Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Mark Dierolf Discussing Navigating the Transition from Employment to Retirement

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Mark Dierolf has been helping individuals, families, and business owners with insurance and retirement-related decisions since 1983. With more than four decades of experience, Mark focuses on helping people age 50 and older prepare for one of life’s biggest financial transitions: moving from earning a regular paycheck to relying on the resources they’ve accumulated for retirement.His approach begins with understanding the individual—their goals, concerns, income needs, existing retirement resources, and the risks they want to address. Mark helps clients better understand retirement income and insurance options, with particular attention to dependable retirement income, protection from unnecessary risk, and the important decisions that arise as retirement approaches.Mark provides insurance and insurance-related services and works with a variety of insurance and financial companies. He does not provide securities or investment-advisory services.After more than four decades in the business, helping people understand their choices and approach retirement with greater clarity and confidence remains the most important part of Mark’s work.Learn More: https://markdierolf.com/This discussion is for general educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as individualized financial, investment, tax, legal, or securities advice. No specific insurance or financial product is being recommended. Mark Dierolf provides insurance and insurance-related services and does not provide securities or investment-advisory services.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-mark-dierolf-discussing-navigating-the-transition-from-employment-to-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 this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have back with this Mark DeRolf, who focuses on retirement income services, and we'll be talking about I'm leaving my job or retiring. Now what? Mark, welcome back to the program. Right. Well, thank you. And it's my pleasure.

Yeah, that's a good question, right? I'm getting ready to leave my job or I'm retiring. What are some things that I should take into consideration that I've not thought of before, right? Because someone might have finally decided this is the year I'm retiring and there might be a checklist of things that they should be considering to do that maybe people make mistakes on. What are some of those? Well, I'll just give you, too, because we can go on for probably 90 minutes. So, yeah, well, one of them is if you have a pension plan at work where they guarantee you a lifetime income, that is basically an insurance product, basically, that they're guaranteeing payments to you for the rest of your life. What you need to do is weigh very carefully those options. Sometimes there's an option where they'll let you settle with a cash amount, a cash settlement. Well, here's the funds.

You can go ahead and do your own shopping around, decide what you want to do. You can invest it. You can stick it in a bank or you can see someone like myself who can give you something a little bit better without the market downside risk. And then they also will give people the option of, well, if you are going to take the insurance contract that we have, you know, the pension, you know, benefit. Do you want it as just for yourself while you're alive or do you want it for yourself with your spouse getting it as a survivor? And a lot of people will just go with the joint one when they're married. But some people go, and I've seen this quite a bit, will decide, well, the joint one is not enough to live on. So, well, I got to get the, I'll have to get the one that's the higher amount.

I'll get that one. And so if they do that, they need to plan. well, what happens when that income goes away? And so how's their spouse going to survive? Well, one possible solution is life insurance. You can get a life insurance policy. If it works out, sometimes it's not an option. But a life insurance policy could help for that.

But just keep in mind, the older you get, the more expensive it will become. And so if you do get a life insurance policy, you want to make sure you get one that, will last as long as you. And also at the same time, the amount of the benefit will go up or be high enough to where it would cover the need when it comes to the funds that your spouse will need. And then there are some other strategies too if, like I said, the health is an issue and you can't get the life insurance. And then also if you get a cash settlement, that's oftentimes, that often might be a better way to go and reach out to someone like me saying, well, you know, they offer me this pension at work, see, you know, lifetime income.

You know, that's your business. Why don't you tell me what you can do, see if you can give me a better offer than what I got at work and maybe even cover my spouse too. And so, and that would be a smart way or smart to move to make. and so those are the two things to really look at. And, and, but like I said, I've seen it a lot where people will, when it comes to this decision, will not really look at anything other than what the company proposes and even get the cash settlement offer. They'll just say, well, no, I'll just go with the joint or sometimes they'll go with the single. And it's always, you should.

talk to someone like myself before making a decision like that. So you can make you know, I feel like a lot of people at the beginning of their job or career or whatnot, they do the onboarding day one with HR. They sign a bunch of papers. And one of one stack of the papers is the 401k or retirement plan or whatever that is. And they don't know what they're doing. They sign, sign, sign, you know, oh, do you want a 401K or a Roth or whatever they're doing? They just sign.

And then the same kind of a thing happens in the middle. of their career or that job. And they don't really know, you know, well, hey, should I be looking at this or allocations or whatever the case is? And they kind of just assume that, you know, the employer's department is handling it. But then what you're describing here is at the end when they leave. They just make that final assumption. They're just like, okay, you're telling me what to do.

Someone like yourself, people don't realize that an outside person like yourself could make some wonderful recommendations. In addition to what, you know, you were describing on those two points, What are some other things that you from the outside could give recommendations on for someone leaving a job where it might differ from what their company HR department is telling them? Well, by the way, the same problem is with the 401k or 403B or whatever the fund is or they have for deferred savings. The issue is people, while they're working, they often had it in the market where they were subject to market risk. So they would need to look at repositioning some of those funds. So that way they have a more predictable retirement versus having to take the risk of market volatility.

The other issue is when it comes to health care. when it comes to taking care of those needs, we touched on some of those when it came to long-term care. There's also the transition when it comes to their employment to Medicare, for example. Sometimes the companies will offer retiree health, and sometimes the plans are good. Sometimes they're not. And so it's a good thing to talk to someone like myself

that also deals with those types of. matters and can help people with their decision making. Yeah, you know, that's a really good point. And I think a lot of times people don't realize that. And then they go, oh, well, if I was going to do something like that, I'm going to my bank once a week, cashing my paycheck. So I'll just talk to them or my bank sent me, you know, an email that they can help was he.

I'll just talk to them. How can they tell whether an option that they're given like that or if they even do have a conversation with their bank? is actually something that will meet their needs. So they might have a conversation with their company, financial representative. Then they might go talk to their bank. And then they might talk with someone like yourself, an external independent advisor. How should they take those three pieces of advice and put them together into the best choice?

Well, it's, yeah, in a case like that, it's, um, um, um, You should deal with the person that helps you identify problems, not just come over and say, hey, we got this, we got that. You know, you want to buy this? You want to buy that? Someone that helps you actually identify a problem. Like you said, there's a lot of companies, banks, brokers, provide financial products. But there's not too many people out there that really, in my opinion, actually try to listen

and identify a problem and look for a solution. And oftentimes when you're hearing those pitches, you may not even really realize what problems or what issues you have to deal with until you talk to something like me, in which case then we can identify issues that you haven't thought of. Yes, good point.

And sometimes, you know, your gut just kind of guide you, You know, like, does this feel, does this feel right? Does this seem right? So I think that's interesting. You know, you were talking a little bit earlier about some insurance. What about someone in their 60s or older or, you know, getting ready to retire that has a term or universal life policy and they're thinking of dropping it because maybe the premiums are too high? What should they be thinking about in that case? A good point.

One of my services is as a life settlement broker and what that means if, If somebody has a life insurance policy that seems or is no longer of much value, you know, for example, it's become too expensive, or it's a policy that has universal life, for example, that has very little cash value and is at risk of lapsing. What they can do is talk to me, and my services involve identifying whether there are instant. institutions that would be willing to take that policy and actually give them a cash settlement. And so that usually applies to people over 60. They usually have medical issues. And that's usually what the institutions look for. And what that would do is even if you have a term policy,

they may take it over and pay the premiums and pay you for the transaction to transfer it over. And in some cases, people have a policy that has a guarantee, even though it may have no cash value, it works like a term as a guaranteed premium. And they really love those policies. The institutions love those. But there is something I have to point out here is I get this a lot. Many times I've come across customers that have policies like that, actually pretty good policies, but they can't afford them because they're getting too expensive.

And they're up there in your years. You know, they're 60, 70, maybe approaching 80 sometimes. And what happens is they, even though I can find an institution that would give them a settlement for that policy, they get attached to them. You know, I go, well, my husband bought that for me or my dad bought that for me when I was a kid. and they don't want to let it go. But the problem is if they don't let it go, they're going to lose both what their spouse or their father or parent gave them in addition to any possible caste settlement.

And I've unfortunately seen that happen so many times. People get attached to their policies. They don't realize there's a time where maybe the best move, if you want to keep that memory is to get that settlement so you have something to remember that by. Otherwise, you're going to end up with nothing. You know, sometimes we, you know, the old saying, you know, well, it's just the way we have always done things before. You know, in the business world, you're working your job and it's like, why do we do things like this? Well, we've just always done it.

Maybe that's not the best, you know, way to continue. And to your point, like you just brought up, well, just that. That's the policy I've got. And that's the one that I, sometimes getting that extra perspective is super, super important. How do you factor in that decision if you've got a policy that has a guaranteed premium versus one that may be keeps going up? How do you make that call? Well, in what way when it comes to, well, if it's a guaranteed premium, if it's like dropping it or not. Yeah, if it's a guaranteed premium, they, they should try.

try to keep it. But I have a situation where the surviving spouse, she couldn't afford to that. Because, you know, what happens is when a spouse dies, your income usually drops because you lose that spouse's social security. And so, and she really said, look, I couldn't afford that. And I go, well, fine. I got her a really, a buyer who offered a very generous settlement. And what does that look like? What do you mean a buyer with a settlement? And the first thing she said was, well, then that word it. So she basically ended up, keep painted for about a year and a half. And then she ended up just letting it lapse because she couldn't afford it. You know, we couldn't.

And we weren't able to sell. And like I said, I've seen stuff like this happen. So if someone has a guaranteed premium policy, those are good policies. You know, and I think that sometimes people don't even pick up on, you know, the intricacies of the policy that they currently have. They needed a policy. They had it set up a year, you know, decade ago or many years ago and they just keep on,

keeping on. And the only thing that they notice is a change. You know, if it is a guaranteed premium, okay, good. They didn't notice the premiums changed. But maybe they heard from someone like, oh, life insurance is expensive and they start thinking, well, maybe I should drop mine.

What should someone be thinking of or check? checking on before they drop an older policy because you don't want to drop it too soon. Yeah, you definitely want to have someone like myself look at it. And for example, I had a customer just not too long ago. She had a universal life policy that had ran out of money. And the company was saying, well, give us the money or so much to keep in force or we're going to drop it. And her and her husband were in their 60s. And so my suggestion after talking to her and find out her husband's in really good health,

that, you know, in that particular case, since they're still pretty young, they're just about 60 years old, okay? It's probably unlikely to have much of a settlement value to the institutions. And so I told her, well, you know, you might, you know, it might be worth just letting that one go. on the other hand, though, she had a whole life policy that was a small amount that was paying for itself. But the problem is with the whole life policies, the way they work is the cash value goes up and the amount of actual insurance goes down. And since we're talking about small amount of money and she mentioned she really didn't need the life insurance benefit, you know, it was just something that she kind of inherited, you know, was I guess we started long ago. But my suggestion was to, well, it would be better purposed to change that instead of a death benefit for someone else to turn into a living benefit for her and exchange it for a long-term care policy.

In fact, there are several ways you can do that with either another life insurance policy or you can use. a hybrid annuity they call them that have long-term care benefits, which are usually easier to get. You know, you brought up a word I want to kind of highlight for a second because a lot of people think life insurance is when someone dies, that amount of money is paid out to their beneficiaries. That's the death benefit. You used a phrase called living benefit that I think a lot of people don't really fully understand that is available in some types of life insurance. And you mentioned one, you know, living benefit for, you know, like that long-term care.

What are some of the other living benefits that could be beneficial in that type of policy? In any type of life policy? Yeah, in like a permanent type of a policy. What are some of the other living benefits? Usually the living benefits involve, they usually. usually most of your policies nowadays will have a terminal illness rider. It means that if somebody's close to dying, I mean, you have to be pretty close, anywhere, usually about six months, two years to two years.

They will pay out early. But they won't pay the whole thing out. They will pay a portion of it early. That's a very common one. A lot of policies tend to include that now, at least about six months. and then like I said long-term care is one that can be added some policies will add

dread diseases if you have certain types of diseases or illnesses they will pay a partial benefit ahead of time those are the typical living benefits long term care or dread disease you know like cancer heart attack or in which case they never pay up

the, well, it comes to the dread disease wants, they don't pay out the whole thing. When it comes to the, when it comes to the terminal illness, they're not going to, they'll pay out a lot of the policy, but they won't pay the whole thing now to kind of help. But when it comes to long-term care, usually they'll pay out the whole contract amount if possible. So that's usually your best value. And like I said, there's two ways you can get that. You can get that.

If you can't get life insurance, you may be able to get it through. through repositioning some of your retirement funds to, without having to, you know, to be still able to have that, you know, have your funds grow at the same time, help finance the cost of it, which I think that's probably the more economical way to go. Right. Repositioning, you know, not new expense, not new costs, but repositioning. That's a great point. So if someone is interested in just kind of taking a closer look at this, what it could look

like for them and maybe a second opinion. What would be the best way that they could learn a little bit more and reach out and connect with you, Mark? They can reach out to me by calling 831-753-0-507. My website, Mark Dirov, M-R-K-D-I-E-R-O-L-F.com. Excellent. Well, Mark, thank you so much for coming back on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you again. And it was likewise 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. influential entrepreneursradio.com.