Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Adam Blain, Wealth and Retirement Advisor with AAA Life Solutions – The Retirement Paycheck

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

Adam Blain is a Wealth and Retirement Advisor based in Germantown, Tennessee, dedicated to helping individuals plan for retirement—whether they’re building their savings or already enjoying retirement life. With over eight years of experience, Adam is Series 65 licensed and also holds life and health insurance licenses. He provides personalized strategies for income planning, investment management, annuities, tax-efficient withdrawals, estate coordination, and Medicare guidance.Adam serves as a fiduciary under AAA Life Solutions and believes in offering clear, honest advice that’s easy to understand. His approach is faith-driven, educational, and tailored to each client’s goals. Outside of work, Adam is a husband, a proud father of three, and is actively involved in his church and community.Learn more: https://aaalifesolutions.com/The opinions expressed by Adam Blain and guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of this radio station. All Statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable, although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated are not guaranteed. Past performance cannot be used as an indicator to determine future results. Any strategies mentioned may not be suitable for everyone, information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for you. Before acting on any information mentioned, please consult with a qualified tax or investment advisor to determine if it is suitable for your specific situation. This program is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to subject covered.BWA Disclosure: Investment advisory services offered through Brookstone Wealth Advisors, LLC (BWA), a registered investment advisor and an affiliate of Brookstone Capital Management, LLC. BWA and AAA Life Solutions are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through BWA but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-adam-blain-wealth-and-retirement-advisor-with-aaa-life-solutions-the-retirement-paycheck

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, Adam Blaine, who's a wealth and retirement advisor with AAA Life Solutions, and we'll be talking about the retirement paycheck. your 401k plan isn't a plan. Adam, welcome back to the program. Thanks for having me, Mike.

It's great to be back. So why do you say a 401k isn't a plan? Because I think that most people get a job. They get HR to put papers in front of them. They sign, sign, oh, here's the 401k sign this. They don't even know what they're signing, what their allocations, what they're doing, and they just do it because everyone has always done it.

So why is a 401K not a plan? Yeah, I want you to think about it kind of like a, like fuel for a gas tank, okay, for a for a vehicle. Having a four-old, having a 401 case, like having a full tank of gas, but no map, no GPS or no plan to even where you're going. Just kind of wandering around, right? People focus too much on the size of the account. Do I have a million dollars, but they forget that spending that money efficiently is the real challenge, right? When you're working, your income structure, you know your paycheck, taxes are withheld, benefits are taking care of. But in retirement, it's all on you. You have to figure out all those

things. You have to create a paycheck from scratch, figure out when you take Social Security, how much to withdraw, how to reduce taxes, and how to make it last 25 to 30 years. 401K is a balance. It doesn't do that for you. It's just the fuel that you need to get you on the route through retirement. It's not a retirement plan. Think about it. It's just an account that has money in it, essentially. That's a good point because I think a lot of people think, how are you set for retirement? And they check the box mentally by going, I got my 401K. Well, that's just like having a CD or a savings account.

That's just one bullet point. If you were to say what is involved in a retirement plan, it's just one of the bullet point. So you say that a stack of statements is not a plan. You know, a 4MK statement is in that stack. What are some of the other things in that stack of statements? And what do you mean by that? Yeah. So a lot of people like bringing me their binder of statements.

IRAs, 401Ks, mutual funds, brokerage accounts. And they think they've done a great job. What they've done a great job is saving money. But when I ask, what is the plan here? They can't answer that plan. What is that money going to do for them? How much can they spend every much without running out? They can't answer that.

How are you handling taxes? What happens to your spouse if you pass away first? What is your plan if the market drops 20 to 30%? So answering those tax statements aren't going to answer any of that. That's not going to position you in any way to handle any of those questions. But a strategy does. That's why we create coordinated written income plans. It's not just about what you own.

It's about how it. it works altogether to support your life and your lifestyle throughout your retirement. Yeah, that's a, it's a really, really good point. And I know that, like I mentioned previously, people just mindlessly signed the paper. Oh, it's my four-week-old. Let's set that up. And they have no clue. Do I check moderate or aggressive?

Yeah, yeah. They have no clue about allocations. And they check just one of the boxes. And then five years later, they just keep getting their statements. What do you say to them once, you know, they're a, several years in, you know, should they check allocations? How should they change those up? Because once it's in a 401K, you know, if they decide to leave it in there, they could optimize it. What are some ways to optimize it? Yeah. So definitely always reviewed your allocations.

If you should get some sort of financial statement every year and you're able, they should have on that statement a breakdown of what is even in those allocations and know what. what you're invested in. A lot of people aren't financial savvy. You don't necessarily need to know all that, but you do need to check. And most of these plans do through HR, whatever,

you're able to have access to somebody to guide you a little bit as well. People just don't think to ask HR that. Or frankly, they try to stay off HR's radar for some reason or another. But you need to check in. You need to check in with somebody

who's in charge of that plan because there is an advisor somewhere on each of those plans that can guide you as to what each of those allocations are. And as you get older into closer to retirement and you've been aggressive your whole life, then in that kind of an aggressive mentality of throwing it and grown it as much as you much, you might need, you should draw it back a little bit on the aggressiveness. Start moving it to more of a conservative because if you're in that aggressive and then we're in the environment we are right now where market's going whichever way it wants to go,

mostly down right now. By the time you retire, you could be in a world of hurt, especially if we have a situation like it was in 2008 where portfolios went down 30 to 50 percent. And you retired right then? What was that going to do to your retirement going forward? You know, I know that if you asked 10 financial professionals, you'd get 26 opinions on this, but my question would be, should you leave your money in a 401K? You know, let's say that someone is, you know, different ages, maybe the answer would be different. But maybe they're in their 20s or 30s or 50s or 60s. At some point, maybe it might be who've them to say, you know what,

why don't you stop contributing to it because you're just racking up tax liability for down the road. What if you put that money into a Roth? What are your thoughts around keeping a 401K or transferring it out? Yeah. So my opinion on it is if the employer is putting a match on it, take the match. Don't invest anymore into the 401K. Reason being is we just don't know taxes down the road.

We know what they are right now. There's a new tax bill before Congress on the Congress floor. They're supposed to vote soon on that to kind of keep the current tax rate stable for the next four years. but with the way things are going with our debt, inflation, everything revolving around our country, taxes have to go up. I mean, it's just mathematically they have to go up. So why invest at the lowest time right now in our nation's history into a tax deferred account to when we're deferring to when taxes are more likely going to be up?

just not smart in my opinion. But take advantage of those Ross, but there's other accounts as well that can give you tax-free income. For instance, investing in life insurance is another tax-free option or just having a brokerage account as well to where you can manage a little bit more of those taxes

going forward. But having different, I guess, flavors of ice cream I like putting out there, you need to have different tax consequences with each account as well. So I come across too many people who have too many tax deferred accounts to where that paychecks later on in life can really wreck someone's retirement, especially if you don't unwind yourself too much more.

And those who leave a job, I don't always suggest leaving it in that 401K at that job. Reason being is that it's just never managed. directly, you're not high on their totem pole of caring. You're not at the job anymore. So just just roll it out to an IRA where you have more control of it. Your advisor can help you a little bit better on it. I don't ever suggest it. Of course, when you do leave for retirement, I don't always like that people leave them there at their current employment, so the 401K. The reason being, the tax consequences are a little bit different. There's a firewall between 401ks and IRAs. And when you hit those RMDs, you got to draw one out of each account that you have.

But if you have an IRA and you move all your accounts to IRAs, you can choose what account you want to pull that RMD out to satisfy all the RMDs. So it's just, it's a behooves you to, to move those 401Ks when you're not longer there. So let's say you had several jobs over your career and you had three 401ks and you still have three 401Ks. Are you saying that when you're required to pull money out through those required minimum distributions, there is a requirement that you have to pull a little out of all three of those 401ks? Yeah. So let's just say one scenario you have three separate 401Ks.

You've kept them at those 401Ks forever. In your retirement, you reach that requirement of distribution age of 73. You still have those 401ks there. The government by federal law right now says that you have to take out of the year. of each one of those accounts. I can't take out of one to satisfy the other three. But if I rolled them to an IRA or three separate IRAs, I can pick and choose which account I want to pull that R&D out of to satisfy the three.

Okay. So I just say one account is down. Like say you have the three accounts that are still in 401Ks, and this one's doing, I have one that's doing really, really well. It's a lot, but the other two are down. Well, I don't really want to pull out of the two. two that are down.

So, but I, government law says I got to pull out of each three. So then you're, you're just making things worse on the two that are down. But if you have them in IRAs, I can pull out of the ones doing really well to satisfy the other three. So that's the leg up you were mentioning about an IRA versus a 401K. Yeah. One of the benefits. That is just for just, just, also just the paperwork hassle.

Like, I've got to go file paperwork and pull a little out of this and that and the other. and, you know, not even the fact that it's up or down. I mean, that's a big thing. But just the hassle factor, let's put it in one, you know, roll them in, put them into one thing. And then there you go. But at least what you're saying is even if you did have each one in separate IRAs, you then can have a little bit of flexibility in choosing which one to pull it up to meet that RMD. So that's a great point to people to realize.

Exactly. I mean, strategy and retirement, controlling what you can control. Yep. So what is some of the things that you are working with your clients on to turn their savings into a monthly paycheck? Kind of like that feeling of I don't want to worry about what the markets are doing and volatility and up and down and all around. I want to count on a monthly paycheck. Yeah, exactly. So what we first do is that we reverse engineer the retirement.

First we calculate their core expenses, the essentials like housing, food, utilities, health care. then we make sure that those are covered with reliable as consistent income sources. So either through Social Security, pensions, and then we have these accounts that we call guardrail accounts. The reason being is that they usually have floors to where those accounts don't lose, but they can also generate a lifetime income, okay, to where when we start the income, it lasts for the rest of the life. So we utilize a lot between the two of those, between those three, those Social Security pensions, if you're able, you're fortunate to have a pension.

Those have mostly gone by the wayside by now. And then these guardrail accounts will provide lifetime income. So essentially you're taking your 401K, converting it into one of these guardrail accounts, and creating your own pension then. So that's how you're able to take that account of 401K, that gas money, right? that fuel that you put into your car to make it last for the rest of your life. You're able to drive much further than when you would before. And I know previously we talked about buckets.

So when we're talking, how do you compare the bucket mentality to this guardrail guaranteed income, monthly income? Are you putting all of the buckets into this type of an account or is it still broken up into some buckets? Broken up in a bucket still. I would not put everything into one. of these guarder accounts, like I said, this is more or less to sustain your lifestyle to where if anything happens in the market or in life, you're guaranteed this money. I mean,

it's going to come no matter what. So we don't put everything in there, but you also do want to, we can't, we don't know what inflation is going to necessarily do over time. So we need to invest in other buckets as well. Like we need to have that growth bucket, a little bit more of a moderate bucket as well. So we have a little bit more growth going forward to where if we need to in the future, we need a raise from time to time because things are getting expensive. They always will. There's always inflation. We can start another pension. We can start more income. So we have it layered. We do have more growth and stuff like that. So we don't put everything in there and then just call it done. And, you know, it also makes me think of another aspect that is really important too, which is.

there is never one perfect plan for every single person. Otherwise, it'd just be like rubber stamping next, next, next. So every idea that you're mentioning here, they're structured for the specific client based on what they need. And so I think that's something really important for people to keep in mind, too. Yeah, everybody lives a different lifestyle. Everybody has different goals and aspirations. Everybody has different outlooks on what tirement should be,

what they want to do with the rest of the level. life. So different people need different incomes. Different people need different paths to come down the mountain like we talked about last podcast where we're trying to get down this mountain and everybody's going to take a different route down it. That's going to get them safely to the bottom. Yeah. So, Adam, what have you found if some of the biggest misconceptions people have about the 401K because a lot of times people think, oh, I'm good to go because, but what are some of those additional misconceptions people might have. Misconception is,

the biggest one, I think, is that, oh, I'm contributing to this 401k that that's enough. I don't need to do any more saving. Oftentimes, that 401k alone is not the only vehicle you should be saving in or doing period.

A lot of people are like it because it's coming directly out of their paycheck and they don't have to think about it. That's the attractive feature of it. It's directly there. But people need to save a lot more. Things are expensive.

Things are getting out of with inflation and everything. You need to have more that I found. And just having it in that 401K is just going to, it kind of limits also are planning going into the future. If you don't plan starting pre-retirement, if all you do is a 401k and you tax defer it, there's not much we. can do going forward. Yeah. When we get into retirement, yeah, we can maybe do maybe a Roth

conversion and pay some of those taxes, but you don't have options going forward. So we've got to start creating buckets. But if you can start earlier with some of those buckets of money where you have a tax deferred, a tax now and a tax never bucket, that gives you options going forward. So that's a good point. a more efficient retirement. How soon before retirement should you start building the buckets? You know, like in a perfect world, start in your 30s, you know, but really, what, you know, should it be five years before retirement?

10, 15, what are you seeing? I like 40. I think you should start planning right around there, 50. But really, people aren't thinking about it until like two, three years away. from retirement. And that's a good time to start too, but almost a little bit too late as well, because you're in your highest earning income potential at that point, usually. So moving in, if you're needing to do a Roth conversion, that might limit you a little bit. So I like doing it earlier. Always earliest is the best policy. I mean, perfect scenario, you started doing something

in your 20s or 30s, but we're young. We're not. don't make much. We know that won't happen. But at least, at least by 40, 45. 40. 45. I mean, you're usually, you're set. Kids are a little bit older. You're able to put away a little bit more and start thinking about it. I think that's a good age. Yeah. Awesome. Well, this has been really insightful to pick up some thoughts on 401K. So if someone is interested in learning a little bit more about this and maybe having you take

a look at creating those buckets, what's the best way that they can do that? Yeah, definitely. They can reach out to us at, our office phone number, it's 901, 508, 2433. Always can look us up as well at AAAlif Solutions.com. And on there as well, there's a request, a time to meet with us as well. Perfect. Well, Adam, thank you so much for coming back on. It was a real pleasure talking with you today.

Thanks for having me, Mike. 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. www. influential entrepreneurs

radio.com.