Business Innovators Radio - Eric Sebold, Federal Benefit Consultant with Institute for Financial Awareness-Overcoming Financial Fears

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

Eric Sebold is the Lead Workshop Educator for the Institute for Financial Awareness, one of the fastest growing 501(c)(3) nonprofits in the DC/Metro Area.Eric is a widely sought out speaker pertaining to the world of Federal Benefits and Retirement Planning. He is a Certified Educational Consultant (CEC) and a Federal Employee Benefits Consultant. He is a well-versed workshop veteran, teaching courses in many agencies across the D.C. metropolitan area.Eric’s career in financial services started as a Chartered Federal Employee Benefits Consultant (ChFEBC). Eric is best known for his workshop entitled Federal Benefits Best Kept Secrets. Through his years of experience consulting for federal employees, Eric has developed tax saving strategies as well as estate conservation plans for hundreds of individuals throughout dozens of different agencies. He has also guided many federal employees through the complex steps of the retirement process. Eric has generously donated his time and expertise to the Institute for Financial Awareness.Learn more: http://www.ifaonline.orgInfluential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/eric-sebold-federal-benefit-consultant-with-institute-for-financial-awareness-overcoming-financial-fears

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have back with us, Eric Sebold, a federal benefits consultant with the Institute for Financial Awareness. and we'll be talking about overcoming financial fears. Eric, welcome back to the program. Thank you, sir. Welcome. Glad to be back. Hey, you know, I think that one of the financial fears that people have is just not knowing what they don't even know and just not knowing where to start and they feel like, they feel like, okay, since I don't know anything about anything, I'm not going to do anything and then that's not a good thing. So what are some of the common financial fears that people tend to face? and then what are you encouraging them to do to start making strides to overcome those?

Definitely. I mean, we call that frozen in fear in our world. But, you know, financial fears are incredibly common. I mean, I deal with them on a daily-day basis when speaking to clients. I mean, one of the biggest financial fears that I deal with is, hey, if I plan on retiring or I'm going to retire here in the next couple months, am I even going to have enough money to keep up my standard of living? I mean, that's kind of financial fear number one as it pertains to just the retirement aspect of things.

And, you know, often less money is about money. Sorry, it's often less about money itself and more about uncertainty, control, security, you know, finding these various instruments or fears that, you know, identifying them is kind of the first key piece. I mean, the big things that a lot of people are fearful of in my world is first and foremost, can I make it? Do I make enough money? number two, you know, am I going to run out of money at some point? Yeah. It's always a big, big fear. And that's when, you know, we look at the market itself and market fluctuation.

What does the market do on a daily basis? That's another big key point. I mean, I can't tell you how many people tell me that on a daily basis or weekly basis, they're looking at their accounts, has it gone up, has it gone down? And that impacts their daily livings, you know, I mean, whether they sleep or how they sleep or how they live, you know, and also just another big one is just, you know, how will my life be impacted by potentially a death or a disability within my immediate family? Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's those unknowns. And I think if you were to list down those fears and then start to map out some

IFTTT, if this, then that, right? If this happens, then we'll do that. And then if this happens, even if they you know just kind of getting it out on paper i think that would help many people kind of uh start to formulate that and it's almost like once you identify you know that big bad beast of fear number one it doesn't become as atrocious and i also think really speaking through this with someone like myself or your financial advisor and gaining understanding and expertise of it. I mean, as a lot of my clients do, it's not just about, you know, financial planning and, you know, invest in advisory. I mean, a lot of it is a learning curve. I mean, we need to learn about these different instruments we have. How do they impact us? How do they impact us from a tax

perspective, from an income perspective? And just the understanding and the learning aspect of it, oftentimes will help us overcome a lot of these fears. Yeah. Just teaching yourself and then having a group of advisors that you trust that you can clarify that with. Because the worst thing in the world is to teach yourself by going to AI or Google and putting in a question and thinking that that's the answer for everyone, bar none. When in reality, that should just peak your interest and go, okay, here's the top three things. I'm going to take this to my trusted financial person and clarify that for my situation. Right. That's just your baseline for your answer. Right. That's not the total picture or your total answer.

So talk a little bit about how once you get that understanding in place by learning and teaching yourself and relying on those experts, how does that help kind of give you some peace and build confidence in your own personal future as it relates to retirement? Definitely. I think understanding your just your whole financial landscape can definitely reduce your anxiety about the process in itself because it replaces these. unknowns with facts and identifiable facts. You know, it gives you some concrete, something concrete, I should say, to work off of. Most financial stress doesn't come from, you know, how bad things are. It comes from not knowing really where you stand and where you'll end up and what the

picture is. And I think that really, you know, for a lot of us, it really can be, it can be helpful to get some idea or a picture of what we look like in the future based on what we're currently. saving. I mean, how can we really even begin to know how do we save properly or how do we save from a, you know, a retirement bucket standpoint or whatever you want to call it unless we have some sense of where we're headed based on our current track? Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. And, you know, I think that part of fear and anxiety is identifying what that is. And you made a big point. I think outliving my money becomes one of the biggest fears in life, not just retirement,

but outliving my money might, there's a lot of variables that go into that. But it might mean, did I save enough? It might mean the amount that I did save, is it going to last given market volatility, inflation, taxes? Where do you have that conversation with people regarding, you know, at some point at age X, we should start moving your money out of kind of the more volatile, market kind of things into some more safe protected. Where does that conversation start? And what does that look like? Right. And that's a good, that's a really, really good question. Like, I mean, I think really the bottom line is for a lot of people, it's, it's timing first and foremost. And we're never going to time the market perfectly. It's never going to happen. It doesn't exist. I mean, if I had, you know, my little

glass ball and I could tell you when the market was going up and down, I, you know, I'd probably be sitting somewhere high on the top floor somewhere. But to be honest with you, really, it's a lot of about your feeling and protecting your assets from an income standpoint. And whether that's at your 50s and your 60s and your 70s, I think it has more to do with, you know, when you plan on retire, when you plan on taking income out. And that kind of gauges us in terms of when we exit the market. It's not uncommon. I'm sure we've all heard of this rule of 100, which is a very old school, I'll say, way of thinking as it pertains to how much money we should have in the market versus how much we should have protected.

And let's say I'm 60 years old. And in that rule of 100, basically what that stated is, if I'm 60 years old, 60% of my asset should be protected, 40% should be aggressive. Now, obviously, this is just a baseline for us. But at least that gives us some gauge in terms of where we stand within our life. And based on some formulation of strategy and thinking over a long period of time, we should be at least protected to a certain degree. And again, I don't think that that rule of 100 is something we all should stand by,

but at least it gives us a baseline to look at with your advisor, with your group of advisors to identify, okay, I know I'm going to retire in the next couple of years. I know I'm this old. Maybe it's time to start shifting my money out of the market slowly because what we certainly don't want to do is jump all of our money out at one point. And I think the laddering approach in my experience is a much better approach. Yeah.

Because A, it kind of spread your risk out, right? Because if you get hit on one bad, then you're going to recoup it on the other one, which probably was dialed it differently. And it kind of is a good safe approach. 100%. And even it pertains to using CDs or annuities or municipal bonds or bond portfolios, whatever it may be, it doesn't really matter. the protection aspect is the key point.

Where you place it is up to you and up to your financial advisor, but exiting over a period of time rather than exiting all at once, in my experience, is a much better strategy that's just trying to jump out and protect because you never know what the market's going to do. You may eliminate the ability for a higher upside potential across the board just by jumping out at once. And there's not one strategy for every single person or else you could just go to a robot and get that. you've got to realize that, okay, here's what I want to achieve. Here's what retirement looks like to me.

Here's where I am right now. And the advisor then kind of takes all that in consideration. He goes, okay, we ought to consider, we ought to look at. And I think that's really huge. And when you're sitting down kind of crafting that plan, what are some of the steps that people can take today to lessen or mitigate these risks and identify the fears and kind of meet them head on? I mean, let's be honest here. We don't really need a full overhaul more than likely up all our financial life and, you know, overall picture to reduce our financial fear. We just need to make a couple deliberate moves today that turn worry into action. And really the goal is to shrink uncertainty, build control and financial stability through that strategy. I think for a lot of us listening to this call today, I don't think it's about taking giant leaps. It's more about looking at all of the pieces that make up our financial life, identifying and maybe, you know, meeting some of these fears head on, especially for a lot of us, it's the fear of retirement, the fear of running out of money.

And maybe coming up with a strategy at least to try to remove, because we're never going to remove all of that fear. I mean, it's inherent to retirement life. We're always going to be a little bit worried about it. But maybe it's not in the forefront of our mind. it's in the back of our mind because we have a strategy. We have these things in place that doesn't force us to look at this on a daily basis. Once a year we look at it. We face our fears.

We identify the strategy. And then we can move on. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good point. So let's talk about going a little bit deeper here on working with that financial advisor because how do you know some of the traits to look for in choosing a financial advisor that will correctly and empathetically help transform fear into empowerment because the problem is there's a lot of advisors out there that are just in in the business to make their money for their benefit,

but not really helping you come alongside and overcome your fears and get that solid retirement for you and your family. That's a really, really good point. I think I think the first and the most impactful thing you should look for in a financial advisor is not just their, ability to tell you what to do or how to do it. But the first step in the entire process is identifying their ability to listen to what you're telling them, listen to your needs, and really just listen as a whole. Because let's be honest, a financial advisor, while obviously we deal with the financial impacts of everything that goes or comes across your table, it's not just about the financial aspect. It's helping guide people, educating people, helping them learn about not just telling them what to

do, but educating on them why we're doing this, why we're doing this to fix this, why we're facing this. I think a lot of financial advisors out there are more directors than they are just listeners. And you need someone that will listen to you, listen to what your needs are. I mean, anytime I meet with someone, the first 15 to 20 minutes of me meeting with them is learning a little bit about them personally, identifying things that are important to them. What are their goals? What are their wants? What are their needs? I even make a recommendation. I mean, shoot, I may go an hour of just chit-chatting with someone, meeting with them, learning about their goals, their wants their needs, before I even consider

making any recommendations. I mean, it's really about, you know, working with a financial advisor can certainly shift your mindset to be, you know, from reactive and uncertain to intentional and confident. That should be the goal. Because, you know, you don't always have to navigate these things on your own and really teaming up with a financial advisor to create a strategy for all scenarios to fulfill all your wants and needs is the key to all of us. You know, it's all about you. It's not about what the financial advisor wants. It's about what you want. And making sure that you're heard by that individual, in my experience, is a big, big piece to all of this. Because it's all about trust, right? Yep. It is. I mean, it really is just a huge thing. People these days,

We're busy. We look for things online. We make a couple click decisions, but a real is rare. And when you can sit down with that real advisor that you can just sense has your best interest in at heart, it's just as a powerful thing. So I think when someone is looking for that, it just stands out like a sore thumb and that's spectacular. So if someone is interested in finding a little bit out more about how you can sit down with them and articulate and identify some financial fears that they can address and overcome,

what's the best way that they can do that? Yeah, great, Mike. So you can reach us as a nonprofit at I-F-A Indico-Frank Alpha at isa-online.org. That's our main website. And if you'd like to email me directly, feel free. my email is my first initial, E as an Eric, C-B-B-B-B-N-Boy, O-L-D-D as-N-D-D-D-D at I-A-online. Wonderful. Eric, thank you so much for coming back on.

It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. Always a pleasure, Mike. Thank you so much. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, Visit www. www. influential entrepreneurs

radio.com.