Services

We are here to develop a financial strategy for your future. It's important for your financial professional to see a complete, 360 degree view of your financial picture, including how your retirement assets are integrated and work with one another. We can work directly with you and your team of legal and tax planning professionals to advise you on specific aspects of your financial strategy.

At Daniel Krug & Associates, we offer you professionals providing the following services: Retirement and Wealth Accumulation, Fee Based Advisory Services, Asset Protection, Tax Planning & Preparation, Long Term Care Protection (Traditional and Alternative Programs), Life Insurance, Fixed Indexed & Variable Annuities, IRA & 401(k) Rollovers and IRA Legacy Planning, Wills, Trusts, Financial Health Care Power of Attorney, Special Needs Trusts, Estate Planning, Probate Avoidance, Charitable Giving Strategies, Retirement Income Strategies, and Estate settlement and Trustee Services.

Retirement income plans are not just for the wealthy. Everyone has a circle of wealth. Your circle of wealth may be larger than some, and some are larger than yours. There is one thing all of us have in common as it relates to our circle of wealth— we want it to grow larger. At a minimum, we want to keep it from getting any smaller or keep it the same size as it is today.

Unfortunately, too much of our focus may be on making our circle of wealth larger without understanding how we may be transferring our wealth away. Obviously, if you knew what these wealth transfers were, you would have already addressed the problems they create. If we can help you eliminate areas of wealth transfer, your circle of wealth will increase by definition. This is one of our areas of focus. As we look at these areas, we can help recapture or help to increase your accumulated assets, and thus your current lifestyle.

Time doesn’t stand still, and neither does money. That’s why you can use time to your advantage when investing for wealth accumulation.

Time itself, however, is not the only factor. That is why at Daniel Krug & Associates we utilize institutional money managers to bring the most cost-effective and performance-driven portfolios to our clients. Portfolio managers like Global Financial Private Capital, Matson Money, Federated, Astor Asset management, Bernstein Asset management, and more. As institutional money managers, we use two leading custodians, Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab to safeguard your money.

The longer you invest, the more time your money has to compound. If your portfolio has not fully recovered from losses in recent years, you may wish to consider an alternative to retail investing. Our institutional managers utilize strategies such as tactical, structured and strategic allocated portfolios.

Each money manager is GIPS compliant. GIPS stands for “Global Investment Performance Standards”. GIPS are ethical standards that apply to the way investment performance is presented to potential and existing clients.

Through the GIPS auditing system you can be confident that the performance of each portfolio is accurate. Many of our managers have a proven strategy of advance and protect. Designed to be defensive in a down market and to potentially take advantage of opportunities in an up market.

However, given recent lessons learned in stock market investing, it is important to remember that more conservative retirement strategies typically have only a portion of the assets invested in the stock market. Other allocations should be set aside for more conservative investments and/or secured income contracts such as annuities. Annuities are long term vehicles designed to generate supplemental income during retirement. They have minimum guarantees backed by the strength and claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. After all, the last thing you want to do is lose more ground during the next market correction.

Investments are not FDIC or NCUA insured, are not insured by any federal agency, and are not guaranteed by any bank or credit union. They may be subject to losses, including loss of principle.

When you change jobs or retire, there are four things you can do with the money in your employer-sponsored retirement plan:

Leave the money where it is
Take the cash (and pay income taxes and perhaps a 10% additional Federal tax if you are younger than age 59½)
Transfer the money to another employer plan (if the plan allows)
Roll the money over into an IRA
Rolling over from one qualified plan to another qualified plan allows your money to continue growing tax-deferred until you receive distributions in retirement. We can help you determine if a rollover is the right move for you.

If you choose to cash out of an IRA, we can assist you in finding suitable vehicles to help you reach your retirement income goals.

Neither the Company nor its agents or representatives may give tax, legal, or accounting advice. Individuals should consult with a professional specializing in these areas regarding the applicability of this information to his/her situation. Consult with your wealth management team to determine what is right for you.

Because the market does not provide security, you may want your financial strategies to include some secured income products. For example, annuities (insurance products with guarantees*), can provide a source of supplemental income throughout your retirement.

Twenty-first century asset protection calls for more than just strategic asset allocation. Product allocation—buying instruments that can help protect your monies from market declines throughout retirement—can be an effective means of protecting assets.

Diversifying your retirement assets among a variety of vehicles—may offer you the best chance of meeting your retirement income goals throughout your lifespan. This can be done through both insurance products and investments, depending on what is appropriate for your situation.

*Guarantees are backed by the financial strength and claims paying ability of the issuing insurance company.

A number of the annuity products currently on the market can help provide a secure stream of income during retirement. Some annuities that may be suitable for your unique situation are fixed annuities, with principal protection and no market exposure, and fixed index annuities, with principal protection and the potential for higher earnings with increases in a linked Market Index. Riders are usually available, for an additional annual premium, to include protection against inflation and other benefits. Some of the features that are available to you through fixed index annuities are bonuses, various crediting methods, death benefit riders, and income riders that give you choices on how to grow your money. Keep in mind that all annuities are not created equal. Some are better than others. Like all good strategies it is important to know your wealth management strategy first and then decide if an annuity fits your strategy.

Most annuities have a surrender period for the first 5 to 15 years of ownership; early withdrawal will deplete your principal by the amount of surrender charge still in force. Bonus annuities may carry higher fees and charges than annuities without the bonus feature, may only accumulate interest prior to annuitization, and may not pay the bonus in case of early withdrawal.

Life insurance isn’t for those who have died—it’s for those who are left behind. When shopping for life insurance, consider needs such as replacing income so your family can maintain its standard of living, as well as paying for your funeral and estate costs. A general rule is that you should seek coverage between seven and ten times your gross annual income. As far as the various types of policies go, they can generally be placed into one of two categories: Term and Permanent.

Term insurance generally provides coverage for a specified period of time and pays out a specified amount of coverage to your beneficiary only if you die within that time period. In a level premium term policy, you pay the same amount of premium from the first day of the policy until the term ends. A permanent insurance policy, on the other hand, will stay permanently in effect for the rest of your life so long as premiums continue to be paid.

As the oldest Baby Boomers begin to wind through their 60s, one of the biggest concerns may not be outliving income, but outliving good health.

For seniors, home health care can cost $50,000 or more per year1, and nursing home care can run as high as $80,0002. Does your retirement plan account for this kind of possibility? Would you be prepared for twice that amount as a married couple?

Considering that you have to exhaust virtually all of your financial means before Medicaid will pay for long-term care and neither your employer group health insurance nor major medical insurance will cover long-term care, it’s critically important to plan ahead for these potential expenses.

We can help evaluate your situation and determine if purchasing a long-term care insurance policy may be the right move or if a long-term care alternative strategy would be better to help ensure your future. For those clients who either could not afford or do not meet recommended guidelines to purchase a long-term care policy, Daniel Krug & Associates has teamed up with Don Rosenberg, founder of the Center for Elder Law to help protect our clients’ estates in the event of a critical illness.

¹ Genworth Cost of Care Survey, 2010

² MetLife Market Survey of Nursing Home, Assisted Living, Adult Day Services, and Home Care Costs, 2009

Rising taxes are a concern for many individuals planning for retirement. It’s important to incorporate tax planning into your financial decisions. It is our opinion that taxes may pose the biggest threat to your wealth in the future.

Investing in or purchasing a tax-deferred vehicle means your money can compound interest for years, deferring income taxes, while providing the potential to earn interest at a faster rate. While very few financial vehicles avoid taxes altogether, insurance products allow you to defer paying them until retirement—when you may be in a lower tax bracket. However, if you have been successful in life, you may retire in either the same or a higher bracket than you are in today. If this is your case, then tax deferral in a rising tax environment may not make sense. You may require employing additional strategies that better fit your situation.

Advanced tax strategies designed to follow current tax codes can be of great benefit when applied in the correct manner by a professional team who knows you and your family’s goals. Advanced planning is part of our firm’s culture. It is part of what we do for our clients in an effort to keep them ahead of the game.

Please note that withdrawals from insurance or annuity products will reduce the contract value and the value of any protection benefits. Additional withdrawals taken within the contract withdrawal charge schedule will be subject to a withdrawal charge. All withdrawals are subject to ordinary income tax and, if taken prior to age 59 1/2, may be subject to an additional 10% federal tax.

Estate planning is simply determining where your assets should go after you die. Without a properly structured estate plan your wishes may not be fulfilled and your loved ones could be hurt both emotionally and financially.

While the concept is simple, the vehicles, the plan, and implementation process can be rather complex. It is more improtant to work with experienced estate planning professionals who stay current in this field and advise clients on a day-to-day basis. Changes to estate laws, complex Medicaid and Probate laws, as well as the emerging financial vehicles all need to be carefully considered.

We believe it is critical to have a team working together to create an estate strategy and draft the written legal documents, as well as helping you properly fund your estate plan. Funding a trust is simply re-registering or re-titling your assets or changing the beneficiary to reflect your desires to distribute the assets following current laws as well as financial guidelines and procedures. Your advisors must be well versed and experienced in following the current IRS codes, Probate laws, Medicaid rules as well as having a clear understanding of how to utilize each financial company's rules to affect the desired outcome for you and your family.

IRA accounts have become one of the largest types of assets inherited by beneficiaries. If you don’t anticipate needing your IRA money in retirement, you may wish to consider a legacy planning strategy to reduce taxes and increase the payout your beneficiaries will inherit upon your death.

A properly structured IRA may provide your beneficiary(ies) a regular stream of income while leaving the balance of IRA assets invested for tax-deferred growth. The result may yield substantially more money paid out over the course of your beneficiary’s lifetime. We can help you evaluate your financial situation to determine if IRA legacy planning may be the best means for ensuring a long-lasting inheritance for your heirs.

Probate is the potentially lengthy and costly legal process that oversees the transfer of your assets upon your death. If you do not create a will or set up a trust to transfer your property when you die, state law will determine what happens to your estate. This is called probate or “intestate.” Without a will or some other form of legal estate planning, there is the chance that your assets may not be distributed in the manner that you desire.

There are many different types of trusts and they can be complex to set up and execute. However, a trust can be a very flexible and advantageous means to transfer your assets in the future. Unlike a will, a trust may help avoid probate upon your death. To learn more about trusts and how they may benefit you, we will be happy to help you consult a qualified estate planning attorney that specializes in these matters.

Creating a charitable gift giving plan may provide you with multiple tax breaks: an income tax deduction, the avoidance of capital gains on highly appreciated assets and no estate taxes on the charitable contribution upon your death.

With the increasing tax environment we expect in the U.S. in coming years, there may be compelling reasons to integrate philanthropy into your financial and estate planning.

We can help guide you in this decision.