From Assembly Lines to Annuities with Rob Neff

In this episode of the How to Win Podcast, hosts Kyrk Davis and Rick Gregory discuss financial planning with guest Rob Neff, a retired Toyota employee and current client of Family Financial Partners (FFP). The hosts share their experiences with surgeries and how Rob transitioned his retirement finances smoothly with FFP. They emphasize simplifying financial planning, ensuring easy account transitions, and the importance of client comfort and trust. Additionally, Rob touches on his career in real estate post-retirement amid market fluctuations. The episode concludes with recommendations for living below means, investing consistently, and establishing a secure financial future. Rob praises FFP's customer support and service, making finance management accessible and stress-free.

Kyrk Davis is a Registered Representative offering Securities through The O.N. Equity Sales Company, Member FINRA/SIPC, One Financial Way Cincinnati, Ohio 45242 (513) 794-6794. Kyrk Davis is an Investment Advisor Representative offering Investment Advisory services through O.N. Investment Management Company. Estate planning services provided in conjunction with your licensed legal professional.

Chapters

• 1:21 Welcome Rob Neff
• 3:19 Getting setup at FFP
• 6:22 Avoiding One-Size-Fits-All Products
• 11:12 Life after Toyota
• 13:37 Today's Economy
• 16:56 Closing Thoughts

Transcript

0:02

Welcome to the How to Win Podcast. I'm Kyrk Davis. And I'm Rick Gregory. Want to know how to win in life and in your finances? Then you're in the right place. On this podcast, we'll be talking about everyday topics and how they relate to your overall financial picture. Welcome back to another episode of the How to Win podcast. We've taken a little bit of a hiatus for the past couple months, but we're happy to be back here. Well, the hiatus is probably my fault because I had to have back surgery on June 24th, so I was gone for quite a while and didn't feel like podcasting, but my back's 100 percent perfect now and I'm back and we have a special guest today. Some of you all that listen to this might know this guy. His name is Rob Neff. Rob and I worked at Toyota together. He was in stamping, I was in body weld, and he just had my parts and I had to go get them. And he'd say, go get them yourself, because I'm busy over here. So, that's how we got to know each other. And Rob is a client of FFP, and a friend of ours, and we wanted to have him in for a guest today. So, welcome to the podcast, Rob. It's great to be here, Rick, and I can still see you climbing up on pallets 15 feet off the ground to get to work. It was a left hand door or a right hand door. I don't want to put the wrong word on it. Yep, I wasn't going to get it. We did a lot of self serve there. Like you said, I'm Rob Neff and I was at Toyota for 32 and a half years and retired in June of 21. And have not missed the place, but have definitely missed some of the people. That's the thing about there, out there. You know, it's like, we had to do a whole lot of work that was hard, and it was tough, but man, the people made it. I mean, it was, if it hadn't have been for going in and seeing, seeing some of the people that you liked and hung out with every day, it would have been awful. You know, so, that's, that's just one of those things where that You know, it's a great place to work and we got a good retirement out of it. But man, it's you know, the people and I miss the people too, just like you. Yeah. Yeah. Not stay in contact with. There's probably 15 20 people I stay in contact and then of course social media. And then we still have some text chains where we send out little funny, what we think are funny memes. Yeah. And reels. But but other than that, no. And you're talking about surgery, I just had knee replacement in April, so courtesy of The Rock. Yeah, so there, you know, so, so it beat us all down, but we're, we're better off for it. So. We're going to talk a little bit today about how Rob got here with us. So, I retired in April, the same year that Rob did, in 21. And I was working for FFP kinda. And when I retired, they said, hey, come over here and work. We want you to, you know, come and hang out with us and get us some Toyota people. So, obviously I did and Rob was one of them. We have a great time here at FFP and we're glad that Rob came. But Kirk, I want you to kind of tell everybody how people get from Fidelity or whatever they are to FFP and kind of how that process goes. Yeah. Well, Rob's been a client for about two and a half years now. Yeah. But kind of the process of getting everything set up and, and moved over if you, if you will. It's pretty simple. So a lot of people kind of overcomplicate personal finance for whatever reason, whether it's. Whether it's just that they get overwhelmed with it or sometimes it's they try to make it confusing just to win clients over You know, we take a little bit different approach and we try to simplify things as much as possible because we firmly believe that If we can explain something in everyday language that everybody can understand That means that the clients are going to be more comfortable with what we're doing and those initial meetings, when we start working with a new prospect, it's really just a kind of a fact finding to see where you're at, how you make decisions with money, what some of your long term goals are and then from there, we help build a plan to actually execute that. And oftentimes, part of that's going to be managing, you know, assets that were in a 401k or other IRAs or just money that you'd saved up in the banks there. So the process to actually get the account set up is, it's pretty simple. We just collect the, the basic information of, you know, name, date of birth, social, that kind of, that kind of stuff then our operations team will put together an application. We do everything electronically nowadays so we can send you a DocuSign, it's just a couple clicks of the mouse to put your your signature on there, and that actually opens the account. Now we have a new home for those dollars to, to be placed in. And from there we'll we'll manage it and whatever way that we discuss that works for your goals there. So I received a phone call one day when all this happened for Rob and I said, Hey Rick, I'm wanting to get out of here. He said can you help me? And I said, yeah, what do you want to do? You know, so we discussed what he wanted to do. So was it pretty easy, Rob, for you? I mean, when you, like I said, you know, basically you come over and hung out and we talked and did we make it easy enough for you? Oh, it, it could not have been any easier. In fact, I had left my money in Fidelity for several months after I retired just for, you know, you know, Not wanting to deal with it. You know, I had a brokerage link account that I had money in. I knew I wanted to move it. And you know, Rick and I talked and then met with Kyrk and kind of discussed, you know, my personal strategy. Cause I was 55 at the time. We sat down, we talked, signed a couple things, and I'm up and rolling in a new retirement account well, we want to make sure that we're not like, that you don't feel like you're going to the used car sales lot. You know what I'm saying? I mean, you come in there and you get pressured or whatever, you know, we want to help. And, of course, a lot of the people I know, you know, that come in here. are friends of mine so you know we want to make sure that you know that they're comfortable and I think we got a little example of how Kyrk helped you a little bit so Kyrk why don't you start with what happened to Rob with the with the little annuity thing the dinner the free dinner thing let us let's talk about the free dinner thing Yeah, so it's a, it's a common practice in the industry to offer, you know, free seminars or free dinner seminars or something along those lines and they'll typically describe them as an educational piece but in reality it's more of a sales pitch and often times the products that they're, or the product that they're, they're trying to sell in that particular seminar or that particular dinner that's the only product that they have or that's the only product that they're looking to sell that, that day. And they're trying to sell it to every single person in the room and oftentimes that's just not the, not going to be the, the right product for that particular person or, or their needs. So, Rob had went to one of those seminars a little while, little while back and got offered something that was, you know, essentially too good to, too good to be true. And A little hint, if anything ever sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And this is not to throw shade at anybody. We're not trying to talk bad about anybody, because sometimes you might go to this and it might be the greatest thing. You know, it might work. It might, you know, it might be something that's good for you and your situation, but it's something that if you have a financial advisor, or if you have questions, just call us. Call us. We'll answer your questions. Absolutely. And the one thing about the product that this company was pushing was, it was a legal product. There was nothing illegal about it, but he only hinted at what the product actually did and didn't do. And all the promises inside of it for, you know, money match, taking money out just wasn't accurate to what the product was for. So you know, if you want to do it, go get a free meal, but how was the meal, by the way? Oh, it was at Jeff Ruby's Pilates. Oh, you can't beat that. Yeah, no, I, I, yes, so, but anyway, lest I digress. But I think, I think the overall, the overall point with it is you know, every different product and every different service out there I kind of think of them as different tools. Now they can be, they can be great tools for the, for the right job but before making any, you know, major decisions with your retirement or with your finances, you should make sure that that tool is going to be appropriate for the job that it's, that you're trying to, trying to do. Don't hand me a hammer and ask me to paint with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And don't forget, I mean, if you call us, it doesn't cost anything to call us and ask us a question. Yep. You know, it doesn't, we're not going to charge you for, Call and say, hey, this is what I got going on. Is this okay or not? Just call us. Yeah. You know, I'll answer the phone. My, my cell phone number's on my card, you know, so no big deal. So I think the, the, the, the bigger thing to, to, to look at is again, anytime you're trying to make a big decision, make sure that we, we have all the information make sure that we have thought through you know, all the different contingencies and what this particular product or what this particular service is Going to look like over the next, you know, five years, ten years. Let's not get too tunnel visioned on one particular aspect of it. Let's make sure that it, it works with the, within your overall financial plan. And I think that's where our firm kind of sets itself apart is because we don't ever approach a new prospect with, with a strategy in mind before actually, before actually talking to them. We come in as a, you know, with a You know, open canvas or blank canvas if you, if you will, and try to figure out what that client's needs actually are. And then we have, you know, thousands of different tools in our tool belt to craft the correct investment strategy and the correct, you know, retirement strategy or insurance strategy or what have you. But we have all those tools to, to put together the, the correct plan to make sure that. Your retirement and your financial life progresses in the correct direction well, you know, people don't understand, I think, you know, a lot of my best friends and my family are clients of FFP. And that's what, that's what we try to do. You know, and, and I think Rob, I think of course, like I said, Rob and I worked together and I know that gives me a little insight, you know, as to what's going on because we knew about Fidelity, you know, how it works, how Toyota retirement system works. Oh, absolutely. I mean, just anytime that you have a personal connection with someone that you're considering doing business with, you know, that, that helped that helped that part of the process for sure. Yeah. And for me, you know, I couldn't be any more pleased, you know, because he's I had been through a divorce and given half my pension away. Yeah. I was 55 years old and I didn't need to touch my retirement. Yeah, we don't want to stay at Toyota for 32 more years. No. Yeah, so that, that, that's a, that's an important thing too. I mean, you know, you just, you don't realize. I mean, so tell us what you're doing now, Rob. Well, I am chasing around an 11 year old. I've got an 11 year old son, got 5 grandsons, but I also my work life, I decided to get my real estate license. So I've been a licensed realtor since 2019. I got my license before I left Toyota. And kind of got my feet wet that way, so I'll do a couple buddies there at the plant. And I've been doing that ever since. Of course, I decided to get my license right before COVID hit. And shut everything down. And shut everything down. And people that were normally working had time. Well, I'll get my real estate license. So there was an uptick of about 30 percent more agents in the central Kentucky area. And, oh, I don't know the numbers, but I would say a 40 50 percent decline in inventory. And that really hasn't changed much just for the simple fact that, you know, I bought my house for 300, 000 in 2019, or 360, 000 in 2019. It's probably worth 650, 000, but where am I gonna, what am I gonna do with that money? Because the market's gone up so much, I, you know, and that's why so many people are, you know, unless they're downsizing or moving. There, there's no lateral moves in the market just for the fact that, you know, you, you're going to spend any money you made on your house to get in a new one and interest rates aren't 3 percent anymore. Yeah. So if you, if you're, unless you, unless you have your house paid off or like you said going to downsizing to where you can buy it in cash, you're either making a lateral move and still paying more because interest rates are, are, you know, really high compared to, you know, where they were a couple of years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Or you're downsizing to kind of keep the same payment or maybe buying cash if you were fortunate enough for that. Well, you know, people don't realize how the interest rate affects everything. They don't realize. It affects you and your job as a realtor. It affects us here as financial, supposedly financial experts. We'll use that term loosely. And you know, there's, there's things that it affects everybody, you know, I mean, because all of us have to eat, buy gas, you know, have a house, have a place to live. So it affects everybody. And I don't think people realize to what extent until something like this happens, the interest rates stay high, but things are getting better. Yeah, they're, they're, they're coming down. The feds. The feds obviously indirectly affect mortgage rates, but they're going to start loosening up and, and cutting rates and, you know, we, we might get back down. If I had a crystal ball, I would guess we might get back down in the fives. I don't, as much as I'd love for it to get low again, I don't know that it'll ever get, ever get where it was. Groceries aren't going to go down. That's the thing. You know, the stuff has gone up like that. I don't think groceries are not going to, they're not going to go up. You're not going to see, you're not going to see, you know, 99 cents for a loaf of bread anymore. It's not going to happen. Well, that's kind of the, the, the misconception with, with inflation. So a lot of people think, okay, we had inflation, so that means prices go up. Now that we have inflation coming down, that means prices should go down. That's not, again, that's not how, how inflation works. Inflation is just the, the rate at which prices go up. Typically once they go up, they, they never come down unless there is some supply and demand imbalance that forces them back down. Well, groceries, there's always going to be a, you know, a large demand and a relatively, you know, neutral, I guess you could call it, they're equal supply. So we're probably never going to see prices on those, those types of things come down. Things like gas. Well, we can, we can certainly kind of see that go up and go down because we can either, you know, turn on the, turn on the wells or turn off the wells and artificially, you know kind of adjust the, the supply and then there's seasonality with the demand of, you know, we're definitely traveling more in the, the summer. So, yeah, demand goes up. That's why I see prices come up. And then now we're kind of getting into a season where summer's over. Kids are back in school. We're not traveling as, as much and we see demand. Drop down and that's why you know prices typically start falling in at the the pumps this time this time of year Well, things have been volatile, you know like gas prices I think that that's the most important thing is, you know, we have an approach as were that You know, we look at the big picture. We try to take care of things and, you know, on the long term, hey, Rob, give us a couple of suggestions on what we can do better. Well, you can move closer to Wilmore. Okay, that's good. So I don't have to go up Man O War. No, I mean, you know, and again, You know, I know you all are paying me a lot of money to do this podcast. But I actually gave you coffee. Anyway you know, really, it's been nothing but easy. I wouldn't know what to what to suggest. Communication's good. You know, it's just for me personally, it's just been a very easy, easy transition. And knowing that, you know, it's just a phone call away if I got a question. I'll You know, I'm super horrible. I mean, just little things. Like, I'm horrible at remembering my password to the online account. So, I probably call every two months to hey, help me with my password. And so, just those little things that, you know, are trivial when they're taken care of, but would be a big deal if they weren't taken care of. We got tailgate, you know, go to football, go to Keeneland, you know, I mean. Have our Christmas open house. Have a Christmas open house, yeah, so we do a lot. So, well, Kyrk, close us up, why don't you give us some thoughts. Yeah, well, first of all, I want to thank Rob for taking some time today to meet with us. I'm going to chat through his experience and hopefully give some insight to, to all of you out there that may be on the fence or may be intimidated to come talk with a financial advisor thinking that we're going to speak over your head or, you know, overcomplicate the, the process to a point where you just don't want to, don't want to take the time to, to deal with that. So I hope Rob kind of maybe settled some of those, you know, potential fears. But again, you know, The same advice that I give to everybody, and I think it's pretty universal, is, you know, hey, if you live below your means and consistently save and invest ultimately, you know, that's the, you know, those are kind of the biggest things you can do to build yourself a solid financial base and ultimately a dignified retirement. Rob, thanks a lot, man, for coming. Sometimes you hear a horn beep, it's me driving by your house. So I come down to Willmore and go to Bluegrass Sports and Bleak quite a bit. So if you're out there riding a mower and I'm beeping, that's, that's who it is, but we really appreciate it and hope everybody enjoyed the podcast and we'll catch up with you next time. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the How to Win Podcast. We hope you enjoyed the episode, and if you did, be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast platform so you'll never miss an episode. If you have questions about your finances, visit our website@familyfinancialpartners.com or give us a call at (859) 219-1006.