It is Labor Day weekend, and I am going to spend the three days saying thank you to the people who make this place work. Friday earned the first one.
If you have not been to one yet, Fiscal Fridays is our live retirement show. In our Scottsdale studio, my dad David hosts, sits down with a guest, and opens the floor to a room full of real people with real retirement questions. There is no script. Somebody in the seats says the thing they have been chewing on for a year, and the two people on stage take it seriously. That is the whole format.
Hayes was in charge
Friday was different for one reason. Hayes Clement, who we brought in this summer to revamp our online presence, was fully in charge of the show for the first time. Director and producer. The cameras, the lights, the run of show, the pace of the room, when to let a moment breathe and when to move on. His call, start to finish.
I will be honest about how that feels from my chair. Handing the show to somebody else is hard. You built the thing, you know where every wire runs, and part of you is braced to jump in. I did not need to. He did an incredible job. The room was warmer, the show was tighter, and the people in the seats got more of the one thing they came for, which is to be heard. I could not be prouder of him.
What actually happened in the room
The show opened with a short film my dad had never seen. A while back my family got together for pictures, three generations in one room, and it turns out there are a lot of opinions about where everyone is supposed to stand. He put it on the big screen and told the room, this is not a commercial, this is my people, and they are the reason this company exists.
Then he asked everyone born in Arizona to raise a hand. One hand went up. Everybody else was a transplant. So he asked who had grandkids, and then whose grandkids lived the farthest away. Florida. Indiana. Georgia. Puerto Vallarta. California. Indiana won, and the prize was an Easy Eddie plushie, which got a bigger laugh than anything on the run sheet.
And then, without changing his tone, he asked the real question. Do you have a plan for those grandkids? The kind that puts your worries and their fears to rest? Who in this room has become the caregiver for a parent, a brother or sister, even a pet? Hands went up all over. We have all got those stories, he said, and that is why this firm has an inheritance planning practice in the first place.
Greg, Kyle, Jason, and Mr. Edge
Our guest was Greg Frantz, back for his second show. Greg has spent more than twenty-five years helping Arizona families with Medicare. Twenty years ago he and my dad were branch managers across town from each other, and when my dad left to start American Retirement Advisors, Greg kept doing what he does best. He brought his own clients to this show because, in his words, he did not want them in the ozone on the things he does not do. That is a generous thing for an agent to do, and the room could feel it.
Next to him sat our own team. Kyle Jacobs on retirement income planning. Jason Tweet on inheritance planning and generational wealth. And Mr. Edge, who spent thirty-five years inside the machine and can tell you why it is built the way it is, and who also showed up early to open the room and set everybody's seat. My dad sprang a lightning-round quiz on all of them that none of them had seen, which is exactly the kind of thing he thinks is funny.
Then the audience took over. Is an online will good enough? That turned into the clearest five minutes on wills, trusts, and probate I have heard in a while. Are drug plans really going to cost eight times more next year, like the headline said? No, and here is what the law actually did. What is the one thing everyone on Medicare should review every single year? Your prescription drug plan. At what age do the required withdrawals start now? It depends on when you were born, and the panel walked through it.
Thank you, Hayes. Thank you, Greg. Thank you to our host, David Schaeffer, and to Kyle and Jason for being there to give their two cents too. Mr. Edge was even in the room. And thank you to everyone who took a Friday morning to come sit with us.
Get ready for the next one
The full-length episode is coming to YouTube in the next week or two, and I will let you know the moment it is up. Past episodes are on the Fiscal Fridays page. And yes, afterward everybody walked around the corner for cheeseburgers, on Greg.
The next show is coming. The date is not set yet, and when it is, the people on the list hear first. Put your name on it at americanretirementadvisors.com/fiscal-fridays. If you came through Greg, his page is right here. Bring your questions. That is the whole ticket.
Tomorrow's thank-you goes to a team most of you know by voice.