The Wealth Under Pressure Podcast: Recent Episodes
John Smallwood
The purpose of having life insurance in your financial plan is not only to protect your most valuable asset, which is your ability to go to work every day, but can also be a tool that can help increase your retirement income.
However, most people forget about that second part.
In part four of his life insurance mini-series, John Smallwood explains how universal life insurance (UL) can function as more than just a protection policy. To help you better understand this type of insurance, John shares his deep knowledge by explaining the cost of premiums, how UL differs from whole and term insurance, and most importantly—how to determine which policy is suitable for you.
Tune in now to learn about all the unique features of universal life insurance!
Resources:
Episode 18: How to Protect Your Most Important Asset—YOU: Part 1 |Episode 19: How to Protect Your Most Important Asset: Part 2 |Episode 20: How to Protect Your Most Important Asset: Part 3 | 5 Ways Your Wealth is Under Attack | Smallwood Wealth Management
In part 3 of John Smallwood’s series on protecting your most important asset, yourself, he continues to explore the role that life insurance plays all throughout our lives.
Today’s episode is dedicated to whole life insurance.
In an effort to cut through the misinformation surrounding this insurance type, John offers a thorough look at its potential benefits to policyholders, including its flexibility and guaranteed cash value. John also guides you through different options for using dividends.
Tune in now for another eye-opening episode of John Smallwood’s series about all the ways you can protect yourself as your most important asset.
Resources:
Episode 18: How to Protect Your Most Important Asset—YOU—Part 1 |Episode 19: How to Protect Your Most Important Asset: Part 2 | Smallwood Wealth Management | 5 Ways Your Wealth is Under Attack
It’s time for part 2 of John Smallwood’s series about how to protect yourself as your most important asset. In this episode, John dives into the world of life insurance policies, starting with term insurance.
With his characteristically forthright and passionate approach, John breaks down the benefits and drawbacks of term insurance to help you understand how the policy works. He also explains how you can use conversion options to turn term life insurance policies into lifetime policies.
Join John as he continues on his mission to help you understand everything you need to know about protecting your most important asset—you!
Resources:
5 Rules of the Financial Institutions| https://www.smallwoodassociates.com/
Episode 18 – How to Protect Your Most Important Asset – YOU – Part 1
In this episode, John Smallwood explains how you can protect your most important asset, you! Many people don’t actually see themselves as an asset when it comes to financial planning. But John is here to turn that around.
John shares why it is important to have the right protection for your most important asset, along with ways to help ensure that your financial plan has the right protection and strategies in place. He uncovers the different types of protection available and dispels the myths that many people have when it comes to protecting themselves and their assets for the future.
Tune in and learn about John’s unconventional approach to helping you manage the pressure you have on your wealth.
Resources:
Smallwood Wealth Management
John Smallwood tends to challenge closely held truths about financial planning, and this episode is no different.
Listen in as John questions conventional wisdom about Social Security. He clears up confusion about what age people can start collecting their full benefit, and he also explains the advantages of waiting longer. Of course, John uses plenty of examples along the way to help you understand where Social Security fits in with your overall plan.
The right decisions for you are not necessarily the decisions that are being promoted by conventional wisdom. Tune in and learn about John’s unconventional approach to financial planning.
Resources:
Smallwood Associates
Today, Matt Halloran and John Smallwood continue with part two of the Retirement Isn’t What It Used to Be series. John discusses your chess pieces: What do you have? A pension? A 401(k) plan? What will your next move be with those assets? These are important questions to consider, and John is here to guide you along.
Listen in as John covers key components of your retirement planning and shares how you can set yourself up for financial success!
Resources:
Episode 15 - Part 1: Retirement Isn’t What It Used to Be | Smallwood Wealth Management
Today, Matt Halloran and John Smallwood introduce part one of a series, Retirement Isn’t What It Used to Be. If you’re 20 or fewer years away from retirement, it’s especially important for you to tune in and find out what’s become of our retirement income sources. It’s no longer a three-legged-stool situation.
In this episode, John Smallwood explains how our sources of retirement income have changed since our grandparents’ time: we can no longer rely on pensions and Social Security to cover two-thirds of our living expenses. John’s main goal is to help you think strategically about five variables that could all fluctuate and have a dramatic impact on your bottom line.
Join the conversation, become aware of today’s retirement pressures, and learn how to plan accordingly.
Smallwood Wealth Management
How much money do you actually have to accumulate in order to retire?
Today, Matt Halloran and John Smallwood are helping you look into the future at your retirement. Since many people are unsure of how much money it’ll take to sustain their lifestyle, John makes a point of discussing long-term financial strategies. You’ll also learn about safe withdrawal rates and strategies for deciding when to withdraw your money.
Don’t miss this information-packed episode, designed to help you plan for retirement more confidently.
Smallwood Wealth Management
Taxes, are you paying more than you should? Are taxes creating a greater financial pressure in your life? Well, it might just be your outlook.
Today, John Smallwood emphasizes the importance of viewing future tax opportunities rather than being impatient. Opening up opportunities later down the road is much more rewarding. John also shares insight on the macro strategy, which he uses to help clients pay fewer taxes, gain a higher return, and with the least amount of risk.
What will you do to maximize your tax benefits?
We all have financial pressures in our lives right now. Taxes, college tuition, car repairs...we are well aware of these pressures that try to drain money from our budgets. But do we know about the financial pressures that will go hand-in-hand with retirement?
This episode is all about getting prepared. It’s about getting informed so that you can make choices that will help protect you and your family during retirement.
Tune in as I explore the top eight retirement pressures and ways that you can push through these pressures.
Small business owners, how will you be affected by the new tax cuts? Are you feeling some financial pressure, or perhaps wondering if there is a silver lining?
We believe that the future for small business tax benefits has never looked brighter.
Learn how to make the most of tax-law changes by downloading John Smallwood’s free guide: The 2018 Small Business Owner Guide to Maximizing Your Benefits from the 2017 Tax Cuts. It’s your blueprint for learning the key changes to the tax law and how to plan for 2018 taxes.
Listen in as John walks us through his guide and offers tax-saving strategies along the way.
Download our free guide at: www.smallwoodwealth.com.
Have you ever used an air mattress that had a leak in it? You probably felt the impact of that leak as you sank lower and lower towards the ground. And yet, wasn’t it impossible to find the source of that leak?
We can go through a similar experience with our budgets. Thousands of dollars could be sucked away over time, and yet we’re not really sure where all of that money went. It’s almost as though we have several tiny leaks in our budgets.
There are three sources of these financial leaks. In this episode, John Smallwood reveals the source of these financial leaks and explains how you can take control and keep more money in your pockets.
Are you aware of all the changes brought about by the new tax law? In this episode, I dive right in and discuss how individuals and business owners can be affected by these changes. Learn about itemized vs. standard deductions, tax deferral and get the scoop on Qualified Business Income.
Learn more as I uncover the 9 things you need to know about the tax law in order to optimize your taxes in 2018.
If you’re a business owner, you’ll want to learn about the new Qualified Business Income (QBI), introduced by the new tax reform. Who qualifies for QBI? How much can you deduct? Is this new deduction small-business friendly after all? These are just a few of the questions that John tackles in this episode brought to you by the letters Q, B and I!
Learn more about QBI in this podcast:
Taxes drives a lot of us crazy because we don’t understand how it works. But our financial plans may suffer if we don’t consider taxes in our planning process. In this podcast, we’re going to cover the ins and outs of taxes, including how interest is taxed in a person's financial strategy-- we need to grasp this concept before we can understand more complex strategies.
Listen in as John Smallwood tells us what we need to know about taxes and their impact on our financial plans:
It is the start of the year and there is a tax reform underway, so how can we start tax planning for the year? In order to answer that question you need to gauge where you are right now in order to figure out where you go in the future. Regardless of the changes being made in the Tax Reform, tax planning is all about strategy and an overall philosophy. The sooner you start making adjustments to your financial strategy the better off you will be at the end of next year.
Learn more about making changes to your financial strategy with John Smallwood in this podcast:
The market rises and drops. That’s a type of risk. We might lose our job or become injured at work. Life is full of risks! We can’t hide from them and we can’t always predict them, but we can certainly plan for them.
In my latest podcast, I expand the conversation beyond market volatility in order to assess what our risks really are and how to set ourselves up for success.
Savings is the key to every financial strategy. It is the fuel that fires the entire financial plan. Without adequate savings, there are many factors that can erode your wealth savings plan. It is important to start saving now and invest in your financial future. There is no miracle financial product that you can put your money into to solve all of your problems.
Learn more about savings in this podcast:
Every day we are faced with financial pressures, these pressures include 7 factors, which can erode or even destroy your wealth. When these factors are consistently out of balance, they may lead to wealth loss. John Smallwood of Smallwood Associates shares more about these 7 factors and how to ensure balance, to improve your overall wealth.
No matter what aspect of financial planning, there are positive pressures and negative pressures. We have positive pressures such as savings rates, lottery winnings, inheritance, positive interest, etc. Then there are things that will try to bring our wealth down such as taxes, transaction costs, inflation, etc. Wealth is under pressure all the time whether good or bad. The question is how can we balance it so that you have more positive pressure and less negative pressure?
Learn more about wealth under pressure in this podcast:
In this episode we learn more about John Smallwood, Certified Financial Planner, specializing in strategies to reduce the pressure on key areas of people’s wealth.
John started college as an accounting major and realized that the field wasn’t really for him. He attended an economics class and started a path towards in financial planning. Growing up, his father was involved in the industry and he realized that he wanted to help people and build a long-term plan together.
Learn more about John Smallwood and Smallwood Wealth Management in this podcast: