No Plan B: The Retirement Reality Check – with Richard Taylor (We’re The Brits In America S1:E24)

Richard Taylor returns in this special short solo episode of We’re the Brits in America to re-cap recurrent themes and issues he’s seen throughout his career as a financial planner as well as the principles that he’s built up to tackle them head on.

Rich imparts practical advice on several key points that are fundamental to his belief system and key to successful financial planning, making it in America, and living a fulfilling life.

We’re the Brits in America is affiliated with Plan First Wealth LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Plan First Wealth.

Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial adviser and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. Plan First Wealth does not provide any tax and/or legal advice and strongly recommends that listeners seek their own advice in these areas.

About Richard

Richard Taylor is a British expat, dual citizen (UK & US). Originally from Bolton, he now lives in Greenwich, CT, where Plan First Wealth has its head office.

As the firm’s leader, Richard launched Taylor & Taylor, now Plan First Wealth, and continues to fuel the firm’s growth. Richard is a Chartered Financial Planner (UK – CII) in addition to holding the IMC (CFA UK) and Series 65 (US – FINRA).

Connect with Richard on LinkedIn

 

Transcript:

Richard Taylor
[00:00:00 – 00:00:56]
Welcome to the ‘We’re the Brits in America’ podcast, a Plan First Wealth podcast for Brits in America by Brits in America, dedicated to helping British expats thrive in America. I’m your host, Richard Taylor and Plan First wealth is the business I founded and run today, and we work with successful British expatriates living across the US to make the most of their opportunity and avoid the expat landmines.

However, while Plan First Wealth, LLC is an SEC-registered investment advisor, the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Plan First Wealth. Information presented is for educational purposes only. Now, if you aren’t already receiving our weekly emails, please go to our website, planfirstwealth.com and sign up to Wealth Hub.

Richard Taylor:
[00:00:56 – 00:01:26]
It’s free and you’ll then be notified every time we drop a new episode and so much more. Alrighty, let’s get back to this week’s show.

Welcome to this unusual episode of ‘We’re the Brits in America’. So we’re going to take a break from our usual scheduled programming and that’s because I actually brought forward the last episode with Duncan Edwards from the BA being to coincide with the launch of their updated trade and investment guide to the US.

Richard Taylor:
[00:01:26 – 00:02:05]
So that’s created a gap and I have decided to fill that gap with a solo episode, so I want to keep it nice and short. I’ve been a financial advisor, financial planner for well over ten years now. Been in the industry for much longer than that and especially in the last few years, I’ve put out a lot of information, content, talking points, and I have found that I am continuously and relentlessly talking about several key themes which are fundamental to both my belief system and what I believe to be absolutely key requirements in successful financial planning,

Richard Taylor:
[00:02:05 – 00:02:24]
having a successful life, making the most of this journey that we’re all on. So I’m going to talk about them, and I hope you find it interesting, useful and we’ll see. Right, so let’s get straight into it. The first one is, I’m going to introduce this with a hashtag, right, which is obviously very of our times. The first is #OneLife.

Richard Taylor:
[00:02:24 – 00:02:40]
In that we have one life. We have one shot at this. Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is not a practice round. What is it John Lennon said?

Richard Taylor:
[00:02:40 – 00:03:03]
Life is what happens when we’re busy making plans. We’re all incredibly guilty of that, and myself included. And part of what I see my job is literally shaking people into the recognition that they have one shot at this precious time is slipping away. Life is not a dress rehearsal and they better identify what’s important to them, who’s important to them, what they want to be doing and get on doing it, especially here in America.

Richard Taylor:
[00:03:03 – 00:03:11]
America is a land of opportunity. I’ll touch on this later. But it is hard-charging. We work hard here. It can be quite stressful.

Richard Taylor:
[00:03:11 – 00:03:41]
And if you spend a decade, two decades, three decades slogging it out in America, I believe you deserve a long and fulfilling retirement that is worry free. Anything less than that is a tragedy and a travesty. And we have to help people wake up to this fact, because otherwise we just go through our day to day and life passes us by. So #OneLife, one shot at this, make the most of it, the second one. And my next hashtag is no plan B.

Richard Taylor:
[00:03:41 – 00:04:07]
And what I mean by no plan B is when you move into retirement, or what next, or whatever you want to call it. But when you stop working in the main job, the main thing, the big job with a big income, you have no plan B. And I don’t think people really realize this. So you spend 30, 40 years working hard, building up assets outside of your job, obviously. And your assets go up in value, they go down in value.

Richard Taylor:
[00:04:07 – 00:04:39]
Sometimes you don’t like it when they go down in value, but it doesn’t really matter because you have your income that is funding your life. But then when you retire, when you move on to whatever’s next, that changes. That income goes away and those assets become your lifeline and your perception of it and the way you feel, those ups and downs changes dramatically and it makes you susceptible to making a mistake. And what happens if you make a mistake, or you get the initial calculations wrong and you run out or you run low? There’s no plan B.

Richard Taylor:
[00:04:39 – 00:05:05]
You have no opportunity to rebuild. If you make a mistake in your forties or your fifties, sixties even, maybe, there’s often an opportunity to repair, learn from that and get back on track. But if you make a mistake in your sixties, seventies, eighties, when you are in retirement, and I believe you become, I’ve seen it, you become more susceptible to it because it’s now your lifeline, you feel much more exposed to it. You have no plan b. There is no way of making it back up.

Richard Taylor:
[00:05:05 – 00:05:18]
You do that, the only options are bad options. They are changes in lifestyle, pretty serious ones. So making people aware of that, that stakes are extremely high, is a key part of what we do. #NoPlanB.

Richard Taylor:
[00:05:18 – 00:05:46]
This is a good one, #KeepTheFaith. This is relating to investments. So we deeply, strongly, fundamentally believe in a buy the market, buy and hold strategy, rather than trying to time the market or even time investments. We know from history, I’m going to talk about us markets here, but we know from history. And of course, past performance is no guide to future performance.

Richard Taylor:
[00:05:46 – 00:06:02]
But over 100 odd years, we can build out certain things that aren’t guaranteed, but are good indicators of what may happen. And we know over 100 years, markets go up for three out of four years. We just don’t know which three. We don’t know when the back down year’s gonna be. And we also know it’s not even over those three years, it’s wildly different.

Richard Taylor:
[00:06:02 – 00:06:29]
We also know that the news is unrelentingly negative, and it’s much easier to be negative than it is to be positive. What’s famous saying? Bears sound smart, bulls make you money. As in, people who are bearish, people who are fearful, people who are always sounding the alarm, sound clever, sound more intellectually with it, clever on the mark. But people who are bullish, who keep the faith, hashtag keep the faith, who stay invested, remain invested, are rewarded.

Richard Taylor:
[00:06:29 – 00:06:57]
They make you the money. Or you can make your own money by staying invested. So I use #KeepTheFaith when the news cycle turns bad, which is all the time to remind people to tune out the noise, to ignore what’s going on day to day, whether that’s news or even market movements, that over the long term, the market has consistently delivered and we have no reason to believe that that’s not going to be the case going forward and #KeepTheFaith.

Richard Taylor:
[00:06:57 – 00:07:09]
That’s how we make money over the long term. Another one. And this is really aimed specifically at expats. For us, that’s Brits in America. Opportunities and landmines.

Richard Taylor:
[00:07:09 – 00:07:22]
#OpportunitiesAndLandmines. So I’m sure many of you heard me talk about this. Coming to America is a tremendous opportunity. I don’t know how America does it. I’ve heard it said, America is a business.

Richard Taylor:
[00:07:22 – 00:07:41]
And maybe that goes some way to explaining how this place just creates so much opportunity. As an entrepreneur, as an employee, as a manager. You come over here, you make more, you can save more. I’ve seen people rocket through positions in their career and end up much more senior. It really is so cliched, but it really is a land of opportunity.

Richard Taylor:
[00:07:41 – 00:08:08]
And as a British expat coming here, you have a tremendous opportunity to change your financial future, your family’s financial future and all that flows from that. But there are landmines. Landmines abound. And some of these are very specific to being an expat. And that is being an expat in America or having non us assets or non us complications can be uniquely challenging in a way that it’s just not almost anywhere else in the world.

Richard Taylor:
[00:08:08 – 00:08:54]
And part of that is down to America’s unique taxation system, and that is citizenship-based taxation. This includes green card holders and legislation called FATCA, and also maybe even Bank Secrecy Act, which is Brev Bar. Anyway, without going into specific details, there are a raft of reporting requirements, informational reporting requirements, and other stuff that is just not required anywhere else in the world and makes owning non us investments extremely difficult and punitive. And these are all things that can catch expats completely unawares and can have major consequences down the line. And there’s other things, not even taxation related, such as neglecting UK assets when you come over here, because it becomes so difficult to deal with them as a us person that they end up being neglected for 1020 years.

Richard Taylor:
[00:08:54 – 00:09:19]
And there’s a tremendous opportunity cost to that. There’s currency landmines that America’s not have to worry about having assets and income denominated in a different currency. And then there’s more prosaic stuff like, yes, you’re gonna make more money, hopefully you’re gonna save more money, hopefully you’re gonna have more net worth, hopefully. But what I often see is a disconnect between that and the increased cost of living here. America is not a cheap place to live.

Richard Taylor:
[00:09:19 – 00:09:43]
I mean, we fall for this trap of its low tax. I’m not sure it is certainly not in a lot of states. And even in the states where there is low tax, there are other taxes that can make it not especially low tax. And it’s this cost of living. I find, you know, people who come over here and do well, they tend to have quite big lives and quite big lives cost a lot to maintain, particularly if you want to go back and forth from the UK or see family in retirement.

Richard Taylor:
[00:09:43 – 00:10:04]
And I think this is massively underestimated by the people that we speak to, and that can have major long-term consequences. So, hashtag opportunities and landmines. Massive opportunity to come here and change life. But that landmines abound. You need technical expertise, and you need planning, in my humble opinion.

Richard Taylor:
[00:10:04 – 00:10:38]
Finally, #ForPitysSake, work with a cross-border UK us tax advisor. It is a premium, but it is worth it. A local tax person does not have the experience and expertise required to help anyone with non us assets, income streams and complications and other stuff to navigate this. And as I said before, the consequences can be dire. Yes, there will be a premium because you need someone who understands the US, the UK, and the interaction between the two.

Richard Taylor:
[00:10:39 – 00:10:55]
In other words, the double taxation agreement. Of course that comes with a premium. Yes, it can be astronomical, but it doesn’t have to be. Heaven forbid, don’t do your own taxes. I’m of the opinion of the belief as a non-tax professional that when you do, you lose a lot of the COVID that you might already have if you work with a tax professional.

Richard Taylor:
[00:10:56 – 00:11:21]
I cannot stress that enough. I bang that drum all the time and I am astounded by the fact that it doesn’t seem to be landing doesn’t resonate in the amount of people I meet who are not working with cross border tax professionals who have issues lurking in tax affairs that we identify, that help them resolve by working with the right professionals and people who do their own taxes. Which I think is a potential massive mistake. Right? So just to recap there, #OneLife.

Richard Taylor:
[00:11:21 – 00:11:53]
You get one shot at this. Make the most of it. #NoPlanB in retirement, the stakes cannot be higher, and you have no plan b, you have no way of making it back. So don’t mess it up. #KeepTheFaith. That is, get invested, stay invested, don’t panic out, the market will reward you. #OpportunitiesAndLandmines coming to America is a tremendous opportunity. Landmines are bound, don’t step on them. And finally, as always, work with a Ukus cross border tax advisor. That’s not us.

Richard Taylor:
[00:11:53 – 00:12:08]
We don’t do that. But I can introduce you to some if you so wish. Right, I’ll wrap up there. I hope you found this helpful, or if not helpful, at least interesting. As always, feedback, questions, queries, hit me up.

Richard Taylor:
[00:12:08 – 00:12:20]
I’m all over LinkedIn. I’m sure you can find my email somewhere. I would love to hear from you. Ciao for now. Alright folks, that’s another episode of we’re the Brits in America under our belts.

Richard Taylor:
[00:12:20 – 00:12:40]
Thank you for listening. I appreciate it and I appreciate you. If you’re enjoying the show and would like to support the mission, which is to help Brits thrive in America, I’d ask you to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen, and also consider leaving a rating and a review. This stuff really does matter. Please help us get this information to the people who need it.

Richard Taylor:
[00:12:40 – 00:13:12]
That is your fellow brits living in America. Just a quick reminder that this show is brought to you by plan first, wealth. We are a US based US UK cross border financial planning and wealth management firm, and we help successful British expatriates living across the US to make the most of their opportunity and ultimately to retire happier. So if you’re a British expat living in America and you’d like to know more about what we do for people like you, you can find us at our website, www.plantfirstwealth.com, or you can look me up on LinkedIn. Do get in touch.

Richard Taylor:
[00:13:12 – 00:13:20]
We’d love to hear from you. As always, thank you to Sam Nash and The Podcast Guys for their help producing this episode and the entire show. See you next time.