Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Corey Baker Retirement Specialist with KK&B Financial Services Discussing Retirement Income for Life

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Corey is originally from the Chicago area and is a lifelong Cubs and Bears fan. He and his wife Julie have 2 daughters and an incredibly spoiled poodle. As a former minister of one of the fastest growing churches in Florida, Corey has extensive experience connecting with people and assisting them to become the best versions of themselves in every area. In 2017, Corey and his family relocated to Lexington, Kentucky where he now has dedicated himself to helping families and individuals all across the Midwest thrive with their retirement, and with their money.Corey is also a best-selling author, accomplished motivational speaker and personal health and wellness coach. His life’s passion is working with people and is tenacious in his dedication to helping others win. In his spare time, Corey loves to travel all across the US pursing his other life passion, which is bowling.Learn More: http://www.kkandb.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-corey-baker-retirement-specialist-with-kkb-financial-services-discussing-retirement-income-for-life

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 Corey Baker, who's a retirement specialist with KK&B Financial Services, and we'll be talking about the importance of income, for life. Corey, welcome to the program. Thanks, Mike. So honored to be here. Love what you do to serve so many people. And I just, I love being able to have conversations and add value where I can. So I look forward to to chat with you. Yeah, I like that, that wording, adding value because that's what it's all about.

It's, it's just about helping and teaching and advocating for people just to understand concepts and things. So I'm going to dive into this income for life because that sounds like a nice, solid, peaceful concept. So I want to learn all about that. But before we dive in, give us a little bit of your story and background. And how did you get into financial services? Well, I feel like helping people and solving problems and helping people become better is just something that I've always really had a mission for. I was in pastoral ministry for a long, long time. I led a church in Florida of about 750 people or so. And I'm a bestselling author.

I have a personal health and wellness and mindset type of a book called Chasing Better. You can get that on Amazon. And I've always just had this desire to help people to grow. I feel like I'm someone that has just really focused on that aspect. And that as I've grown, I think life has lived in seasons. You know, we, as, you know, most people that are probably listening to this, we're in a different season of our life before the podcast. We were talking about are different seasons with kids. My kids are going into junior year in eighth grade and yours are getting ready to go off to college and they're married. Like we all navigate different seasons of our life. There's spring, there's winter, there's fall, there's summer.

We're all in different seasons of life. And I feel like as my seasons of life have changed, my passions have changed. I've always been. interested in finance, mainly because I think that for so many people, it's one of the main causes of stress. It's one of the main causes of unhappiness. I've always, you know, again, whether it's with spirituality, I've been a wellness coach for a long, long time. And now I've kind of navigated into the financial space. And one common theme that I found was when dealing with working in church, when dealing with the books that I wrote, when dealing with counseling with all the different things that this money thing really kind of came to the head of a lot of things. And as I started to, you know, as I'm getting older, now I'm,

this is just the group of people that I'm with. Lots of people having questions about retirement and wondering if they're going to have enough money and all those things. So it just really formed a passion in me. And I'm pretty tenacious when I figure out something that I want to go after. And so I just dove head first into what can I do to help solve the problem that people have of running out of money in retirement. And that's what got me into this. And I love helping people to do that. You know, it's neat here in that progression of you guiding people through the stage of or the pillar in life of spirituality and health and wellness. And that is a huge thing. And now finance. And there were probably little, there's crossovers in all of them when you were talking to someone

about one area, then it would cross over into the other. And, you know, it makes me think, too, about, you know, the health aspect. I know that when we think about retirement, back in the old days, it would be like, oh, well, you retire at a certain age here, and then you need your money to last to this certain age. Well, now with people taking better care of themselves and health care getting better and working out more and eating better, now that age has gotten a little bit longer. So there's a more heightened need for really planning for retirement. And really the topic of of this conversation here is income for life, meaning we need that flow, that cash flow of income for life because you're going to need some funds and probably more funds than what

you write down on a piece of paper today. If you said, here's what I'll need in retirement every month, it's probably going to end up being more than that. So talk a little bit about what's the true purpose of your money saved for retirement? Well, I think there's several questions that we ask ourselves, right? The truth is there's there's really two things that we don't know. There's a lot of things we don't know. There's some things that we do know. Most of us are experts about one or two things.

I love talking about bowling. I love talking about the Cubs. I love talking about the bears. I can talk to you all day about those things. I feel like I'm pretty well-versed in those areas. There's a lot of things that I know. There's a lot of things that I don't know. It's the age-old thing of, you know, as when you're growing up,

you think you know everything. And then as you get older, you start to. realize how much you don't know. But there's two things that I know for a fact that I don't know. Two questions that I don't have the answers to and two things that I know nobody on this planet has the answers to. The first question is, when am I going to die? Yeah. I have no idea. I have no idea, right? I mean, I talk about health and wellness. Like, I know that you have known people and I've known people that, and this is not meant to sell fear. I don't sell fear. I sell hope. But the truth is, I think it's about being prepared. And I'm sure that you, you know,

You know people well that were perfectly healthy and then had something out of the blue come that they didn't expect, whether it be an accident or whether it be just a fluke health thing that just came out of nowhere, right? And then and then vice versa, you know, where there's people that don't take very good care of themselves and they put themselves in all kinds of harmful situations and then they live to be 102 years old. It's just there's a lot of things that we don't know that there are a lot of things that are out of our hands. be the best driver in the world. I have a couple of childhood friends that a couple of weeks ago, husband and wife on the interstate, stopped in a traffic jam because of a semi that went off the road, got rear-ended by a box truck, killed them both instantly. They had two little boys, the little boys were not in the car. But again, that had nothing to do with their driving ability, that had nothing to do with that was just 100% wrong place, wrong time. We don't know.

That doesn't mean that we should walk around life afraid, but it does mean that we should be prepared. We don't know. We don't know when we're going to die. The second thing we don't know is we don't know what the stock market's going to do tomorrow. You know, we, we, people get asked us these, you know, questions all the time. Like my girls are all into like the superhero movies and stuff. And we've always asked this question. Like if you could have one superpower, what would it be? Right. Would you want to fly? Would you want to teleport? And my answer is always the same. I wish I knew what the stock market was going to do tomorrow. That would be my superpower. If I could know beyond the shadow of a doubt what the stock market was going to be.

to do tomorrow, that would be the superpower that I would want. Now, we can make educated guesses, right? We can study and we can read a lot of books and we can buy into companies and we can bet on the S&P and we can do all these things and those are educated guesses, but we don't know. We don't know. And so because of that, as we get older, our risk tolerance tends to change. As somebody who's a young investor, you've got a 401k, you've got an IRA, you put it in the market, Most likely it's going to experience some ebbs and flows, some ups and downs. Your oil is going to grow by 20% and then it's going to go backwards by 20%. But normally it's going to be trending up.

The problem is as we get a little bit older, we don't have as much time to recover from when those market dips come and they do come and they will come. The issue is we just don't know. We don't know. We don't know when those are going to happen. And so you see as people get older, they tend to read the. diversify their portfolio into putting their money into something that is safer. And there is absolutely no safer play than a fixed index annuity with an income writer for life. There is absolutely nothing on the market that beats that when it comes to safe money. And I feel like

that's what I do. I love bringing peace of mind. I sell sleep insurance. You know, this is crazy, but I was reading this stat the other day, and it said that more seniors today, you mentioned that people are living longer, more seniors today are worried about running out of money than they are about dying. Wow. Wow. That is a massive fear. And that worry, that anxiety, that fear, that's with you 24-7. When you let that, you know, really seep into your consciousness and it's like, man, what if? and you don't know what you don't know, but I do know that I, you know, I am going to need some money for many, many years.

And like you just said, we don't know when this is going to happen. That's going to happen. We don't know what the stock market is going to do. But one thing is for sure, and it kind of gets back to that question, what's the true purpose of your funds saved for retirement? Well, the true purpose, in my opinion, would be to be able to know you're going to have enough funds to make it to and through retirement. And that's what you just said. If the fear is, will I have enough money? well, the true purpose is to have enough money for sure.

And that's where that income for life and that's where that guarantee comes in. So talk a little bit about some of those sources of guaranteed income for life because I think that a lot of advisors, you pick 10 advisors and they'll go, oh, yeah, we can give you income for life. Well, then you look at their recommendations and it's in some of these, you know, stocks and things. And it's like, yeah, but what if the market turns and they're like, yeah, but and they kind of backpedal. So what do you say with that fixed index annuity like you mentioning, how is that different than some of the other recommendations that will come out? Well, again, I think that there's a lot of things that are speculative. And here's, you know, you can talk about, hey, the safest place to be is real estate.

Well, maybe. I mean, you could, I remember in 2007 and 2008. Yeah. When I lived in Florida, my wife and I bought our first house and we bought this house. this was back at a different time, but we bought, get this, we bought an interest only, we had an interest only loan. It was a three-bedroom, two-bath villa, interest-only loan. Now, nowadays, they would never give us that loan. But at this time, the market was flying so much. You could buy a $200,000 house, and six months later, it was worth $230,000. So you're not paying off

anything on your mortgage, but you are getting equity. At least that's what you thought. But what we didn't see was that this was a house of cards. And none of us saw this coming. So we bought this house in 2007 for $220,000, interest only, making payments, doing what we can. There's all these arms coming. We were 24. We were dumb. We didn't know any different, but this was what everybody was doing.

So we bought this house. 18 months later, the crash happened. We short sold that home for $52,000. Oh, my goodness. That sets you back for a while. Now, again, we didn't know, right? And you could say, that was a dumb decision. And you'd be right in saying that.

It was dumb. One of the first things that I asked people. And you know what? Any real estate professional at that time would have said, look back in the last 30, 40 years. Real estate's always been. And here's what's been going on the last six months to 12 months. And you take that and overlay that to today when someone talks about retirement. And they go, oh, look at the stock market for the last 30, 40 years.

Look it for the last three to five years. Yeah, there's some ebbs and flows. But it always comes back. But depending on your age, you might not be able to stomach opening up your statement going, oh, my word. it dropped X percent. How about just that, you said something really in passing, but it stuck out to me, sleep insurance. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, how many people, and I know I have, and I think that's part of one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about this is because I know what it's like to lay awake at night and not be able to sleep because of you have so much stress and worry and fear associated with money. There is nothing that, you know, it's like, I guess, For me, financial fear is kind of like, you know, you live out west. When you get up in the mountains and the air gets thinner, it gets harder and harder to breathe.

And you're, you know, I don't know if you're a Broncos fan, but, you know, in Denver, there's such a home field advantage that the Broncos have. Yeah. Because so many people come play there and they're not used to elevation. Breathing is possible. It's just more challenging. And you got to get used to it. And I think financial stress does that to us too, where it just makes breathing more difficult. It makes life more difficult.

It's like a toothache. If you have a toothache, if you have a toothache, nothing else in the world matters more than that toothache. Somebody could come to you and put a winning powerball ticket in your hand. And that's all fine and good and you're excited about it. But you cannot stop thinking about that tooth. It is all encompassing. It is all you can think about is all you can focus on is I got to fix this tooth. And I think that's the way that it comes with money a lot of times.

When I'm having conversations with people, one of the first things that I ask people, one of the very first questions is this money that you have in a 401k IRA, 403B, in a brokerage account, is this a plan for living or is it a plan for dying? Yeah. What is the purpose of this money? Are you wanting to use this money? But there are so many people that just are really focused. Because here's the thing, and we'll talk about this maybe another time,

if you want to focus on giving some money away, leaving a legacy, taking care of your kids, that's wonderful. Leaving money to your charitable organization of choice, leaving money to a cause, leaving money to a church, awesome. There are amazing ways to do that. But when you look at your portfolio, how much of that are you setting aside for you to live on? And you talk, you know, this was kind of a roundabout answer to the original question,

which is what are the sources of guaranteed income? There's not many, right? Because you have money in an IRA 401K. That is not really guaranteed. Because again, nobody knew when 2008 was going to come. Nobody knew that COVID was going to be there. Nobody knew what inflation was. is going to do like it has over the last several years.

There's a lot of things that we don't know. But there's a couple things that are guaranteed. Like if you have a pension, that is guaranteed. You will get that pension until you die or until if that company goes under or something. But you have a pension, right? That pension, that's guaranteed income. Your Social Security, that is guaranteed income. Now, we could have conversations about this, about, you know, politicians and, you know,

all those different types of things. And they're raising retirement ages. And we're kind of at this bubble. Where is this? Can we fund Social Security? But at least for the time being, right? Your Social Security that you get every month, that is guaranteed. You're going to get that.

So what I sit down with people is let's put down. Let's look at what is guarantee. And then let's have a conversation about what a fixed indexed annuity with an income writer would look like for you. And then we can start saying, okay, let's cover your needs. And this is the play that I have with people. Not the play, but the conversation. Let's fix, let's look at what you need to live first.

How much do you need to live a comfortable life, doing all the things, taking care of your bills? You know, the happiest people, the happiest retirees that I've met are ones that have no debt and have guaranteed income. Yeah. That doesn't mean that you don't have stress. You still have kids that need things and you still have... traffic and you still have politics to stress you out and your sports teams and all the things. But if we can take care of debt, income for life, that is such a stress. That is like a breath of fresh air.

That is just this sigh of relief. And that's what I love giving to people. I love giving them a sigh of relief. I can't take all your problems away. what I can do is help you solve some of the greatest issues and problems that you're facing so that life becomes a little bit easier dealing with all the other things that you've got to deal with. You know, that's just so important because I think a lot of people would go, well, I don't have my money in the market. I've got it in this IRA or this 401K, but it's tied to the market.

And if the market crashes, then that's impacted. Or I've got money in CDs. Well, if the markets crash or inflation goes up down or all around, then your rate of return goes those, you know, negative potentially. But when you're in a product like you're describing, it's a contract with really an insurance company and it's like, this is what you're getting done. And it's guaranteed. And it's long term.

And when you set it up the right way, it gives you additional benefit. So I think that you said something really, really strong, which is let's just look and see how that would look. Not every single person you talk to needs this exact thing because everyone's different. But why should people trust insurance companies with their retirement dollars? because an annuity like you're mentioning is really an insurance company right well yeah it is but here's the thing i think a lot of times you know different people have different it's difficult and i dealt with this when i was when i worked in church world if people have had a negative

experience with one type of thing it's it's hard to not lump everything else into that if you have one bad experience at a church you're going to think that every experience is going to be bad if you had one bad experience with an insurance company that failed to make a payment on your, you know, health, like, or homeowners. Like, I get a lot of, you know, I've had a lot of people, which I don't do property casualty, but that doesn't mean people don't lump it all together, right? I had this thing. I don't trust insurance companies because I had this one claim and then they paid it and then they dropped me.

Okay. I understand that, right? I understand an aversion to insurance companies because of a past. experience that you may have had, but this is a difference, right? Life insurance companies, people that deal in insurance companies that deal in life. They are some of the most stable, reputable companies. Try to find me an example of a life insurance company not paying out a policy, not paying out a premium. There's a reason why so many of them are just rock solid. It is absolutely guaranteed that these insurance companies, first of all, they're highly regulated,

which is good for you and it's good for me, because the higher regulated they are, it makes it less likely for things like that happened to me in 2008 when banks who weren't regulated like this at the time could lend out all this money that they didn't have. They were betting on equity. Well, insurance companies, the reason they can make these guarantees is for every dollar that they put out the guarantee. They have to have dollars to back that up. They have to be able to make those claims. Plus, there's different states, I know in Kentucky where I live, $250,000 of every annuity that you purchase is guaranteed by the state. So if something were to happen to the insurance company, the state would come in. So there are rock solid guarantees.

If you want to figure it out even different ways, you know, there's a lot of pretty smart people that invest in insurance companies, Warren Buffett being one of them. Yeah. That insurance companies and a lot of these insurance companies have insurance themselves. It's called reinsurance. So there is not a safer place. Now, here's the thing. Could, could an end of the world catastrophe come and is my money guaranteed if a meteorite hits the world and we go into another ice age and aliens attack the earth? Listen, if that's happening, then we've got a whole other risk of issues that we've got to worry about. And my biggest thing is not turning into a zombie, right? That's my biggest concern. My biggest concern is not am I getting my 5.4% that I had guaranteed. So yes,

people, you know, people, you know, kind of come back at you with like, well, what if this? Listen, if if the end of the world happens, yes, your money is probably going to have some challenges, right? But we're going to have challenges finding food at that point. So again, that goes back to there's so many things that are outside of our control, but of the plays that are out there, Here's what I would say. There is no safer play than this. Now, you could say, well, here's my play. I'm going to take all my cash. I'm going to bury it in a mattress somewhere and I'm going to just live on that. Well, yeah, you can, but that's going to be eaten away by inflation and it's going to lose value. And that $100 that you think is going to get you so far is going to get you even less further, you know, down the road because of inflation. So that's why I love indexed annuities with, with, um, Income riders is it protects you 100% from loss and it allows you to grow and participate in some of the markets gain. So it's really a win-win. You know, and you said the word fixed. We like that. Guarantee. We like that. Income for life. We like that. So if this is interesting to you,

reach out to Corey, have them look at your situation, your goals where you're at, where you want to be, and see if this is a good decision for you. And I think that is just spectacular how you laid that out. Corey, if someone is interested in learning a little bit more and reaching out to you, what's the best way they can do that? Yeah. So, and last thing I will say just quickly is I think one of the things that I love to do when I have conversations, I think sometimes people are a little bit hesitant to have a conversation with someone they don't know. My first and foremost mission is to help you figure out what your plan is. Most people don't know what the plan is. Let's figure out what your plan is. If the plan includes annuities, great.

If it doesn't, that's fine too. I get so much joy out of helping people figure out what the plan is, even if that plan doesn't include me. So let me help you find out what that plan is. If you want to reach me, you can find me. Our website is www.kKK&B.com. KK-K-A-N-D-B.com. I'll even give you my number, right? This is my personal number.

You want to call me? You want to text me. I will return your call. I will be in contact. That is one of the things that my clients tell me all the time. I'm very, very responsive. You can reach me at 859-880-2164, or you can send me an email, Corey, C-O-R-E-Y, don't forget the E, at K-K-N-B-B.com. Excellent.

Well, Corey, thanks a million for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you today. Thanks for having me. 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.