Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Scott Edelman Founder of Edelman Wealth Management Group Discussing Risks of Retirement

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

Scott is the President & founder of Edelman Wealth Management Group and manages all aspects of financial planning and employee benefits, providing products and services for investing, retiring, insurance, and estate conservation for individuals, families, and businesses.He has a strong commitment to giving uncomplicated advice and unparalleled service and puts an emphasis on creating lasting relationships with his clients and within his community.A natural teacher and mentor, Scott is a member of Strategic Coach, an entrepreneur business coaching program. He is a thought leader in the financial field and a regular speaker at conferences. Scott is also active with local charities and is on several boards.Scott lives in Bucks County, PA with his wife and children.Learn more: http://www.edelmanwealthmanagement.com/Edelman Wealth Management Group, Inc. Heston Hall 1790 Yardley-Langhorne Road, Suite 202 Yardley, PA 19067. Securities and investment advisory services offered through Osaic Wealth, Inc. member FINRA/SIPC. Osaic Wealth is separately owned and other entities and/or marketing names, products or services referenced here are independent of Osaic WealthInfluential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-scott-edelman-founder-of-edelman-wealth-management-group-discussing-risks-of-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 with Scott Edelman, who's the founder of Edelman Wealth Management Group, and we'll be talking about the five risks of retirement. Scott, welcome to the program.

Thanks, Mike. Hey, I'm excited to talk to you because I know that a lot of times people don't like to hear anything negative. Like, I don't want to hear about risks of anything, retirement. But once you know about certain risks, then you kind of can feel like, well, maybe I'm not as afraid of that because I can put a plan together. So this will be really helpful to teach people about. But before we dive into that, give us a little bit of your story and background and how did you get into the industry?

Mike, we're about to celebrate our 30th anniversary for Edelman Wealth Management. We founded it in 1996. It's been an exciting ride, 30 years, working alongside some of the best people in the industry. I think my team is second to none. You know, the bottom line is it's all about really helping people and helping people succeed. And that was our main motivation for starting the firm. And it drives everything that we do today. We get the greatest pleasure from watching our clients succeed, whether it's, you know, planning for their retirement or education, protecting their family. It's quite a rewarding business. And that makes me think that you tend to treat your people, your clients like family, and, you know, you've got wonderful relationships because you're putting them first. That mentality and that approach is just a value.

First mentality. I love to hear that. Yeah, our clients are friends and, you know, our friends are clients. Yeah. Awesome. Well, let's dive into the topic. Let's talk about some of the risks of retirement. And I find that you say number one is longevity risk. That sounds kind of curious because how can longevity be a risk? Interesting, right? I mean, with modern medicine, people tend to live longer in retirement. You know, we keep them healthy. We keep them. modern medicine keeps them around longer.

So what happens is people tend to still look at, I'll retire at 65, 67, but what they forget about it is what their longevity really is, what their mortality is. And we see that, you know, people are living much longer and we have to prepare for that. You know, that's a, that's a, when I hear you say that,

it makes me think of something, which is still a lot of business or that planning, really is the best educated guess in the sense that we don't know when someone's going to die. We don't know what their lifespan really is going to be, but we do know that given more exercise focus that we see society is and our health care is getting some better and medicines and nutrition and all that we're going to live longer. And I've heard that back in the 50s or 60s, maybe the lifespan was much lower than today. So that expected lifespan going out to later and later, that does mean.

mean that, wow, my money might need to last to 90 versus 70 from back in the day. That's right. And it's interesting you bring that up because our clients see that about me. You know, one of the paramounts for my own personal life is health and fitness. And I'm preparing to live longer. Therefore, I understand how we coach those individuals in retirement because they're going to take better care of themselves and they're going to live longer. So when we prepare for that longevity, we like to prepare early for that. We like to have that conversation early and really deep dive into not only are you going to live longer, what's your quality of life going to be. And our goal is to provide the necessary resources for them to live, but live the way

they want to live. And we talk about the different stages of, you know, the retirement in the earlier years, it's the go-go years when you're really going and doing. And then, you know, you get to the years after that, a little bit slower go years where you're not quite doing as much as you want to. And then kind of the no-go years, meaning we can't really do very much anymore. And we try to prepare our clients for all phases so that while they're in those go-go years, they can live the way they want to live and be comfortable and enjoy themselves because that's what you work for. You know, it's interesting that you bring up, you know, my personal fitness routine and

I'm an example to my clients. I bet you also feel like sometimes you're a life coach of sorts because you sit down and go, what is retirement? What do you want to see retirement look like for you? Are you just going to kick back and play golf all day, every day? Or are you going to fill in the blank? And so I think that when you can start articulating that and going, okay, well, now that you've got that kind of painted, that picture painted, that means we're going to need to

plan for X number dollars a month. And so now it starts bringing all those things into focus. and then the retirement age of X age, whatever age that is, that just becomes a blip. And now it's like, okay, I now want to start this nonprofit or go visit the grandkids or do this or that or the other. So having that picture in place just helps you to start working backwards, right? And helping them make sure they've got the monthly income to take care of those goals. Absolutely. We want them to live the way they want to live.

And you said it, you know, everyone has a little bit different goals. You know, it's between traveling and spending time with their grandkids or, you know, now pickleball is a big thing. They want to play pickleball. They want to join the best pickleball club. They want to lay on the beach. They want to have a vacation home, you know, where the weather's warm and they can escape the cold. Whatever it is, you know, we want to identify that early because the earlier we identify that, the better we can prepare to give them just that. And watching our clients retire and live their best life is fantastic.

I just love that. Yeah. So we talked about longevity risk and how lifespan impacts that. And it kind of is balanced with a lot of good stuff. Like, hey, we're talking about living longer. Hey, we're talking about doing fun stuff. But this next risk that you talk about market risk, that starts getting real, right? Like talk a little bit about how market risk really can punch holes into that goal.

of having a good solid retirement if you don't handle market risk the right way. Well, I mean, that is what people tend to talk about market risk. But the idea is to try to take them away from market risk and understand what some of the other retirement risks are. But as far as market risk goes, we want to put things in place that are appropriate for each client and each client's level of risk. You know, we explain to a client that every investment has some level of risk. And it's really how we build a plan to help mitigate some of that risk. And that could be using different types of products and types of insurance to kind of mitigate as much of the risk as possible. But the market risk is all about having your portfolio being set up properly. And we put our clients through a couple of different things. We put our clients through a risk analysis module. And that helps us to dial in to what the real appetite for risk is and what is appropriate for them. And then when we build in the retirement analysis, we kind of take into consideration what inflation is or what we project inflation to be very conservatively.

And we also build in a conservative rate of return in their portfolio so they can see, based on their portfolio, how long their money will live. The idea is to not be as focused on the market and not be too heavily correlated to the market, but having the right amount in the market so that they can to sustain the growth. And really, you talk about outpacing, cost of living, and inflation. And we cover those things in reviewing the market risk with the clients. But the portfolios that we build, we try to talk to our clients about risk-adjusted return. Every portfolio is going to have some level of risk. risk, and we're looking at what some appropriate returns are for the level of risk that they take.

So that we're always reviewing and talking to our clients and updating their strategy to make sure that it still matches what they're looking to accomplish. And by doing that, we're able to take some of that market risk out of their portfolio and really be able to help them sleep a little bit better at night. You know, and I love, I'm kind of a word smith. I love listening for and using certain words. And you said, mitigate. We can never eliminate market risk, but we can lessen it. We can be aware of what market risk is. We can make sure that as much as possible your portfolio is protected so that you have that peace of mind. Talk a little bit about at what age, like when we start talking about here now, okay, we're, you know, getting into the final years before you start punching the clock the last time at work and you're going to retire, what percent should you have of your portfolio still in the market versus in some more protected type accounts? What is your approach that way?

Well, so I think that's going to be different for every client. Every client is going to be able to handle different levels at risk. So when we do a retirement analysis, what we like to share is the certainty of income. So where are we going to be able to get the certainty of income to prepare for some of the fixed costs that a client will have in retirement? And Social Security is actually an example of certainty in retirement, although Social Security is not really going to solve the problem for most clients. You have to build in other things that create some level of certainty in retirement. What's my paycheck going to look like? And then from there, you can address the other bucket.

which is, you know, portfolio and other investments to help create that longevity, right? Help create the need for additional funds down the road or, you know, to buy the vacation property or, you know, I want to give money to my grandchildren to go to college. So the idea is that build it as a strategy, right? Have investments set up for certainty of income along with, you know, market portfolios or just portfolios that can grow to protect your later years or your wants and desires. Yeah. I mean, I love that you answered it that way because if you had said, oh, every time it's this

percent and that percent, then people might feel like, oh, well, that's just a cookie cutter approach and what about me? But everybody's need is different. And there's not one plan that is right for every single person and every single circle. So that's exactly what I would want to hear as a client is let's just figure out what feels right to you. What, you know, what retirement looks like to one client might be totally different than another client. So it makes total sense is we got to identify the risk and then make sure that portfolio is diversified in the way that makes everyone feel good. And then guess what?

We don't let it. We don't set it and forget it. We check it every so often, every six to 12 months, I'm sure. And like, okay, let's just make sure that everything's working the way that we wanted to work. Well, you have to because circumstances change along the way. So I always say to a client, we create the baseline. Let's build the baseline of what we assume, what you project are going to happen. But it's an evolution.

The plan still has to continue to grow with you, whether you're just preparing to enter retirement or you're in retirement. You have to evolve. You have to adjust. Different things come into the market that we talk to our clients about that we present, that maybe weren't available before. And we talk about how these things affect retirement. So everyone's appetite is going to be a little bit different of how much certainty they want, how much they're willing to build in a portfolio for some future growth.

So everyone's a little bit different. And our approach is to customize because, again, it's really about the client achieving their goals and living the lifestyle that they want. So it could never be a cookie cutter. approach because everyone's goals are going to be a little bit different. Yep, love it. Let's move on to risk number three, interest rate and inflation. I think that sometimes in life, one of the most frustrating things that we can experience is things we cannot control. You know, we can't control what interest rates are going to do, what inflation is going to do.

We feel the impact of it, and we can control how we react to that, and we can control how we prepare for that. But what strategies do you recommend to your clients to make sure that they're safeguard against both of these risks? That is a really good question, because like you said, you know, the buzz is people talk about market and market risk. But inflation risk and interest rate risk is a real risk that people don't talk about quite as much. The best way to prepare for that is, I think I'd mentioned earlier, when we do a retirement

analysis, you have to be able to project some level of cost of living increase or inflation increase so that a dollar today is not a dollar 10 years from now. So you have to be able to prepare if a client says, well, I want to live on X per year. Well, X per year today is not going to be X per year for 10 years. So we build in this inflation factor. And it's usually fairly conservative because I like to err on the side of being conservative so that our expectations are much more reasonable. So when we do a retirement analysis and a plan for a client, we're factoring that in so that they understand how inflation will affect their portfolio so that we do save and put

away the right amount of money to live every year the way they want to live. And that's really the best way because we have no control over what inflation is going it look like we can project and forecast. And certainly, if things aren't as forecast, we're adjusting, and that's why we're meeting with our clients regularly to have that conversation that, you know, interest rate is higher than projected lower. I would say that most times we're pretty good about being conservative. So we don't like to take unnecessary risk on the inflation side. And I believe you asked about tax as well. So, you know, we look at tax and the fact that when we build a strategy, what we're looking at there is you can't necessarily project what

taxes are. It used to be you would say, well, you know, when I'm retired, my taxes could be lower, my tax rate could be lower. That's not always the case. So what you really want to look at is in all tax environments, basically how do we utilize the assets that we have in the most tax efficient manner? So in the overall strategy of investments in financial planning, what we're looking at there is the best ways to decumulate assets, begin to take income in a tax-efficient manner so that our clients are not being slam with taxes that we couldn't project. So you can't control the tax rate, but you can, again, look at how we utilize the assets in a most tax-efficient manner based upon whatever scenario we happen to be in or whatever

tax rate environment we happen to be in during a client's retirement. And just like what you've said before is there's not one solution. So there could be a tax strategy that works for one person that would no way in the world work for someone else for many reasons. But being aware of some of these things. And, you know, like from a broad perspective, if we asked 100 people on the street today, do you think taxes are going to go up in the next 10 or 15 years, we'd probably have everyone say, yeah, because we see that inflation, that the national deficit number is huge. And the only way to combat that is cut government spending, which probably won't happen as effectively as we wish or raise taxes.

So if we know that it's coming, make some good plans for that. And make sure that you've got them put into place sequentially. And I know that one of the things that comes into place is, like, I love that word you use decoenix. accumulation. Like, hey, well, I'm going to accumulate enough money for retirement, but that at a certain stage and age, you need to decumulate and start using it because I now need X number of dollars a month. And when you decumulate or use that money from accounts that maybe have not been taxed before, now all of a sudden you got to deal with that. And that's an annual thing. And knowing how to do it best is really, really important. And the final risk that you talk about is long term care risk.

and talk a little bit about what's the percentage of people that might need some type of long-term care. How prevalent is that? I would say that every day, every year, that percentage goes up. I would say that we do position clients and a lot of asset protection strategies like insurance. And I will tell you the one that we see, the greatest utilization of is long-term care insurance. we talked about it earlier. People are living longer. And modern medicine is keeping us around longer, and technology is keeping them around longer.

And the longer you live, the greater the risk of needing some type of care. And, you know, that care could be assisted living care, nursing care, in-home care. You have to protect your clients for this. As an advisor, you must talk. to your clients about this type of risk. I happen to feel, and our firm takes a strong look at this, one of the greatest risk to a client's retirement is the need for long-term care or health care. Health care is one of the greatest risk to a client. You have to protect for that, and we take that very seriously. You know, you think about college cost. That can impact

retirement, but it typically impacts it at an age where you have plenty of time to recoup and put money back in where you took it out. But long-term care tends to be at the end toward retirement, you know, when you're in retirement. And now all of a sudden, if you didn't plan the right way and you self, you know, pay, you're taking chunks of money out of your retirement accounts that you were hoping and planning to use to survive. Well, now these long-term care costs, they cost a buck or two. The cost of long-term care is ever escalating. And you have to protect because what people aren't realizing is those costs are out-of-pocket cost to you, to the client in retirement. The government doesn't necessarily fund that. Your medical insurance doesn't fund that.

Your medical insurance really funds your medical necessities, your doctor visits, your hospital stay. your prescriptions, just like normal. But what it's not going to provide is for someone to come in and help you in the house, for someone if you're living in a nursing home or assisted living or need some additional levels of care. You have to protect. By protecting and using some long-term care type of insurance or strategy, it protects the assets that you have. You may not be able to protect all your assets because there's premium involved

and there's different strategies. But you're going to have to protect the segment of it because when you think about retirement, if you're married and spouse A, depletes your assets or depletes the family assets because of a long-term care need, and then they pass, what happens to the surviving spouse? Where are they going to get? Just because one needs care and then the other's living,

how do they now support their retirement? And, you know, I think it's unbelievably important if you can take measures to protect you and your spouse and your family for that matter. I think it's ridiculously important. You know, we started off the conversation talking about longevity. People are living longer, which gives you opportunity to do the things in retirement you want to do. Wonderful. Now we're ending it with, yeah, but with that longer age comes. the potential every year is more and more chance that you're going to need some type of long-term

care, whatever it is, assisted, you know, nursing home, memory care, whatever that looks like. But we know that those are premium cost and you have to plan for it. So let's wrap up, Scott, with this. There are many risks to retirement and how they impact you and how you plan for them to mitigate the risk is really, really important. So how can someone listening to this learn a little bit more, out and connect with you and see how that can impact their retirement. So we would always want to talk about these types of strategies and everything that you mentioned.

We have ways to help protect you, our clients, in making sure, again, that they live their retirement, that they so desire. where you can find us online at Edelmanwealthmanagement.com. You can email me directly, Scott at EWMG-I-N-C.com. You can call the office 215-579-5601. And we would love to be able to help you address your retirement and help you live the best way you want to live. Excellent. Well, Scott, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. Thank you, Mike.

The views expressed are not necessarily the opinion of the interview guest and should not be construed directly or indirectly as an offer to buy or sell any securities or services mentioned herein. Investing is subject to risks, including loss of principal invested. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. No strategy can assure a profit nor protect against loss. Please note that individual situations can vary. Therefore, the information should only be relied upon when coordinated with individual professional advice. Securities and Investment Advisory Services offered through Osayek Wealth, Inc., member of FINRA and SIPC. Osaceaic Wealth is separately owned in other entities and or marketing names, products, or

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