Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Karen Powell, Founder of My Wealth 4 Life Discussing Securing Retirement Lifestyle

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

As Founder of My Wealth 4 Life, Karen leads a firm dedicated to delivering comprehensive, high-level financial and estate planning designed to protect, preserve, and enhance our clients’ hard-earned wealth. Their approach is both strategic and practical—focused on identifying overlooked risks, uncovering hidden opportunities, and building durable financial structures that stand the test of time.They work closely with medical professionals and entrepreneurs who operate in complex financial environments. Many are highly successful, yet still exposed to inefficiencies within their tax strategies, cash flow systems, and overall financial architecture. Their role is to bring clarity and precision—helping them eliminate waste, improve liquidity, and align their resources with long-term wealth and legacy objectives.Karen’s perspective is shaped by a diverse international background in economics, business, and finance. She began my career in economic consulting with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in Vienna, Austria, followed by a role as a marketing executive at 3M Germany. She later transitioned into financial services with Prudential in Düsseldorf, Germany, where she developed a foundation in advanced financial planning.After returning to the United States, Karen earned her Certified Financial Planner™ designation and established My Wealth 4 Life to provide a more integrated and sophisticated level of advisory services. She has since pursued advanced certifications in profit acceleration, exit and succession planning, cash flow optimization, income structuring, and capital creation, along with extensive training in estate planning and retirement income strategies.This multidisciplinary expertise allows her to approach each client’s situation with a wide lens—connecting the often siloed areas of tax, business, investment, and legacy planning into one cohesive strategy. The result is not just a financial plan, but a structured path toward sustained wealth, greater control, and long-term financial confidence.Learn more: https://mywealth4life.comSecurities offered through Simplicity Group Investments, Member FINRA/SPIC, 475 Springfield Ave., Summit, N.J. 07901. Advisory Services offered through the Leaders Group Advisory, a Registered Investment Advisor. Orion Financial Associates, LLC is not affiliated with Simplicity Group Investments. CA Lic. No 0B77498.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-karen-powell-founder-of-my-wealth-4-life-discussing-securing-retirement-lifestyle

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 Karen Powell, who's the founder of My Wealth for Life, and we'll be talking about securing your lifestyle for the present and future. Karen, welcome to the program.

Thank you, Mike. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, I'm looking forward to talking with you. And I always love when I hear a topic or a title and it's like, oh, that just sounds great. You know, people want their lifestyle to be secure, you know, like guaranteed income or secure lifestyle or a promise of, you know, this transformation. So I'm excited to talk with you about that. But before we dive in, give us a little bit of your story and background and how did you get into the financial services industry? Yeah, well, after I achieved my VA and did my master's studies, I actually worked in Europe.

I was an economics consultant at the U.N. in Vienna, Austria, and then I was also a marketing executive for 3M Germany and did some international speaking. I decided to become a financial advisor because that had been a long-term passion of mine, the investment in finance side. And I did that in Desseldorf, Germany, and then returned to the U.S. And after returning to the U.S., I obtained my certified financial planner designation

and decided that that's an important part. of the way that I wanted to conduct business, and that is to provide holistic planning for folks. And also, on the side, I was a radio host, and I was a member of the Planning Association in Atlanta, Georgia, where I reside. Well, in any case, at that time, back in 2003, I established my own financial practice. And since then, I've been working with doctors, dentists and business owners and some real estate investors. So essentially, the aspect of our business also is improved by the fact that I have certifications in cash management, cash flow insurance and estate planning.

And that's how we got where we're at today. Yeah, that's quite the story with deep experience and really great, credentials. You know, it's really neat when you hear someone say, I'm going to dive right into this industry and make sure that I know things. And I am credentialed and certified. And all of those things take a minute or two to get. You know, really, it's not something, you know, like online ordination where you check the box and hit print. You know, this is something you had to study, be tested, qualify, keep up your your qualifications with continuing ed. And so I applaud that for sure. So you work with medical professionals and business owners. Let's talk a little bit about how they can picture in their mind what a secure lifestyle for today and the future looks like. I feel like sometimes people think about retirement. They just go, here's this certain number, and they're striving for that. They don't even know whether it's enough or whether it'll last long enough. But you're talking about securing a lifestyle.

What does that mean? Yeah. So obviously, the people that we work with, they're very busy professionals. And yes, things are perhaps going well at the present time, but that concern lingers for many people. Will this continue into the future? And that's where I step in and we talk about what are the things that could impact this track that they're on, impact it and derail perhaps their plans for the future. And some of those we can just eliminate or minimize with planning from an early start.

So I do suggest that when people start in their career or their business, it is a wise thing to get going as soon as possible in this type of planning just to remove all of the little hurdles that can come along the way so that basically they can just proceed with their busy lives. And some of those impacts that we examine are, for instance, you know, income loss through perhaps disability or a critical illness. Now, a critical illness is not really a disability. Disability is where you can't work because you're medically disabled. But a critical illness is oftentimes temporary but very dramatic. It could be a heart attack, stroke, cancer, organ transplant. whatever. And all of those things will make a huge impact on your life. As a matter of fact, only 5% of Americans are insured against a critical illness. And 58% say that it would make a major

impact on their finances. And about 85% people worry that something like that could happen to them. So despite all that, the reason why people probably aren't protective, is they don't understand that there is an insurance for those kinds of things so that their life can continue on normally after such an event

because they're not impacted entirely with their finances. The other aspect that they can secure that secure future now and in the future is if they start to

build capital accounts, and other sources for the future to provide a income stream down the road. And that's how they use that discretionary income, if they have it, by setting that aside and starting to build up those resources for the future. And when you have those kinds of things working, then you're not as concerned about your long-term future. You know, a couple things that came to my mind when you mentioned that. And from an uneducated person like me, you're the expert, when you mentioned critical illness,

is that similar to the need for long-term care? Because I think about, you know, people that go into some level of long-term care facility, whether it's the basic assisted living or actual, you know, memory care, things like that. How does critical illness relate to long-term care? Yeah, that's a very good question. So critical illness has to do with the actual health event. And, you know, those are specified types of events that are covered. The long-term care is where you cannot fulfill two of the daily living activities,

such as eating, toileting, dressing, and a number of things like that. Okay. And, you know, long-term care, people think, well, my disability insurance will pick in that. But it can last for a long time and it may not actually have that impact. And there was a case where a businessman was riding his motorcycle and was incapacitated for 18 months. And his long-term care actually took care of that. And then, you know, he got back on track again.

and was able to fulfill all of his work expectations. Therefore, you know, it can handle something at any time in life, but oftentimes people think about it for the elder years. Yeah. And I've heard a statistic. You threw out a few statistics that were pretty staggering, but isn't it true that around 70% of all people will need some type of long-term care and then a very staggeringly low percent actually have that plan for?

That's so right. And that's why it's so important that these things need to be addressed ahead of time because when those needs come about, A, you can't get the insurance. And B, you know, the cost might be so much that you can't have enough to pay for that. Whereas if you've been building that kind of protection all along, you don't have that big concern. Like, how am I going to address this? Yeah, it's like, hey, I just wrecked my car. I wish I'd gotten car insurance. Let me go shop around.

Well, it's too late. And to your point, you know, the longer you wait, then the age is a factor, the health is a factor, the price is a factor. And I know, you know, maybe down the road you can talk about some of these things, too, but I know that there are some options to go, hey, here's a type of a financial tool that can provide long-term care if you need it. But if you don't need it, then it still is working away and providing you the financial protection as well. So it has multiple uses. but let's kind of keep on the track of the securing a lifestyle. What are you now going to recommend for key strategies? So these are some of the triggers.

What are some of the key strategies in building a plan that would bring this peace of mind that you're talking about? Well, just like you talked about, Mike, one of the key things is don't delay. Because if you delay, that's where the costs increase sometime exponentially. and waiting also leads to a more costly outcome. And so therefore, what you want to do is at least look into it and see if there are avenues where you can protect that and maybe have some other flexible options like you just mentioned. What's important, the key strategy is also to identify which are the emergency,

or setbacks that would really most impact your lifestyle and savings. And as you may have heard this statistic, is that health issues, health events are one of the three biggest things that lead to bankruptcy. Now, of course, that can happen. And bankruptcy can happen to anyone, high earners or whomever, because, obviously they can't adjust very quickly because of those enormous health care costs. So that's very important to protect against those emergencies and oftentimes predictable events, but you don't think about them until they occur.

And then also, let me give you an example. If you use, as you already indicated, $1 to do two jobs, that's, my mantra, you know. How can we make this the most optimal and efficient strategy? So, for instance, there are life insurance and even some annuity products that will also cover long-term care. And so, like you said, if you enter into that kind of need, then it may reduce the amount of insurance or annuity that you have, but you have those funds available to you.

and so those are really very efficient ways to handle those issues. But it's also key to put all of the planning in a written document and ensure that all the family members know about it. Let me just give you an example there. There was a patriarch who did all the estate planning, all of the planning for his spouse and his heirs. and unfortunately he was in a coma in the hospital. And because he hadn't communicated the planning that had been done,

his offspring and spouse went all around town undoing these titles and documents and bank accounts, etc. And basically upended the whole plan, which he would not have desired. and they didn't realize what was going on because that lack of communication. So you can make the best plans possible. Yep. If you say, well, my wife or my kids aren't all that interested, well, you need to make

sure that communication's done. And that makes me think of something else, which is, A, all of these things we're talking about are not something you can just go out and Google or chat CPT and go tell me this and click done and it's all set up because they're intricate and advanced. and you need someone like yourself to sit down with you. But then once it's in place and documented, how often are you saying, recommending that you should review it? Because the plan might be great for you at this stage of life, but in two or three years, not that the plan was ever wrong, but maybe life circumstances changed. Do we need to just make a little tweak or an adjustment?

So how often are you recommending to review the plan? Well, I advise folks to when any life event changes, you know, a new grandchild or, you know, an illness or whatever, that your plan gets renewed. Now, there's a little difference between some segments of the plan. The financial plan might be reviewed much more often. The estate plan might be every three to five years. It just depends, as I said, what events or changes come in the meantime. But that's really important. You can't set it, forget it, lock away in a box and assume that A, it still works in the system of finance or taxes, and you're going to be best served by it.

No, you really need to do that to make sure you can follow through. And then I'm always like a visual word picture kind of a guy. So when you were mentioning the example about the client with their heirs, you know, scurrying around town undoing all the things that you had done, isn't it important? to at some point when the plan is put into place, bring the family in, whether it's a group Zoom or a group meeting and say, okay, just so everyone knows, here's the plan, here's what's put together, here's kind of the methodology behind it and we put this in a trust because or whatever the case is, how important is it to make sure that all the extended family to a certain extent is aware of that so that they don't go unravel things that were done?

Oh, that's extremely important. Now, every family is a little different. know as far as who who needs to know or what they need to know and that kind of thing. But most of the families with some wealth that we have dealt with is that they don't want their heirs to know every last dollar that's coming to them. Okay. So what they do is they explain the system. They explain the mechanics. And they even kind of, you know, outline what happens when, et cetera.

but they don't just unveil the whole amount. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't, but many parents who dealt with high net worth and ultra high net worth families are concerned that, oh, their, you know, airs might not work as hard or might not strive or might, you know, start to have some jealousies or whatever. So they want to protect that.

But, you know, just explaining that things are taking care of and also maybe how some of the mechanics or outcomes work out so that basically they're not assuming that there's things that they need to fix when the time comes. Yeah. Those are some really great points, Karen. It's been really helpful just to have you talk through them in just a real way. So let's wrap up with this. If someone is interested in learning a little more and maybe having you give a little bit

of second opinion or guidance, what's the best way they can reach out and connect with you. Yeah. Well, my website is www. MyWealth for Life.com. That's the number four. So my wealth for life. And we are located in Atlanta, but I am registered in many, many states and for securities, insurance, and we can work with families that are well distributed throughout the states as well. I have many associations with other professionals that are on my team, and therefore, you know, as far as some of these things, we call in an expert so that they can get all the right answers and all the right things in place to fit and create the most optimal, to their family goals.

Perfect. Well, Karen, thank you so much for coming on today. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. Thank you. Same here, Mike. All the best. 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.com.