Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Ben Green Co-Founder of Ready2Retire™

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

A native of Columbia, SC, Benjamin is Co-Founder of Ready2Retire™ President, the leading retirement planning firm for people who want to retire with confidence. Benjamin greatly appreciates customer service and client satisfaction, honed from over 20 years of experience, and is recognized nationwide as a top retirement, insurance, Medicare, and Social Security planner.He has over 2,000 clients and has educated over 10,000 people. Benjamin is also President and COO of Insurance Advantage, an employee benefits agency he co-founded 13 years ago. Ben has previously served as COO of a human resources staffing firm and as Vice President of Asia and Europe for an American software company.Benjamin has extensive experience in economic development and consulting and worked as a Business Recruiter for South Carolina. Since Ben opened the Japan office in 2012, South Carolina has received over $2.2 billion in investment. In 2014, he was hired to write the Strategic Plan for the State of South Carolina.Based on ten years working overseas in Japan, Brazil, & Spain, he wrote the Amazon Best Seller The Global Superstar: How Your Students Can Develop an Advantage over Global Competition to help students prepare for careers in this changing economy. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from Morehouse College, an International MBA from The University of South Carolina, and certificates from UNC and Temple University.He’s conversant in Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. He has served on numerous boards, including the South Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities Association, the SC Chamber of Commerce, and the Columbia (SC) Chamber of Commerce. He’s a member of the Nashville City Club and the Nashville Kiwanis Club.Ben splits time between his homes in Nashville, TN, and Columbia, SC, with his wife and their two wonderful daughters. He loves traveling, spending time with friends and family, and helping his clients win.Learn More: https://www.ready2retire.net/Investment Advisory Services offered by James Jurica CFP® CLU® CHFC® RICP® through Wealth Watch Advisors, an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Wealth Watch Advisors has no affiliation with the website represented. Wealth Watch Advisors is not responsible for their views and opinions, and makes no representations or warranties about the accuracy, reliability, completeness or timeliness of the content and does not recommend or endorse any specific information herein. NJM Wealth Preservation Strategies is not affiliated.Investing involves risk including the potential loss of principal. No investment strategy can guarantee a profit or protect against loss in periods of declining values. Opinions expressed as written or recorded are subject to change at any time without notice and are not intended to be used as investment advice or to predict future performance. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Consult your financial professional before making any investment decision.This information is designed to provide general information on the subjects covered. Pursuant to IRS Circular 230, it is not, however, intended to provide specific legal or tax advice and cannot be used to avoid tax penalties or to promote, market, or recommend any tax plan or arrangement.Please note that NJM Wealth Preservation Strategies and its affiliates do not give legal or tax advice. You are encouraged to consult your tax advisor or attorney for any legal or tax advice.Annuity guarantees rely on the financial strength and claims-paying ability of the issuing insurer. Any comments regarding safe and secure investments, and guaranteed income streams refer only to fixed insurance products. They do not refer, in any way, to securities or investment advisory products.Fixed Insurance and Annuity product guarantees are subject to the claims‐paying ability of the issuing company and are not offered by Wealth Watch Advisors.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-ben-green-co-founder-of-ready2retire

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 with us Ben Green, who's the co-founder of Ready to Retire. Ben, welcome to the program. Mike, thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.

Yeah, I love when I talk with people and hear perspectives and how they serve their clients and just to get the picture of what you've been doing and your vision of what the industry is. And I love the name Ready to Retire the Number Two because it's like, are you really ready? And most people, if you took that anonymous survey, might be checking the box. Nope. So I want to hear what you do with your clients, but get us started off with a little bit of your background on your story and how you got into the financial industry. in the first place. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think with ready to retire, it's a pretty

simple name. And folks, you know, understand kind of immediately what, what it actually means. And we try to try to keep that sort of simplicity and transparency across everything we do. And so, so I have a background in finance, got my BA and finance from Morehouse College, did an MBA at the University of South Carolina, and, you know, got lots of certification from, from other, you know, other colleges and have spent about 10 years overseas, Mike, in Japan, Spain, and Brazil, working for private companies and doing some, doing some teaching work, actually, for folks. And really in 2010, kind of came back, you know, came back to the U.S. And, and really started, started up a firm called Insurance Advantage with my brother and another

partner. And we, we at that time, we were really interested in serving folks who were underserved, whether there were millionaires or, you know, had $500 to their name. We felt that folks were underserved when it came to health care and health insurance. And we kind of really got started from there in 2010 and then kind of have progressed from the health insurance side to helping folks with things like life insurance, disability, long-term care, and Medicare and Social Security planning. And that's how we got pulled. into doing full-blown, you know, customized retirement planning with ready to retire. You know, I like that progression that you laid out there because when you begin to think about the

far off future, you know, being ready to retire, that you typically go to where should I put money here and reach of return and things like that and taxes and insurance. But a lot of times you do not think about actually, you know, property and casualty and your homeowners insurance and your life insurance and your health care because these are costs that are really foundational. And if they're not set up the right way, they could really impact being ready to retire, right? Is that what you found with your working with your clients over the years? Absolutely, Mike. And ironically, we actually started doing more retirement planning because we were getting referrals from financial advisors, quote unquote, who only really take a look at someone's 401k or their

their mutual funds, et cetera, and they were not looking at the entire picture. Okay, so we would get referrals from financial advisors and other insurance agents to talk about Medicare, talk about Social Security, you know, help folks through the long-term care planning process and helping them to get long-term care insurance and a plan in place. We even got questions because we had some expertise around estate planning. And so what we found and what we really like to teach every one that we talk to is that when you look at financial advising and when you look at the retirement planning process, a lot of folks just focus on the 401k or their retirement portion of their plan that involves the mutual funds and the IRAs. And that is only a piece, maybe 25%, maybe 35%, may even

be half of the overall pie. But the bottom line is that things like estate planning, tax planning, the long-term care planning and making sure that you have the entire holistic plan in place are really important. So we help folks through that entire process and not just the investment planning piece. You know, as you were describing that, it made me think of, you know, this quote. I know you've probably seen some variation of it online where someone might be asked about their retirement planning like, oh, man, I'm confident that half of my retirement plan is just running like a top. I just don't know which half it is. You know, and it's, Like what you said there, the 401K, the IRAs, those things, those are typically foundational,

but it's just a small percentage because if you only have 30 to 50% of your, you know, a retirement plan dialed in well and based on those kind of products, that other half can really throw you for loop. So talk a little bit about some of that other half and how you apply it with your clients. Yeah. And really, Mike, is the foundation of ready to retire. And so When we think about this process, we like to give the example of Mount Everest, okay? Yeah. So when someone is climbing Mount Everest, you know, they're, of course, they prepared, they packed up, maybe they've, you know, taken 20 or 30 years to get prepared to climb

Mount Everest and they successfully climb it and they get to the peak. And then the easy part should be coming down the mountain. Okay. So when you're climbing Mount Everest as, you know, a 30, 40, 50 year old and you're investing in the market and your dollar cost averaging in, you know, you're going up that mountain and that, that can be tough. But where you actually see the most deaths on Mount Everest is folks, once they've reached that peak as they come down. 55% of the deaths on Mount Everest actually happened coming down that mountain.

Wow. And that's kind of counterintuitive, but that is why we, you know, we tell folks that you have to look at not just the, you know, the 401k or the 457 or your TSP plan, but you also have to look at the risks as you're kind of, as you're really, going through life and then certainly in your preservation and your kind of decumulation years as you're withdrawing money from retirement. So we cover things, Mike, you know, like healthcare and Medicare, right, the long-term care plans that can really destroy people's, you know, total retirement savings, volatility and certainly the volatility that we see in the markets today, and, you know,

it kind of happens. We could be recording this, you know, and talking about this at any time and there's always volatility in the markets. Yeah. Of course, we've seen a lot of inflation in the last couple of years. And everyone is aware of that every time you go to your, every time you go to the gas station. And then we always have to look at what the government is doing in terms of taxes and policies and how that's going to, how that's going to affect our lives and our lifestyle in retirement. And we take a look at estate planning to make sure that that's all buttoned up.

And then the, like maybe the number one fear or concern besides long term care for a lot of retirees now is outliving their money. Yeah. You know, many of these things that you mentioned in that example, in that, um, um, description. Um, I, I would say we could bundle all of that up and liken it to the holes in the bucket analogy, right? You think about the bucket is your, your, you know, retirement wealth and the water is the, the money that's in there. And the holes are the things that can make the money go out. Well, health care, long term care, becoming disabled. taxes, inflation, volatile, all of those things need to be addressed so that it keeps as much water in the bucket as possible.

That's absolutely right. So if you take health care as an example, my first client, actually before I really knew what I was doing, 23 years ago, what was my mother, okay? She was getting divorced from my dad. It was amicable divorce. And so we were kind of going over in all the different finances. And she asked me about her, you know, her health, her health benefits at her job. She is super well educated, a master's, you know, and a PhD in education. She was an elementary school principal at the time. But at that time, 23, you know, 24 years ago, we had never really spoken about finances, right?

Yeah. And one of the reasons we got into this, into this career in this industry is to help educate people about their benefits and their insurance, their finances, and to make them feel comfortable about asking questions because there are no stupid questions when it comes to this stuff because we simply do not receive this education. And so with my mom, we sat down with her, took a look at her benefit package. And then I started getting into things like what her 401K was. And at the time, Mike, she did not have a 401K. She really hadn't put together a retirement plan or taking advantage of that. She did have a pension through her school district, but that was about it.

She had not taken a look at her social security at that time. And she, of course, did not have a plan for Medicare and things like that. They were going to come down the line. We also took a look at her long-term care to get that in place at that time. And over that the 2000s and 2015 sort of period really started taking. and look at the volatility in the stock market to make sure that she was taking care of as she approached retirement. You know, you bring up a big point right there, which is these are things that she just

had her head down creating her career. You know, master's PhD, being the principal. And oh, yeah, I've got that pension plan. The phrase para jumps into my mind, but whatever those letters stand for, I know it's an educational, pension plan. Well, she might have thought, that's good, but it could have been better. And when you think about like long-term care, sometimes people think, well, that just won't happen to me. And that might be the case until it does.

So what are some of the statistics you've heard about some of these things that could, you know, impede those holes in the bucket? Like how prevalent is the need for long-term care? And what if I became disabled? And, you know, how would I supplement my income that way? Yeah. So when you're really under about 55 or 60, you're. years old, Mike, the number one, the number one fear and the number one concern for you should be not early death, actually, but early becoming disabled early, okay, and not being able to

receive a paycheck and go to work. And so becoming disabled, you have about a one out of four chance in becoming disabled for at least a two-year period. And that is when the paychecks can stop. And of course, the bills continue and do not stop. And so it's really important, especially during those accumulation years to make sure people have long-term disability in place, ideally even some short-term disability in place. And for my mom, she was sort of transitioning in her late 50s and 60s towards retirement, we started talking about long-term care for both her and my dad. The statistics are pretty, they're pretty alarming.

Essentially 70% of Americans will need some sort of home health care or nursing home care or skilled nursing facility care in their lifetimes. Okay, Mike, it's typically around 60% of men, and it's around 75% for women. And the men stay in around 18 to 24 months, women and stay in on average between about 24 and 36 months. And we can talk about these stats all day long, but the bottom line is my family, unfortunately, is a statistic. And so my dad, who, you know, like a lot of, um,

A lot of men with a lot of provido, you know, think that long-term care is not really a need or something they need to take care of. We tried to help him get long-term care along with my mom, and my mom did take it at that time about 15 years ago, Mike. My dad did not take it. And unfortunately, my dad from about October of 2020, really about October 2020 up to about March of 2023 here was in a long-term care facility. and we spent around $100,000, $120,000. Wow. Covering that cost, okay? And so it is, we like to make sure that folks truly understand the risk, not just to their,

their portfolios, but to the other parts of their life, like long-term care. Wow. You know, when you hear those stats and it's like, that, that could be me. And you think you're fine until you're not. And that is money coming out, that dollar figure you mentioned, that came out of the, money set aside that he needed for retirement and it's actual funds. It's cold hard cash. So I think that is a huge piece. And obviously you mentioned briefly about people outliving their retirement, you know, because we're taking better care of herself. We've got better health care. We are eating better. We're getting some exercise. And people are living longer than those charts and tables years ago used to say, oh, you retire at this age.

You need your money to last this many years until this age. And sometimes those are not the case. And you need to make sure that your money is ready to be ready for you when you need it. And that's a big, big hurdle to overcome, right? Absolutely. And as I said, a lot of financial advisors actually send people to us because about 80% of financial advisors are not also insurance licensed, Mike. And so this does now allow them then to talk about long-term care.

Talk about, you know, fixed annuities and all these other insurance products and really risk mitigation solutions that you need to have as a person as you're looking at retirement and really going through, you know, once you're going through your entire life. 100%. And then at some point, you need to be thinking about, okay, I've buttoned up this piece and that piece. And over the years, we've just made improvements. And now we're getting to the point where we need to think about transferring the wealth, you know, getting, building. that legacy. So talk a little bit about that side of the equation, which is really like the last piece to go, okay, my life's work is done. I've got my plans in place and here's how the money's going to transfer. And that's not just an easy check-the-box decision. Absolutely. So with my mom, of course, so we took care of her Medicare plans, all right, and kind of married them with what she had from her, from her school district. We took care of the long-term care insurance, Mike. We took care of her portfolio and actually kind of moved a tremendous amount of it away from stock market volatility

and risk on a daily basis and more towards protection, right? Because she doesn't need to be, you know, in high-flying technology stocks when she's 74 years old and entering her required minimum distribution phase. So we took care of a whole lot of that. And then we also came on the other side and took care of the estate planning. So with my mom, she has in hundreds of our clients. They have wills in place. They have the directives, right? The health care directives, the powers of attorney, if something bad happens. And then for a lot of them, and this is for folks, even if you do not have a lot of money, quote unquote, okay?

A lot of them need trusts, especially if they have children, they have grandchildren, and they want to make sure that if something bad does happen, their wishes, their wealth, everything that they intended to happen does happen. And it's set in stone. And so we do help with estate planning through a number of estate planning and really expert trust attorneys that we have at on base, if you will. And then from my mom, when we were looking at the transition from taking a look at her pensions, so we took a look at her pension. We took a look at her social security and kind of the estimate of that income. And then we've also layered in her required minimum distributions so that we know exactly about how much she has coming in. every year and we're controlling for taxes with that, Mike. And so she has a tremendous amount, you know, that's left over, kind of over, over what she

needs. And so she does not expect to use all of that money. And she was concerned about taxes if myself or if my, if my kids, for example, inherit that money from her. So for her, we've actually put it in place a whole life insurance policy to kind of take care of the estate taxes for it. That is so smart. You know, I think you hear sometimes you might have heard this phrase before,

but as you were going through this whole conversation about how, you know, almost like a case study of your mom, you know, you hear people that go, you know what? This is the exact advice that I give to my mom or my family, meaning, you know, this is trustworthy advice because I'd give it to my family. Well, this is powerful advice and it's the actual advice you gave you mom and with good reason because you wanted to give her the best. and this is the kind of advice and guidance that you give to your client. So I think that is so amazing, Ben, the way that you have laid this out. Is there any final thoughts that you would like to bring up and then wrap up with how people can learn more and reach out and connect with you? Yeah, so, Mike, for the last three years, we've been, and I've been donating my time to the Foundation for Financial Education, which is based out of Maryland. and they do a lot of work with major corporations, but also with a lot of federal and county and state employees really around the country.

So I do consulting and investment and financial planning for folks all over the country. And it's been great to be able to really take a look at all Americans, whether they have 50,000 in assets or 50 million in assets. And the bottom line is regardless of the amount of assets they have, everyone gets treated the same and everyone gets the same level of education. Mike, and everyone has one or two little things here or there that they need the button up, right? And so we kind of walk through this entire financial planning process with everybody to make sure that they have all these things in place and that there's nothing that is going to ruin their retirement and really destroy or harm their lifestyle in retirement. I love it. Makes total sense. So what's the best way that someone can learn more and then also reach out and connect with you, Ben?

Absolutely. So they can email me at Benjamin at ready to retire.net. And that's ready. And then the number two, retire. dot net. They, of course, can check out our website at ready to retire. Net as well. And they can call our office.

And we have an office in Nashville, Tennessee, and also in Columbia, South Carolina. You can call 844-615824. four or three. And all of our, all of our consultations are complimentary. Mike, we're all about education and really helping folks, whether they're 75 or 35 years old, get their financial house in order and make sure they live their best life. So really excited to have the opportunity to talk today to you and really appreciate it. You're welcome and it's been a real pleasure talking with you as well, Ben. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you.

Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com.