Latest / Financial Planner Search / Work Optional Planning & SWAT Medic Calm with Nick Lager | Financial Planner Search
Transcript
- Gregory Wilnau: Hey Nick, how you doing today? Nick Lager: Greg, doing well. Thanks for asking, have it yourself. Gregory Wilnau: I'm doing great, man. It's a beautiful Florida day here. Thanks for coming on the pod. Nick Lager: ⁓ Yeah, pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. Been real excited for this all week. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, me too. Been looking forward to it. All right, so let's get started here. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about your practice and what you specialize in. What do do? Nick Lager: Yeah, tactical wealth planning ⁓ started about two years ago. I typically focus on a mentality and a perspective shift for people nearing retirement. It's called work optional. You know, we were voiced in and so used to the traditional, I'm going to retire a retirement plan. There's this whole other phase known as work optional, which is prepping people maybe either earlier or towards the end of their career burned out. is things need to happen to progress forward and take that next step. And that's what I like to do. I like to give people options. And like I said, it's based from a unique perspective shift versus just traditional math problems with a financial plan. Gregory Wilnau: Interesting. So it sounds like you're taking like the human side of it, their goals, their individual situation, and maybe combining it with some traditional investing or something to help them move forward towards those things. But you said tactical, I got to ask, that's a very military word, in some cases, are you do you have a military background? Nick Lager: system. That's a great question. And a lot of it in this whole work optional framework is based from, I was a 901 paramedic, still am. ⁓ particularly I was a SWAT medic as well. So that's where the word tactical comes from. And I know it, it aligns well with finance, but there's a lot of awesome things that go on on the tactical side that I can easily bring into the finance side as well. Hence the birth of tactical wealth planning. Gregory Wilnau: So I gotta ask, do you have that URL, tacticalwealthplanning.com? Nick Lager: It's actually TacticalWealthPlan.com. Gregory Wilnau: Wow, that's a pretty good URL. I like that. That's good. You lucked out on that one, Yeah. Nick Lager: It some searching. Yeah, it took some searching, but that's the base of it. And then I've had the privilege of doing a lot of cool things on the SWOT side as a medic. And ⁓ why not carry it over to the finance drill plants? Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, well, let's talk about that a little bit. ⁓ at this point in the interview, I like to know where you kind of come from, the bigger picture, but also what inspired you, because that's one of the things that often differentiates people is the inspiration, your individual experience and your background. So what inspired you maybe to start doing this? Nick Lager: Sure. I started my career probably like many advisors did, big firms, familiar ones. Vanguard was there for seven years, went to then a little bit bigger of an RA that was acquired by a big company Empower. ⁓ You know, I realized the experience there was great, but it was volume based. know, there was a client's just another number. Now, as much as personalization as I try to make it. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Nick Lager: It was still a cookie cutter, still served by the volume. Messaging was not mine. So about two years ago, I was like, I can do this better. There's something that I need to convey. I want to provide to clients in a better way. And hence the launch of Tactical Wealth Planning. ⁓ And really what kind of many iterations, long story short was while I was doing this, was still a 911 paramedic. I can't tell you how many times I saw, you know, people, my ideal clients in the back of the ambulance where I couldn't help think, are they financially secure to move past this or is their family in a good situation? And, you know, I was just like, that's a unique perspective that I think a lot of people connect with and, ⁓ Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Yes. Nick Lager: I decided to launch my own firm because I feel I can help a lot more people. I come from a certain background, hence the paramedicine, and now it just carries over into my financial planning practice. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, I mean, you're a badass for sure. I love that back. All right, so let's talk. Sorry for cursing if you're listening. Sorry. Nick Lager: No, no offense at all man. I've seen a lot of life. It's uh, it's through and through it's fine Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, I've got a blue collar background. I don't know. And people care. Yeah, it's perfect. All right. We're in the same same place here. Yeah. All right. So let's talk a little bit about the people that you connect with, the people that you serve. ⁓ Maybe you could take a second to describe the typical person that comes to you. What's the situation that they might come to you with that you would lead? Nick Lager: Perfect. Yeah. Yeah, typically I'm seeing and I deal with later career professionals, know, age, mid fifties, early sixties, where they think they're secure. They think they can retire, but either they're working with an advisor currently who hasn't discussed anything related to income, healthcare, taxes, they're purely just an investment manager. Um, and these people are not comfortable with stepping away from a paycheck, commission check, their healthcare, and they just want validation that, hey, what's the next three to seven years look like for me? What if my job goes away? What if I have a medical event? So I'm typically, those later burned out professionals, high earners, a lot of people I work with, particularly in the medical device. sales and leadership side, pharmaceutical sales, because there's a lot of factors, a lot of good things in that industry, but it is a changing environment nonetheless. Gregory Wilnau: What are some of the questions that they typically ask you when they first meet with you? Like, what are their concerns? Help us understand more about, bring us into that space. Nick Lager: Yeah, the biggest thing is do I have enough to retire? You know, what's, what can I survive off of my portfolio? You know, what's the biggest, ⁓ you know, downfall of, you know, going into retirement right now? ⁓ the second biggest honestly is like, what do I do about healthcare? How do I retire earlier? How do I make work optional when I have great employer healthcare? What do I do? I'm still eight to 10 years away from Medicare. What are those solutions? And I think there's a lot of people out there that don't realize that there's a lot of factors that go into solving that problem. But also there's a lot of solutions out there that people don't really understand or piece together because they're used to, know, their company paid health insurance and that's okay. But it holds them back. And that's why I want to create that work optional because healthcare typically keeps people employed for probably longer than they potentially need to be. They'll suffer day in, day out. Suffer, you know? Gregory Wilnau: Sure. Suffer. Yeah. Well, I mean, you many cases you've been doing this for a really long time and you're in it, you're doing it. And then starting to think about what's next becomes appropriate to talk to somebody like you about that. And you're saying like a lot of your clients will be held there because they think they have to be because in many cases, their insurance is so sweet at the organization. And in the States, we know Nick Lager: it. Gregory Wilnau: health insurance is incredibly expensive. It sucks. So naturally, having somebody like you to help them work through that transition specifically around the healthcare is something that would be really valuable to them, right? Nick Lager: 100%. It's the biggest, it's the number one recent studies, number one handcuff to late stage high earner professionals of why they stay in the job, even though they consider retirement probably year before, it's constantly on their mind, know, health insurance and then where they're going to get their paycheck from once they do decide to flip the switch of, Hey, I want to be retired. Gregory Wilnau: I could see why helping them through that would be something that would be really valuable. All right, so we talked a little bit about the questions that they have, the situations that they're in. Maybe we could get more specific with demographics instead of psychographics. ⁓ Are there any demographics that your ideal client might typically fall into? Things like age range, income, net worth, any tangible numbers for when it starts to make sense to work with you? Anything specific? Nick Lager: Yeah. So specifically, you know, the work optional framework is kind of like a validation checkpoint. You know, it's not necessarily retiring right now. It's more of a runway for the next three to seven years. So if you're mid fifties, early sixties and thinking about stepping away in the next three to seven years where you want validation and a secure plan to step away on a moment's notice, meaning your healthcare is secured, your taxes are designed for when you do step away, you know where you're going to get your income from once it does hit that retirement, beach vacation, and your portfolios de-risked or aligned to your actual needs at that standpoint in time. That timeframe when you want to align all those is typically We're the right people for you and you have an estimated net worth your portfolio is anywhere between one and $5 million. Obviously can be more than that. Just creates more options, but that one to five suite range, there's a lot that can go right, but there's a lot can go wrong. And I've been doing this for 10 plus years, you know, and taxes are one of them. Healthcare is another. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-mm. Yeah. So you've mentioned this a couple of times, the work optional framework. Could you explain this a little bit more? Is this your framework or are you borrowing it from somewhere? Nick Lager: This is my framework through the iterations of creating tactical wealth plan. Obviously it started out serving high net worth individuals and then it kind of narrowed in, but it is my framework. It stems from the back of the ambulance because there's a lot more to life than work in your later career. Yeah, it's secure, but I was tired of seeing people in the back of the ambulance and like I said, I couldn't help but think. Gregory Wilnau: Ooh, I like that. Nick Lager: what's your retirement look like now? You you probably couldn't have stepped away five years sooner and you know, health is unpredictable. Biologics are unpredictable, but your retirement can be predictable. But this work optional framework is, it's rooted and foundational in four pillars, healthcare, tax architecture, cashflow and income, and then the portfolio design. You know, integrating all four of those is what makes the runway of stepping away in three to seven years possible. Gregory Wilnau: I really like that because, you know, anytime you can share the way that you work or the methodology that you follow, which could be very complex and very confusing. If you can figure out how to break it down into pillars, like chapters or sub chapters in a book, so to speak, it really helps people understand your unique approach. And I think that's important here. And I love how you've also related back to ⁓ the bigger picture and why you do what you do. So that's great. OK, let's talk a little bit more about your values and your approach, maybe a little bit about your philosophy. ⁓ So how do people typically find you? What are some of the ways you get to know your clients as individuals? Nick Lager: Yeah, typically, you know, I use a lot of LinkedIn. ⁓ You know, my website draws in a lot of people, but, I do a lot of its referrals from, you know, I'm going to be honest with you, my father, in a sense, you know, my demographic is my dad, you know, really sixties, mid sixties, stepping away in the medical field in a sense. And, you know, kind of just relating and telling that story and connection of, you know, medical background and keeping things simple. You know, this is not over complicated stuff, but it does need to align and it does need to have a strategic tactical plan in order for it to be successful. So, you know, that's, you know, typically where people find me, you know, my website and LinkedIn are where I'm most active on currently to, ⁓ you know, draw in and have people find me. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. You know, I've got a, know a couple of people who ⁓ are first responders. And ⁓ one of the things that I've noticed about them, and this is the only, it's, it's, it's immediately apparent. But when, when I'm around them and if things become stressful, they are so good at just Nick Lager: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: not only keeping calm themselves, but making everybody else relaxed and keeping them calm because they've been in stressful situations and that's just part of their job. So I'd imagine that when that happens, when know, things in the market happen or things are scary, you just like you lock in, right? And I'm sure that energy translates to give your other, clients a lot of confidence too. Would you say that that's, I'm just making an assumption here, but Nick Lager: You know, this is funny because I came across a picture last night. It's actually a meme. It describes exactly this. So it's a picture of like the back of ambulance with like everything torn out of the cabinets, know, blood on the ground, all the tools on the ground. you know, for those, you know, that's the result of a bad but good call, right? Pretty interventional call. And the caption on it is, tell me how I'm calm here but overstimulated in Costco. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, right. Nick Lager: And that I was like, it does resonate with myself because as I mentioned earlier, the perspective of relation to finance, like, yeah, you're right. The markets go up and down. I mean, look at the past three months, you know, that calmness that I do see things through a different lens of like, listen, things could be a lot worse. We can be in a completely different situation. Those translate from the back of the ambulance to people's financial plans and situations. And that's how I approach it. I take it step by step. I do basically an assessment similar to like I would if you were to call 911 and I show up. You know, what's the problem? What do you got going on? What are your vitals? All right, here are some solutions. And that's, you know, in the background what's going through my mind and how I approach everyone's situation. And as you mentioned, I think you do get a calming. feel whether it's intentional or not, I do get that a lot. But, you know, it's funny because I just came across that picture last night again and, you know, funny you brought up the calmness. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, yeah, I just it blows. It never ceases to blow my mind. First responders, military guys or gals. They're just they're on another level, ⁓ It's it's just great. Nick Lager: It's a good thing to have though when a financial plan, you know, that's what you want when you want someone managing your nest egg or your, you know, future. You want calmness, you want security, you want confidence. That's the biggest thing. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Yeah, 100%. All right, so let's talk a little bit more about your vision. And when it comes to your practice, maybe you could talk about the next one to three years, where do you see it going? What's your vision? Are there any goals you're working on? Nick Lager: You know, there's a lot in this industry of financial planning that people don't really know about practices similar to mine in a sense. You know, everyone knows you got the big ones, facet, Vanguard, Fisher Investments, you know, but there's these practices like myself that really give personalized one-on-one care and attention to people's well-being and success and I mean this in the best way I want my practice to be more quality over quantity so I do like staying smaller obviously support a business you do need growth and scale but I do like having a smaller say cohort or you know client base that I can provide individual attention to you know, immediate responses and adjustments because one, it makes their lives easier. It makes my life easier. And you just get that level of customization that I stepped away from years ago from the bigger firms. So small, but mighty. There's a great book, Small Giants. I know if you read it. I forget the author. Gregory Wilnau: Yep. Yep. It's on the shelf over here, actually. Bober... Birmingham... Boberlingham. Hold on. Nick Lager: you Gregory Wilnau: My books are falling down the shelf. see that? I pulled it off and it was so full it just all fell down. But this is the one, right? Yeah. Nick Lager: Yeah. It's a great book. you haven't, mean, obviously. If I believe so, yeah, small giants. Exactly. So, I mean, it's a great read first off. ⁓ it's about these small companies that were doing something great in a niche. And then they got either greedy or they got approached with a situation and they grew bigger than they could handle. And they ended up failing or not being what they were. And I read that book kind of went out starting the firm and I was like, this is how I want to build my practice. I don't want to cross that threshold. I want to be that small giant in the field. Because one lucrative for everyone is more, even more lucrative for my clients. And that's, you know, that's the basis and vision that I have for my firm. And we're getting there. We're growing nicely. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Yeah. One of the things that stood out to me about this book, actually, now that you mentioned it, is it says that one of the things that makes them small giants is the passion of the business owner that they keep coming back to over and over again and building their firm or their business on top of. It sounds like your passion might be providing that care to your clients. Nick Lager: Yeah, it does transition. mean, there's not many advisors. I really haven't met too many that can rebound. The big joke is I can rebalance a 401k and also save your life at the same time. Right. Even though that's just the iceberg of what I actually accomplished. You rebalancing 401k is easy. Saving a life at this point, 15 plus years is second nature too. But yeah, the passion does drive from there because like I said, life is fragile. And I don't know if you've seen the pit. or that acclaimed show on HBO Max. mean, there's a lot of good light. It's based in the emergency room. Basically what I do plus or minus a few things on an ambulance, but I can't help but connect it to finance too. There's a lot more to life. Life's fragile and there's a lot of good messages in there. And there's structure that can get you to stepping away from work or as I call it, work optional. Gregory Wilnau: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love it. The parallels are just they're perfect. All right. So let's let's move on. I want you to take a second to brag about yourself. I think that and I always share this whenever I ask this question. But, you know, I think so many times we as individuals, you know, it's we think a lot about the things that we wish we were better at or that we want to be better at and that we're working on. And it's harder for us to acknowledge the things that we're good at. Nick Lager: See you soon. Gregory Wilnau: things that we've done well, celebrate our wins. So what I want you to do is put your humble hat on for a second, and then maybe talk about something that you do for your clients that takes a significant amount of time, but that they might never see or know about. Could you brag about yourself for a second? Nick Lager: Yeah. Thank Yeah, I mean, just like anything, I mean, I bring the compassion into it and I want to understand truly like what's the biggest worry. And I also provide a set of different perspectives. like, you know, my, always challenge my clients cause I get a little crazy. I want them to dream and I want them to do things. I'm not the limiting advisor. Like you can't spend this or anything like that. Like if you want to go out and buy a shed for your backyard. For example, I just helped a recent client. They were debating whether or not they wanted to a back door or a backyard bar, gazebo thing. I was like, yeah, do it. I didn't even ask how much it was. I had another client too. I like, I want to go on a travel and see my son. He's in the military. He's going to the Philippines. May meet him in North Europe, Eastern Europe. I was like, do it. She's like, how much can I spend? I'm like, I don't, I don't care how much you spend, you know, as long as it's not like, you know, half of your portfolio, you're going to be just fine. You know? So like, think there's a lot of, a lot of different misconceptions of advisors. They want to hold on to your money. They gather assets, right? You know, I want you to enjoy and spend your money because I've seen the alternative. I've seen. where it doesn't even matter, right? Your portfolio balance could be, you know, five million and then you end up meeting me in the back of the ambulance on a, you know, random weekend, you know, when I pick up a random shift or something like that, because I still give back to the community and then that's all out the window. Now you're worried about medical bills. So I guess I'm an encouragement and I'm confidence builder because to me personally, Gregory Wilnau: Life is short, life is precious. Yeah. Nick Lager: Spending and coordinating a retirement plan or work optional plan is easy compared to discussing medical issues in the back of the ambulance at ER or what's next. There's a lot more hurdles and everyone's like, I can't happen to me. It happens all the time. It happens all the time. I just had a 55 year old we saved. I don't know what his outcome is gonna be, but you know. Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Nick Lager: The quintessential collapsed while watching TV. CPR and everything. Fortunately, we got the 1%. Gregory Wilnau: Dang. Yeah. Well, my old man passed away a couple years and he had a sudden heart attack. yeah, I say this, I've shared this on the pod before, but man, my, yeah, he was a good guy. I'm proud to be a son, but my mom had to work through all the, cause my dad did all the financials and she had to work through all of that by herself. She's not retired yet. She's a Nick Lager: Yeah. I'm sorry. Gregory Wilnau: kindergarten, she was an art teacher at an elementary school. So she didn't have a ton of assets. So she had to work through all of that herself, that transition. And man, couldn't imagine having somebody like you to just work through that with her, you know, would just have been a game changer. But it's one of the reasons why, you know, I'm so grateful for people like you, because I know the value and the impact that you can have on both sides. Right. So. Nick Lager: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: All right, so let's talk a little bit about. we talked about you, your story, ⁓ your clients and then some of your philosophy. Maybe we could talk about what it looks like to to work with you. ⁓ So maybe you could walk us through your process. So, like, let's say ⁓ somebody listening to this this call is like, ⁓ I like Nick, I'm going to contact them. You know, see how it goes. then the say they sign up a couple of weeks from now, they become a client. What does it look like to work with you? So maybe you could explain kind of what happens the first couple of weeks. Explain that working relationship. What do you do with them? What does that look like? Nick Lager: Yeah, as I mentioned before, kind of brings back, we kind of assess everything. We get an inventory, you know, first we uncover where some gaps are, ⁓ all overlaid on those four pillars I mentioned. So we look at healthcare, we look at taxes, we look at income sources, and we look at the portfolio. And there's not one that we particularly start with. It kind of, truthfully, the one that pops up the most is healthcare and income. ⁓ So we start, typically the conversation will lead to one of those and then it builds from there. And what we want to address is and find out is solving all factors in those four pillars, you know, where your healthcare is going to come from. know, bridging the gap if you are near Medicare or, you know, a few years out, what we're going to do with that. Then we'll move to the income side of things, how we're going to structure your paycheck from yourself if you do decide to retire at some point. And then we factor in and overlay taxes on top of that. I call it tax architecture. You know, everyone calls it tax planning. I call it tax architecture because we can. Gregory Wilnau: I like that. gotta, you gotta, you gotta have different names for different, for the same thing. Yeah. Nick Lager: You got to have different name because you are creating something and that three to seven years, it may not happen right away. You do need build up from the bottom in order to make it happen. then, believe it or not, last but not least, it's typically the portfolio. And that's usually like a de-risk or a risk alignment because I'll be honest with you, most people that I see, they're either too risky or they've been super conservative in their portfolios. They never find the sweet spot. Gregory Wilnau: interesting. Nick Lager: even if they are working with an advisor. I just had a recent client. I just had a recent client who came to me and I took a look at his portfolio. He's paying this person, mind you, he has an advisor, he came to me, he's paying this person over 1 % for a basket of ETFs. That's probably over risk and there's overlap. Gregory Wilnau: Wow, that's it. You sometimes it's crazy. Like, I'll have people come to me, advisors, and they've been working with a person for a long time. I think just at some point, know, long term relationships are usually very, very successful. But sometimes you get a little too comfortable. You know what I mean? And just having somebody, maybe you've got a suspicion. You're like, you know, I've been working with this person. I like them. It's fine. But maybe there's just this thing where like your gut's telling you, I just maybe just it's time to have somebody else look at this thing. Nick Lager: Yeah. Gregory Wilnau: And just being somebody who's on the outside looking in can reveal things to you that you never would have thought about or that the other person hasn't thought about. So it sounds like that's something that kind of your talk. Nick Lager: Yeah, I mean, I worked with his client. He has a guy. He's managing just the assets. You know, a simple question was like, have they told you how much you can spend in retirement? Have they coordinated any of your social security, healthcare, anything of that nature? He's like, no. I'm like, No. I'm like, well, it was like, he talked to you about... Gregory Wilnau: Mm. Dang. Nick Lager: Taxes or you know where you're gonna pay your taxes from he's like Gregory Wilnau: Yeah, feels like it was a little too comfortable maybe. Nick Lager: little too comfortable and and again it stemmed from he was telling me the story it was you know hey small firm started out got bought out by a big firm became a number you know deli counter number of advisory and then he just became the bottom wrong once you know they became a volume business you know kind of where it came from Vanguard and Power not that they're bad but they just provide Gregory Wilnau: It's just a different flavor, I think. Some people are fine with that. Other people don't, you know, they don't, they don't, they don't want that. So we're not poo-pooing on that, right? Everybody likes different things, but that doesn't work for everybody, you know? Yeah. Nick Lager: different flavor and everyone you get what you pay for. Yeah, you get what you pay for. Yeah, you get what you pay for. The biggest analogy I give is like you're flying over to Europe. There is a difference between economy and business class. Gregory Wilnau: Yes, there is a couple couple grand and lots lots of comfort delicious meals and free drinks. Yeah. Nick Lager: Huge difference. Couple of grand, you know. And quality, quality and comfort. And that, can't help but think that translates so clearly into the type of financial advice that you pay for and get. And the style too. know, whether or not it's price difference or just the comfort as well. You can go to a cheap one or a big one and get the job accomplished, but are you comfortable? Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. No, I love it. Nick, thank you so much for coming on the pod, sharing your thoughts. I really like your background, your perspective. like how I like the way that you describe things and you relate everything to your background and to your story. I think that's that's really awesome. So for somebody who's listening, who wants to get in touch with you and is interested in exploring this further with you, what should they do next? How should they get in touch with you? Nick Lager: Thanks. Yeah, the two best ways my LinkedIn, I just search Nick Logger. I some great content, great stories on there as well. There's a booking link right in my profile on LinkedIn. ⁓ Also my website, tacticalwealthplan.com. It gives you a good, it's an updated site recently, really proud of it. So ⁓ you can easily book a link right there in the top right corner as well. Book a calendar time with me and. ⁓ find out a little bit more about myself. I there's a cool little picture of my dog on there as well. Gregory Wilnau: Well, I'm going to go there just to look at the dog pick. Nick Lager: I think anyway, I'm not sure. I did actually I did include him in there. So Big dog person. I'm glad you see a new I knew I liked it Gregory Wilnau: Yeah. Yeah, I love love love dogs always had one. All right, Nick. Appreciate the time. Appreciate you sharing your insights and perspective. Thanks for coming on. Nick Lager: Yeah, great. I really appreciate having you. was Take care, Gregory Wilnau: Take care.