Conversation with Tom Hegna: Proven Formula for Retirement Income, Wealth & Peace of Mind (Ep. 32)

Welcome to the Ideas by Mike podcast, where your one-of-a-kind life meets a one-of-a-kind financial plan. Every week, we're not just talking about money, we're negotiating with Wall Street, outsmarting insurance companies, and navigating the ever-changing financial markets so you can win on your terms. Here you'll find the energy, optimism, and straight talk you need to take control of your financial future. This isn't cookie-cutter advice or financial advice for the weary. It's about crafting a plan as unique as you are, building around your values, your priorities, and your vision for the future. Whether you're planning for retirement, investing for growth, or protecting your family, I'll share insider insights and stories to help you make your next move with confidence. So buckle up and get ready to challenge the status quo, negotiate like a pro, and build a financial life that's truly one of a kind. Let's dive into today's episode and start making your money work harder for you. Hey, this is Mike, the host of the Ideas by Mike podcast. Today, we have a titan in the world of retirement planning, known for cutting through the noise and making complex financial concepts refreshingly clear and actionable. If anyone can help retirees confidently step outside of the sea of sameness, stop experiencing retirement déjà vu, and into the one-of-a-kind financial plan, it's today's guest. Tom Hegna's expertise isn't just theoretical. It's forged from experience, grit, and real-world results. Well, welcome back to the Ideas by Mike podcast. Today, I'm very fortunate to have Tom Hegna with us. Tom is coming to us today from Mesa, Arizona. Did I say Mesa right?

It's Mesa. Yeah.

Mesa, Arizona, right? He's getting ready to do what a lot of retirees want to do, and he's getting ready to head over tomorrow and go travel in Europe. So, Tom, Tom, thanks for taking a little time today to, to talk to our listeners. Um, I'd like to talk first about like your journey in the financial industry because many people know you now for like your books, right? They know you for like Don't Worry, Retire Happy, right? They know for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. They know you for Paychecks and Playchecks. But walk us through how you got started in the financial industry.

Alright. Well, I'll go way back. I'm originally from a small town in Minnesota. I went to college at North Dakota State University on an Army ROTC scholarship. I was commissioned in the military. I spent 6 years active duty, 16.5 years Army Reserve, retired as a lieutenant colonel. When I got off active duty, it's an interesting story how I got in the career. So, I was a company commander in the Army. I was probably 26, 27 years old, 26 probably at the time. And there was a MetLife agent going through my unit selling whole life insurance. And at the time, I was a buy term, invest the difference guy. I said, who's this guy ripping off my soldiers? I said, bring him to me because when you're a commander, you can do that. They said, well, sir, he'll be happy to sit down with you, but he's asking for your birthdate. I said, give him my birthdate. I want to see him in my office first thing. So, he comes in my office. I start ripping him up one side down the other, ripping off my soldiers with this rip-off life insurance. He goes, no, sir. I'm protecting their families. I'm helping them save for a down payment on their— on their house. I'm helping them save for their kids' college education. They're going to get tax-free income in retirement. And he said, your soldiers were nice enough to give me your birthday, so I ran a printout for you. And I said, let me see this piece of crap. And I'm looking at— now, this would be— this tells you how old I am. This is before the 7-pay test. This was a 5-pay, 5-pay whole life.

Oh, wow.

You pay for 5 years, it runs for the rest of your life. So I said, let me see this thing. I said, pay for 5 years and I don't pay anymore. Within about 6th or 7th year, all my cash value is there. My cash value is growing, my death benefit's growing. I said, why would anybody buy term insurance when you could buy this?

Right.

He says, I don't sell much of that term. That's what I sell. I said, I could sell that. And that's how I got in the business. So I ended up going and I worked for MetLife for 8 years. I was an agent, a manager. I was their national marketing manager for variable life there at the end. And then I got enticed by New York Life to come over there. They were really going to ramp up their annuity sales. And so, they hired me as an annuity wholesaler. So, I started out with a territory of about 13 offices covering about 10 states. Well, then pretty soon, they gave me half the country and then they gave me the whole country because my offices led the country every year.

Right.

I brought in billions and billions and billions for New York Life. In fact, New York Life was about 10 years ahead of everybody else on the focus on income thing. And so, we were doing really good stuff with variable annuities. We had this great variable annuity where you couldn't lose money over a 10-year period of time. And it was sexy. People were selling that. Well, then they did this shift to income and I had to get a 12,000-person field force to stop selling VAs and go to sell SPIAs and DIAs because that's all they had. They didn't have fixed index. They had SPIAs and DIAs. And so, in order to get somebody to sell a SPIA or a DIA because they're pretty boring products, they pay very low commissions, I got to find out everything I can. So that's where I learned about mortality credits. I learned about the power of lifetime income. I read all the white papers of all the top PhDs. And that's how this whole thing started. And I gave seminars in all 50 states. I trained every single New York Life agent, every single New York Life manager, every single New York Life wholesaler. And at the time, New York Life had a 42% market share on income annuities. They still have a 40% market share on income annuities. It's incredible. Wow.

Wow. And it's amazing, right? Because you helped build out their network to do that. And then, so then you transitioned from— you retired from New York Life, if I'm right?

Yeah. So, in 2011, I retired and that's when I wrote my first book, Paychecks and Playchecks, which is really the math and science behind a successful retirement. This is the research of all the PhDs. So, I wrote that book and then I wrote another one called Retirement Income Master Secrets of the Pros. That's more for advisors. And I interviewed 12 different advisors. Each advisor has their own chapter. How do they do business? What do they say? What questions do they ask? It's a very interesting book. And then I gave the Paychecks and Playchecks talk down in San Diego, and there were some there from PBS, public television. They said, Tom, we need to take this message out to the American people. They're getting the wrong message from all these other talking heads, but we don't think they'll understand Paychecks and Playchecks. We need a simpler title. So, that's when I wrote Don't Worry, Retire Happy because I think everybody can understand that. And then, my latest book is Tom Magnus, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? That's for people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s on how to build wealth.

Yeah. And that's a great topic that we're going to cover on a different podcast together because that's really for the next generation and how they go. So, let's talk to this generation in terms that they understand, the retiree generation. And let's talk about golf, right? You are, you are known for being a scratch golfer.

Not really. I mean, right now I'm a 6. I got as low as a 4.5. But, you know, I, but I, I've won a club championship. I won 2 senior club championships. So I'm a competitive golfer. Yes.

Well, you didn't read— I mean, you didn't win club championships back in 2011 and '12. You won them the last 2 years.

Yeah, the last 5 years. Yeah.

Right. Last 5 years you've won the club championship. Okay. So, you know how to play, right? Do you find any similarities between discipline in golf and financial planning?

Yeah. Well, I always say there's 14 clubs in my bag and I don't use a putter off the tee and I don't use my driver out of the bunker. Each club has a purpose. And it's the same in our industry. There are too many advisors who only want to use a 7-iron. Oh, I only sell fixed index annuities, or I only sell IUL, or I only sell assets under management. No, you should be doing all of that, really. I mean, we should not be trying— when all you got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And hammer is just one of the tools that you can use. You might want to use pliers. You might want to use a screwdriver to get the job done. It's the same in our business. Annuities are there for a reason. Life insurance is there for a reason. Mutual funds are there for a reason. Crypto's there for a reason. And so, it's more what is the proper mix? What tools do you need at what time in your life? Because there's certain times in your life you need different tools than you need. And so I would just say you wanna work with a financial professional who is willing to use all 14 clubs in the bag and just doesn't have a putter and just doesn't have a driver.

We talk about like everything from CDs to Bitcoins has attributes, right? And it's, are those attributes being used and are they useful for you in your portfolio? I, um, in the One of a Kind Financial Plan book that I wrote, uh, my publisher, when I wrote the book, they actually said, are you sure you want to publish chapter 4? And I was like, absolutely, I want to do it. Chapter 4 talks about what a true fiduciary is, and it's another way of saying what you just said, right? Like using all the clubs in the bag. Like, to me, a fiduciary is if all you have is a hammer and you see a screw and you use it, you're not really a true fiduciary. Right. So, like financial professionals who all that, like you said, only have fixed index annuities and that's all they offer and that's all they see as a solution, that's not really a true fiduciary, right? Somebody that only manages investments and they'll say annuities are bad, that's not a true fiduciary, right?

Right. I call them fake fiduciaries.

Fake fiduciaries. And I haven't— I've been around you enough and I've never heard you say that. So, I just describe it, but in your words, describe what a fake fiduciary is.

Well, there's somebody who says, I always do what's in the client's best interest, but then they don't protect them against the risk of long-term care. They don't protect them with guaranteed lifetime income. They don't believe in life insurance. That's not a fiduciary, and they are not acting in your best interest. You know, I own 13 annuities. I own some Bitcoin. I have a big life insurance policy that my premium was $226,000 a year for 12 years. I mean, I have these things, I own them, and there's a reason why I own them. And I have investments, and I have a brokerage account. But, you know, I use all 14 clubs when I play golf and I use all my tools when I'm working on my own retirement.

I love that. You are— you're not fully retired now, correct?

No, I'm 70%. I was speaking in Austin, Texas yesterday. So, but I'm mostly retired. I, you know, I used to do 300 to 400 live events a year because I do breakfast, lunch, dinner, breakfast, lunch. I don't do those anymore. I'll maybe do 35 this year. So I do some, but like my wife and I, we're going on the Grand European Tour on Viking, and then we come back and then we're going to Panama City for a week. We're going to go to Cancun for a week. Then we'll get on a Panama Canal cruise with my sister. So, I mean, I'm traveling and playing in all these golf tournaments. I get to play in the national, the PGA National Club Championship this year in December in Palm Springs. I'm looking forward to that. So I got a lot of stuff going on.

Well, that's amazing, right? I mean, it's so— so you've done— we talk about phased retirement. Like, you didn't just cut the cord and you're done. You're like, you're almost like you're taking a phased retirement. You're scaling down.

It's what I call in step 3 of Don't Worry, Retire Happy, consider a hybrid retirement. This is a hybrid retirement. I'm mostly retired. We're traveling. So here's the difference. For 30 years, I would book all my speaking engagements, and then we'd vacation and I'd golf around them. Now, I book all my key golf tournaments. We take all our trips and we put them on a calendar. And now, I do my speaking around my life. So, all that's happened is in the last 5 years, I've just changed my priorities. I'm still— and you know what? I work about maybe 15%, 20% of what I used to and I'm making almost the same. So, I mean, to me, it's a fair trade. I get much more of my life back and I don't have to give up a lot so far. Right.

This is a little bit off my question here, but when you decided to make that transition, did you write down what you wanted to do or did you just let it naturally happen?

Well, a couple things happened. Number one, in 2019, I took a trial retirement. So, I retired for the summer. I didn't do any speaking from May till October. And then, it's because we have a place up in Flagstaff. And so, I just spent the summer up there to see, would I get bored? Would my wife get upset because I'm around too much? Would this work? And I loved it. Well, then COVID hit. Well, COVID got me off the road. It got me off the road. And I had already set up a lot of things to be virtual. Like, I run probably 50 seminars, webinars every single day in the cloud.

Wow.

They're recorded and they're just going 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. And so, I'd set that up. And the year of COVID was my very best year ever, if you can believe it. Like, some people got almost wiped out that year. That was my best year because I was ready for it. I had everything done virtually, and I was doing 5, 6, 7 webinars a day because the major companies didn't have any virtual capability. And so they were all hiring me. It was, it was a great— that was a great year, right?

And so, you know, that there, there's a lot of people whose careers took off during COVID Mine, mine also took off because I was virtual ahead of time. But now all of a sudden, I was getting more referrals ever during COVID right? Because before that, we had a podcast We were doing, uh, you— I was doing Skype meetings back in 2012, right? And then when Zoom came on, it was great. But like, some of us took off, others of us just like withered because, you know, we couldn't do the in-person that we wanted to. Uh, let's talk about— let's talk about taxes, right? You, you talk about taxes, about the risk of increasing taxes in retirement. We know the big beautiful bill, right? Just kind of kept taxes, gave a little, gave a little bit of a benefit to, you know, retirees now who have Social Security and their income's a little bit lower. But do you— what are some strategies on tax drag on retirement income? And what are your thoughts on like Roth conversions?

So here's the deal on taxes. I do believe taxes are going to have to go up and they're going to have to go up quite a bit because, you know, we just went over $37 trillion in debt. But that's not the scary number. The scary number is $225 trillion of unfunded obligations for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, government pensions, military pensions. You know, Doge went in there and they were going to cut everything. And you saw the screaming and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Oh, they're coming in with a chainsaw. They didn't even cut 1/10 of 1%, not even 1%. So, if we had to cut like trillions and trillions, there's no— oh, people would scream and squawk. So, I think taxes are going to have to go up. So, here's what I've done. First of all, I've moved more of my personal wealth to cash value life insurance. I said my premium was $226,000 a year and I didn't think it was going to be hard. It was hard because that's like $400,000 pre-tax, okay? So, I mean, that's a serious amount of money, but I wanted to get that into— and all that money's there, plus now a bunch of dividends too. So, I can take that money out at any time I want tax-free. So, that gives me a lot of liquidity, a lot of freedom. And plus, that policy, you know, whole life policy is like a freight train. It just goes slow at first, but once that thing gets going, you can't stop that thing. That thing just keeps going.

Right.

And so, I've set myself up very well there. I've converted all of my IRAs and 401s to Roth. Now, I wish I wouldn't have converted all of it because there's some really great gifting strategies. Like, we give money to the church, we give money to organizations. And if I would've left that qualified money there, I could have gifted a lot of that away and not had to pay tax on it anyway because we're gifting anyway. But anyway, I have almost everything in Roth or everything now is in Roth and then a bunch of my Money's in cash value life insurance. And there's 2 reasons for that. In the state of Arizona, 100% of the money you put in life insurance and annuities is protected from creditors. They can't sue me. So, that's important. When I'm in front of hundreds of thousands of people, I mean, there's wackos everywhere. Somebody can try to sue, they're not going to get anything because my money's protected. And I think that's so important. And then, of course, it's growing tax-deferred and I can take it out tax-free and it goes tax-free to my family.

Yeah, that last part, that last part you mentioned, tax-free to the family, is so beautiful.

Yes.

Uh, one thing you mentioned, you mentioned numbers about the actual debt and the unfunded debt. Most people don't know this, but there's actually a website called usdebtclock.org that puts those numbers and the clock's running real time, right? And then like it gets a lot of visitors, but most people just don't know it exists, right? If you want to see what the real debt to our country is, it's there. I want to tell you something that I have a theory on and see, I want to get your opinion on it. Right. So we hit peak 65 this year, next year, right? 12,000 people 65 retiring in the next, you know, every day.

Every day.

Every day. The thing that's interesting, right, is we're going to reach that peak next year where we have more 65-year-olds alive than we ever have. Well, that means if there's more 65-year-olds alive in 2026, well, in 2036, there's going to be more 75-year-olds alive. And then in 2046, there's going to be more 85-year-olds alive. And I think one of our biggest crises— listen, our debt is a huge problem, right? It's huge. I just don't think our government has the gumption to deal with it like they should. They're going to have to because they're going to be forced to. But one thing I know they will take care of is they will put social programs in place to take care of people. And if you got these people aging, like the most 75-year-olds alive 10 years from now, the most 85-year-olds, 20, I think there's probably going to be a national long-term care program, right? And when that comes, how do we pay for that?

Yeah.

Right?

You know, I don't think there will be a national Social Security because the government can't afford it. And so they're going to have to put incentives. And I think people, you know, I've had an unlimited benefit long-term care plan since I got in my 40s, okay? And it was super cheap back then. And even though they've raised the premium once or twice, it's still Pretty darn effective. But I think for most people, what will make the most sense is getting a life insurance policy with a long-term care rider, because that does 3 things.

Mm-hmm.

Number one, there's money in there. If you have an emergency, you can take the money out. Number 2, if you need long-term care, you put in this much. Well, now your long-term care bucket is that big, and you can take money out of there. And if you don't need it, when you die, it goes to your family tax-free. So I, to me, that one, Fits a lot more people, I think, than a traditional long-term care policy. I'm not against long— I own a traditional long-term care, but I think for most people, that's more expensive. They at least think it's more expensive. And then if they don't need long-term care, that money just is gone. And so I just, I think that life insurance, and now there are annuity solutions too that can help solve the long-term care crisis. So you don't need to have big premiums. You just put some money in there and Then if you need long-term care, the payment doubles or triples depending on the company.

I want to say something to you, and I just want to get your initial reaction, right? Because this is propagated everywhere on social media. It's propagated in big firms, right? And those fake fiduciary firms will say this a lot of times, right? Annuities are bad.

Yeah. That's not what the research shows. You can't find me a PhD who studied retirement who says annuities are bad. Quite the opposite. They say annuities have to play a foundational role. You know, Dr. Roger Ibbotson studied annuities against bonds, and he found that fixed indexed annuities have outperformed bonds for the last 40 years and are likely to do so for the next 40 years. So you don't have to mess with your stock portfolio, but move that bond portfolio, especially when it was only paying 1% a few years ago and people had 40% of their money in a bond. I wrote an article in 2016, the 60/40 portfolio is dead. Long Live Life Insurance and Annuities. And I said, all you need to do is move that bond portfolio into life insurance or annuities because right now you're only earning 1%. And we know when interest rates go up, what happens to the value of bonds? They go down, which is exactly what happened in 2022. And people lost 22% in the bond market that's supposed to be ultra safe. And I had predicted that years prior. And so anybody who, in fact, if anybody tells you annuities are bad, you know one thing about that person. They don't have a clue as to what annuities are, how they work, Or how retirement is and all the risks that annuities mitigate in retirement. They don't have— I own 13 of them. If they were bad, if they were stupid, if they were dumb, I would own zero of them. And I don't sell them, all right? I just buy them.

Right. So, if somebody is wondering, like, from an education standpoint, okay, well, my thought has always been annuities are bad because the one-size-fits-all world out there has told me that, right? The big companies who don't sell them because they can't profit from them. Have told me that. How do I figure out if they're right for me?

Well, I think that's why you have to work with a financial professional that uses all 14 clubs. You know, you don't want somebody who's biased towards annuities and you don't want somebody who's biased against annuities. You want somebody who says, hey, here's what annuities do. It could be very helpful in these situations. If you're in this situation, it wouldn't be as helpful. You know, and so, you know, if somebody's in super bad health and their wife is in super bad health, you know, maybe a lifetime income annuity isn't the best thing for them, right? But if you got people who are somewhat healthy, then it should play a foundational role because here's what the research shows, 3 things. When you add an income annuity to a retirement portfolio, 3 things happen. Number 1, it will improve portfolio performance because of the mortality credits. And if you don't know what mortality credits are, that's why you don't like annuities, okay?

Right.

So it will improve portfolio performance. Number 2, people who have guaranteed income are happier in retirement. That's what all the research shows. And number 3, People who buy income annuities can live 20% longer than people who don't. There was an entire article written by Patrick Tricker. He's an attorney. And he wrote this entire article and he showed that people who have guaranteed lifetime income live longer. And in America, a 65-year-old male will live up to 20% longer if they've got the guaranteed income. Because when you're being paid to live, guess what? Some people choose to live differently. They watch what they eat, they exercise, they don't call the doctor, they have less stress, they don't worry. That's why they're living longer.

So Bill Bengen, safe withdrawal rate, you've heard of that before. He actually just came out with a new book called A Richer Retirement. He's actually going to be on my podcast in a couple weeks also because he's starting to now talk about like the safe withdrawal rate's not 4%, it's 4.7% with a longer, with a longer, with a more diversified portfolio. And he's even starting to do the research on the annuities himself, right? It's taken him a long time to come around, but he's really starting to do this. Um, when you hear like maybe the safe withdrawal is not 4, you hear it's 4.7, do you still think guaranteed lifetime income annuities with— if you understand mortality tables— still make sense?

Absolutely. Uh, because almost every annuity I know is paying more than 4.5 or 4.7, you know. And, and, and the thing is, what is safe if it's not guaranteed? How can you say it's safe? You don't know if it's safe. I mean, Historically, it might have succeeded 99% of the time, but the past you can't use to project the future. And so, to me, I want to have some guarantees. I want those mortality credits. And when people understand the mortality credits, the more that you have lifetime guarantee without any other guarantees, if you take life only, that'll pay you the highest mortality credits. That's the ones the insurance companies are are the most afraid of. Now, people— a lot of people don't buy life only, but I do because it gives me the most mortality credits, and I have life insurance to go to my family if something happens to me.

Well, okay, so that, that is the key right there, right? So you said you've done the research that said people with guaranteed lifetime income are happier, they live longer. But somebody is going to say, well, what about the legacy for my family? And one of the most unique things about you is you've mentioned it, this, and I've heard you speak on this before, is You bought a life insurance policy that puts— that put a wealth floor on what passes to your family. Talk about what a wealth floor is.

Yeah. So, so a lot of people don't fully enjoy their retirements because in the back of their mind, they think they got to leave some money to their kids. So we got to leave some money to Johnny and Susie. We got to leave some money to Johnny and Susie. So they deny themselves retirement to leave money to their kids. I tell people this all the time. Don't leave any money to your kids. You're not supposed to leave any money. You are supposed to spend your money. You work for it. You saved it, now spend it, but leave your kids life insurance. So I'll use me as an example. We got 4 kids and one day we're sitting around saying, how much do we leave the kids? My wife said, I don't know, what do you think? I said, well, if we bought a $1 million second-to-die life insurance policy, name the 4 kids beneficiary, when we're both gone, they're going to get $1 million tax-free. That's $250,000 apiece plus whatever's left over and there'll be plenty left over. I said, let's start there. So we bought that $1 million second-to-die policy, named the kids as beneficiary. That policy's paid up. Total cost of that policy, $150,000. For $0.15 on the dollar, we get to transfer $1 million tax-free to our kids. But here's the best part. Who gets to spend the other $850,000? We do. You can leave your kids so much more and it's tax-free for so much less if you would just use life insurance and then spend your money.

That's— I mean, like, it's a— it sounds like to me like you created a financial plan that takes care of a lot of different things. Retirement income. You did talk about like your investments are more than just annuities and life insurance. I heard you say crypto. I'm sure you've got money in the market also, right? We all do.

Yeah.

But you also talked about your plan for long-term care and now legacy. And so when you put those 5 components together— taxes, retirement income, investments, long-term care, and legacy— you've built what most would say is a pretty comprehensive financial plan.

Well, I don't just talk the talk. I walk the walk. Everything in these books is what I'm doing. And it works. It works. And, you know, don't worry, retire happy. We're retired happy. Like, we're traveling. I'm playing golf. I'm like a kid. I'm like a kid at summer camp. But this way it feels—

I was— you said that there's a lot of PhDs that have done the research. I was actually just with one, Dr. Jeremy Siegel, Wharton School. He's often on CNBC. He said one of the greatest struggles that happen in the financial planning space are investment. And he made this sound so simple. He said the biggest struggle that's out there is really the struggle between the short-term and the long-term. Do you, I mean, in your financial plan, have you been able to balance the short-term and the long-term?

Well, I think for short-term, you just need to have an emergency fund. And I got some money in a money market fund that if the roof blew off or something, I could take care of it. So, I got my short-term stuff. I got my income that's coming in. I'm one of those lucky guys. I got 4 pensions. I got an Army pension, I got a MetLife pension, I got 2 New York Life pensions, I got 13 annuities. So, I got all these checks coming. I call my paychecks and playchecks. Those are what I spend. And then, I've got my investments and my real estate holdings and those things just can keep growing, I guess. But I'm not trying to save any more money, okay? I'm not trying to save. I've always been a saver. My whole life, I've been a saver. And retirement's all about spending. So, it's really hard for savers to turn into spenders, which is another reason Why you wanna have those paychecks and playchecks coming in, 'cause you'll spend those. You just don't wanna dig into your investments. And so, take some of your investments, get yourself some playchecks, go out and enjoy your retirement, and then let your other stuff grow if you want it. But, you know, too many people are underspending in retirement. They could live a much better life and they're not.

Right. Well, Tom, this has been a great conversation. I think many of our pre-retirees and retirees are gonna love to hear. Your passion is evident. evident, right? And even though that you're doing, you know, 15% of the work you've done previously, you're still having a huge impact. And, uh, these technologies, like getting on podcasts with us, you're speaking— you and I actually have a CNBC special coming out, uh, called Financial Freedom that we recorded a couple weeks ago. Can't wait for that to launch. Um, I, I, I thank you for coming on the podcast today. Um, and so, uh, for those who want to know more or get your books, Where's the best place to get those?

Pretty easy to find me. TomHegna.com. Books are on Amazon. Books are on my store as well at TomHegna.com. And I have a YouTube channel, free videos that you can watch.

If, if, if somebody was going to read one of your books first and they're retiring, which one would you tell them to read?

I'd say start with Paychecks and Playchecks. That's, that's, you know, a very solid read. And then don't worry. So the difference is Paychecks and Playchecks goes a little deeper. into life insurance, annuities, long-term care. Don't Worry, Retire Happy is broader. It talks about Social Security, talks about hybrid retirement, talks about home equity. So depending on what your interest is, that's the difference between those 2 books.

Well, great. Thanks for that explanation. Thanks, Tom. We'll see you soon.

Thanks, Mike.

Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of Ideas by Mike, the show where I share how to build a one-of-a-kind financial plan for your one-of-a-kind life.

If you found the information on today's If you found this episode helpful and want to talk more clearly about your specific situation, go to our website at ideasbymike.com. Find us on the socials at Mike Milligan, CFP on LinkedIn or at Instagram or Facebook using @ideasbymike. Also, don't forget that in the comment section will be more show notes. Here's a message from our compliance team. Any and all statements of purported or observed general practices of non-affiliated firms and advisors or conditions of the broad financial services industry are solely the opinions of the podcast host and are not intended to be offered as factual. The validity of these statements has not been verified and are the opinions of said host, and as such, no representations of their validity are made. An annuity is a long-term financial product designed largely for asset accumulation and retirement income needs. All guarantees are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. Annuities generally contain fees and charges, which include but are not limited to surrender charges, administrative fees, or optional contract riders and benefits. Withdrawals and death benefits may be subject to income tax. If withdrawals and other distributions are received prior to 59½ years of age, a 10% penalty may apply. Annuities typically carry surrender charges for several years that may be assessed during withdrawals above any free withdrawal amount. Certain annuity product features, such as stepped-up death benefit, a bonus credit, and a guaranteed minimum income benefit, may incur additional fees. If you are investing in an annuity through a tax-advantaged plan, such as an IRA, you will get no added tax advantage. Any comments regarding safe or secure investments or guarantees of income refer only to fixed insurance products and do not refer in any way to securities or investment advisory products. As a reminder, Mike Milligan, Certified Financial Planner, is an investment advisor representative of Advisory Alpha, LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor. All opinions expressed by me, Mike, or any podcast guests are solely our opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Advisory Alpha. This recording is for informational purposes only, should not be relied on solely for investment, tax, or legal decisions, and it's in no way intended to communicate or guarantee specific performance or suitability of any security instrument or Or product as we may have discussed. Investment advisory and financial planning services offered through Advisory Alpha LLC, a registered investment advisor. Insurances— insurance products are provided by Ideas by Mike, a licensed agency located in Norfolk, Virginia, and licensed to do business in all 50 states. While tax and legal issues may be discussed in the general course of financial and investment planning, Advisory Alpha does not provide tax or legal services. Please consult with your tax or legal professional prior to making decisions related to these issues. If you want an appointment with Ideas by Mike or One Oak Financial, please reach out via our website. This podcast is produced in conjunction with Mike Milligan, LLC.