Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Leslie Hammock, Founder of Retire By Design Discussing How Life Insurance Fits into Retirement

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

Leslie Hammock was born in Perry, Georgia, graduated from Stratford Academy, and later graduated from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. He began his career with Mass Mutual. After a number of successful years, Leslie founded his own firm. Leslie has extensive personal and professional experience with an emphasis on Retirement and Estate planning strategies for professionals, business owners, and individuals working in both private and government sectors.Leslie has been the recipient of the National Quality Award. He is also a long-time member of the International Association of Registered Financial Consultants (RFC), a member of the National Ethics Association, and an Independent Fiduciary Investment Advisor.Leslie is an approved adult financial education instructor and holds classes at numerous local colleges on the subjects of Investment Planning, Retirement Planning, Social Security Maximization, Estate Planning, and many other topics.Leslie is dedicated to developing lasting relationships with all his clients in their wealth accumulation and preservation objectives. He takes pride in his ability to provide clear, easily understood strategies using various financial products, services, and cutting-edge analytical technology.Learn more: http://www.retirebydesign.com/Disclosure:Securities and investment advisory services offered through Integrity Alliance, LLC, Member SIPC. Integrity Wealth is a marketing name for Integrity Alliance, LLC. Retire By Design is not affiliated with Integrity Wealth.IUL Disclosure:Indexed Universal Life Insurance is an insurance contract that, depending on the contract, may offer a guaranteed annual interest rate and some participation growth, if any, of a stock market index. Such contracts have substantial variation in terms, costs of guarantees and features and may cap participation or returns in significant ways. Any guarantees offered are backed by the financial strength of the insurance company, not an outside entity. Investors are cautioned to carefully review an indexed universal life insurance for its features, costs, risks, and how the variables are calculated.SSA & SSA Max Disclosures:Not associated with or endorsed by the Social Security Administration, Medicare or any other government agency. Maximizing your Social Security Benefits assumes foreknowledge of your date of death. If as an example you wait to claim a higher monthly benefit amount but predecease your average life expectancy, it would have been better to claim your benefits at an earlier age with reduced benefits.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-leslie-hammock-founder-of-retire-by-design-discussing-how-life-insurance-fits-into-retirement

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 influential entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have back with us, Leslie Hemick, who's the founder of Retire by Design, and we'll be talking about how life insurance fits into retirement. Leslie, welcome back to the program. Good morning. Happy to be here.

Hey, thank you for coming back. I know that last time we talked all about some risks of retirement and now we want to see how life insurance fits in retirement. And I know that anytime people hear that word, you know, life insurance, it's like their senses just go into overdrive and go, oh, I don't need life insurance or I've got it. But I think that what we want to cover here is, do you have the appropriate? of life insurance and how does it fit in retirement. And so that's where I am excited to hear some of your perspectives from your 40 years of experience. Talk a little bit about how life insurance fits into a retirement plan because in reality, it's not just an expense that people would have, like, oh, I've got to pay my life insurance premium. It's a factor that fits into your

retirement plan. Yeah, well, in my own personal experience with my own family and parents, A proper appropriate amount of life insurance on my dad proved to be the retirement plan for my mother and allowing her to continue her lifestyle when he was killed by a drunk driver at age 50. But as far as different types of life insurance, there's, I refer this to basically two categories of life insurance. A lot of people want to overcomplicate it as temporary or I call it term insurance or permanent insurance. and there are different types of term and different types of permanent. A lot of people make a mistake of, depending upon their employers, group life insurance, for their life insurance, for their beneficiaries.

They get used to it, they get low to sleep about it, are often kind of blindsided when the retire and realize, oh, it's gone now. And it may be too late to do something about life insurance and retirement, through the health issues or whatever. But term insurance plays a vital role when you're young and raising kids and got a lot of debt. That's what I recommend for my young clients to cover those things. Permanent life insurance can play a role for other planning needs in retirement,

such as tax-free income, estate planning, estate liquidity for taxes and that sort of thing. As far as the different types of life insurance on the term side, you've got 10-year guarantee-level premium all the way to 30-year-level premium term, which means premiums cannot go up during that period of time. On the permanent side of the equation, you've got whole life, you've got universal life, and indexed universal life. Whole life has been around forever. it's a high cash value building life insurance, higher premium.

Universal Life is a lower premium type permanent life insurance. It almost looks like a lifetime term policy. Instead of being limited to 30 years. And then the index universal life is actually it was designed to fund heavily in order to be able to have it be a retirement income asset in retirement on a taxpayer. basis. Mm-hmm.

You know, it makes me think of a question here, and I know that we've mentioned this before, but it just bears repeating, there's never one solution for every single person, so everyone's different. But you mentioned the people when they're younger, they might need term versus permanent, and that can change, of course. But is there a time where your age gets to the point where you would say to a client, you know, rather than renewing that term because you're X age, we might want to look at permanent because then you don't ever need to worry about renewing again or doing health exams. Is there a time where, you know, you should look at that decision?

I would say by your mid-50s. Okay. You know, by your mid-50s, you know, pregnancy's, you know, pregnancy's don't go up a lot each year up through you up through your mid-50s. They go up every year. And so it's obviously, if you do, if you buy permanent insurance when you're in your 40s, it's going to be a lot cheaper than in your 50s. But buying your 50s is a lot, a lot cheaper than trying to get it done when you're retired at age 65 or 60, whatever.

Yes. I think that's just really important also is kind of have that mental, you know, time of, you know, 50s like you mentioned. But that's a big piece that people don't really. think about is like, oh, I got a 20 year term when I was whatever age and I'm just going to renew it. But at some point when you go to renew, you're now 10, 15, 20 years older and maybe your health has changed. And maybe you either can't get that term or maybe you get it at way higher rates because of health or now your age is older. So there comes a point in the decision making that if you have permanent insurance, you never need to worry about that again of requalifying because it's

permanent. It's exactly right. It's exactly right. As I said earlier, as opposed to a number of years ago when I started many years ago when I started this business, there are so many ways to design the cost level of the permanent insurance. We can make it look like a lifetime term policy type premium all the way up to a high premium high cash accumulation dual benefit type of arrangement where you've got the death

benefits when something happens to you. You've got high cash accumulation to supplement your retirement, which can also be done on a tax paper basis. So let's think about a couple of those things of those benefits of having that permanent insurance. I think a lot of times people think, oh, life insurance means when I die, it provides X number of dollars to my family. And that's a factor. That's a death benefit. But some of the benefits of permanent insurance are actually living benefits. So talk a little bit about some of the benefits people could have while they're still living. Yes, that's another big thing with modern, the modern life

insurance policies. Most of the modern life insurance policies, which have been being issued now for the last 10 years, have some leading benefits other than the cash accumulation. that a lot of people are not aware of. They can provide benefits for chronic illness, which is for like long-term care, whether you're getting care in your home or in a facility or assisted living. It can provide benefits for terminal illness.

It can provide benefits for critical illness. In the event of chronic or terminal, you can access the entire death benefit while you're alive as a living benefit. In the amount of a critical illness, you can access a substantial amount to cover the cost of the critical illness, such as cancer, heart attack, that sort of thing. The older policies of 10 years back and further don't typically have these as a feature on their policies. Some of these are built in to some of the modern policies. Some of them are optional riders, which you can choose to add or not to add.

But most people like to have. you know and that's a it's another way it's another way of paying for long-term care you know that's an interesting point and before i ask about that i want to make this comment because it's really powerful um modern policies you kept saying modern policies and older policies and and this could be a writer and that could be a writer if i just googled let me go get a permanent life insurance policy and then went click click and let me set that up. Maybe I'm missing out on some of these ways to properly structure a policy. So, again, the benefit of sitting down with someone like yourself that knows how to properly structure based on what you're needing and, oh, do you need this writer or not? And making sure that if you need one of these living benefits that the writer is there, I think that's a big piece to keep in mind.

Exactly. It really, it really is. and sometimes people have a resistance to it. They know they need long-term care insurance, but they have a resistance because they feel like, well, what if I pay all these premiums, and I just, I just die, I don't need the long-term care. Yeah. And I just got canceled checks.

And but with these living benefits on the modern life insurance policies, that eliminates that issue all together because it's going to provide, the long-term care benefit, you can provide the death benefit, you can provide living retirement benefits all wrapped into one. Yeah, it's almost like your car insurance, if you drove all year long and didn't have a wreck and you didn't make any claims, you can't call up your auto policy and say, send me back my money. I didn't use it. They would say you had the coverage there if you needed it. Same with a standalone long-term care type policy. You're paying premiums and you have the

cancel checks, but if you didn't use it, those premiums are gone. Versus if it's a rider, like you're mentioning here, it's there if you need it, but if you don't, it's just sitting there doing all the benefits in that properly structured life insurance policy. Yes, and there's another strategy known as asset-based long-term care, which is where you can buy a life insurance policy with one single premium, or you can do. do premiums over five, 10 years or whatever. That provides a death benefit in the event of your death, provides long-term care benefits,

and the event of your long-term care needs, and can guarantee a return of your premiums should you change your mind down the road. So giving you flexibility, that's nice, peace of mind, that's wonderful. It makes me think of this. how can permanent life complement other kind of retirement vehicles like IRAs when it comes to tax diversification? Because you were mentioning previously that there's some tax aspects to think about. Exactly. Well, pretty much most people are familiar with municipal bonds for tax-free income, at least on the federal's tax side.

They can be tax-free on the state side as well if the bonds are issued. in your state. It's not so much a guaranteed income because the bonds can be called and due to the lower interest rates, for example. So you may have to restructure your bond portfolios for lesser income. Nevertheless, that is tax-free income. Then you've got your Roth IRAs, the giant appeal to Roth IRAs are that the income that you pull off of it are tax-free because you didn't get a tax deduction for the

contributions when you put them in. The thing that people really don't know much about is that life insurance can provide tax-free income as well with the cash-raging relations in the contract. And the reason for that is that life insurance loans, whether done monthly or annually, are tax-free under current tax law. And they've been that way in the tax laws for many, many, many years. and the interest cost on the loans are paid for internally, but you don't pay for them out of pocket. So they provide us a really attractive way to have substantial tax-free income there. You know, and that makes me think to the point of making sure that you're setting it up the right way.

You're like, you can't just take it off the shelf and out of the box and know that all these things are taking care of. tax-free income and loans this and writer that. So when you hear that there's some, you know, some people might be going, I always just thought life insurance was a check after you die. There's some really powerful living benefits and writers and tax-free and income. Tell me more. You can't just go Google that. So I think being able to have this as a piece of the retirement puzzle, not everything,

this is not your whole retirement plan, but it's a nice piece to that. That's just really a power. of these powerful concepts. And it kind of makes me think if you're taking a loan against the policy for income, couldn't you also take a loan against it to pay for your kids college or some of those things where it would actually help you not take cash out of a retirement account? That's exactly right, especially if the market timing is bad to take cash out of a portfolio. It might prove it better not to have to do that to have this safe. bucket there where you can access cash, take care of emergencies if you need it.

Yeah. And it's almost like... I want to add something here. And retired by design, I think we do bring this very unique thing to the table. That is, I'm a planner. I'm not just a money manager. I'm not just an insurance guy. I'm an estate planning and retirement planning for,

professional. And I know how to put together concepts that a lot of others in the investment business don't know how to put together or that are just in the insurance business know how to put together. I can look at it from a holistic approach and look at each person's individual circumstances and objectives and really could put forth some compelling strategies that really complement what we want to get done. You know, that's a great point, Leslie, and it makes me, I'm always, you know, I know I've, I've interjected some of these examples or analogies. I think sometimes men think in analogies, but it reminds me of playing chess. You make a move and you'll keep your finger on the piece and you look around and go, is this, is this the right move? Well, what if my opponent does this or that? Okay, no, this is the right move. I take my finger off. Now the move is done. What you just said is kind of like making a financial move. If you were, only an insurance guy, you'd say you need this and you'd write an insurance policy. And what if that wasn't the best decision overall for retirement? You're saying with your expertise, you're able to keep your finger on the decision, so to speak, and go, okay, what if we were to put this into play? How would this affect your retirement from a whatever perspective, from an estate plane, from a tax? Okay, yeah, all these fit, all these fit. It's not going to create any problems versus some other people.

out there that might just manage money or might just do estate planning, you're bringing it all together to make sure everything is cohesive. Avoiding piecemeal planning is what I like to refer to it. That's a good one. Why do piecemeal planning? Why not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing? Why would you do that? You know?

And I'm sure that you have some clients that say, hey, I've already got an attorney. I work with for state planning. But where I need you is, you know, managing money and insurance. So you can work with the client's existing professionals. You might just want to loop them in on the plan to make sure everyone is on the same page. We have worked with, I have personally worked with most of the state planning and tax attorneys in middle Georgia over my 40 years. They know me well. They know how I work.

They call me oftentimes for ideas. I refer them clients because I believe that somebody has a real estate planning need with their documents. I think they ought to go to a specialist, not a journalist. And so I work very well with the legal profession that specializes in that area. That's excellent. Well, Leslie, this has been so helpful to see how life insurance fits into a properly structured retirement plan. And if someone is interested in learning a little bit more and seeing how some of these aspects could benefit them, what's the best way they can reach out and connect with you? Either phone or email.

Our phone number is 478-329-0339. My email address is Leslie, L-E-S-L-E-E-E-at retire bydesign.com. Excellent. Well, Leslie, thank you so much for coming back. back on. It's been a great pleasure talking with you today. I appreciate your time. You're very welcome. My pleasure. 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.influentialentrepreneursradio.com.