Speaker: Tammy Gover
Introduce yourself, and describe how Bret Loftis & Axim Planning & Wealth recently helped you.
Tammy Gover: Hi, my name is Tammy Gover. And I recently left us retirement, has helped my husband and I, in so many ways, we, about 14 months ago, decided to just uproot our lives, to sell our home in Oregon, relocate to Texas where that was eventually where we wanted to retire. Although we're about 10, 12 years out from actually retiring. Um, and so we had a lot of different needs that we had with finances. We needed to figure out how to reinvest our money from the equity on our house. Um, and I'm so glad that we had the ability to talk to Brett and he had just, has so many options and just, I guess packages for lack of a better term tools that he uses so that we could really kind of isolate the 10 different questions that we had. So thinking about how to invest our, you know, bulk money from the house, um, that we sold, uh, you know, going back and forth about, you know, in investing it back into the new home. And at the time, we were at two point, I think it's 2.3 interest rate. And so we just explained why that didn't make sense. We weren't really going to get a return on that investment, how we could actually make more money, different ways as well as setting up a retirement account for my husband. He's almost 53 he didn't have, we didn't invent any retirement planning. And so we talked a lot about that and just really made a commitment to have, you know, we never thought about just investing in it monthly while we did with a house payment. And, you know, again, just really projecting what our needs were. Um And how much longer we needed to meet what our goals were. So, and I think when you're getting close, you can be like, I don't know, can I retire now? What do I need to retire? What are all of my available resources to retire? Um And also for my state service with my job, my retirement is pretty complicated. Um It all sounds good and you're just paying into it for years. But I just really didn't understand, I can't touch that money um for a while, but also how to work that money better while it's there. So again, they just really helped us with a lot of different financial planning and I feel more secure about my retirement future than I ever have because we have a plan and we have somebody knowledgeable to help us and just guide us through it.
How did Bret Loftis & Axim Planning & Wealth go above and beyond for you?
Tammy Gover: and beyond for me in the sense that we, again, we just had so many things that we wanted to accomplish. Um, and it was pretty complicated on our end because we didn't understand. And I just think that Brett just really went out of his way to just offer so many different options as well as just really break it down. Like I'm no financial planner don't even want to be. And so he really just helped connect us and, um, and just reexplained it, he spent a lot of time with us again, just really understanding our money, but also just building trust with him, of his knowledge. And, you know, you have this money that is going to last you until for the rest of your life. And it's hard to decide who to trust. And every time I talk to Brett, I feel like he's listening. He is, it's not cookie cutter. He is definitely speaking to. Again, just my family, my needs, my finances and also he's realistic when you know, he talks about, hey, you might do that now and you can, you know, do that later. So I never felt stuck to where I was like, oh, I gotta make a commitment up until the point that I retire and then some, as well as, um, all of my retirement within i, within my state service. Uh, you know, I, I think that's above and beyond because that's money that is not working for him in the sense of, you know, it's, he's not investing in anywhere. So kind of helping me kind of follow my trail of really understanding all my pots of money that I have. Um, and how to, again, just make it work better for, for me in the last, you know, 10 years, five years, whatever, I think as a state employee, you know, everyone, I shouldn't say everyone anymore. But, you know, you want to put in your 30 years, put in your time, get your retirement, catch you later. And I think I'm about five years out from my 30 years and Brett and I had a conversation and he said, well, think about this, if you want an extra five years, you could do this and this and this and that would still only have me. So if I went 10 more years, I'm only gonna be 61. So it wasn't like I'm gonna be working until I'm 70. But the payout of the difference of the money that we would have and, and how comfortable we would be. And it's not unrealistic for me to work in my sixties. And so I just, and I just, again, I just think that was above and beyond and he's always personable. Um And I just feel like he's an old friend that I can call, we can pick back up where we left off. He remembers my financial situation. Um, he asks about my family and again, I think that's above and beyond. I, I like when you can be personable and you can just feel like, you know, somebody in their family and they know yours, especially when you're making this big of a decision.
How does Axim Planning & Wealth compare to other similar services you know of?
Tammy Gover: So I don't have a whole lot of comparison for retirement um services and just other, you know, companies, what I will say is once I reached out to Bret, I, that was it. And I think what I've seen in Bret over the years that I've known him is that he just continues to grow. He continues to grow his business. He continues to really find his niche in the market. Um, he really is so well rounded again with all of um the opportunities that he can provide and reach out to and really hook you up with. And so, you know, I think it was overwhelming and my dad, um, was trying to give me, um, some retirement advice years ago and, um, and just kind of how they did it and, and, and it was very different. He was retired Air Force. His money looked a lot different, you know, when he was doing this retirement planning 20 years ago. And, um, you know, and he started with different money and I think that seemed overwhelming to me too, you know, to where he started putting things in the trust and just all kinds of, to me complicated things that my dad did. And so again, when I talked to Bret, um, I didn't feel the need to shop around. I, I really felt like he gave me everything that I needed. And, um, and back to when he really understood my state's planning of the retirement piece of it, you know, he understood, um, the pers retirement system and I think a lot of me and my friends are, um, you know, we, we can take classes but, you know, again, it's, there's nothing of interest for them. Like there's not a benefit to some of the people that we would take retirement planning classes from within the state business. And so really looking out that, you know, lends with somebody else, but also we're also hooked up with a spouse, not all of us, but typically, and so it's not always just about our retirement planning. Um, but for a lot of my friends, we're the primary resources for retirement. So we're kind of the one that we're kind of standing on and our spouse is kind of the extra because we usually have the strong hold on. You know, we've got it pretty solid and a lot of us have been, you know, with the state for 20 plus years and plan to go our 30. So, um, so again, I didn't do, I was so fortunate to be able to land with, um, with Bret and I would follow him anywhere. So and I would absolutely refer him to anybody. So that'd be how I would compare him.
