Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Vincent Virga, Founder of PFS Wealth Management Group Discussing Fee and Risk-Efficient Investment Planning

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

Vincent has more than 35 years of experience in the financial services industry, growing and developing close relationships with mentors in all areas of financial management, financial planning, tax-efficient strategies, and market alternative investment concepts. Having worked with these individuals in wealth management and asset protection strategies, Vincent has been better able to serve his clients’ needs in a world that demands unconventional approaches to building long-term financial security.The published author of “The S.M.A.R.T. Approach: A 5 Step Process to Life, Leadership and Investing,” Vincent, also hosted a weekly radio show, “The S.M.A.R.T. Approach to Retirement,” on 970 AM The Answer in New York. He lectures extensively about non-conventional wealth accumulation and preservation approaches to other financial advisory professionals and the public through his energetic and entertaining informational workshops.Learn more: http://www.pfswealthgroup.com/Insurance products are offered through the insurance business PFS Wealth Management Group. PFS Wealth Management Group is also an Investment Advisory practice that offers products and services through AE Wealth Management, LLC (AEWM), a Registered Investment Advisor. AEWM does not offer insurance products. The insurance products offered by PFS Wealth Management Group are not subject to Investment Advisor requirements. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. Any references to protection, safety or lifetime income, generally refer to fixed insurance products, never securities or investments. Insurance guarantees are backed by the financial strength and claims paying abilities of the issuing carrier. This radio show is intended for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be used as the sole basis for financial decisions, nor should it be construed as advice designed to meet the particular needs of an individual's situation. PFS Wealth Management Group is not permitted to offer and no statement made during this show shall constitute tax or legal advice. Our firm is not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Government or any governmental agency. The information and opinions contained herein provided by third parties have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed by PFS Wealth Management Group. A PR firm was paid to assist with media placement. 3190008- 07/25  Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-vincent-virga-founder-of-pfs-wealth-management-group-discussing-fee-and-risk-efficient-investment-planning

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 as Vincent Virga, who's the founder of PFS Wealth Management Group, and we'll be talking about fee and risk-efficient investment planning. Vincent, welcome to the program.

Thanks so much, Mike. Hey, I'm excited to talk with you because I know that you've got plenty of experience in the industry, and it's always neat to hear perspectives. You can have 10 people in the same industry and get 12 different stories and examples. So I'm excited to learn from you on some of your investment planning, guidance that you give to your clients. But before we dive into that, give us a little bit of your story and background and what led you to the financial services industry? Well, you know, it's an interesting story, Mike. I am the proud recipient of two immigrant parents. Back in the late 50s,

they got on a ship from Sicily, Italy, to be exact, not a word of English, just a few hundred in their pockets and took a 13-day journey across the Atlantic to this incredible, beautiful country we call home. And they settled here. And over the course of my dad's life, an amazing thing, amazing man. And if you shook his hands, you knew the type of work he did. He became one of the most well-respected contractors and developers in our community and was respected for his integrity, his character.

And an amazing thing about this man was that he came. here with a fourth grade education from a little rural village in Sicily and was reading blueprints just as well as college educated engineers and architects here. So the sad irony here is that my dad built some of the most incredible, beautiful homes here in the U.S., but one of the houses he failed to build was his financial home. And ultimately, when my dad passed away, I didn't inherit some legacy. I didn't inherit some trust fund. What I inherited was $45,000 in additional expenses each year in order to take care of my mom's needs

because both of them failed to plan for the future. As much as I tried to push them to do it, they refused. And ultimately, that was the legacy that I inherited. And I promised myself that in my life, both personal and in business, I would never, ever, ever have that happen to another family again if I can help it. So that is one of the premises as to how I was led to this industry. You know, it's interesting when you say that and it's like, you know, you can just feel the pain and you don't want to experience that again.

So how can I put things into place to fix that? but then what lessons you learned and strategies you put into place, how can I now help the next person and the next person? And no, you can't help every human out there, but you can help this one and you can help this one. So I think that is such a strong story and it comes from the passion of dealing with your parents. So that's just spectacular. So where does it start with your clients when you're working with someone and, you know, obviously one of the biggest concerns is I don't want risk. You know, I'm talking about my retirement funds that I've worked hard to build up. So what are some of those risks that you're guiding your clients to avoid? Talk about some of

those. And I think that, you know, so many times we think about that bucket and there's holes in it and water's flowing out. And that's a picture of our retirement funds. And we don't want risk to have money flowing out and excess fees. So where do you start that conversation with your clients? Yeah, so fee and risk efficiency is one of the five pillars we focus on with planning for our clients' futures. Most individuals don't realize because they don't see it on paper the impact of fees and risk to their bottom line and their portfolios. And for us, the fee and risk efficient planning is, quite frankly, the framework for organizing and really creating financial decisions around factors that are more controllable. You know, we talk and we educate our perspective clients on costs, tax exposure, and ultimately the portfolio design or what I call the design of their financial home.

Rather than solely relying, I'll tell you, Mike, on market returns. You know, for me, most retirees, you know, this really could be especially important as their ability to recover for market downturns, ultimately as we get older, is going to be limited because of one of the risks, and that's time, time horizon. So rather than focusing for us solely on maximizing returns, many of the retirees we sit down with benefit from understanding how to structure their assets in a way that supports consistent cash flow, aligns with their risk tolerance, and manages their expenses. You know, it's interesting, you put it that way, and it made me think of something like my

example of the bucket, you know, if you have five holes in the bucket, and you keep pouring money in, well, money is flowing out. So sure, you need to pour more, you know, water in the bucket. But at the same time, what if you poured less in, less money, but there was less outflow. So less expense, less risk, less fees. And I would venture to say that many of the clients you work with would assume like, oh, yeah, yeah, there's not much fees in. But if you dig in and dig in and dig in and show, wow, you know, your current plan that you have

with whatever set up and whatever strategy, look at all these fees. How do you show them and expose that to make sure that they're getting the best in their plan? Yeah. So you're right. Most individual investors, most of them working what I call the usual suspects, i.e. the institutional firms, don't realize there's potentially a few fees that they're incurring each and every month that they don't see on a statement. but it is on the 300-page prospectus for their mutual funds. You know, one example is, you know, the net expense ratio.

And, you know, net expense ratio is basically the cost for the mutual fund companies to keep the lights on at their fund company. That's not on your statement. Another potential fee that we educate our prospective clients on, and quite frankly, we illustrated in a pretty detailed Morning Star report, is turnover ratio. And turnover ratio is exactly what it sounds like is how often is that mutual fund manager turning that fund over. Now, it should not be confused with an unscrupulous broker churning an account. That is not what I'm talking about. It's ultimately the fund

manager doing their fiduciary role of rebalancing and rebalancing their particular fund that they're managing. What most individuals don't realize, is that every time they rebalance or i.e. turn that fund over, there's a cost that you're incurring. And oh, by the way, if you own mutual funds outside of your qualified accounts, guess what else you're incurring? The T word, taxes. So it is an eye opener like you wouldn't believe. And I would venture to say, like, how many pages was that? disclosure that you mentioned? Yeah, mutual funds typically have anywhere from two to 300,

potentially, uh, pages. And of course, we read every word of that and understand it as well. You know, of course we don't, but I would venture to say that many people glance at or look at, you know, this number, this return number, whatever that might be and go, oh, oh, that that's good. But the net, net net, like you're saying, is not that top line number, very similar to a business owner that says I brought in a million dollars last year. That sounds wonderful. until the fact comes out that they spend $1.2 million and now they're under. So you need to look at those things, those fees. So talk a little bit about some of the key components of putting together a risk-efficient

portfolio and how does that align with your smart approach that you work with your clients on? Sure. Yeah. So, you know, our smart approach planning process is premised around the book I published a few years back to Smart Approach, A Five-Eproach. at process to life, leadership, and investing. And ultimately, what we're emphasizing is the S in Smart is simplicity. Keep it simple.

So it's not overwhelming because our industry can be perceived as crazy and confusing. But with clarity, we can bring simplicity so that we focus on simplicity first. Then we go to the M, which is measurability or measuring. and that's, in other words, tracking. Then there's accountability, making sure we sit down with our clients periodically and holding each other accountable, not only them to us, but us to them. You know, we need to know if their tolerance for risk, as an example, has adjusted either up or down.

So there's a level of accountability that we're all going to have and bring to the table. You know, the other is, the R is realistic results. You know, we tell folks that if you're greedy, we're probably not going to be a good fit. Our clients have been comfortable working with us, with us bringing realistic results right across the board in the services we bring. And then ultimately, it's a sense of teamwork, and it's not about any one advisor, but the team that we have around us that provides our prospective clients with the services that we have. and that we provide in those five pillars that I'd mentioned earlier. So ultimately, Mike, each one of these elements plays a role in building a portfolio or a financial home that is truly aligned with the long-term objectives that are tailored specifically

to each one of our prospective clients and eventual clients' circumstances. So it sounds to me like you do not have one plan, you put everybody in and here's the next one next, right? Obviously, that should never be the case because everyone is different. Everyone's got a different need. They come from a different place. Their view of retirement looks differently. And I love the phrase that we're talking about here, risk efficient investment planning, because guess what? Most of the time, there's an element of risk. You just need to be efficient with it. And I like your realistic results. You know, if you're expecting grand slams and home runs, This is probably not the plan to go with, you know, because that steady plotting gets those results, right?

Yeah, that's right. And again, you know, as I mentioned earlier about my dad having been a contractor, I use a utilize often analogies in the construction home building circumstance. And ultimately, what we do at PFS is sit down with our prospective clients and talk to them about their perceived and what they're looking for in. the design of their financial home. So ultimately, we're wearing a financial architect's hat. Once we've laid out what it is and where it is that they want to live, then we put on our hard hats and then go build their financial home for them. And then ultimately, once the house is built to the specs that they wanted, quote unquote, the financial home, then we become financial property managers.

And now we manage the home for them. So ultimately we design, we build, and we manage through our smart approach planning process. You know, I think probably if our wives were listening in, they would say, oh, that's a guy thing. Guys love analogies. But, you know, let's continue with that analogy you brought up, you know, the financial architect. I would venture to say this. When you sit down with a couple and you say, let's build that house, let's lay out that blueprint. They need to know what they want.

In other words, they can't just say, yeah, build me a house. Well, how big? What kind? How many floors? How many? There are so many decisions. So when you're sitting down with a client, talk a little bit about the process that you will talk with them, work with them on to help bring that vision of what they want in their retirement to life. Because sometimes, like I had an uncle, two uncles actually, that worked in the unions, they worked in asbestos.

and they put in hard, hard years. And when they retired, both of them were thrilled to sit in Florida and do literally, play golf, go out on the boat, do nothing. And many people would say, I could do that for about three weeks, but I'd go nuts after that. So everyone is different. How do you help bring that to life with your clients? Yeah, it's taking a very compassionate approach to how we evaluate specifically what our prospective clients' goals and objectives are.

for the future. We go through a pretty intense interview process to determine. And again, you know, you Mike may like to live in a 4,500 square foot Victorian. I may like it living in a 1,500 foot ranch. You may want to be in the mountains. I may want to be in the beach. And ultimately, it's, it's our responsibility to determine specifically where and how they want these financial homes to be built. And I referenced earlier, if I can, the usual suspects or the institutional firms. And it's not to be disrespectful of them because I have many friends and family that work for the institutional firms. But their focus truly is on the climb up the mountain. Their focus is 60, 40 portfolios, 70, 30 portfolios, 50, 50, 50 portfolios right off the shelf. And, you know,

those are just cookie cutter portfolios that are just not going to be a good fit. And really, they serve a purpose and what I call one slice in the many slices of a financial pie. Yeah. Let's kind of go a little bit deeper on that mountain analogy because I know, I know that it's like, okay, great, that might work to as you're striving to save, as you're getting to that certain number. But then is that enough? Is that enough to get you to and through retirement? How long are you going to live after all of those questions?

but in the analogy of the mountain, it's coming back down. And I know that a lot of outdoors people will say it's coming down the mountain that's the most important and dangerous. So what do you do with your clients in that respect? So yeah, so exactly. So if you can look at Mount Everest as a template for this, again, our wives are not going to like this, this analogy, look at the climb up Mount Everest as the accumulation phase of one. financial lives. This is the hard working years, the blood, sweat, and tears that individuals put into preparing to reach the summit, which is retirement. And once you reach the summit of

Mount Everest, the reality is, if you're fortunate and blessed to make it up there, you can't survive up there for more than a few minutes. You have to make your way down. And the walk down the mountain is ultimately in retirement, the distribution phase. For better or worse, everything you did going up the mountain is unsustainable coming down the mountain. And the distribution phase is your retirement years. And the reality is, statistically, more folks die coming down Mount Everest than they do going up. Why? Because they were full of adrenaline. They were full of focus. They were full of energy going up. That once they got to the top, all of a sudden they have to come down that mountain and the tools and strategies they used to get up there are ill-suited for them to come and make their way

down. And again, more people died coming down Mount Everest than they did going up. Huge. Yeah. And you need a guide. You need someone that's going to help you structure that financial portfolio to get to retirement, to get through retirement, all of those things. But I think that what you were mentioning about the institutionals and the off-the-shelves and whatnot, how do you address fears that your clients may have because they feel like, yeah, but I'm in this. And it's been working fine for me. But to move away from a current investment strategy to what's maybe a better structured portfolio that you know would work, but there's that hesitancy. What do you do to help them kind of move past that and realize that, you know, maybe there's a better way?

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I'm a student of Tony Robbins and I've coached many individuals on how to deal with fear. And, you know, ultimately, you know, fear in the circumstances that you're referencing is folks are afraid of change. You know, change could be difficult, especially when it comes to someone's personal finances. And what's important is that we start focusing on educating and opening the dialogue with these individuals that we come in contact with. rather than asking someone to abandon completely and arbitrarily what they know and what's helped them to get to the mountain, what we ultimately do is provide our prospective clients with absolute clarity in building a plan for the walk down.

We provide clarity as it pertains to sustainable and reliable income. We provide clarity of fee and risk efficient investment planning. We provide clarity in health care planning. We provide value and tax. We provide value in estate and legacy planning. And ultimately, my feeling is that if we don't know, you know, if we don't know where we are today, how can we possibly get to where we want to go tomorrow? And, you know, again, what I remind folks is when you get on a plane, what is what is the one thing, what's the, I call it the F word, what's the F word that you put into the pilot's hand? It's faith.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, faith that the airplane's going to get me from one point to the other because the pilots have done everything in their power to prepare to get you from point A to point B. It's faith that when you plug in a GPS in your GPS in your car, it's going to get you from point A to point B. And ultimately, I feel, Mike, that the problem that we have seen in the past and see less of is that what we're instilling, A, right out of the gate is trust and B, clarity like perspective. clients have never seen in their lives. Nice. Can you think of an example or maybe a success story with a client that used your approach and then they really got on that better trajectory?

Perfect. Yeah. So I always talk about the Dr. Mark story. Now, Dr. Mark is a hypothetical scenario, but Dr. Mark had attended one of our live events. And I posed a few questions to the audience.

and Dr. Mark humbly was unable to answer any of them and checked yes to come into the office. And, you know, the first thing I said to Dr. Mark when he came in when I was meeting with clients at the time, I said, Dr. Mark, what brings you in here? And he said, yeah, Vince, you post questions to me that I just didn't have answers to, such as, you know, he knew how long he'd been working with his current advisor. I asked Dr. Mark, are you familiar aware of how much risk your current portfolio is taking in? Is it truly aligned with the amount of risk you and your family want to take now? I don't know. Yeah. You know, how often are you meeting with your advisor?

Maybe. It's always maybe twice a year. And by the way, when people say maybe or, you know, that's like going to the casino and telling me that you broke even. I say, you know, what is your average rate of return bid? I don't know. How much are your fees? He goes, I don't know. He goes, oh, my advisor, I said, forget about your advisor fees for now.

What are the fees for the underlying mutual fund portfolio you have? And I educated them on the net expense ratios, the turnover ratios. And it blew his mind what he was incurring. And I assured him, I said, Dr. Mark, what my team and I are going to do, we're going to go back and we're going to evaluate. It's important that now you know where you are, right? as I said a few minutes ago. Now he knew where he is. Now it was a matter of knowing that he is where he is right now.

Now we're going to move him and move the needle forward. So we built a smart approach plan for him where we provided him clarity as to exactly what his fees were going to be in. We reduced his fees dramatically from the fees that he was incurring from one of the institutional firms. We educated him also on how to build and create sustainable and reliable income. that neither he nor his wife could ever outlive. We adjusted the risk that he was taking to be more aligned with the amount of risk he and his wife wanted to take. And we provided him ultimately clarity to rest assured based on his family's life expectancy and spending habits that if he had followed our plan, that he would have no issue of running out of money throughout the course of his life.

And on top of it, then we added some estate and legacy planning and some tax efficient strategies for estate planning purposes that also helped him and his family out. Nate, you know, I think you can show someone, here's where you are, here's hard facts, you know, numbers and printouts and reports of what you're paying and here's what we could do differently, it sure just turns the light ball ball on. So, Vincent, if someone is interested in maybe having that second opinion or having you look at their plan and see if they're going to get to that proper retirement the right way, what's the best way they can learn a little bit more and also reach out and connect with you. Sure. I always say

you've got nothing to lose other than an hour out of the rest of your life to get a second opinion from someone other than the first. And the easiest way is to visit our website, PFS Wealth Group. That's Paul Frank Sam, Wealthgroup.com. And just fill out our contact us. And one of our smart approach advisors will reach out to you. Schedule an introductory call to learn more, a strategy session with your listeners. As a matter of fact, hopefully you don't mind this.

but any of your listeners that reaches out and fills out that contact us form will get a free copy, a complimentary copy of my book. And we'll be more than happy to sit down with them and provide them the clarity as they rightfully deserve, whether they become a client of PFS or not. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for that. Appreciate your time. And it was really a great pleasure chatting with you today, Vincent.

Likewise, Mike. Thanks for the time. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com.