Your 401k Isn't Enough for Retirement Income! (PhD Tom Wall Reveals in Full Interview)

Hello and welcome Tom. I appreciate you coming on my YouTube channel debuting for the very first time. I personally I'm a fanboy of your work in the background. My very first interaction with you was at Caleb's event, the and Asset Mastermind in Denver, Colorado. You gave a talk that was in my opinion the most logistical, factual breakdown of bonds in comparison to whole life insurance. And you were using terms like buffer volatility, vehicle sequencing of returns, better bond alternative. Those were all new words to me, I hadn't heard at all. And I have been in the life insurance industry and financial coaching for seven years now and just never came across those, those terms. And when I discovered you, I was just like blown away. I was like, this is gonna truly not only help me, but help everybody I serve on my YouTube channel. So I first wanna say thank you to all the work that you're doing and I wanna give you the floor to just kind of introduce yourself to my audience on your journey, your origin story into the finance industry and what that's blossomed into today.

Yeah, well, thanks for having me on. I. It's hard to believe I started in the business 20, almost 23 as a college intern with Northwestern Mutual and I, I think they found me at a career fair and I was just looking for ways to get in the finance industry and they told me I could make a lot of money and I could do a lot of good, you know, as a financial advisor and you know, immediately I was in. So you know, I spent my entire, you know, senior semester at college, basically, you know, studying for licensing exams, learning the business and you know, talking to people about life insurance and all the good that we do in financial planning world. And after four years of that, you know, I actually ended up joining the home office of a major mutual carrier as a life insurance wholesaler. You know, eventually got really good at that and they promoted me to run an entire marketing team, you know, doing some sales leadership roles and marketing and in the process was studying heavily. You know, I ended up putting together a couple advanced degrees and finally a PhD in retirement income planning around, around that time. And I just got so convicted around, you know, the message that we tell in this business and the fact that there's so few people talking powerfully where whole life insurance dividend paying, participating whole life insurance from some of these, you know, 175 year old institutions and where that fits inside of a plan versus I think, you know, some of the people out there thinking that it's a bad deal or it's or it's something that's being sold by commission driven advisors and it's not good for the clients. When all of my research and all of my background told me that no, I, I, I don't, I don't just think, I know scientifically that this is probably the best kept secret in personal finance when you really understand where it fits. So you know, here I am today, you know, five years after making that decision to leave that home office and I'm on stages, you know, every, I'm in a different city every week now. You know, I've published the book, I do, I do keynote talks to, to you know, financial advisors, you know, tens of thousands across, across the industry. I host a very large, you know, 1600 member group called Whole Life Masterminds. Really focused on you know, putting you know, these high end plans into people's, you know, you know, financial, overall financial plans. And it's been, it's been the honor of a lifetime to do it. And it's grown so much that we're hosting large live events now, you know, first class, you know, 400 advisor events, you know, just, just coming together, talking about some of these core principles that in my opinion built the industry. You know, the Morgan Stanley's and these investment houses, they didn't build the industry. The you know, the financial planning world that we know was really created by these major mutuals and the advisors that they, that they recruited and developed over the last several decades. So that's where I'm at today, just really carrying the torch for this part of our space and talk and helping advisors talk powerfully about it to their clients.

So two things you mentioned. You know, you got pretty much recruited at a pretty young age looking to make some money. So you were attracted by the money aspect that you could do some good and serve people. Was there anything else? Just more maybe like personally that also was creating that drive for you. Because what I've been able to observe and see over the years observing highly successful entrepreneurs like yourself and even Caleb Garrett Gunderson, many of the people that were at the events that I've seen you at, they often are just driven by something, maybe a faith, maybe maybe something personal happened to them in their, in their family. So there's like that aspect plus getting early insight or maybe a mentor into a specific field that is non traditional, just, just totally different, that is producing phenomenal results. As you mentioned earlier, like you've got scientific data that proves how this asset can fit into somebody's portfolio. So is there anything additional Other than, like, the attraction of making money and helping people out with their finances. Is there something else?

You know, if I'm being honest, when I was 21, when I entered the business, I just wanted to make a lot of money. And I, I'm a little bit of a nerd. I loved math and I love numbers, and I was fascinated by the financial world and investing and all that stuff. And I thought, how cool would it be to, you know, be a financial advisor and make a whole bunch of money and, and, and have all kinds of clients and be influential in my, in my community and all that stuff that drives us, you know, to, to do that. But what really, what changed my career was when I got really fascinated around the behavioral finance part of it is. And it's really why I titled my book Permission to Spend. It's kind of a nod to the fact that you can do all the investing that you want. You can spend your whole life living like a miser and saving every dollar until you're a multimillionaire, but if you're not spending it along the way, who cares? It's just a scorecard. It's. If it's not actually driving a better life, if you're not actually getting life experiences and you're not creating memories with your family because you're just hoarding wealth, that's not a good outcome either. So for me, I got really fascinated very early on with this whole concept of, you know, using insurance and annuities and actuarial science inside of your plan, not as just another asset class, which it is. It's a way to accumulate wealth, but by sh. But it shifts risk out of your portfolio. You know, the risk that you would typically have to take if you want to have those big outsized returns that you're bragging about. Investing in businesses, real estate, equities, all this stuff carries a lot of risk, and it's very cyclical, but there's just this north star of dividend paying, participating whole life insurance, an asset that always goes up in value and along the way protects your family. At any stage, whether you're young or 90 years old, it's protecting you along the way. And because of that, that is the unlock that is actually what allows people to invest more aggressively elsewhere, take chances elsewhere, because they've got that backstop. And it allows them to actually realize a true retirement or financial independence, however you define that in modern days, because you know that the people that you love are taken care of and the obligations that you morally feel toward them are met. So that's, that was, that was the big change for me. It was, it's not about math. It's not about getting a half a percent higher return which is what everyone online, I call it the financial, like the CNBC world, like it's financial entertainment. We're all just like betting on which stock is going to go up. That's, that's silly. That's not financial planning. These tougher conversations with these unsexy products which I joke around, I think it's pretty sexy when you really understand it. But for the, for the average consumer, it doesn't sound like it. I think that's, that's really where, where changes happen. That's, that's really where impact is made.

So it's the behavior part on how someone goes about accumulating wealth in their early years and then approaching retirement and how it's like even if you look at someone that makes good money, saves their money, invest it all in the right accounts, does all the right stuff, becomes a multi million to beyond retires, whatever it may be, but they're literally freaking out. They have anxiety, they have stress because now they have all this money, don't know how to spend it. And there was no financial literally literacy class on spending your money, let alone doing it at a point where you're no longer actively bringing in money like you once were. Now you're at that older age. So that was the next anchor in your life that has taken you on this 20 year plus run. Has anything changed in that time frame or as of late? It seems like with your whole life mastermind event that you put on, you're now serving other financial professionals in the industry. And you mentioned over 1600 advisors or this group and that's no small number. So when did that occur? When it was. You're helping yourself grow in the industry, you're gaining this knowledge, you're being taught by the very best in the industry and then you get your PhD, you're learning, you then discover the behavioral part of finance. You then write the book permission to spend. When did you start saying there's also another error in the industry and it's the people that are providing the plans. Not talking about this age old asset, this, this consistent asset called whole life insurance.

Yeah, so I recognize that early most of my career at the home office, I've actually been on stages in front of thousands of advisors. So my role was as a product expert, they call it a wholesaler where my job was to talk to financial advisors about the company's whole life products and where they fit. And I realized along the way, on an increasing basis that, that a lot of advisors either they weren't hearing it, they didn't really understand where it fit. So I'm talking about the nuts and bolts of the product and the features and benefits and riders and all this stuff. But the advisors weren't connecting with how to actually share that with a client where it fit in the overall story. So I've known this for, for a long time and on an increasing basis started to realize that a. The conversations are hard. You know, when it comes to life insurance, you're talking about medical underwriting, you're talking about death. Know what happens upon your death. Hard conversations, things that people typically won't think about unless they're challenged to think about them. And a lot of advisors, in my opinion, sometimes it's laziness. They just want to talk about the fun, sexy stuff like the investment portfolios, and they get to show pie charts and all these simulations in their software. And it's, it's fun stuff, it's lightweight. The clients love talking about it. It's aspirational. But they're not having hard conversations about the things that can derail that plan, which is really what financial planning is about. I mean, any, any monkey can generate wealth, just save enough money and do some general good things with it. It's going to grow as long as you're not doing stupid stuff. The real art of financial planning is making sure that when there's bad times or when some future congress decides they're going to tax you because you're too rich or World War 3 breaks out or the next pandemic, just fill in the blank of bad things that can happen. Unemployment, divorce, all these things. If you've got plans in place to weather any storm, that's financial planning, all right. The other world is just investment management. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's. It's a helpful part of the business and it's a service that people need, but it's only half the job. It's not talking about, you know, protecting against what can go wrong or the right to actually, you know, shoot for the stars and prepare for what can go. What can go right.

Gotcha. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it. And as it pertains to your, your book, what I personally got out of it is this. This was not only helpful to the advisor, the financial advisor and insurance agent, a financial coach, anyone that's a financial professional with any kind of licenses. This is also. You wrote it in such a way that the potential customer can comprehend this, that it was, it was applying to them more. And maybe I'm wrong. You tell me you're the author. But as the agent reading it, I was like, wow, this feels like this was more so for my client to read than, than me, because you. Okay, so I was right. All right, that's great. Yeah. Because I was just like, I really enjoyed how you just went right into the material. The whole book, by the way, for my, for my audience, it's, it's all meat and potatoes. So you don't go into any, any sob stories. And not that that's a bad thing. And this is why I wanted an interview, because I'm like, who is Tom Wall? And I didn't, I didn't really get to discover too much of that in, in the book other than your, you know, accolades and background. And for someone like myself, I'm like 80, 90% all logic when it comes to finance. And over the years, I've made it a part of my practice to be more intentional with the behavior, the mindset, the foundations part, because if that person doesn't have that, something like this is going to fly over their head. But I can tell you with my particular audience, there's a, a large audience base that are really interested in. They're like, dude, how do I figure this out? Because I feel like I'm doing everything right. Funding my 401k, I'm saving, I'm investing, I'm getting out of debt. I feel like I'm doing these things right, yet I don't feel like I'm on track to retire on time. And they're simply just missing one or two pieces in the puzzle. You mentioned earlier about how you put together these highly sophisticated plans. And I was thinking, I'm like, I agree with that. But then I'm also like, it's quite simple once it's in play. I guess the hard part is figuring out the allocation of investment dollars, savings dollars to the whole life. And then you also go into guaranteed income, retirement planning, annuities. But would you say once it's like, in place, it's quite simple. You got all these protections, all these guarantees, entire large contract of, of safety and protection, all these benefits, and it, the asset's going to do what it's going to do and there's really no ongoing work on your part, and same goes with the annuity, once you turn it on, that it does its job. So talk to me about like your opinion on where's the highly sophisticated part coming in? Is that for the client or is it more so for the advisor, the professional that needs to comprehend this in such a way to articulate it to.

Their clients, it's all about the articulation. Look, this stuff is not super sophisticated. I talk about the art and science. Everyone thinks because it's finance and there's numbers and there's tax codes and like a good financial advisor is a little bit of everything. A good financial Advisor is like 5% CPA, 5% attorney, maybe 10% financial planner. You know, there's, there's all kinds of stuff that they have to know about the tax code, about legalities, about estate planning, things like that. And the better, you know, the more experienced and better financial advisor you are or are surrounded by, the better you can do for a client. No question there. That's kind of the science part. But the truth is in Today's World, with ChatGPT and you know, reading some magazines like you can figure most of that out on your own. I think the bigger the art is, is crafting a plan that's going to work no matter what because like we have no idea what's going to, what's going to happen down the road. I actually, I kind of chuckle at some of the financial plans that I see with these Monte Carlo simulations of 10,000 outcome that are possible and those outcomes are generated based on historical averages and historical standard deviations of markets and projecting that history forward as if history is going to repeat itself. And I can guarantee you history will not repeat itself. You have no idea what the next 30, 40, 50 years of your life and what the next 30, 40, 50 Years on this planet are going to look like. So to, to pretend that you are on a piece of paper in a financial plan and then sell that as if like this is the bible of the rest of your financially is, is ignorant in my opinion. Like that's, that's based, that's basic level stuff and that's what a lot of financial advisors are doing out there. So I wrote the book. Really? I. Yes, it's for consumers. It's meant to be a easy four or five hour read tops that you can hand to a client and the client can understand. It's basically retirement planning 101 in the early chapters. Just this is kind of what we're doing here. This is how much you're going to need in retirement. This is some of the basic principles that basically everybody in our business will agree upon that that you should be doing. But it finishes with a story that a lot of advisors aren't telling, which is, you know, we're not. It used to be that we were in the age of pensions where you could work for a company for, you know, 30 or 40 years and they would guarantee you a pension or a guaranteed paycheck you could never outlive. On top of getting a Social Security, the other, the other leg of the stool. So you had all this guaranteed income in retirement. And for most people today, that's not the case. For most people today, you know, Social Security still is there. You know, there's going to be some challenges moving forward, but it'll still be there. Um, but, but otherwise, outside of that, it's up to you to generate to, to, to A, earn a high income, but then B, be responsible enough to sell it, and then C, or save it. Excuse me. And then C, you know, be smart enough with how you allocate those resources and save. And that's, it's, that's not rocket science. The art is crafting it in such a way where we don't know what's going to happen in the future. But if we can allocate resources and shift risk out of the portfolio without creating undue costs, you know, you can, you can guarantee away anything just like the rest of your life. You can buy expensive homeowners coverage, you can buy expensive car insurance, pay way more than you need to, and guarantee away any potential risk. But you're probably wasting money in the process. Same goes with any other. With this kind of insurance too, is if done incorrectly, you can, you can spend too much. But if there was a way to do it where you could be, where your insurance could be a performing asset in your portfolio. So in the more likely event that bad things don't happen, you're actually also generating wealth in this. That's the magic. So really the story that I wanted to tell was that I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. So I think that if there was just one principle I would share with folks is everyone. I don't like putting a number on this because everyone's got a different number. For some people, you know, worth one or two million dollars is plenty to retire on. If, if you had a $1 or $2 million net worth, you would feel comfortable quitting your job and never working again. For other people, it's 5 million or 10 million or whatever the number is. Doesn't matter what the number is. But imagine someone comes to you with A check for that number. Let's say Your number is 4 million bucks, all right? And I write you a check for $4 million. So here you go, here's $4 million. You can sign the back of it, deposit it in your account today, and you are now worth $4 million. Here's the catch, though. Once you do that, you can never earn money on planet Earth again. You can never work for gainful employment. These, this is your last $4 million. So cool. You're a multi millionaire now. You've got plenty of money to live on. But then how do you manage that money and how do you spend that money for the rest of your life knowing you can never earn more? When you pause and think about that, that's effectively what a retiree is facing when they get to retirement. Hypothetically, you know, at that point of financial independence or retirement is they've earned their last dollars and now what? How much can I spend? How should I invest? How much risk should I take? And the answer is if, if you're never going to earn money again and you don't know how long that money needs to last. You know, retirement planning is really easy if you know you have 15 years to live. But if it could be 50, that's a very different proposition. So what happens is people end up hoarding their wealth. They end up spending way below what they, what they really could. They end up taking a lot less risk in their investments than they should. They're, they're missing out on upside and potential gains because they're, they're afraid. And it doesn't have to be that way. And that's, that's really, that's kind of the mass affluent issue in the world today. Like, once you get to a place where you have enough money and you're going to be okay and you are going to be worth some number of millions in retirement, then how do you spend it? Right, that's, that's the issue that no one thinks about ahead of time, and that's the decumulation phase. So that's, that's really the message that I'm trying to get across to people is, is this, is, this is good stuff in the short term, it protects your family and builds a lot of guarantees and accessibility, but long term, it's, it's one of the most efficient places to, to store wealth and transfer that to the next generation. Because most of us, you know, whether or not we want to leave our kids rich, you know, some people do, some people don't. We're all at the very least, you know, going to be obligated to our spouses. We're not going to impoverish our spouse upon our death. Like we're going to leave assets behind. So this is the most efficient way to do that, you know.

So, Tom, I want to share with you my whiteboard. I put together some material here and just give you an idea of the audience that you're, that you're talking to. Over the last seven years on my YouTube channel, I've mainly been serving and working with a lot of moms, single moms, divorced moms, married moms. My passion is working with moms because that was my very first client, was my own mother helping her get her finances in order, get out of debt, start to begin to save money and Invest. Starting at 53, 54 years old with little to no financial literacy. And fast forward to today, she is approaching 59. She's 59 now, turning 60 in the, in next year. And she has a whole life policy. She has a convertible term policy. I bought my mom a condo. So she has a home now. She's a homeowner. She's building her credit, she's managing her debt, she's cash flow positive. It's like all these things in the last seven years has really given her hope that she actually will be able to retire at a decent age. Anywhere between 62 and 65 is what we're projecting. And she's able to actually leave a tangible legacy behind via that death benefit that we were able to, you know, get her a really good amount of coverage, multiple six figures. She has three children. And that's the origin and start and drive of why I do what I do today, including my faith. And so taking to the whiteboard here, it's going to kind of give you like a little deep insight. Roughly 78% of the people watching this YouTube channel are between 40 and 60 years old and up 30% are women that watch my channel. And mostly their moms. They're single, some are divorced, some are widows, and many of them are married with kids. They have a husband that works. Maybe in some cases the mom is the breadwinner. In most cases it's the man with a W2 job. Most of my audience are not business owners. They're mostly W2. So it's like either dual income or single income household. And they're making about 60 to 200,000 a year. So that's the range. I work with a couple high six figure, maybe seven figure earners every now and then. That Find my channel. But mostly it's average American income, salaries 60 plus K to my IT professionals and people that work in, in the real estate space. A lot of folks that are in our nurses that are doing, you know, six figure plus. So those higher end careers but all W2, the problem that they're having and they share with me is they have a lot of high interest debt that they're carrying, little to no coverage. Many of them are in their late 40s, mid-50s to late 50s, no life insurance whatsoever. But they're healthy, they don't smoke, they don't drink, they're in good shape and they have low cash flow due to the high debt that they're carrying. Mortgage, student loans, personal loans, high interest credit cards, you name it. And most of the people I work with have about six figures, multiple six figures or less in their retirement accounts, mostly being IRAs, 401ks and Roths. And they're worried about income in retirement. They're like Denzel, I'm like 10 years out, 5 years out, 15 years out. And these projections are not looking pretty. I don't know how I'm going to be able to retire. So where I been able to come in the last seven years, I will typically start with debt because it's their biggest block. It's like they're just unable to comprehend other financial conversations until we address the debt. So I do a combined approach as a, as a financial coach. I touch on their own personal development, try to establish a foundation that would lead to transformation and try to best understand what their mindset beliefs are about money and their faith that goes along with it. From there I'm showing them strategies on how they can eliminate debt faster than just throwing money at it any day of the week or a little bit here, a little bit there. So I start with simple strategies like Debt snowball, Debt avalanche, Cash Flow Index. I picked that up from Garrett Gunderson a few years back. And then velocity banking is something I teach quite a bit and that's leveraging credit, leveraging HELOCs and personal lines of credits, credit cards to offset interest or consolidate in a more efficient way and recapture the cash flow while remaining somewhat liquid. And then in your book you touched on it ever so lightly, you called it becoming your own bank. Infinite banking is like another popular term around that. And as well as building credit and the results at this point, fast forward, I have a healthy amount of people watching that are now debt free. They have higher cash flow, they have really good credit 720 or higher their house is the maybe the only debt left. So we've been able to pay off everything but their house. They're in a higher income position now. They're making more money as they're getting closer and closer to retirement. And those are the people that you've been able to really, really help tremendously. Because I think for the person watching, probably for every 10 people watching this video, probably 6 to 7 are right here still. They're in the problem and I'm working the problem with them. But about 3 out of 10 people watching this video are right here where they're now debt free. They got really good cash flow, their income's higher, good credit, but they're still have no idea about investing and where to invest and where to allocate funds and that such. And that's where I've been implementing your work and you've actually my testimony for me personally is I've been able to explain whole life much easier now. Like much easier now. I first got exposed to whole life from the perspective of infinite banking where it's like build your own tax free bank, earn high rates of return in your policy, create arbitrage and offset and borrow and you know you're paying interest but you're also earning and you pay yourself back over time. And there's this death benefit and it was like all mostly features and benefit conversations that I came across Nelson Nash and that community infinite banking concept. And it was really a long journey to just like comprehend all that material then, let alone explain it to my audience and clients. And I been doing that with videos but in the last year or two I actually been speaking less and less and less about the concept of becoming your own bank. And really approaching it from this perspective of hey, this is a better, safer, higher performing location than your savings accounts, bonds, money markets, CDs, any anywhere you believe to be storing your money in a safe place. This whole life policy not only outperforms over a long period of time, but you get this laundry list of benefits and guarantees that that come with it. When I started doing, when I started having that conversation, not only was I processing applications faster with the client, but they were also maintaining the value of that asset years later. Versus some of my earlier clients were constantly have to be like reminded hey, that death benefit has been increasing, that's really valuable. Or there's these other riders in there terminal and chronic, that's really valuable. Or I had to like re explain why the dividend rate is this number but their internal rate of return is this number and their loan interest rate is this number. So it was kind of like more maintenance and work versus the last year or two, way less work involved. The, the client views it as an additional asset that they're contributing funds to, not paying. And you mentioned that in your book that we have to look at Whole Life as another type of account that you contribute money to, just like a Roth 401K, an HSA, an IRA account. And you have the freedom or flexibility to fund that however you like, you get to custom design it. And there's far less limitations in funding. So I wanted to really just give you that full analysis there on just who you're talking to, where they're coming from, the progress they've been able to make and the impact that you're, you're having not only on me explaining things to the client, but then them actually moving forward with it. So with that, I have a case study if you're interested, spend a few minutes, want to get your, your thoughts on, on this. Do you have any, anything you want to add to what I just shared here or am I good to go into the case study while you pull that up?

I guess I would say, you know, for that market, for that market, for those folks, there's so many competing interests. You know, when, when, when money is a little scarce, there's a lot of competing interests and there's a lot of different ways you can diversify assets. You know, the, the easy way is you just plow money into a, into a 401k or an IRA or retirement account. But there's a couple problems with that. Is one, you're taking risk.

You know, if you're going to do that, you should be invested in the markets and the markets go up and down and there's timing risk, but there's also excess risk. You know, when you put your money into those accounts, you can't really touch it until you're 59 and a half unless you want to pay massive tax penalties. So, you know, one of why Whole Life is such a great fit is when I think about diversifying a portfolio. I want to diversify in three ways. Everyone really focuses on risk and taxes. Basically asset allocation, how we invest stocks, bonds, real estate, things like that. Taxes is an important one. That's why we fund retirement accounts because we get tax advantages to do it. The government has, has provided tax advantages as an incentive for people to take care of themselves so the government doesn't have to take care of them someday, to be, to be blunt. But then there's also the access piece. And that's what people always miss is whole life insurance has unlimited tax advantages. It ends up acting like the cash or bond piece of the portfol going to be a, you know, very predictable 4 to 6% over time. It's not going to be your cocktail party bragging asset of 40%, but it's accessible. Like you get unlimited tax advantages and it's accessible along the way. Typically when, when the government gives you tax advantages, there's some strict strings attached in terms of what that 20, what that money is used for, when it's, when it's used, you know, how much you're allowed to earn before you fund these accounts. Whole life has none of that. So that's, that's a big reason why I think it fits so well in so many portfolios. It's not about, it's not about rate of return. It's about just the nature of the product. It gives you a lot more options and flexibility along the way.

Are you seeing. Because in the YouTube content creator influencer space around, as you were mentioning earlier, like financial entertainment, I would, I would throw myself in that category to an extent. I like to educate and maybe throw a little entertaining into it to keep people engaged. But as a content creator, but also an observer of who I'm working with, who I'm talking to consistently, I'm seeing a lot of folks withdraw in droves from the traditional way of investing. Putting money in a 401k funding to the max or to the match contribution, they're actually withdrawing completely from that. And because of their lack of belief in the stock market, they're like, I have trauma from 2007, 2008, or I'm watching YouTubers now talk negatively about traditional ways of investing, but they're not actually making the conversation better, in a sense because they're then steering this massive viewership, this, this audience to become in full control, which I'm not against to a, to a degree. But they're having them invest in, say, a brokerage account and do maybe a fire movement where it's like you're gonna buy dividend investing, paying stocks only, or you're gonna do ETFs and index funds only. And now you're fully in control of this, of this money. And I think there's benefits to that for sure. But it's still what they've done is focused heavily on what you say, the rate of return. So they're like, hey, if you put your money here instead, stop funding these accounts where you're paying high fees and there's no control. You can, money goes up, money goes down, you can lose and you're going to put it over here. I like that idea. But there's still the missing piece of, well now how do you protect that? How do you protect this new investment strategy? Or if they go even further off the deep end, you've got content creators that are like, the hell with all those accounts. Put all your money in crypto, put all your money in promissory notes and you know, tax liens and just get involved in real estate syndications earning 20 plus percent and do it that way. Same thing. Missing the backstop is what you often say in your book is what's, what's protecting whatever strategy we're, we're doing as it pertains. So are you seeing like people just fully withdraw and almost not do nothing or put themselves in an even higher risk position now with the hopes of catching up? Because they're like, yeah, 8% average return isn't going to do it for me. I only got five, 10 years left to retire. I need to earn 20, 30, 40, 50% returns, which is possible, no doubt, but what's protecting that?

No, it's the dangerous thing. It's a dangerous thing. Today. Someone you know, I didn't realize this, but somebody said that if you're younger than 40 or 41, you've never actually experienced a real financial crash, you know, and which means you didn't, you didn't experience 2008, which was really the end of 2007 to the beginning of 2009. It was really like a year and a half. The joke at the time was your 401k turned into a 201k. And that was true. I mean people lost half their wealth, least on paper that year. And all the more recent crashes, you know, 2022 or the pandemic, like those were short lived, you know, those, those kind of happened and came back and people have just got conditioned that the market can do no wrong. We're, we're in, you know, one of the longest secular bull markets we've seen in history. So who knows when that ends? Who knows if AI makes that continue forever? I have no idea. It's, it's not my job to predict that. But you know, if, if you're, if you're late for a meeting and you drive 95 down the highway, you'll get there on time, right? So, and, but you're taking a lot of risk and that's what people are Doing with the market right now is they're taking a lot of risk. They're driving 95. It might work out. But, you know, if they, if they pass a cop or they get in an accident, all. Everything, you know, falls apart, they miss the meeting or worse. So that's the problem with investing that way is you can, you can take a whole lot of risk. You can buy, you know, cheap stocks and quantum computing and AI and hope like heck, but the alternative is catastrophe. So, yeah, I think a lot of people are doing that right now. And that's the wrong approach. The approach that I take by adding actuarial science and by adding guarantees into the plan. What people don't realize is the whole world, and for really good reasons, by the way, over the last few decades has been programmed around. How do we get to my number? So, like I said, if your number's a million bucks or your numbers 4 million bucks, whatever your number is in your mind to live the lifestyle that you want to live, we're all programmed in, how do we invest to accumulate that number? But it's really why, why that number? You can't spend the number. You can't spend your 401k. You spend the income that you draw out of it. So if there are ways to build your portfolio in a way where you can take a higher percentage out of your portfolio with the same confidence or better confidence, then you're better off. Or put differently, you know, 6% of 4 million is worth a lot more than 4% of 5 million, you know, in terms of the annual income that you're taking. So that's what we want to do is, is, you know, we're not. Don't reach for that extra 10 or 20% account balance. Reach for ways to give yourself permission to spend that money so that in the 1 out of 4 chance that, you know, you retire into a down market, you're covered. But in the three out of four chance, the far more, the far greater likelihood that you retire into an okay market where you're still making money. This just, you know, caps off a good performance and makes everything even better.

What, what a good point about the highway example. I appreciate you putting that into just a simple analogy there as to what people are really doing with their money purely based out of fear and only focusing on one metric being the rate of return. And rate of return becomes less and less valuable as you get to retirement, because it's. It's really not about that. It's a. It's what distribution rate are you Getting on whatever you've, you've accumulated. So I, great, great point there. I want to share with you a case study I'm working on. Get, get your insight. I actually did a video a couple weeks, no, two days ago I posted it, but I made the video a couple weeks back and kind of give you some facts of the situation. It's a gentleman, 50 years old and he's about to come into a windfall of money completely tax free, about 176,000 and some change. And he has a mom that's 80 years old. So the other thing, the other humongous value that I got from your book, because you mentioned it, but created more ideas in my mind, which is I serve a lot of immigrant families of different demographics and there's a culture that I typically see with people that are born outside of the United States, move to the United States, right, become citizens. So they're either that first generation or the second generation born in the United States under an immigrant family that originally lived in another country. What I typically see as part of their living expense is once the son or daughter is of maturity and usually around their late 30s, 40s, and for the rest of their days they're pretty much providing an annuity for their mom and dad. So part of their living expenses is like 3, 4, 500amonth. They just send that to their dad, they just send that to their mom and it supplements some of their, some of their bills whether they live in another country or if they're still living in the United States. So this is a similar case where this is a son, 50 years old, has an 80 year old mom and he wants to give her almost like a stream of income from that money and he's trying to figure out like what's the most efficient way do I just pay off her debt and then that would put cash flow back into her pocket and it's a mortgage, a home equity line of credit that she has. Or do I just like give her money on a monthly basis from that, from that cash? And the thought that came to my mind was, well, if you're already intending to give her X amount of money for, from that six figures plus, what would an annuity be able to do for you? And I'm wondering if you've ever been in that kind of situation before or seen any kind of case studies like this. And I would like your opinion if you think I'm on the right track there as it pertains to getting a windfall of money. And you have an elderly Parent that is on fixed income, they don't make a lot of money and very low cash flow. You as the son or daughter, you're trying to look out for your parents, trying to help them have a better, more sustainable life in retirement. Where do you see annuities fitting into that conversation for the son or daughter?

For the son or daughter.

Yeah. So, so the son, son is 50 years old. Yeah. And he's coming into this 176,000 of tax free money from a settlement. Louis, it was a car accident, an injury that, that he sustained. And yeah, part of his goals is to take care of his mom. So he's going to spend money probably in the neighborhood of giving her about a thousand 1500 every single month until that money runs out, that he's thinking about allocating to her or taking a lump sum of money and paying off some of mom's debt. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna share my, my screen kind of show you all the math that I did here. So on the, and I did a little research as well, try to get my hands out the way. Yeah. On the left hand side is his income that he's currently bringing in in cash flow and that's all his debt that he's carrying. And then in the middle, we were just kind of breaking down how he's going to allocate the money and he's getting it this month, I believe. So I had, I had looked up what a $90,000 annuity could. I just googled it and it was saying that it would guarantee an 80 year old female about $850 and 950, 850 to 950amonth. Pretty much like a 10% distribution on, on that initial amount of money that she's get that he's getting that he would give to her anyways. And I was saying how, hey, if you were to just, you know, you take a thousand a month and divide that by 90 grand, you know, that's, you have 90 months, so that's 7.5 years. Okay, now what? Mom's 87 and a half years old. What if she's still with us going to live all the way to 100. Could an annuity do what you're planning on doing? Anyways, I just wanted to get your thoughts there. If you think I'm on the right track or if I should be having, or if you think something different, you.

Know, there's no right answer. It's, I think there's a couple different ways to approach it. So, you know, he could keep the money himself and invest it. Conservatively.

Correct.

You know, it, it may be a case for life insurance on his own life if she's dependent upon him.

Yep, yep. Which is right there. I put part of the 176,000 I showed. You know, what would it look like if you saved 10, 20% of that money and funded a life insurance policy on himself? So we're actually in the process of that already. And then I also showed him, you know, Max funding, his Roth, his hsa, he wants to do some real estate. I show paying off debt. So I show him doing a lot of the things that he wants to do with his money. And then there was still about 80 to 90 plus thousand dollars left over that's earmarked for his mother, period. So, yeah, it's like, what do we do there? Or additional ideas. So you said the first part was, okay, maybe he can just invest that money himself and take withdrawals, help mom out. So that's one option. What else?

That's one option. I think the annuity on mom's life, especially since she's, she's an older female, I think that would, that would, the payout would be phenomenal on that. Like you said, you know, 10, 11 cash flow off that annuity. So, you know, that's going to create tremendous income, and that's income she can't outlive. So that's. If she ends up living a very long time because of medical advancements, that money continues. The downside, though, is that money's gone. So that money, if she lives a while, there won't be anything left over, you know, to pass to the next generation. Which sounds like he's okay, that he's not really requiring that, right?

Yeah.

I think what people miss, I think too is the reverse mortgage opportunity. So if she has a HELOC that tells me that she owns a home, and if it's a home that he doesn't want to inherit or live in, then at the end of the day, it's just a financial asset. You know, I think, I think a lot of people, especially, you know, the older generation, gets home because they spent so many, so many years and time in that property, but the next generation doesn't want it. Like, at the end of the day, it passes to the next generation, and then the next generation sells it for cash and then uses that cash for something else. And reverse mortgages are not what they used to be. Reverse mortgages almost have this, almost dirty word connotation to them. But with modern regulation and some of the options out there, what a phenomenal way to unlock the value of a primary residence. And you can do it in a way where you can draw income out of that property forever without, without ever having to pay that back. So. Or at the very least, just you can use it almost like a, like a heloc. So if she needs an extra couple thousand bucks some month for something, she can, she can dip into that. So that's, that's often an overlooked option for people, especially in scenarios where that, that family home is, is modest and the next generation doesn't really care about inheriting it. That's, that's financial wealth that is stored inside that home equity that oftentimes just doesn't get used to. So that could be an additional recommendation as well. But those would be the three ways that I might create income for it.

Yeah, that's awesome. I definitely will mention that to him because mom does have a home that she lives in, and she's got 200,000 left owed on the mortgage. And this is New Jersey, so I'm pretty sure her property value is worth more than that. And her payment is like 1900amonth or something like that. So what you're saying is, hey, there's a world where we can potentially just remove that obligation of payment, 1900. So that puts 1900 back into her pocket every single month. And with the home equity conversion mortgage, I'm not mistaken, you don't necessarily have to take income. You can just opt out of making the payment altogether. Is that right? As one of the options?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Effectively you refinance the house and you know that it acts like a line of credit that is effectively, you know, growing. If you take the money out, then it's effectively just like any other mortgage where if you, if it's kind of like swiping a credit card and not making a payment, like the balance stays there and it gets higher and higher. But hypothetically, the house is growing in value too. So there's, there's rules and limitations around it. So to make sure that the bank is, is not at risk. But, but yeah, it can be a couple different ways. It can, it can act like a, like a heloc, like a source of capital if you need it, but you don't have to, or you can actually just effectively annuitize your house and turn it into an income stream. And it's just one of those things no one ever thinks about. No one ever thinks in those terms. Yeah, that's for the average American where you know, it's just a modest home that the next generation probably doesn't want anyway. That's, that's financial value you can unlock for sure.

Okay, that's huge. Thank you for sharing that and I know that's going to help. A lot of my clients that are in their 50s to 60s still have living parents and they are allocating quite a bit of money to their in laws maybe or their direct parents and that can put a tremendous strain on their own retirement if they're constantly having to send money to their, to their parents. Where it's like, what if there was an asset that could do that job for you and then you could work to basically redirecting that cash flow back to you now that you've allowed this asset to do it for them. And everybody wins in that scenario. So as we begin to close, there is whole life mastermind that, that you've been putting together and correct me if I'm wrong, clients can show up to this, People that are just interested could attend this. Or would you say it's more so for the financial professional that's, that's watching currently, that's licensed, that is serving folks in the retirement planning space and life insurance and wealth management. Yeah.

So this is, this is really for the advisor. I mean, I guess there's nothing stopping, stopping an individual from being there. But this is really for the financial advisor. It'll be two and a half days of the best in our industry on stage. So some of the greatest thought leaders, people that are publishing, you know, the white papers and the articles that our industry, you know, lives by. There'll be top 1% advisors, people that have worked with thousands of clients and you know, some in the high net worth space, some in just, you know, middle market space. There'll be some performance coaches talking about how to, how to be better as an advisor and just really as an overall business owner and human. And it's, it's really, it's called the Fast Start forum on purpose. It's meant to get you off to a fast start this year and you know, be saying the right things and dealing with the right clients and start Q1 with a bang so that you know, that sets the tone for the rest of the year. And you know, I'm kind of pinching myself. We're, we're still three months away, but we've already got, you know, soft commitments for 250 advisors to show up there. My guess is we'll, we'll almost double that amount in the next three months because people Just tend to drag their feet and sign up late. Sounds like you're one of them.

Well, I actually just heard about it. I just heard about it. So I, I. From your last, the last time this was in Nashville. And I think you, I think you, you spoke about the event, if I'm not mistaken, when you last spoke in, in Nashville. But I didn't, I don't think you had the, the date locked. I wasn't sure. I might have, did not pay attention. But then I reached out to Caleb. I was like, hey, I really want to get connected to Tom and just kind of like get an idea of how he runs that event, see if it's something I should, you know, attend for myself and get value. So, yeah, that, that's my, I'm not going to use an excuse. I'm not gonna. But yeah, you're right. I'm probably one of those people that is, you know, trying to move things around, make sure I can attend. I have to get permission from the wife to take two, three days away from her, but it's in my area, so it's not, you know, a huge commitment. It's not like I gotta fly anywhere. So that, that was a really, really attractive part there. But to your point earlier, that this is mainly for the advisor. And recently I made a partnership with Life180, you know, Chris Kirkpatrick, and I've been growing an insurance agency under, under the Life180 umbrella. So I've got about, I want to say about 30 plus licensed insurance agents. So for those of you that are watching that are licensed on my team, or you're a client and you sell life insurance, or you're in, you're a financial professional, financial coach, advisor. This is an event that. And I was looking at the speakers. It's not like a, A hype kind of an event. Rah, rah. This is very, very meat and potatoes. And I'm such a fan for that kind of material where it's like, I can go in, I can extract data, factual information, I can apply back into my practice, and I don't have to be the most charismatic person in the room. I can just show my audience, my clients, how much I care about how much I want to serve them. And I've done the homework to get them the right information, say it correctly, and articulate it in a way that they can comprehend it.

That's right.

Awesome. So where can people sign up for, for the, for the event?

Yeah, so, I mean, I got a variety of people listening to this I would say if you're an Advisor, check out fast start forum.com you know, we're still, tickets are still still available. If you got groups, you can reach out to me individually. You know, we can talk about, you know, getting groups down there. And then for the individuals listening, I'd say, you know, check out the book Permission to spend. It's, it's meant to be kind of entry level retirement planning, but it talks about some concepts that you're not going to hear through some of the mainstream folks. And that's which is, which kind of blows my mind because to me it's very mainstream knowledge just given my background. But I think a lot of the industry just didn't have the background that I was fortunate enough to have. And you know, the, the advice you get really is very advisor dependent. So it's great to see the work you're doing. Denzel, I know you, you come from the good place in the industry. You know that, you know the core principles and your, your, you're telling the right story to folks.

So. Yeah, no, thank you, thank you. Because you literally have improved my practice dramatically. The way I speak to clients, like I said, the speed at which a policy is written now and even annuities, like I just got into annuities last year as well and just discovering like how much more value is being added to what's already been done. Like as I mentioned earlier, like help people get out of debt, helping to get their credit right and spend less money and just be better stewards, better managers over their, over their money. Then it was like once we got to like investing in retirement, I kind of was like not as clear. And then with your material and even a shout out to Tom Hegna, who you've done some work with and I've seen some content, it's like, wow, it really puts the cherry on top. It, it creates so much safety, especially for my moms that are not trying to start a multiple six figure business online. They're not interested in AI, they're not interested in random stocks. They're interested in taking care of their kids. They got three, four, five kids and they want to make sure that they have protection, they have coverage and they have secure income. And it's simple and easy for them to understand. They will commit to funding those assets. That's what I've been able to, you know, witness over the, over the years now and the fact that we don't need 20, 30 years to actually make it happen, that we can condense time with the right assets at the right timing. So again, thank you so much for your time today. Appreciate you. And I'll have the link below for you all watching in the description the comment section everywhere to sign up for Tom Wall's event. And with permission from my wife, I will be there as well. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day.

I love that.

Awesome. Have a wonderful day everyone and thank you again. Tom. Appreciate your time. Bye now.

Thanks Denzel.

I help moms women build wealthy kingdoms that will last forever to have authority over their finances by helping them pay off debt, increase cash flow, lower your expenses, build your credit all using your own income.