Seminars focus on healthy, wealthy, wise seniors
February 18, 2010 by Gene Stowe
By GENE STOWE
Tribune Correspondent
Andy Garza and Elisa Lawrence of Garza Lawrence Tax Advisory Group have collaborated with other experts to start regular Community Health and Wealth seminars aimed at older adults.
The seminars, also featuring author Karen Bachert and health coach Cindy Cohen, include a growing list of exhibitors, such as Natural Touch Therapies, Wells Fargo and numerous other mostly financial and health services.
“I allow vendors to be at these,” Garza says. “It makes it kind of fun. It’s a seminar and expo. They get the health and wealth. It fits like a glove for seniors.”
Garza has held the midday events since November and recently settled on Comfort Suites Hotel on Indiana 933 as the site. Upcoming sessions are Feb. 18, March 18 and April 13, with several planned for May.
Garza and Lawrence bought a Freedom America Inc. financial franchise three years ago, after several years in the industry, and focused the practice on older adults.
“Basically, it’s a real simple philosophy,” he says. “I deal with nothing but seniors. When you become retired, you have to look for ways to get out of the market and on safe ground. There’s no reason they should be rolling the dice when they retire.”
A primary instrument for clients is the fixed indexed annuity, Garza says.
“It’s the best of both worlds,” he says. “It’s not in the market, but it looks at the market. If there’s a market gain, you get a major chunk of that. If the market goes down, you don’t go down at all.”
Other annuities don’t share those features — fixed annuities have lower returns, and variable annuities expose the owner to market loss — so clients sometimes have a vague aversion to the instruments.
“A lot of seniors don’t know the difference between those,” Garza says. “We teach. I teach seniors what their alternatives are.”
