Driven Towards Retirement with Elliott Kallen
Elliott Callen discusses retirement planning strategies like 401(k)s and SEP plans, then shares how his son's suicide in 2015 led him to start A Brighter Day, a charity offering teen suicide prevention resources and a 24/7 crisis hotline.
You know, we save people's retirement every day, but that's nothing compared with saving a life. My marketing woman posted the other day emails to the board from teens that said, thank you for saving my life. I didn't realize there were over 100 of them.
Welcome to the Next Level Income show, where it's our goal to take your income, your investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larsen. If you haven't yet, get a copy of our book for free at our website, nextlevelincome.com. that's www.nextlevelincome.com. just click on the book link and I'll even send you a copy if you put your address in. On today's show, we have Elliot Callen. Elliot has been an entrepreneur for over 40 years, and like many business owners, he's experienced his fair share of hardships. In 2015, during a critical phase in his business building journey, Elliot's 19 year old youngest son, Jake committed suicide, a devastating event that coincided with the challenges of growing his venture. Despite the tragic loss, he persevered and continued to scale and keep his business running. Elliot, who has founded four businesses, was also forced to sell one of them because it was cash strapped. From these and other setbacks, he's emerged stronger and gained priceless insights on overcoming adversity in business and life, which he's enthusiastically shares with other entrepreneurs. And we're going to talk about on today's podcast. Elliot, welcome to the show.
Great to be here. Thanks for having me on, Chris.
Yeah, no, I'm really excited, as I was saying to talk to you today, Elliot, because you have, you have an amazing story and you know, we get, we get bogged down in the financial world about like, you know, financial independence and money and cash flow in and cash flow out. But what it really is like is it's really about what does it do for you? And today we're going to talk about how investors can simplify their finances, kind of set things on autopilot and ultimately put a plan in place that can allow them to live more of their life today as well as reduce their worries about the future. But you have an awesome story. You got a, you got a great book, you got a great podcast. We'd love for you to share a little bit about your background before we dive into it here with the audience.
Thanks, Chris, for having me on here. I can't believe I've been doing this for 32 years. These are companies 3, 4 and 5 that I've started So I'm a starter. I'm ready to start number six now, which is great. You know, it's funny, in our world, Chris, the financial world, there's a really sad statistic out there. The average retiree spends between four and six hours a day on.
And that's probably about half the time the average retiree is awake.
Yeah. So here's what it is. I need to watch a little bit of CNN or Fox, depending on what I have a proclivity for. Then of course, I need to watch some local news, Dr. Phil and some other couple shows. And then maybe I'm binging Landman or something, but goes by really fast. And then I need to see the 6 o' clock news to see if I missed anything. And then 8 o' clock is my favorite show. So I'm always watching Chicago Fire or something like that. And there's your four and six hours.
Yeah.
And so you and I know that the top thing to do in retirement that people love to do is they become travel bugs.
Yeah.
And you want to create a really good use of money with travel. I had one client that blew through $4,000 in her first year of travel.
400.
400. She's a wonderful person, but she flew first class to Japan, then she flew first class to Korea, then came back, flew first class all over Europe, you know, when each flight was thousand dollars. Wow. Yeah, just a lot. You know, she went to best restaurant. It's a great life. It's just, it was just 40% of her retirement in one year.
Oh, yeah. That, that's not. Yeah. Unless your lifespan is two years, that's not going to work.
Yeah. And so, you know, when my mother, when I was young, the IRA started and my mother. The Individual Retirement account. And my mom said, she listened to radio and she said, you know, if you put away $2,000 till you're 65 and it grows at 8%, you will have $1 million in your retirement plan. And that's all you'll ever need the rest of your life.
For her Back then, maybe. Yeah.
In the early 80s that was true. Now and I live in California, in East bay, you need 2 to 3 million at least. And that's not first class anymore because I got a child in Europe. I got to go to your place a year. Well, that's a 2010-20,000 trip. They need money. I'm dropping a lot of money on children. And then I've got one here that I have to loan the bathroom bought a blew up with mold and that was $25,000 loaned them. I'll never get that money back.
Never.
I don't expect to.
But I bet you're happy to do it. But the point is you want to be able to do it and do it. It's important in life.
Money has to go further than you ever thought it did.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, the thing is, you know, Elliot, we love to jump ahead and talk about the investments and how exciting it is in doing that. What I found is a lot of investors, I'm talking to people every day worth, you know, that are worth millions, that are making half a million, a million dollars a year. I'm like, well, hey, like, what are you spending? You know, what are you spending? And they're like, I don't know. Like, I don't, I don't keep track of it. I know one of the things that you help your investors do is they plan is to put their saving on autopilot. What are some tips that investors that listeners can use to put some of these early steps in place so that they start to accumulate money? Because, you know, we know that time is your friend if you start early, but it's your enemy if you start too late.
That's a great question. It's called the accumulation issue.
Yeah.
So, you know, when we talk about risk, everybody thinks of our risk of the market going down. Donald Trump is going to put a tariff on something, a bomb's going to go off. Middle East. These are risks. You have no control of that. But you have the risk of not having enough money in your retirement and running out too quickly that a lot of people don't put that. And that means didn't accumulate properly. Which is your question, how do you accumulate more? And here's the rule that I use. I know there's some people like Susie Orman that'll tell you you should buy a life insurance policy and not use an IRA or not use a 401. They're wrong. Those people that say don't invest in 401ks are just dead wrong.
Oh, we might have to debate that one.
The reason for that is. And even a raw 401k which is barely used in America is an accumul. These are accumulation vehicles. The more it's people on earth use every accumulation vehicle available to them. And so some are going to be tax deferred, some are going to be post tax, some are going to be like overfunding insurance policy, you're going to borrow from it, whatever those vehicles are, try to Learn how to max them out. So important to do. And you set up automatic monthly amounts. We do that. I mean, I clear I've got a $500 million of Schwab. We can pull money automatically from you. Your employer can pull automatically from you for the Roth or the full 1k roll form 1k or ORC pre tax 401k. If you have an IRA or a SEP, we could pull for that. If you're a business owner, you want to at least have. Or an individual 401 that you can overfund over $60,000 a year, you wanted to be able to do that. If you own a business and you have a corporate 401, find out if you could do a cash balance plan, depending on the number of employees and depending on your cash flow, because that could let you put away almost a quarter million dollars a year if you have that. Because when you retire, you will need more money and you're going to want that money. They have great use. And you know, I said there's travel, there's taking care of your children and your grandchildren. These are the top two uses. There's joining the country club and playing more golf. There's having the garden you always wanted. Those are the, by the way, the top four things in retirement right there. Yeah. That. Of what people say. And you might have your own thing. Maybe you want your, your. You. You've always wanted to be a quilter. You want to start going to natural quilting conventions. Who knows what you want to do? They're good. But have the resources to do it. And remember, your children want. They don't really want your. Your business or your job. They want the outcome, which is your money. Yeah. So you are a role model for your children on how you view how frugal you are in saving and how you spend it in retirement, because they will do the exact same thing as you.
I love that.
Be a great model.
Yeah, I love that. Be a great role model. And, you know, I just want to underscore what you said, Elliot, because I think this is so important. It sounds basic, but, you know, in my book, I talk about how we. We did the same thing. We put our savings on autopilot. I call it our savings tax. And even my boys know, they're like, hey, the goal is to save 50. Like right now, my son actually, he just left. Left. He's going to walk some dogs. He's 13, he's got a summer job. And he knows that if he makes a hundred dollars, he needs to save 50% of that. He's like, why do we have to save so much, dad? I'm like, well, if you get in the habit early of saving this money, then as you start life and you have a job and you have more money, you get used to saving that, and then you're not spending it. And you can always spend more.
Right.
If you save it, you can still go back and spend it. But if you're spending as much as you're making, if you're overspending, it's really hard to catch up. I worked with surgeons, and over the course of my career in medical device sales, Elliott, and what I found was the surgeons, they got. They got on the. On the opposite side of that because they had to go into debt to go to school. They went to medical school, they went into debt, and they did their residency. They're coming out and they're making money, and they. They're 15 years behind in savings, in some cases from people that started out their careers, you know, early off, and they have to really turn up that savings nozzle when it comes to that. That respect.
Well, you're doing a great job. I'll tell you what I did with my kids.
Yeah.
Like, you've done a great job with your kids. And my twins are 31, so my youngest. Those are the youngest right now.
Yeah.
Is that. I did a. I did a match to their savings. That's what we.
I love that. Yeah. Tell me. Tell me about. Because we do the same thing. I said, hey, hey, buddy, if you save this 50 bucks from the 100 you made, we go to the bank. You got to put it in. I deposit 50 bucks on top of it. You did.
You did a dollar for dollar savings. What I did is I did golden dollars. You remember when dollars were the. That color gold? You know, the.
No, I don't. No, I don't think so. Oh, you mean the. Oh, the coins. Yes, sir. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
And so I went there for the bank, and I pick up rolls of these.
Oh, that's so cool. Yeah.
So they. I. My match was in golden dollars.
Oh, that's really cool. Because they.
They.
They physically see it and feel it, and that's a really cool. I really love that.
So. Yeah. So when Nikki ultimately left home, they had banks, plastic banks that I bought atop plastics.
Yeah.
And we fill those up with golden dollars. And so they each walked out with what was thousands of dollars towards their college, you know, And I said, even with college, I said, listen, here's my deal. College, the maximum you can borrow is. It was a little bit over $5,000 your freshman year. That's all I'm going to ask you to borrow. I will pay for college.
So they got some skin in the.
Game, all that, and you have to pay that back when you graduate. So you have some skin in there. Right. And so, you know, this $60,000 education per year, now it's 80. Cost them $5,800 out of pocket when they graduated, and I picked up the rest, or they got some loans and things like that. But their loans. I said, I want you to borrow money, apply for loans subsidized and unsubsidized. I reserve the right to pay them off for you or not. And I did. But I said, you have to get jobs that you could afford to pay and understand that these loans are payable. And I made them pay, like the first two payments, and then I picked them up. Wow.
Yeah. So what a nice. What a wonderful gift. Yeah. And they learned the lesson and had the right mindset to do that. And I'm sure they appreciated it more because they know kids these days, they don't realize, you know, what things cost. I mean, my son's lacrosse, travel. Lacrosse is thousands of dollars a year. You know, it's, you know, and being able to make children appreciate, you know, the cost and the investment.
You need to do it.
Yeah.
My kids, my boys played ice hockey. Two of them. Travel hockey. My daughter gets. Yeah, I know what that cost. My grandson does travel swimming.
Yeah.
And so He's a. He's 12 years old, and his mom, they live with us, and they have. They. They went to a. She paid for that. One of those tournaments. And so the tournament, she got all. She couldn't get into the Hilton or whatever it was, suites at all. So that didn't work out. So they got a hotel down the street. Turns out the hotel she got for her son had mirrors on the ceiling. So he was really. At 12 years old, he was taken back. He was sure that somebody on the floor above them was watching them sleep and all that. He kind of freaked out on that. And it's goofy. We're laughing at that.
Why would you have mirrors on the ceiling? I'm winking at you here. But for those that aren't watching.
Yeah. So when we went to the swim this weekend, I said, where's your next tournament? And they gave me the place and said, I'll get you the hotel. So I got a hotel, and then I got a pass to Disney at the same time. And he Sat there next to me on my phone as we did it. And he said, grandpa, thank you so much for taking care of me. And I said to him, cole, I'm Grandpa. I would jump in front of a truck for you, to protect you and to help your life out. That's my job as your grandfather. And he gave me, he just gave me a gigantic hug and said, thank you so much. That's the message you want to send to your children? We're helping them. And that's your grandchildren doing that. You're helping them with money. You're helping them with a hotel. But in retirement, you no longer have income coming in, which means you're 100% coming out of gain or principal. And you scrape really careful. That.
Yeah, yeah. And I know that's what you guys specialize in. And we're going to, we're going to wrap up by talking a little bit about that, Elliot. But you know, I want to, I want to be conscious of our time together. One of the, one of the big reasons I wanted to have you on. I lost my father when I was five years old. I lost my best friend to a massive brain hemorrhage when he was 18. I was 19. And you lost a son at a young age. At 15. You have a wonderful organization now, A Brighter Day. Do you mind sharing a little bit about that story and how it changed your outlook on life and your appreciation for, you know, you know, not, not, not money, but what, you know, the, what money can actually do and the ability to appreciate, you know, the days that we have.
It's. Thank you very much for asking me. The charity is called A Brighter Day and is a brighterday.info. so he was 19, not 15. He was 19. He was a freshman.
I'm sorry, my apologies.
He was a sophomore, excuse me, at the University of Montana.
It was 2015, I think it was, which is what I had in my head. Yeah. My apologies.
That's okay. You're close enough and I appreciate you bringing it up. He walked up to the highway, waited for a truck to come by and jumped in front of an oncoming truck. And on that Friday, we were frantically looking for him and his phone was turned off. No teenage off her phone. And the FedEx showed up at 6:30 night with a six page suicide note from him. And then the police within minutes. And I live in a little town. The police department showed up at my house, A chaplain showed up my house, the county police showed up at my house. All of them had their life and we were in shock at the whole thing, and we had to go up and get his body, bring it back. But the main reason I started a charity. It helps teens with resources on stress and depression or the goal of stopping suicide. And that we touch 3,000 families every single month of the year, which is amazing. It's because in his suicide note to me, and he was a wonderful kid, we didn't see it coming. Captain of the high soccer team up in Missoula. His jersey is retired at the University of Montana. And at the Oakland, California ice rink. It's hanging. Is because in a suicide note to us, you wrote mom and dad, I've been thinking about this for a very long time. I never would have told you how I felt. Never would have asked for your help, and I never would have taken your help. And was that premise that we started this charity? I wrote a book about it. It's over my left shoulder. About adversity and overcoming it. You never overcome it as a parent. There's a hole in your heart forever, but you have to deal with it and move on. And that's what I wrote about. To creating a charity. To doing good. We save people's retirement lives every day. But that's nothing compared with saving a life, a teenager's life. And I don't know how many we've saved, but I know that we're getting emails. My marketing woman posted the other day emails to the board for teens that said, thank you for saving my life. I didn't realize there were over a hundred of them. Emails. Wow. And we were all in shock looking at, oh, my God. This person was about to go off a bridge or walk up the highway. It's in all 50 states, 24. Seven. A teen crisis hotline. And it goes off every day. You know when teens text us our crisis hotline and they do maybe 50amonth. New teens within five minutes, they all ask the same question to a counselor. Am I anyone feeling this way? So that means they're tone.
Yeah. They feel like they're alone. Especially in a world where we're so connected through social media. We've actually become more and more isolated. And the challenges that young individuals go through as teens and just growing and your body's changing and social things and everything that goes on. I feel like today this is needed more than ever before in history.
And. And that's what we. And that's what we do. That's what a brighter day does. We accept donations. We got a. A golf outing on June 23. We got a summer concert that we raised money out. We got a exotic car show with Lamborghinis and Ferraris and Corvettes coming up in the summer. We do a lot of really cool stuff to raise money.
Yeah.
When you're in charity, unfortunately, I've had to learn this. It's like running for Congress. Every person you meet, you have to put your hand down for money.
Yeah.
Yeah. And that's how it is with the charity. You can't be shy about it. So for your listeners, go to a brighterday.info look what we're just. You feel inclined, we'd love to have you join us with a website mailing list, charity donation. All that stuff is fabulous. And, you know, and we support so much. And I can't thank you enough, Christopher, for talking about the.
Oh, yeah. And I can't. I mean, you know, like you said, you know, you save, you save people's retirements every day on the financial side, Elliot. But, you know, the future of the country is, is our young individuals that are going to go out, they're going to, you know, they're going to come up with the new invention, you know, you know, you know, whether it's a company or drug or whatever it is that's going to change humanity, I feel like the biggest thing that we can do is support our youth today that are, that are under assault by all these other, you know, forces that are out of our control. So, yeah, we're going to put this in the, in the, in the show notes here. So if you're listening, you can click down below. If you're on YouTube, you can click here. A brighter day.info and yes, please, please check that out and do that. And then your group is Prosperity Financial Group. Elliot. So share a little bit more about what you guys do, you know, on, on the financial planning side, specifically the services you offer, who you work with. And, you know, we talked about some of the mechanics that people can do, but you guys do it soup to nuts. Explain that for us.
Yes. Thank you again. So we're, it's ProsperityFinancialGroup.com I'm Elliot@ProsperityFinancialGroup.com it's really simple. We are financial planners and investment portfolio builders. So what we do is we look holistically at your, like, what's going on and we put together plans for you to meet your goals. You may not even have any goals. So we help you create these financial goals for your retirement, whether it's using your company's 401 saving on the side, insurance, whatever they are. We clear through Schwab, we got a half a billion dollars floating around there. I've got another company I own that's another half a billion. That's a national company. So it's a billion dollars. It's a lot of money to be managing a billion dollars that. We love what we do. We're passionate about what we do, and the passion is helping people have a successful financial life. That is what we do. And there are a lot of people who are very good in our industry that do a great job like we do. It's just. It's what your passion is. And you love people. And if you really enjoy people, it's easy to work with them. That's what we do.
Absolutely. Well, I can. I know you. I know you do. I can tell. I can tell by talking with you. And yeah, I know it's. It changes your life when you lose somebody close to you. And I know that drives the meaning. The meaning behind what you do. And I know people can appreciate that. For those that have.
It's a personal story, sadly, about charity, about tragedy that we turn into something good. But admit me, understand people a lot more. I don't want to say I'm more empathetic because my son died. I probably am. I'm kind of an empathetic person anyway, and I probably am. But when people have problems, they know that I have a very long fuse to listen. And so I always say that my grandmother crowd loves me more than my grandchild crowd because listen for hours, all about the stories that they want to talk about.
Yeah. Wonderful. And you help them get to where they want to be and spend the time doing that. So, Elliot, we've really enjoyed getting to. Getting to hear your story a little bit today, getting to share it with the audience. Thank you so much. You can pick up Elliot's book driven. You can check out his group, Prosperity Financial Group Prosperity Financial group dot com. And also check out A Brighter day dot IN FO I got it pulled up here on my screen as well. If you want to learn how they are helping teens and preventing teen suicide and providing really the support to those individuals that feel like they're all alone out there. Elliot, it's been great having you here today. Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me on, Chris.
Thanks so much. Hey, Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now, I have one more thing to gift you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book. As well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also, please like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.
