to answer this, but if you make more than 139,000 as an individual, you actually cannot contribute to a Roth IRA or more than 189,000 as a married couple, you cannot contribute to a Roth IRA. But if you make less than that, then you can contribute. So does that answer that of… I would do the SIMPLE at work and then I would actually open an outside Roth IRA on your own and start saving into that as well. So what I’ll do is, I kind of got the okay, I’m just going to send out to everyone that joined just a very simple email of, Hey, everything we covered do you want to see how it fits in your own situation?

Anthony Camara:
There’s never a cost to sit down with me, do any planning. A lot of advisors where I’m at they’ll charge you a 1000 to 1500, especially for the Family Conference, I just don’t. So you want to sit down ever, answer questions. There’s never a charge. You’ll never get a bill in the mail and happy to help out that way. I put my info in the group. So I put my email and phone number. So feel free to jot that down. If you want to email me, call me anytime, happy to answer questions, but I’ll reach out to answer your own questions as well.

Lori :
So how do you save while you have something accruing interest and then you’re still trying to live?

Anthony Camara:
Nope. And to answer that it’s a combination of both. So again, a strategy that would need to be tailored to you, but its… I would say for now we throw extra money toward the student loans, depending on the interest. Now kind of my example, I graduated with an undergraduate and a master’s degree in finance. So I had a lot of student loans. Now a lot of people that have student loans have several loans. So I’ll use that in as an example, I had five to seven. I took my extra money at the end of each month and put it all toward the loan with the highest interest. Now, back to the interest rate conversation, kind of anything over I would in today’s world six, seven, that’s got to go. We really need to put together a plan of attack to really start paying that down.

Anthony Camara:
Anything lower than that, I’m okay. We can pay low interest and start saving on top of that. So it’s kind of having a plan tailored to you. I would say it’s a combo of both. Maybe we start out more at the beginning, paying down student loans a lot more and then maybe once we have that balance down, so we have a lower balance earning interest, its a lot easier to overcome then we start saving more. Any questions on the different retirement accounts, how they work, stock market, life insurance, the emergency reserve. That was the big takeaway I wanted. I’m really challenging everyone to have… A lot of the clients I talked to, as you could imagine, I had some crazy conversations this year with people of really checking in, Hey, do you have that emergency reserve we’ve talked about?

Anthony Camara:
And I can tell you the people that do are just fine. They’re just fine getting through this. Other thing I’m noticing is with people staying home, they’re spending a lot less money because they don’t have the opportunity to go out to of dinner, I guess now you do, but for a couple months there you didn’t. But having that emergency reserve, especially during COVID and those things that can set you back, the life insurance, the disability insurance planning for a loss of job at death, those sort of things are more paramount than ever, especially kind of getting those types of insurances. I don’t know if there will be a second wave or anything like that, but just to kind of protect your family, to get the coverage while you can now, I think is very, very important.

Anthony Camara:
So those were the big, big takeaways I wanted everyone to take away today was, different types of diversification, different types of goals and how that money should be treated for those goals. Then again, having a written spending plan, knowing where my money’s going and an emergency reserve setup. So I challenge kind of everyone on that call to do that. If you need help, I’m always happy to help. I love doing what I do in case you couldn’t tell.

Lori :
So, I’d like to thank you, Anthony, for the wonderful presentation and thank you all for joining us and for participating with Anthony’s… Just participating with Anthony and thank you again for joining us and thanks Anthony.

Anthony Camara:
Thank you, [crosstalk 00:35:12] Lori. Thanks everyone. Hope that was valuable for you and you got some good info.

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Finances during COVID 19 by Anthony Camara