Changing How You Perceive the Role of Your Investment Advisor
By: Jeff Bucher

On the surface, when people think of an investment advisor, financial planner or retirement planner, what they think of is someone that's going to assist them with making the selections of their stocks, bonds and mutual funds. As you transition into the retirement stage there are many other important areas of retirement that also need to be considered.  Selecting the right retirement guide that will be able to help in all of these areas is crucial for you to have a fulfilling retirement.

We call ourselves many different things, Financial Planners, Investment Advisors, or maybe even Retirement Planners.  Regardless of the title, you probably go to us all for the same thing - to use our knowledge and expertise regarding the financial markets to invest your funds for you. On the surface, this describes the role of the advisor.  However, we feel that this limited role of the advisor specifically covers one period of your investment lifetime, the accumulation period, when you are trying to build and grow your wealth.  As you transition into retirement (the portfolio distribution phase), it's important that the advisor begin to take on a larger role when it comes to your financial well-being.  As an advisor that specializes in the distribution phase, the investment selection must be complimented by a strategy of when best to file for Social Security Benefits, a plan to minimize the amount of taxes that will be due, and a sustainable withdrawal strategy to ensure that your needs will be met for the remainder of your lifetime.

Fiduciary vs. Suitability

When it comes to the investment selection, it's very important to understand what type of advisor with whom you're working. There are two different types of advisors that plan within two different sets of rules. There's the investment advisor, who is held to a fiduciary standard, and then there is the registered representative, or an insurance professional, who is held to a suitability standard. Understanding what standards that they're held to and how they're compensated is part of the investment selection process that, as the consumer, you need to be aware of. The differences are crucial.

A fiduciary standard is a legal obligation where the advisor must act in the best interest of their client and puts the client's best interest ahead of their own.  It is the highest standard of care available under law.  Fiduciary advisors can be regulated by the SEC or state regulators.  An example to explain this standard is an advisor with two identical products that have different fees, who must recommend the one that is lower in cost.  They can't recommend the product that makes more money for them or their company.  A fiduciary advisor is often paid by a quarterly fee that is calculated as a percentage of assets.

According to the FIRNA Industry Professionals manual, the suitability standard requires that a registered representative or insurance professional must have a reasonable basis to believe that a recommended transaction or investment strategy involving a security or securities is suitable for the customer.  This is based primarily on financial objectives, current income level and age, in order to complete a commissionable sale of a financial product.  There is no requirement to find the best investment for you, only ones that are seemingly suitable for you.  They offer a range of products for sale carried by the company he or she represents.  The way that someone with a suitability standard gets paid is by commissions calculated as a percentage of money invested into the product.

Which type of advisor would you like to work with after hearing the differences between the two?

What to expect from a retirement planner

As we transition into retirement, the investment selection is still part of the process, but there's more to expect from a retirement planner.

Important questions we need to ask include :

• How are we going to create an income/distribution plan of these assets that's going to be reliable and sustainable for as long as you live?

• How do we select a social security filing strategy that will best meet our needs it?

• How are we going to protect your standard of living from inflation?

• How are we going to reduce your tax obligations?

• How are we going to position these assets in a way that you still have the liquidity that you need for all kinds of emergencies and related discretionary spending?

• How can we position things in such a way that you have the income stream you need and, at the same time, have the flexibility to handle life's unknowns?

• How can we help protect you from the risks of a long term illness?

• How do we select the right health care plan to best meet your needs and resources?

• How do we protect the legacy that you want to leave behind for your heirs?

Transitioning into Retirement

Again, as we transition into this retirement phase, investment selection is part of the process. But now we need to focus more on an income plan, which encompasses social security planning, tax planning, planning against inflation and health care planning - all of these things are added into the picture. So, during this transition, the perception that you have of your investment advisor needs to take on a new role. Often, with new clients, we find that there hasn't been a transition, which means the client is being greatly underserved.

At Citizen Advisory Group, (www.citizenadvisory.com), our program offers a much more comprehensive approach to the retirement planning side of things. We pull in the investment selection with an income/distribution plan that includes planning for social security, longevity and taxes. We unify all of these different pieces to create a very well-rounded plan. This allows people the safety and security to go out and enjoy their retirement lifestyle and spend their money without the fear associated with running out of money during their lifetimes.

About Jeff Bucher

Jeff Bucher is president of Citizen Advisory Group, (www.citizenadvisory.com), and is an Investment Advisor Representative of AlphaStar Capital Management, an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. He has a life and health insurance license with the state of Ohio. His membership affiliations include the exclusive Ed Slott's Master Elite IRA Advisor Group™, National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA), the National Association of Fixed Annuities (NAFA) and the Forum 400. He has earned Top of the Table honors through the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT).  Jeff has been featured on the Toledo, Ohio television affiliates for NBC, CBS, FOX, and ABC. Bucher is a former standout wrestler at The Ohio State University, where he earned an athletic scholarship and honed his leadership skills en route to earning four varsity letters.

The Hubbell-Waterman Foundation has awarded a capital grant in the amount of $25,000 to Rivermont Collegiate for masonry preservation, maintenance, and repairs to the historic Joseph Bettendorf Mansion. The grant will be used to begin essential repairs to exterior bricks, mortar, and joints on the 100-year old structure.

Built in 1815, the Bettendorf Mansion is one of only two remaining structures within the city of Bettendorf listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is of significant historical value to the entire community and region.

Rivermont Collegiate moved to the Bettendorf estate from the original campus in Davenport in 1973. The Mansion houses the Middle and Upper school classrooms, a science lab, a computer lab, and administrative offices. The Bettendorf Mansion also hosts numerous weddings and community events throughout the year.

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Many Apps Can Track Your Location And Share
Your Information, Says Cybersecurity Expert

You just had a flat tire along a dark country road. Luckily, you downloaded a flashlight app into your cellphone and now can put it to use.

But that flashlight, handy as it is, may be just one of many doors you unwittingly opened to let spies take up residence inside your phone.

"Most free flashlight apps are creepware," says Gary S. Miliefsky, CEO of SnoopWall (www.snoopwall.com), a company that specializes in cybersecurity.

Creepware is malware that spies on you and your online behavior, and could pass along information to others.

For example, Goldenshores Technologies, the company behind the popular "Brightest Flashlight Free" app for Android phones, agreed in 2013 to settle the Federal Trade Commission's charges that the software secretly supplied cellphone locations to advertising networks and other third parties.

The problem doesn't begin and end with flashlight apps, though. Many seemingly innocuous apps that people carry around with them on their mobile devices have the capability to eavesdrop on their activities.

"Consumers trust first and verify never," Miliefsky says. "As a result, most of their smartphones are infected with malware that they trust in the form of some kind of useful app or game."

Miliefsky offers these tips for ousting those spies inside the phone:

•  First, assume you've already been compromised. It's nice to think all is probably well, but most likely it's not. Somewhere in the phone the spies are at work and it's time to take the privacy behaviors and privacy policies of these apps more seriously.

•  Verify the behavior and privacy risks for apps before installing them. Do some research and ask the question: "Why does this app need GPS, microphone, webcam, contacts, etc.?" Most apps don't need these ports unless they want to invade your privacy, Miliefsky says. Find an alternative before installing risky apps.

•  Do a smartphone version of spring cleaning. Delete all the apps you don't use that often. Replace the apps that take advantage of too many of your privacy settings, such as GPS, phone and text-message logs, with similar apps that don't.

•  Turn off WiFi, Bluetooth, Near Field Communication and GPS except when you need them. That way, Miliefsky says, if you are at a local coffee shop or in a shopping mall, no one can spy using nearby (proximity) hacking attack. They also can't track where you were and where you are going on GPS.

•  Check to see if your email has put a tracer on you and your phone. "If you use a Google email account and have an Android phone, you'd be surprised that even with your GPS off, it's tracking your every move," Miliefsky says. You need to go into the phone's settings to turn off that tracking feature, he says. In your Android phone, go to "settings," then "location." Select "Google location reporting" and set "location history" to off.

About Gary S. Miliefsky

Gary S. Miliefsky is CEO of SnoopWall (www.snoopwall.com) and the inventor of SnoopWall spyware-blocking technology. He is a founding member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and serves on the advisory board of MITRE on the CVE Program, and is a founding board member of the National Information Security Group. He's also the founder of NetClarity, Inc., an internal intrusion defense company, based on a patented technology he invented.

The Republican sweep of all five contested Mercer County Board races did not just happen. A number of factors came together in God's Providence, and it is proper to attribute the victory ultimately to Him. Looking back on how things came together, here are a few observations we can make.

We begin by looking at the 2012 General Election, which broke down what had been a crushing majority of Democrats on the Mercer County Board. After that election, the Republicans held four of the ten seats, and though they were still a minority, they were an effective minority. Nevertheless, it became quite apparent that, with anything short of a real majority of Republicans on the county board, we were not going to turn around the county's deteriorating condition. Thus was born the motivation to work hard for a Republican majority in the next election.

Then there were changes within the Mercer County Republican Party. There was a push to expand the Republican Central Committee (which consists of all of the precinct committeemen). In 2012 and 2013 we had
only five precinct committeeman positions filled. By April of 2014, 23 of the 24 positions were filled. As a result, we suited up a full team of committeemen and Republican regulars. As far as anybody's memory could be stretched, the Republican Party in Mercer County had never been in such good shape.

A good manager assembles a team of many talents; then he plays their strengths and covers their  weaknesses. Let's talk about the strengths.

First, we were Republicans, and because we were Republicans, we knew what needed to be done. In fact, at one point that became our theme: We know what to do.

Eventually, that fact developed into a document wherein all five board candidates, along with the two sitting Republican board members, pledged that if the voters gave the Republicans a majority, they would do eight necessary things - things which the Democrats had no will to do.

This pledge eventually became a tool to leverage the voters our way.

The board candidates and members pledged that if they were given a majority on the county board, then they would:

1. Balance the budget. Stop spending more than we take in.

2. Relieve the tax payer. Stop raising property taxes, and eventually reduce them.

3. Upgrade the county board's operation. Make the board more effective and government more efficient with a county administrator.

4. Serve the people. Republican board members would continue to forgo compensation at least until the budget shows a surplus.

5. Prosper Mercer County. Develop a plan to improve general prosperity by making Mercer County business and landowner friendly.

6. Implement full transparency. Improve the people's access to county information, including putting the Mercer County checkbook, board meeting minutes, budgets, etc. online.

7. Manage the jail obligations. Protect the people from the burden of the obligations of the jail expansion.

8. Empower the people. Give the people of Mercer County direct say over large county projects involving potential tax increases.

Our five county board candidates ran as a team, and they won as a team.

There were some big financial donors, and there were lots of little donors, so we were able to raise enough money to put together a Republican campaign like hasn't been seen in this county.

We ran full page newspaper ads and wrote letters to the editor. We distributed 4,000 red bags of literature door-to-door, from booths at the fair and other public events, and from floats and walkers in parades. We ran radio ads. We sent out mailers publishing our pledge to every household in the county. We redesigned our web page, worked our YouTube channel and several Facebook pages. We had press conferences and organized restaurant events.

The Democrats began following us around at events, but they would not show up where they were invited to debate us. They threw lots of false, misleading, and senseless stuff at us in letters to the editor, radio ads, and the usual public channels. We ignored all of the slanderous stuff, and most of the rest of the stuff, and moved right on.

On November 4th, the voters rewarded our efforts with a sweep. All five of our county board candidates won, carrying 21 out of the 24 precincts in the county. With the two Republicans already sitting on the board, Republicans now make up the Magnificent Seven. That leaves the Democrats with only three.

Many things contributed to our success. We have mentioned or alluded to only a few of those things. Each of you can likely think of a dozen things that you would add. The point that needs to be made is that though many things were necessary for our success, no one thing guaranteed success. We had some difficulties and some disappointments, but we were able to maintain solidarity and good communication among our regular members, and so we were able to keep things moving in the right direction. We assembled a good team, we worked with what we were given, we played our strengths, we covered our weaknesses, and when everything is said and done, that is the winning plan.

So count your blessings, give God the glory Who brought all of this together, and keep your promises.