Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Sharda Ryan, Financial Advisor with Wealth Design Group

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

As a Financial Advisor at Wealth Design Group, she is motivated by helping single women and their families in her community develop and achieve financial goals that are unique to their financial picture. More specifically, she specializes in financial planning, retirement accounts, business retirement plans, gifting or giving strategies, education funding, debt management, social security income planning, and portfolio management. She constantly keeps her clients’ best interests in mind when making recommendations and developing a solid financial plan for their goals and needs. She strives to be a woman’s caring and knowledgeable advocate throughout the journey of reaching her financial independence.She has served in the financial industry since 2008. As a single mother, her own experiences led her to a career in the financial services industry to help women achieve financial wellness and advise them on their holistic financial picture. She finds it fascinating when her clients share their diverse backgrounds and stories with her and developing long-lasting relationships with them makes her desire for their success even stronger.Sharda currently lives in Salinas with her husband, Nate, and their dogs. When she is not servicing her clients, she enjoys volunteering with the Salinas Downtown Rotary Club, Serving on the board of Tatum’s Garden Foundation, training her dogs, exploring the outdoors, and spending time with her new granddaughter.Learn more:https://www.wealthdesigngroup.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-sharda-ryan-financial-advisor-with-wealth-design-group

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of influential entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with the Sharda Ryan, who's a financial advisor with Wealth Design Group. Sharda, welcome to the program. Thanks for having you, Mike. You're welcome. I'm looking forward to learning what you do and who you serve, but get us started with your story and your background. How did you get into financial services?

Sure. Yeah, thanks for asking me that I was a single mother in my 30s, raising my daughter, and I was a manager at Starbucks. And there was a gentleman that would come in. And, you know, he would start talking to me. And I could tell, you know, that he was in some type of. of financial services position. And so finally, I sat down and talked to him one day, and he said to me, what would happen to your daughter if something happened to you? And I just thought, wow, nobody's ever asked me that before. They don't teach you those kinds of things in school, you know, budgeting, credit, life insurance, things like that.

So he was my first mentor and he was the person who started me into the fray of life insurance and then financial advising. And so I owe a lot to him and that's how I got started. That's amazing. And it's the power of strategic questions. You know, he could have, you could have sat down and he could have said, oh, well, what we do is and let me show you this product. And you would have been like, oh, stop.

But he asked a question and it got you thinking. And it really, I've heard it said, years and years ago where someone would go, oh, hey, imagine in your basement, you've got this really special machine and it prints out all legal, $100 bills, 24 hours a day. And the government gave it to you, and it's all legal. Would you want me to come by once a month and just maintain it, make sure it's going to run all the time and grease it and loo bit? Of course you would. Well, that's kind of like the monthly maintenance. And that's similar to how life insurance works because you're a money-making machine. So I love that he asked you some really, really great questions. So you got into

the business and then started, you know, focusing on serving specific clientele, specifically women. So what are the unique financial issues that women face? Yeah. So recently I started focusing specifically on single women. So that could be childless, single women, widows, divorced, mothers. Because I believe that, and it's in statistics and all the the studies have shown that we all know that women make less than men. They live longer, so they have longevity issues. They're more likely to be the caregiver. And also, since they spend more time out of the workforce, they tend to save less for retirement. So I like to focus on those women who need that specific tailored planning because I myself,

know what it was like as a single mother and just kind of being out there on my own. So having someone that can advocate for you and truly be educational and helpful, that's where my passion lies. You know, I love that you picked a specific niche of target audience that relates to your personal area of expertise because you are one or you have that history where you can say, hey, look, let me tell you a couple little pitfalls that I can, you know, prevent you from making. So that's huge. I want to go a little bit deeper on what you said about lifespan because, you know, numbers don't lie, statistics don't lie.

But, you know, unfortunately, women tend to make less than men. That's a whole other issue, which is not right. But let's talk about lifespan because statistically women will live longer than men. Well, when you're looking at a financial plan, all of a sudden, some of those standard numbers like retire at this age and then have money last this many years. Sometimes those go out the window when you're working it up for women. So talk a little bit about lifespan and how you approach that with serving your clients. Right. So, you know, in the typical financial plan, we will, us, will project out to, say, age 90. Well, if a woman is 80 and her spouse dies at around the same age 80, the likelihood that she'll live past 90 is even higher.

And the likelihood that she will need long-term care for longer is higher as well. So it's making sure that you take into account. Now we need to think about inflation, whereas before the past 10, 20 years, advisors and planners really didn't need to have to worry about inflation. But now it's a real issue for those widows. And also there's the two incomes from Social Security. Well, one of those goes away when one of the spouses dies. So it's tricky having to plan for that even longer, what we call longevity risk,

because, you know, sometimes you wouldn't think that someone could run out of money at age 90, 95, but it happens all the time. Yeah. And many times, and we don't need to get into the weeds, but I would suspect that many times it's not necessarily, if you're picturing the bucket of water representing, you know, money in retirement accounts. most of the times it's holes in the bucket like inflation, fees, and taxes, things similar to that. Not necessarily, you know, the money that was in there because you had a bunch of money and it should have lasted. But wow, I didn't really realize the full impact of, you know, like you said, inflation or taxes because, wow, I had this one accountant. I thought I was totally fine. But then all of a sudden triggered taxes and now all of a sudden the money's flowing out of that bucket.

So what are some things that, you know, kind of like those kind of trends that women should look at, that you're able to help them, you know, plug up as much of those holes as possible? We know we can never eliminate taxes and eliminate inflation, but mitigated as much as possible. Sure. So we usually will plan for things like, let's say you have a major capital gain. You've sold a property. well, that not only affects your capital gains for that year in which you'll have to pay, but it can also affect how much you pay for your Medicare and your Part D premiums if you're on, you know, if you're over age 65. So that's another tax issue that, you know, some people don't quite think about. They think just, okay, well, I got, you know, this pot of money, now I'm going to have to pay 15%

while it could also affect how much you're going to pay for another 20, 30 years in your premiums. And most people think that their social security is not taxed. Well, there's certain rules around taking your social security and taking distributions from retirement accounts at the same time. There's tax implications there that interact. So it's just looking for those, you know, intricacies. with taxes, with inflation, you know, with longevity, to help them plan with their, and then on top of all of that, right, the stock market ups and downs to help them plan for their income.

You know, if that's not enough, then we have to consider this. You know, it's like a wave that hits you and then another wave and another wave. And I think that a lot of times people don't realize all of those aspects and they're trying to focus on the first thing and then they're getting hit from. you know, another direction with something else, you know, like the taxes and inflation and then volatility, you know, and I'm sure you talk to your clients like, okay, well, at a certain age, we need to start moving money out of some of the more volatile type accounts and put it into more stable that can never lose money. And again, we don't need to get into recommendations

or ideas, but I know that concept is important because, you know, at a certain age, you don't have the runway left to recover from a kickup in volatility and wait for. for things to come back because, oh, the market dipped this percent. So what do you, what do you advise your clients that are women to do regarding kind of the risk and volatility of where the money is sitting in accounts? Sure. So we do a standard risk tolerance questionnaire that just figures out their appetite for ups and downs. And we also look at their total assets, not just their assets that are invested in, say, the stock market. Because if you have real estate that you're getting income from, and that's a

steady stream, well, then maybe that means you can be a little more aggressive, try to capture more gains in the stock market. Or if you have, say, an annuity or a pension or, you know, something else that's a little more stable, then maybe we can look to grow your investments a little more. So it's really just tailoring that to each client for what makes sense to them. that's a really good point. And you had mentioned Social Security being taxed and things. And I think a lot of times people are like, you know, and again, there's so many variables that go into when should I claim Social Security at this age or that age. And there's a lot of variables.

But some of the variables are just like what you had mentioned, which is, oh, well, you've got this stream of income from or you've got this tucked away so that we can use this as. But if all you have is, you know, the Social Security income, now that that makes some of the decisions. more pertinent. Same with risk and volatility. You know, so I think that, you know, there can never be that cookie cutter template, oh, here's our plan. Let's implement it because everyone's situation is different. And I think that, I think a lot of times, you know, like we started our conversation here talking about, you know, that question you were asked from that advisor that ended up becoming your mentor. What questions should women be asking advisors when they're looking to get guidance, on retirement.

So maybe they're looking to hire a new advisor or an advisor for the first time. What are some of those key questions they should be thinking of asking the advisor? So I would ask that advisor, what does your service calendar look like? What are the different value added items that you're going to provide to me beyond my beyond my portfolio management. So are you going to look at all aspects of my financial picture or just look at this one account or my own or just my portfolio? Because there has been a trend recently towards comprehensive financial planning.

Advisors needing to be able to do, you know, like you said, the tax planning, looking at all of the insurances. knowledgeable on debt reduction, knowledgeable on student loans and college funding. So I think it's just asking the deeper question, what are the exact services that you're going to provide in what cadence and how often are we going to meet and, you know, are we going to meet face-to-face? What's your preference? Are you available via email if something happens?

So just trying to get the total picture of what the... advisor can offer. Yeah, that's that's a huge point. And also I would suspect that they would want to know, are I'm not going to get a call every other week saying pitching me on some new thing. You know, like I can only imagine like, you know, I'm getting a call now and you told me to buy this and do this and move this and it's just enough already. So I want to know that we're on a plan, you know, And I think that that's something huge. Like when the sequence of meetings comes up, we've got to, you know, address these points. And then the next time we meet, we're going to move on to this.

And it's not going to feel like you're pushing me to do things. You're teaching me. And I think that's a key point, too, is to educate. Right. Yeah, education is huge. And especially with women, many times. And what I've found with my clients, too, is that they are hungry for more information. It doesn't mean that they're not going to be a client, that they're not going to follow your recommendations.

They just want to make sure that they're 100% informed by the information that you're giving them and that they're making the right decision. Yeah, they don't need a degree in financial planning per se. They just need to be taught and educated so that they follow along. And then they don't need to understand all the intricacies, but they're following your thought patterns. And it's like, yeah, that does make sense. And so, again, you're not pushing and prodding. You're just laying out some options. And then I think that's human nature.

People want to understand their options so that then the path forward becomes really, really clear. I think that's just so powerful of what you're doing and helping, you know, specifically single women, make wise decisions for their finances now and for retirement. If someone is interested in learning more and then also reaching out and connecting with you, what's the best way they can do that, Sharda? Sure. So you can go to our website. It's wealth design group.com. I'm also on Facebook and LinkedIn, active there and post things regularly that are educationally driven. And you can always email me at shardat at wealthdesign group.com. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you today. Yeah, thank you. I've really enjoyed it.

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