Business Innovators Radio - Interview w/Cameron Bryant Founder of Found Revenue Solutions & Retirement Specialist at Federal Employee Advocates-Protecting Your Retire

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

Cameron has over 33 years of experience in working with Business Owners, Seniors, Federal employees, and Franchisees in the planning and development of Tax-Favored Retirement plans, Living Trusts, Buy/Sell Agreements, Executive Bonus Plans Marketing and Wellness Benefit programs. I was able to work exclusively with the Franchisee of 7-11, Mobil, Shell, Hallmark, and Yamaha to create personal as well as business Retirement Plans. Working now exclusively with Federal Employees and retirees in helping them understand their benefits and helping them to retire with a sound and stable plan.Learn More:https://federalemployeeadvocates.com/Cameron/https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameron-bryant-48b51014/ Please be advised that any information provided in this correspondence shall not be construed by any person as legal, tax, investment, or accounting advice. This message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential, legal, and/or privileged information.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-w-cameron-bryant-founder-of-found-revenue-solutions-retirement-specialist-at-federal-employee-advocates-protecting-your-retirement-funds

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 Cameron Bryant, who's the founder of Found Revenue Solutions and Retirement Specialists at Federal Employee Advocates, and we'll be talking about. protecting your retirement funds. Cameron, welcome back to the program. Hey, thank you, Mike.

Great to be back. Hey, so I know when I hear the title here, I'm excited to hear your thoughts on this because protecting your retirement funds kind of gives me the connotation of you've worked hard to build your retirement funds to be prepared to retire. Now you better circle their wagons and protect them. And it reminds me of, you know, the psychological research where people have proven that we as humans are more motivated to not lose money than to gain money. You know, if I said to you, hey, Cameron, I can show you how to make $1,000 and you might go, okay, that's cool. Tell me a little bit more. But if I said, Cameron, I could show you how to protect and save $1,000.

You're like, yes, I need that. So when you start talking with your clients about protecting their retirement funds, where do you start that conversation? Well, we start the conversation from the standpoint of balance, understanding that most people are going to have their money in some type of investments. And a lot of people have money in a 401k or they might have what's called a Thrift Savings Plan. And so the big part of that is as we become older to protect it, we need to shift more of the funds over to less, what's the right term, less risky investment. So I was telling people, we're going through these three phases as we're trying to retire and build our nest egg.

The first phase we go through is that is the accumulation phase. So that's when, you know, we're younger. And we're trying to accumulate and save as much as we can and taking more risk all the way through it. But then now as we're getting into our early 60s, mid 60s, 70s, now we get into that second phase, which is the protection phase, right? That's what we're talking about. So we've made all this money.

We've made our nest egg. We've built it all the way up. We survived and came back from 2008 where most nest eggs portfolios lost over 30%. And now we want to protect it. We don't want a repeat of 2008. We can't afford to lose 30, 35%, like we did back in. So now we need to protect it. So now you're putting 75, 80 to 100% in a guaranteed or protected account where you can't lose the money.

That's the most important. Because in your 20s, 30s, you've got plenty of time to let some of that risk roll and sit there and you can recover. But like you said, it's at a certain age, man, we better circle the wagon. So if we need to protect our retirement funds, then that means we need to protect it from something. So what are some of those risks to retirement savings? And then once we identify what they are, how can they be mitigated? Because I would venture to say you can't eliminate all the risk. You can just lessen or mitigate them, right?

Correct. Yeah, you can lessen them a bit. But there are plans, I call it the best of both worlds, the plans where you're going to have some certainty, you're going to have some guarantees, you're going to have some security. zero to low fees, but it eliminates the risk of loss. So that's important. But at the same time, when I say the best of both, you still have the potential for having some higher returns, having some double-digit returns, but all without any market risk

or market volatility. And that's the big thing that a lot of people don't consider is market volatility. they don't consider longevity. So, yeah, those are the things we looked at. And some of the programs out there, the fixed indexed annuities are one alternative. That will be reflective of the indexed of the markets. It could be the S&P 500 index, could be the NASDAQ, multiple different indexes, but that's what we take a look at.

You know, I am not a financial professional like you are, but I recognize. the risk of volatility. You know, if your money's in the market, the market goes up down and all around. I get that. But you mentioned longevity. How does that factor into a risk?

Well, how longevity factors into it? And I'll give you an example. I have a client that I worked with back in 2023, the end of 2023. And his main concern was Cameron, I don't want to run out of money. I'm looking at my mother. in her early 90s, and she's about to run out of money.

I can't do that. It just really, that way, he was so concerned about that. And so the longevity is, you know, people are living longer, sometimes whether we want to or not, right? But we're living longer. So it's like, we need to make sure that we have our funds, we have money available that we are able to tap into and use during retirement. I tell people, you know, do you want your retirement to be a maybe where, okay, my money's in the market, it may do this, it may do that, or do you want a sure thing? And, you know, most of the people I talk to are like Cameron, I want a sure thing.

I want something that is for sure going to be there, no matter if I lived in 92 or 122, my money is going to be there. So that's longevity, making sure you don't run out. And then what about things like, I'm thinking. thinking of things like what are things out of our control that could impact, you know, retirement funds, right? So you mentioned volatility, market risk, yep, got that. What about inflation? Because I know we can't go a day or two without hearing inflation's good or bad or up or down.

So those are things that would impact, you know, how far our retirement funds go. Like it doesn't, inflation might not lessen our retirement account, you know, necessarily. It might. But mainly it's like, okay, now my dollar is going further or not going further, right? Oh, 100%. And that's completely factored in to everything we do with our proprietary process is taken to account inflation. You know, I have people that I've been talking to on the federal side, the federal employees. And within their TSP, their Thrift Savings Plan, they have what's called the G fund, right?

And the G fund is always going to average right around that 2% mark per year. But the problem is that inflation is usually, well, right now it's more than 2.6. Yeah, 2.6. But I mean, this year it was up to 5, 5 and a quarter, 5 and a half. I mean, so if inflation is always, let's say, hovering between 3 and 5 or 3 and 6 and you're in an account that's consistently getting 1.52, your money is actually going backwards, right? You're not doing anything to help yourself. You're going backwards. So no, inflation is a big part of what we take a look at.

Yeah, you have to defeat that. So you can't be so conservative and so safe where you're just stuck in an account getting one and a half, two percent. That's not going to bode well for your retirement. Yeah, I mean, you could say, I don't ever want to lose money ever. I'm so afraid of that. I'm going to buy a safe, put all my cash in there and bury it in my backyard. Well, you're not going to lose money then, but then look what you just described.

Now when you pull it out and start using that cash, inflation has caused the cash not to go as far. So that's huge. So what about – Yeah, yeah, for sure. What about – what are some things like how can retirees do to protect the money from that volatility? I think you had mentioned, like, moving a little bit from the market to different products. But what are some other things that they can do to make sure that their money's protected? And then what are some of those solutions that you are recommending to them?

There's different solutions that come into play. When we're looking at retirement, I would say 95% of the people that we speak to need to have more income. So what fits that mark exactly 100% is the fixed indexed annuity where the money is protected. Right. So it's safe, but it can earn some nice returns. And then they can turn on a guaranteed income stream that will last their lifetime. There's also basic just fixed annuities, which can give you a fixed rated return for, say, three, four, five years. So you have those.

Those would probably be two of the most popular. kind of the Swiss Army knife on the other one, the fixed index annuity, because you can build that for income or you can build it for growth, you know, because I have a fair amount of people that, hey, I just want to move my money over. I want to park it and I want to let it grow. I may never touch it, but it's going to be there for my kids and my grandkids. So, you know, I have that situation as well where maybe they were in the military or they had a different job. And they have, you know, two or three pensions. plus Social Security. They don't need income, but they need a place to park their money where it's going to grow nicely and be safe. So those are the ones that we take a look at is those types of programs for people. And you mentioned the word guarantee, which I always love that word because you want to know something is going to happen the way that you said it.

So you're saying that these annuity products these days have a guarantee that you're not going to lose money. And depending on the product, you might get XYZ rate of return, you know, like on the fixed and things like that. So talk a little bit about the peace of mind that brings when someone hears you say, now hold up. You're telling me that this is a guarantee and I'm not ever going to lose money. That's pretty strong. Yeah, yeah, it's very strong. Obviously, it's built on the backing of the financial institution that we use. Right. So those are all going to be what we call blue chip companies, blue chippers, A-rated companies. So companies with a very strong financial background, you have the state guarantee association that's going to help

protect the client in that particular state. There's different safeguards involved. I remember since 2008 when you had sacks and some other companies go down the tubes, the government stepped in and said, okay, we cannot have this happen. again. We need to put better safeguards in place for some of these financial institutions. And so with these companies that we work with, the A-rated companies, and all the companies involved now in the financial market, you know, you're talking fidelity and guaranteed. You're talking nationwide, New York, life, you know, companies you've heard of on particular plans, they usually have to have the dollar on reserve for every dollar that they take in.

So that safeguards everybody in that situation. So, yeah, guarantees are strong. You want to have that in any retirement portfolio. So that's how that's set up that way. It gives you peace of mind or, you know, as I call it, you know, it's going to be for your sleep at night money. You know, you're not going to stress and worry about it. you can sleep a night knowing, hey, I know my money's protected. So that's how it works.

Yeah, I would venture to say that you've even got clients that have come to you and said, hey, before I got into these accounts, I was really worried when I would see the news reports or open up my portfolio statement. And now all of a sudden it's down 5%, 7%, 20, whatever the number is. But now when they're seeing these, you know, it's staying stable. It didn't go down at all, even if they're for. statement plummeted, they retained their funds. And then when you try to, you know, regain that ground, their friends have to do a whole lot of, you know, regaining to get back

up to ground zero. But they're starting right there and moving right along. So that's got to be a great feeling to hear as well. It really is, you know. And that that really reminds me of a client I had back. This was back in 2001. His name was Amir. And he owned a few Texaco stations, hardworking guy, you know, 5, 10, about 240 pounds, I don't know, built like a brick wall, just, but it's the hardest working nicest guy that I knew. I mean, just one of my best clients, right? And his daughter would come in because I'd be, I'd stop by his station at least a couple times a week.

And his daughter would come in after school and help him out and do things. And just a real good, hardworking family, right? So I rolled over close to 300,000 for him. And what happened was, as you know, in 01, the market just cratered. Everything went down. And so I was getting calls. And I remember I got this one call from Amir, and he did not sound good. And he said, Cameron, Cameron, Cameron.

I go, hi, my, how are you doing? What's up? Everything okay? And he goes, am I okay? Am I okay? What about my account? Am I okay? And I go, no, I'm here.

Your account's fine. You're in that protected IRA annuity. You can't lose any money. You're not losing any money at all. You're not losing a dime. And he said, Cameron, all my friends, all my gas station friends, and they're all, they can't believe it. They're all so upset.

They've lost so much money. And I'm like, no, you're good. You have not lost a dime and you're going to be okay. So it's all right. Wow. So that, and that's, I tell people, that that's why I do what I do. I mean, that, that's, that's huge. I just felt so good.

I would have loved to. Yeah, I was going to say I would have loved to had a heart rate monitor blood pressure band on him before the call and after the call. You would have seen just this peaceful, serene. He probably went out and took the family to dinner that night. Oh, man. He was so relieved, I tell you. Yeah, very much.

Well, let's talk a little bit here as we wrap up this thought on protecting retirement funds. What is the role of diversification? And I think that sometimes people even have a misconception. They think, oh, I'm diversified. My money's in Apple, Microsoft, Tesla. No, that's not diversification. You're still in the market.

So how do you describe diversification to clients? And then what should their mix be to balance growth and protection? Great question. So you have different choices of investment, right? You have a choice number one, I call it, is you have where you can get competitive returns. those are going to be stocks, mutual funds, real estate, Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, something like that. But there's a lot of volatility in there. There's uncertainty.

There's a lot of risk. And there's high fees in those as well, right? And the results of that are you can take a risk of loss. And you're exchanging that for high return. So the risk-reward factor there, you can get high returns, but you can have just as high losses. There's no guarantees in there. there's no guaranteed income. I call that those accounts can give you insomnia, right?

And then you have the ones with the lower returns, super safe, right? Treasury bills, fixed rate annuities, savings bonds, CDs. So you have complete certainty, you have some guarantees, you have no fees, you have total security. But you don't have the chance for potential higher returns. It's just a set low return. Again, no guaranteed income. And again, you can either totally sleep because you're not worried about it because you're not really earning much or you can have the insomnia on that too.

But when we talked about diversification, you know, the best of both worlds as I talked about, the fixed indexed annuities accounts, you know, they do have certainty. They do have guarantees. You have security on zero to very low fees. And you're eliminating that risk of loss, right? but you still have the potential for getting higher returns. And oh, by the way, they can also add on a guaranteed lifetime income benefit to the plan. So that's your sleep at night money. So diversification, you know, what really woke me up back in 2008 when I was looking at people's statements,

and they would pull out their statements from the different brokerage houses out there. And it would say low risk, minimum risk. I'd say, yeah, but right next to this low risk, you lost 27%. Right next to minimum risk, you lost 22.3%. So I understood at that point in 08 that the game is language. The game is, well, yeah, that's low risk. That's minimum risk. Well, they all lost over 20%, right?

Yeah, how about zero risk? Yeah, right. So diversification, and I always tell this to my clients and people I'm speaking to, you've got to have a balance. Yeah, everybody has a different risk tolerance. If you want 20% at risk and 80% guaranteed, great. I'm your guy to help you with that 80% right. You can have multiple people help you.

I have tons of people where they have their broker that handles their 15, 20, 25% of their money and I handle the rest of it in the guaranteed protected accounts. So having a balance, especially as we become older, because we can't rebound from a 20% loss. Right? Don't have the time. No, we don't have the time. It's not on our side. So, yeah, so diversifying and having balance, that's how you do that.

You got to take a look at that. And we take a look at that for every person. Everybody's different. Everybody's individual. Some people. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Well, I think that's so powerful.

And let's wrap up with this, Cameron, because like you said, everyone's different. It's not a cookie cutter. One size fits also. So if someone is interested in seeing what protecting their retirement income would look like in some of these guaranteed accounts, how can they reach out and connect with you? So they can reach me directly on this phone at 949-412-3534. The web page is Federal Employee Advocates.com forward slash Cameron. So that's Federal Employee Advocates.com, that little forward slash Cameron.

So those are two ways. Also on LinkedIn, if you have a LinkedIn or you have a LinkedIn account, I'll also be on LinkedIn as well. Excellent. Well, Cameron, thanks so much for coming back on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. Hey, great to speak with you again, Mike. I appreciate your time. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders.

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