Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Roy Snarr, Founder of Roy Snarr Retirement Solutions Discussing Lifetime Income

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

Roy Snarr specializes in asset protection, Long Term Care and retirement planning and is the host of Safe Money and Income Radio, broadcasting throughout central Texas. He is sought after nationally and helps people across the country with life insurance, long term care and guaranteed retirement income planning. Roy is a CFF (Certified Financial Fiduciary) a LACP (Life and Annuity Certified Professional) and a NSSA (National Social Security Advisor)destinations and is a proud member of MDRT: top 1% of licensed financial professionals in the United States. He is easy going, family oriented and loves meeting new people.Learn more: http://www.roysnarr.com/DISCLAIMER: I do not work for any type of government officeInfluential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-roy-snarr-founder-of-roy-snarr-retirement-solutions-discussing-lifetime-income

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 as Roy Snar, who's the founder of Roy Snar Retirement Solutions and we'll be talking about lifetime income. Roy, welcome back to the program. Thank you, Mike. I'm happy to share about lifetime income, one of my passions in life.

Well, you know, it kind of, I always like, you know, those games where it's like, when I say this word, tell me the first thing you think about. And it's really interesting when you hear like a phrase like lifetime income. It's almost like you take this deep breath and go, yeah, that just feels right. That just sounds right. But if you were to ask 100 people like, okay, well, what is it? How do you create it? and what does it do for you, then they'd be like, I don't know, but it sure sounds good. So define what actually is lifetime income.

What does it really mean? I'll give you a brief history and a background of it. Lifetime income is just a paycheck for life. It's a guaranteed stream of income that comes in. So when we reference lifetime income, we're looking at a contractual guarantee. The easiest, most basic way to relate this for 99.9% of the entire population is Social Security. You are eligible for 100% of your primary insurance amount at your full retirement age. You see, Social Security is a giant annuity.

It just means payment. It dates back to the Roman Empire. They used to pay the soldiers annual for their services. And so annuities have been around for a very long time. And at their core, they just mean payment for life, just like a pension for an employer. And, you know, I think a lot of times people are like, oh, don't start your business because we need that solid paycheck, that salary. Well, that sounds fine and good until they change your job. They lay you off.

The company gets bought out. The company goes under. So a lot of times that salary is not the lifetime income, solid, you know, source that people assume that it is. But it's that pension. It's that contractual guarantee. To me, that that's what, you know, nails it on the head. that it's a contractual guarantee. So talk a little bit about why that contractual guarantee of lifetime income is so important

in when you're starting to work with someone, talk about retirement planning. Retirement's all about cash flow. How much cash flow can we generate on a guaranteed basis? That way we can pay for all of our expenses, go travel, do everything that we want to do. That's the number one basis we want to look at. You could have, you know, $10, $20, $30 million in assets, but maybe they're illiquid and you can't touch them. Well, that's not going to help pay the bills. You need to have cash flow.

And if you look at it, just from a scientific and mathematical perspective, there's been numerous research done on this by big names like Black Rock, Ernst & Young, Boston Retirement School, all these different big publications, PhDs. The happiest people in retirement are those with pensions. And what I always love to do, I'm sitting down and meeting with people. I say, look, like say if I was talking to you, Mike, I'd say, Mike, if you could go back into time and your employer, let's assume that you just had the same one, they offered you a 401k, a pension, or the opportunity to have a 401k and a pension, what would you choose? And the overwhelming majority of people will choose the latter. Well, I kind of like the idea of a 401k, but I like the idea of a pension or we'll get people to say a pension. because it's the guaranteed check.

You don't have to worry about it. People with it scientifically live longer. They are happier. They don't have to flip on the news and worry about what's going on in politics, world wars, economy. They get their guaranteed check. So number one, it's a peace of mind. Number two, there's a lot of math behind it that actually helps protect and preserve the family's wealth and legacy, which we can get into. You know, I want to touch a little bit on what you just kind of mentioned in passing, but, and I think it's so powerful, which is when you have guaranteed in lifetime income, guarantee, right, then you kind of have that peace of mind, which leads to something super important.

It actually is documented research to show that people live a little bit longer because you're not watching the news going, oh, my word, the stock market went down or up or, oh, I got my portfolio and it's down. or up or inflation. When it's guaranteed income, it's like, it's coming in. And your friends are running for the hills and you're going, I didn't lose anything because it's guaranteed income. Talk a little bit about about that kind of longevity and that peace of mind that comes because that's a quality of life benefit. It is 100%. And it all comes down to stress levels. I mean, if you look at anybody, if they're super stressed out, they're going to live shorter. I mean, stress creates dis-ease disease. It reduces cortis. It increases cortisol. all levels. I mean, there's so many health-related issues with stress. And the goal is to

eliminate that. Like, during the working years, raising kids, the nine to five grind or whatever they may have been doing, you know, it's a stressful time frame. In your later years, you know, you've worked your whole life. You want to be relaxed and actually enjoy it. I mean, anybody can Google, hey, if I have a pension, what's the statistical likelihood of me living longer? There's plenty of research out there that's not coming from me. It's just, it's, it's. It's, it's, it's, It's from PhDs and big institutions. And the evidence is there. And it comes down to the type of person.

Some people are very risky. They want to say, hey, I'm going to put my entire life savings into Bitcoin and hope it all works out. And maybe they're right. And then you have other people to say, you know what? I've worked this long. I want to help preserve it and protect it. And I don't want to have to worry about it.

And that's how the perfect person that we work with, they don't want to have to worry about what's coming in to their checking. account every single month. They want to know with certainty that they have this check coming in. All their bills can be paid. And that allows them to not only travel, take care of the grandkids, but just be overall more relaxed and to have their other assets grow and appreciate from them. Can you imagine going into retirement and you're constantly stressed out, worried about how much you should be taking out of your investments, if it's going to last you? There's so many external factors that we cannot control that can affect the retirement portfolio. You can take that whole

mitigation of risk out by implementing just a small portion of guaranteed income. In fact, through all the degrees that I have in designations in finance, every single one of them always roots back to have enough income to cover all of your fixed expenses. That's the number one rule. And most people, they just don't have that because there's a lack of education and awareness or there's a negative stigmatism around guaranteed income. And a lot of that negativity stems from outside marketing companies that are just trying to manage people's money and not help them with a quote unquote stagnant plan of just a stream of income. Yeah. That's a good point. Now, I know that asset allocation is a big topic, but how do you have?

help your clients decide how much of their portfolio should be allocated to like this lifetime income concept and maybe that changes depending on what their age is or the risk tolerance or whatever but where do you approach to that conversation do you say oh you have X number of dollars put 100% of that into lifetime income strategies yeah so the planning comes in we first look at social security because that's already an annuity a guaranteed paycheck for life so let's get the most out of there, and then let's look at the shortfall. You already have this check that's going to be rolling through the doors. How much more do you need to cover all your expenses? Maybe they only need another thousand dollars a month. So what we do is we run a calculator that compares

all of the lifetime income plans. And we work with over 75 plus different firms that have literally over 2,500 different options to choose from. And we use software technology to actually show the client transparently the number one company that's going to pay them the most. And then we put into the software, they only need $1,000 a month. And so we put into the software, how much principle does it take to generate $1,000 a month in lifetime income? And that may only represent 1% of the portfolio, 5% of the portfolio. To answer your question a little bit further, most people don't go over 50%. And I don't necessarily recommend them doing that. The average client that we help, it's generally 20%. So you think of a pie chart of all the retirement assets, whether it's a million or half a million,

let's just say a million for easy numbers, $200,000 of that 20% may be able to generate enough guaranteed lifetime income to complement the Social Security and pay for all of their bills. And then they have the rest of the money invested either more aggressively or it's for charity or it's for legacy purposes. It totally frees up the portfolio. And there's some other reasoning behind having a stream of income that we can get into as well, that the government is going to force people to take withdrawals from. Yeah, that's a really good point. And I mean, let's go ahead and merge into that topic right now because I don't like to be forced to do anything. And especially when you layer in the word government, you know, what does that bring into the conversation?

Well, we all have a business partner in life, whether we want them or not. It's the IRS. And so what the IRS does is they say, hey, look, if you have a 403B, a 457, a simple IRA, SEP IRA, regular IRA, and the list goes on, everything except for a Roth, we're going to legally force you to take some distributions, and we want to click the income tax on those distributions. It's called a required minimum distribution. And that kicks on for most people at age 75 now with the new changes, depending on what year you're born, it could be 73. But essentially, the government's going to make you take roughly 4% to start with of your entire IRA balance. So let's say you had a million dollars in an IRA.

They're going to say you need to pay income taxes on $40,000. Now, there's other ways that you can donate that to charities and stuff. For most people, they're going to need the cash flow. So we'll keep it simple in this example. They have to withdraw $40,000. Well, what happens if you go into a recession? So that 4% may end up equaling 8%. Is there anywhere that you've ever heard that taking 8% of your portfolio is safe?

No. So the annuity or lifetime income plan helps mitigate that risk. Because let's ask ourselves a question. If we're going to be forced legally to be taking these distributions of paying income taxes, wouldn't we want it to be automated and guaranteed? In addition to that, if that 200,000 can yield an 8% capital. flow rate for a couple, that's a, you know, if that's double of what the RMD is. So IRS also allows you to have multiple IRAs. They don't care where the RMD money comes from. So oftentimes,

Mike, there are people that do not need lifetime income. They have pensions. They have plenty of assets. They have real estate. But they know about this looming future of an RMD. They will use a small portion in a lifetime income annuity simply to help fulfill the RMD obligations on the rest of their portfolio. So there's different ways that you can structure this for higher net worth people that don't necessarily need the cash flow, but they have a legal obligation in the future through the RMD system that they utilize the annuity for on the fulfillment side. You know, I think that there's so many times that people go, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm good to go.

And then when you bring up things like, oh, well, have you factored in inflation? have you factored in taxes? Have you factored in required minimum distribution? Then they're like, no. So I think you tying that together and I know that most people couldn't go, oh, cool, thanks for that tip. I know how to do it. They now go, that's interesting information. I need now some guidance on how to do it. But knowing that that lifetime income annuity can help with that required minimum distribution is huge. I've often heard it said like all these accounts, like the IRAs where you've put your money in pre-tax and now it's grown without being taxed. It's like the government is sitting there like the coyote, you know, in front of the groundhog

hole. We're waiting for it to come up to, you know, it hasn't been paid the taxes. So we got to start getting those taxes. They're ready to go. Well, you got to have a plan for that. You do. And one of the biggest things that we can't control, let's look at health care costs. You know, the average, if you look at Medicare Part B premiums, everybody thinks Medicare is free. It's definitely not.

They sell you on the fact that Part A is free, but you've already paid your taxes on it your whole life, so is it really free? But Medicare Part B has a carried premium with it, and it can be extremely high depending on your income and other assets and net worth. But even for most people that earning less than $200,000 as of 2024 as a couple, I mean, you're still paying a base rate of like $185. And that rate's going to most likely go up. And in fact, they're already talking about adjusting that rate moving forward per couple. And so that's an uncontrolled bill that we have to face. And then you have to have a supplement. You have to have other ancillary plans that cover in the gaps.

And so the health insurance side of things and the Medicare costs are extreme. And it's something that a lot of advisors, you know, reviewing thousands of financial plans by competitors, I rarely see a health care calculator in there. And that's another reason where the guaranteed lifetime income can come into play, where you can adjust the income of the lifetime to be another. to cover the bills today, plus a little extra to cover for future hikes. Because just as you mentioned, going to the grocery store today versus 10 years from now, the bag of chips is going to cost more. Well, health care is also going up. And now you are forced to pay that. You don't have to buy that

bag of chips. And so we want to take into consideration all of these factors to really design a plan because we can't control the outcome of the market. We can't control the health care premiums. But what we can do and what we can control is a contractual guarantee to at least provide income that will hopefully cover basis throughout retirement. Because you know what? You're going to spend it anyway. Wouldn't you want it guaranteed? And with lifetime income annuities, you can literally double your money in retirement. And what I mean by that, depending on the time that you're listening to this and what rates are, as of today, 100,000 can yield you an 8% cash to cash return in the form of cash flow.

okay and so if you're told not to take more than 4%, but you have a lifetime income annuity that gives you 8,000 a year per 100,000, well that's as if you had 200,000 dedicated to income. I just allowed you to invest way more into the markets, do whatever you want with your money by doubling it in the form of cash flow. And so that's the conversation we have with people because the narrative has steered people away from these annuities because they can't leverage the funds, they're fixed assets, There's no ongoing management fee. The revenue is dramatically lower as an agent or advisor selling an annuity than it is having a lifetime client that's involved in the markets.

You know, and not to throw rocks at the enemy, but we know that the big guys on TV and radio, they do poo-poo on annuities. And sometimes people remember way back in the day annuities had a little bit of a black guy because of misconceptions. So how have those misconceptions kind of been remedied in recent years? Because I know that people think, oh, well, annuities are just, and that was something that they remember from a couple decades ago. Yeah, exactly. 100%. There's a lot of misconception, misunderstanding that's out there. And I always encourage people, look, there's always an opinion.

There's always an angle. And you want to be able to get non-biased information. have a basic understanding so you can make your own decision. I mean, at the end of the day, annuities are not for everyone, but for the vast majority of Americans, they can add a huge value at. You just don't want to listen to a lot of the talking heads online

because a lot of the talking heads are people that have very popular podcasts or YouTube shows. There's an agenda there. Yeah. They paid sponsorship dollars to give referrals to people to manage money, or they get a percentage of the money being managed. There's always an angle. So as long as you can understand those angles and the angle, the person trying to position you into an annuity and have non-biased information, make the decision

on your own. But ultimately, besides opinion, besides whatever somebody else says, if you just look at the math, it's almost impossible to mathematically beat these. And this is why we actually get referrals from some of the largest financial advisors and investment institutions in the entire world on their high net worth clients to help mitigate some of these risks because they don't have a specialty in it. Yeah. And, you know, I think one of the fears that people have, probably one of the biggest fears, I think, is what if I outlive my money? And I think the lifetime income solves that fear because you were talking about the gap, you know, of $1,000. Well, maybe we're going to structure it where you've got, you know, $1,400 that's coming in so that the $1,000 is covered. But a couple of

those little unknown things, we're not going to get caught by surprise. But talk a little bit about how of this will also help the fear of outliving someone's retirement money. 100% correct. The biggest thing is, is that people underestimate how expensive life really is, especially in retirement. They're used to a constant paycheck. And they may say,

I have $1 million or $2 million and I'm 65, I'm going to retire. Great. You have nearly 30 years of life expectancy left. How is that going to last? Because if we have a duplication of the last five years of the marketplace, every single year moving forward, you'd be totally fine. But what if it doesn't? And everyone sells you on it always comes back. There's ups and downs. But what if we go through

the lost decade period? Where in 2001, the S&P was at around 1,500 points. And then it went down and went up, went down, went up. It didn't balance back out until 2013 at the same starting point. Anybody can look that up is called the Lost Decade. And it's like, what if we go through that again? The biggest thing that we have working against us is time. If these clients are 35 years old, who cares? Let it ride. Go to Vegas. Buy Bitcoin.

It doesn't matter. You have plenty of time. But if you're 65 years old, can you afford to have a 10-year hit of a roller coaster, emotionally, stress, all of that, and hope and pray that your money is going to actually last? Or would you much rather mitigate that risk because no one can predict the future and at least have enough income to cover all your basis? and know that you have enough monthly income that you can pay all your bills for the rest of your life. And if we go through a big correction in the markets, which we will, we just don't know when,

that you're fine. You can still live your day-to-day life. Or would you rather put it all in one basket and hope for the best and take somebody else's word on it? You know, one of the biggest challenges is people, they have a close relationship with their advisor. And I love financial advisors. There is a time and a place for them. And it's good to have a financial advisor. But a good financial advisor is going to understand that they are not the number one person that knows all the secrets. Because if they did, they'd be on a private island. And so a good advisor should be telling people, look, let's get you enough lifetime income. Let's manage the rest the best that we can.

And that's the way to do it because no matter what happens, Mike, no one is going to pay the bills for these clients except for themselves. It's based on their own decisions they make today to take care of themselves. So can you imagine somebody retiring at the peak of 2001.com bubble crash? And then going through that downturn and then it spikes back up again and then 2008 happens. How comfortable do you think they would have been during that time frame? And most people have amnesia to the historical market trends and the cyclical cycles. But I encourage everyone, don't take my word for it. Just Google it and look it up.

What do you think is happen? What if it does happen like this again in the future? How would you feel? And if you made some moves now to move some of your retirement fund, into guarantee lifetime income and things didn't, you know, change, at least you're protected. There was no downside to that. You know, but the downside of not doing something is what you just explained. I think that's such, you know, hearing you explain it that way is such a safe approach to

making financial moves. And I think that a lot of people resonate with that. So Roy, this has been really eye-opening and enlightening talking about lifetime income. If someone is listening to this, go on, show me the way. as well, show me some options. What's the best way they can reach out and connect with you? The best way to connect with me is just by simply Googling my name, Roy Snar, S-N as a NATO, A-R-R. My company is Roy Snar Retirement Solutions.

We focus on asset preservation and lifetime income strategies. So Social Security is obviously a part of that, helping to maximize the portfolio to give you enough lifetime income. We do free consultations. it's not a sales pitch. We do all education. And through that education, if it makes sense for someone, great. We'd love to be that person to help represent you. If it doesn't make sense, at least you got to learn something.

That's how we take our approach with every client. Awesome. Well, Roy, thank you so much for coming back on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. You too. Thank you. 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 EntrepreneursRadyo.com.