Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Scott Leonardi Founder of Complete Solutions Discussing Good Retirement Plans

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Scott Leonardi began serving families in 1995 as a licensed Life & Health insurance agent. In 1998, he founded Complete Solutions, a holistic planning firm dedicated to helping individuals and business owners protect their future. As a Certified Financial Fiduciary® and member of the National Association of Certified Financial Fiduciaries, Scott is committed to putting his clients’ best interests first.A passionate advocate for financial education, Scott co-authored *Don’t Go Broke in a Nursing Home* to help people avoid costly mistakes that threaten their life’s work. His mission is to align insurance coverage with each client’s unique needs and lifestyle.Outside of work, Scott enjoys time with his wife, five children, one granddaughter, and three Dobermans—and continues to campaign for that family boat.Learn More: https://www.completesolutions.insure/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-scott-leonardi-founder-of-complete-solutions-discussing-good-retirement-plans

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 the Scott Leonardi, who's the founder of Complete Solutions, and we'll be talking about what defines a good retirement plan. Scott, welcome to the program.

Well, thanks, Mike. It's great to be on. I'm excited about our podcast today. Yes, I know that you've got a vast amount of experience and talking about a good retirement plan. Probably could be a weekend seminar in and of itself. So we want to just kind of hit all the high levels and hear how you are guiding and educating your clients there. But before we dive into that, give us a little bit of your story and your background and how did you get into the financial services business? Well, and I've been in the retirement planning business for about 30 years now. Hard to believe 30 years past the darn fast, right? But I kind of started thinking about being a planner. Man, when I was like seven or eight or nine years old, and people look at people when I tell people that, they say, what are you talking about? Well, you know, I kind of grew up and kind of a broken home. My dad, unfortunately, was a raging alcoholic. And my mom really had to raise all seven of us kids all by herself. So she really became my first hero. But she taught me a lot of.

of great stuff, meaning you have to go out and really, if you want something, you got to go earn something, you have to work hard. So she taught me a lot of great stuff. But what she taught me really by accident was you got to become educated. You've got to know items and things that can affect you and hurt you. So I seen her made a lot of mistakes, you know, not doing an IRA and not having the proper estate plan documents and just stuff like that. So I kind of prompted me to say, you know what someday I'd like to help people kind of plan. So that's kind of what led me in this 30 years ago. Hardly spent 30 years, right? Yeah, I mean, I know it sounds cliche to say that, but when you talk to people that are in the early 20s, you know, like my kids are 21 to 26 and you tell them, oh, time flies and you sound like the old fogey, but guess what?

It really does. And it encourages us kind of on a side note here, life coaching kind of a concept, but kind of encourages us to maximize the moments. And when you are working with your clients on helping them maximize their moments, guess what? Time does fly fast. And that retirement that you think is someday I'll handle that, well, someday I'll comes fast. And so when you start working with clients, let's talk about a little bit of where you start educating them on what defines a good retirement plan because we want to contrast what's a good plan and what's a bad plan and we want to know what to avoid. Well, Mike, you're absolutely right. I mean, time just skips along.

And most people always think, well, I got time later. I can do it tomorrow. I can do it later. tomorrow and it doesn't it catches right up on and so it's so crucial to have a good plan of action especially when you're getting closer and close to starting your retirement you know it's kind of funny you know i hate to use the word retirement even though it's part of all of our processes but to me retirement sounds like done stop over finished right yeah but realistically if you think about it you work 40 50 60 years of your physical life to finally get a chance to leave that job for the last time

and you enter the period that i call you know you're a great adventure I mean, it's really a time where you should get out there and enjoy life, you know, and everybody's great adventures different. Maybe they're great adventures traveling all over the world. You know, maybe just traveling in the U.S., a lot of cool places to travel in the U.S. You know, maybe just volunteering, you know, giving some time back, why? Just because you can't. You know, doing something fun. Spurred a moment thing. You know, one was the last time you did some spur of the moment travel. We just can't do that. Why? Life just gets it away, right? Maybe just start some new habits or get serious about some old habits, you know? So, you know, that's kind of a cool that has had habits. I mean hobbies, but, you know, habits are good to get those kind of in light, right? But when you finally leave that boss for the very last time, it's important to really have a great adventure. But in order to have a great adventure, what do you have to do? You have to have your ducks in a row. And that comes with a plan, right?

And so what's the plan? Well, you have to kind of figure out where you start, where you're going and kind of where you're going, right? And it's so important to kind of figure it out for retirement. I think most people spend more time planning a trip to Florida than they do planning their financial future. Would you agree with that? I would. And you know, it sounds to me that you act, yes, you know, put the financial advisor retirement planner hat on, yes. But it sounds to me like you have a lot of life coaching kind of conversations with clients to go, hey, what does retirement look like for you?

Because so many times I would suspect you have a client that's, you have a client that's, you know, says, oh, well, I need X number dollars a month in retirement. We want to do this, this, and this. But when you start really peeling it back and going, well, hey, now that you don't have that nine to five, you're going to be traveling more and potentially spending more. And maybe some of those perceptions they came into your meeting with now are changing because what you're doing is unveiling to them what really is going to retirement going to look like. Talk a little bit about how you're helping people articulate that and plan properly.

for that retirement. Yeah, yeah, you're 100% actually correct. People just kind of don't think about some of that stuff and get closer and closer to retirement. And they start thinking to myself, they start thinking, you know, when can I retire? You know, when's the opportune time? When's the opportunity time to take my Social Security? You know, when should I start my retirement plan so I don't run out of money? I mean, those are some of the biggest concerns.

So you really kind of starts back with what I call cash flow. I tell people, basic retirement planning begins with cash flow. What's coming in? What's going out? And most people just kind of run through life, you know, making money and spending money, making money and spending money, making money and spending money. Well, they make enough money that everything gets by, they don't think too much. Well, come retirement time, that retirement, you know, that's a whole different story, right? Because now your job income is stop.

We're now going to figure out what is the cash flow. So what's coming in? How do we maximize what's coming in? Do we have a pension? How do we maximize Social Security? When's the best time to take that? What are my expenses look like? You know, how do I kind of map that out?

And then the key is to talk through all that stuff with what you're going to. to spend, what you want to spend, and how do you get again clear till the end, you know, until the day the Lord comes and get you. And how do you kind of map all that out? You know, I call that a roadmap, right? We use roadmaps all of our life, right? And I call it the great adventure retirement roadmap. You need a roadmap to get you where you need to go. And, you know, I got some great information on my website, duck, duck, plan.com. You know, I tell people get your ducks in a row. Go to duck, dot, dot, plan.com, and you can learn a little bit more about that, again, that great adventure retirement roadmap. But you've got to figure those numbers out.

kind of kind of map it out. It's just so important. And I would even say that, you know, how do you maximize that cash, the inflow of the cash, you know, that kind of thing. But then also there's the aspect of the outflow. And, you know, without getting into too much detail, but what are some of those things that you're going to be bringing to your client's awareness on outflow like expenses? And we're not talking about the grocery bill or the light bill. we're talking about expenses that you can't control like taxes and inflation. Those were just impacted by, but you better plan for them, right? Yeah, you mentioned a great word a minute ago.

Budget, budget. You know, most Americans, you think most Americans work on a budget today? I would say no. People don't work on a budget. No, they don't. They make money to spend money. So one of the biggest things I tell people is, okay, what's your numbers? They look at me kind of funny.

I said, what's your numbers? We want to know two numbers. First numbers, what do you need? what do you need to just pay all your expenses in retirement? And that starts with a budget worksheet. Figuring those numbers out. And then the next number you got to take a look at is, what do you want? Because your need just covers all the expenses.

Well, you want to leave the house come retirement time, right? You want to go out and enjoy life. You want to do some things. So what do you need? And then what do you want? Because there's a lot of things that can affect that number. Once you get those two numbers, let's say you need $4,000, but you want $6,000. Well, again, this is you mentioned, a lot of things can come along that kind of tear up.

your plan, your plan of action, right? That's why I always tell people, you know, when you got a good plan, what can really mess up your good plan? Well, there's a whole mess of things. And you mentioned inflation and taxes and all that kind of stuff. But really, I say there's really four big things. I clump it into four big things. What can mess up a good plan?

You know, first one's a premature death. You know, second one, just taking too much risk. Number three, you know, just kind of like long-term care, the effects of chronic conditions. And the last one's, you know, kind of taxes. That kind of clumps into three, the four big ones. that we really have to kind of worry about. You know?

Yeah. And sometimes people don't think much about premature death, but think about that. If you have a spouse and one of you pass away, you know, sometimes people just think, well, there's no plan in there. Everything will be okay. Well, it might not be okay. How do we plan that? You know, statistically, who passes away first? Us guys, right?

You don't want to say it, but us guys, yeah, men, statistically passed away first. A lot of times I'll talk to people and they say, well, you know, she'll be okay. Are you sure? Yeah, she'll be okay. Well, let's figure it out. I mean, survivor income planning is crucially important. Right? Sometimes people think, you know, when I pass away, you know, our expenses are going to drop.

You know, one of us passed away, our expenses are going to drop to the basement. Well, guess what? Do you think that happens? No, your expenses don't drop to the basement, a little less groceries, a little less car insurance, stuff like that. But guess what? They still want the taxes to be paid. You still need electric coming in and water bill and, you know, car insurance and all that kind of stuff. So you lose some of those expenses, but you don't.

But you lost a lot of income. So planning for a premature death is crucially important. And women, I tell them all time, you've got to make sure you've got to plan in action for, you know, that premature potential death. Right. You're going to get to where you've got to go if somebody passed away less income coming in. Right. And what's the other thing I talk about is, you know, just taking too much risk. Yeah, what kind of risk?

It's kind of another big one. You know, when you take a look at, you know, I talk about, you know, two phases when it comes to your retirement, you know, your retirement savings accounts. You know, the first phase is kind of accumulation, right? You're just running through life and kids and braces and cars breaking down and just life's happening, right? Trying to save much as much money as you can. You'll buy stocks, you'll buy bonds. You'll take some risk. Why?

Well, because you are trying to save some money time retirement time. And when the market goes down, sure, nobody likes that. Nobody likes that. But what's going to happen if the market comes back or goes down? It's going to come back. It's got to go back up, hopefully. Well, guess what? It's got to go back up.

But if you're 30 and 40, you don't worry too much, do you? Because what's on your side? Time. Time. Time. You got plenty of time on your hand. 2008. Mike, what were you doing in 2008?

Same thing I was doing. White, you were working. Right. You're working. You're still working. You're still working. So the market could drop down, not so good. But we were still working.

We're younger, right? So during the accumulation phase, it's a little bit different because we got time on our sign. Well, then you get to that next phase where it's where it's, we're, we're, we're where really it's the preservation and distribution phase, right? I'm getting close to my great adventure. I'm leaving that job. Now I've got to figure out how do I make some money, but how do I preserve what I have, right,

because the market's ups and downs. Now, how do I effectively take that money out and use it, right? To use it. So make sure it lasts again when, you know, kind of clear it will the end. So many times people really don't have an understanding of really the risks they're taking with their retirement account, especially in today's environment.

And I think that once you, You brought up some great points about those, you know, when you're in your 30s and 40s. You got plenty of time, runway, before retirement. So you can take on a little bit more risk. But at some age, whatever that is, 50, 55, 60, you better start making sure your portfolio is de-risked because you don't have time to recover from that. And I would venture to say that the people that don't do that and take a hit, maybe, you know, oh, the market dipped, they want to get back to where they want to. were because it's like, you know, one of our main motivators in life is, you know, not losing something we have. So you take that hit of whatever, 10, 15 percent, and you then get tempted

to take on a little bit, even more risk to get back up there. But then what does that do? It's like that, you know, vicious cycle. It's like you took a more risk and then now you could lose even more. So being proactive and knowing that, okay, I'm at now that certain age my advisor told me about, let's start, you know, making sure we've got some of that, you know, risk taking. Uh, uh, taking care of. It is, I've often heard of this example. Maybe you, you can expound on it. But kind of retirement is like, you know, climbing that mountain. But then the hardest part is coming back down the mountain. That's when literally people that are mountain climbers, you know, have the problem. Well, sometimes, you know, like you've said, how do you take

your money out of these accounts and all of those things? So talk a little bit about like there's never really a time to catch your breath. You've always got to be making sure that plan is working for you the way that you had intended. it. Yeah, you're exactly right. It kind of reminds me of the story when I first got started in the business a long time ago, almost 30 years ago, went out to one of my very first appointments. You know, I didn't know much of anything, but I had some good lines and I dressed, dressed appropriate. I looked great. I met this farmer. And we're talking through, and I just started talking about risk. And again, I really didn't know what I was talking about, but I just started talking about risk. And I said, do you think you're taking too much risk? And you look to me kind of funny. He goes, you know, risk is like, risk is like being a pig at the trough, Scott. I'm like, what do you mean being a pig of the trough? He goes, well, he goes, he goes, everybody wants to be a pig at the trough. We all want to get everything we can get. We all want to be a pig at the trough. He goes, but what happens when the pig stays at the trough too long?

And I say, well, pig gets full, pig gets bigger, what? He goes, no, the pig gets slaughtered. And I thought, my goodness gracious, what an analogy. We all want to be a pig at the truck. We all want the returns, but we forget. We have amnesia of the 2008, the 9-11, the dot-com bubbles. We have amnesia that stuff. And that kind of leads you right into what we call sequence of returns.

And, you know, everybody hears of sequence of returns, but I don't think a lot of people really grasp, but what does that mean? Well, sequence of returns is nothing more than do we have multiple years of negative returns or multiple year of positive returns, right? So positive returns are great, but what if we have multiple years of negative returns? Well, let's compare that to the first period of time with your retirement account. Remember, I said that was accumulation. Let's just call that age 50 to age 65. During the working years, 50 to 65, that's 15-year period.

period. During that period, it doesn't really matter if we have some negative sequence of returns in the beginning in the middle or even in the end because guess what? We're going to average that whole 15 year period down and the return is the return. It's the average, right? Well, now we get into that or close to the preservation, the distribution phase, our great adventure is beginning, right? Now sequence of returns are a lot more of a potential issue, right? Because what if one or two years before or two, three years into our retirement We have some negative, two, three, four years of negative sequence of returns. Now all of a sudden those negative sequence of returns have a really adverse effect on the longevity, i.e. of our money, which again makes us worry, we're going to run out of money. Well, what's the big problem? Well, and if you've got to withdraw a certain amount of money to live on in a year when the market's down, then that's a double whammy. That's a double whammy. Exactly right. Now, the first problem is, first of all, we don't know when the negative returns are going to be, right? If I mean when all the negative returns are going to be, I'd be a bazillionaire.

We'd have this meeting down to my house in the Caracas Islands. I'd fly you down. We'd have lobster, right? But I don't know when those negatives are going to. Neither are you. We don't know. And the next thing, like you said, we're in that retirement. We're in that distribution phase.

We're using some of that money. So now what happens? If every account we have is volatile, meaning it can go up and down with the market and we're pulling money out when the market's down, what should we? we be doing? We should stop pulling money out. We should stop because the market's going to hopefully come back. But a lot of times we can't. Why? We're in retirement. We're using that money. So we really got to take a look at our portfolio and say, okay, how can we lessen the risk? Now, that doesn't mean pull every nickel of your money out of the stock market and dump it into a savings account. That's not what that means.

But we need to really analyze what risk can we take. Can we lower some of the risk? Can we keep fees as low as we can? and can we use what I call volatility buffers? Volatility buffers, right? So what's a volatility buffer? Well, it's something that we can use that isn't affected by the market. Savings accounts and CDs and annuities and stuff that can have a potential return,

but it's not going to have any loss because of a market downspend. Right? So if we've divided up our portfolio with these volatility buffers and we've still got money in the market, when everything's up, guess what? We can pull money for that,

wonderful river cruise in Alaska or whatever, we can pull money out of any of the buckets. But when the market's down, where should we pull our money from? Those volatility buffers and not pulled out of the market money because hopefully that's something to come back. So positioning, that's crucially important. That's crucially important. And to accomplish all of that, you have to have what we've been talking about, a plan, meaning where are you now?

Where do you want to be? And then when you put that plan into place, I'm confident that you would recommend that you don't wait 10 years to just double check and make sure everything's good. You come in every six months or every year and go, okay, let's just see. Has anything changed in your personal life, your professional life? Let's see what the markets are doing. Let's make sure. And you just always keeping tabs on that because things can change.

Even whether it's, you know, the rate of inflation or, you know, maybe the markets did make a move. So how often are you recommending that your clients come in and just kind of double check the plan and make sure everything is set. Yeah, minimum annually, minimum. But money of my clients come in every six months. And some people are a little worrisome in the beginning of our relationship. Maybe it will come in every quarter. But you're right.

The key is getting that plan in place, which is a great adventure retirement roadmap, getting your roadmap in place. And again, you can't leave the office and disappear for 15 years, come back in and be mad because the plan didn't work. I didn't see it. You got to come in. We have to talk about the plan. We have to adjust it with life.

Maybe we had a premature death. Maybe we have had some market loss. We have to adjust. You know, the other thing that messes up a good plan, I mentioned it a second ago, but laundrom care. You know, we have an issue with extended care, health care. You know, I always tell everybody in the future, you're going to need more income. Why?

This cost of health care and prescription drugs and God forbid you need home health care, nursing, home care, that kind of stuff. Those are some big numbers that can kind of eat away at that portfolio, which lessens a chance of it, the single and clearly end. You know, and I already mentioned taxes. you know, taxes should be a part that we're talking about all the time. How do we reduce the taxes? Pay what we owe, but kind of pay as little as we possibly can to meet all the requirements.

But again, not pay too much. It's amazing how people pay too much because they don't learn. I think a lot of people think about taxes on a surface level, meaning, oh, you know, when I take all my money out of all of my retirement accounts, I want to make sure that taxes are, you know, minimized. But in reality, at a certain age, you're forced to take. out chunks of your money from different retirement account for those required minimum distributions. So you're going to start paying and having to deal with taxes, you know, sooner than maybe some people think. So talk a little bit about some of those required distributions and what happens

if someone goes, oh, I sold my RV last year. I'm flushed with cash. I don't need to take the money out. Well, that could be a problem. Yeah, you're absolutely right. So we've got to plan through that process. You know, tax planning, I think, should be something we should be doing on an ongoing basis. You know, it drives me crazy when I hear people talk about, you know, tax, you know, these tax loopholes. There's all kinds of tax loopholes. You know, there's no tax loopholes. There's rules and regulations in the tax code. There's rules and regulations in the tax code. And if you learn about those, guess what? You could probably take advantage of some of them and pay less taxes. Now, we might not be able to take the same tax loopholes, lose it all the wealthy people do. But again, we have to learn about that stuff because at times in the future, we'll have to start

pulling that money out. And like you mentioned, required minimum distribution. Well, it used to be at 70 and a half you had to start pulling that money out, at least the minimum amount, pay tax done, and then you can do whatever you want. But then it started in changing, and now it's up to 73 or even up to 75 based on when you were born. So you have to pay attention to that to be sure you're pulling up the minimum amount because if you don't, it's a 50% IRS penalty for not pulling those required minimum distributions out. So that should be part of your whole plan, not a, oh, my goodness gracious, I forgot to pull. the money out or oh my goodness gracious i got to pull it up today because i forgot about it that should be part of the plan because it doesn't matter the government will say black or white yes or no did you do it

and if the answer is no there's your penalty and that's a big chunk that's lost so the bottom line is have a plan have someone that's working with you that knows how to ask the right questions put the right things in place check and make sure that everything every six months to a year is working as it should and then at that point you can breathe this eye of relief to know that, hey, as long as things keep going the way we're planning here, we've got that good blueprint in place. So let's wrap up, Scott, with these great, great points you've been making on a good retirement plan. How is, what is, like, a final thought that you would like to wrap up with? And then what's the best way someone can learn more about what you guys offer and reach out and connect with you. Well, yeah, the key is, again, it boils down and having a plan.

And most times people just don't. So I encourage people to go to my website, duckduckplan.com, learn about that great adventure retirement roadmap because it helps you understand what you need to put in place to get this thing mapped out. So I'm happy to get you some information and help you understand that. But you've got to understand cash flow, what's coming in, what's going out, and again, all those multiple things that can affect that cash flow. The key is having a good plan and working through it. So again, you can get clear to the end and not run out of money. That's just kind of the key, right? Yep.

And then what's the best way that someone can learn more about what you guys are doing? Well, again, go to duck, duck, d'clock.com. It was our website, or you can actually reach us at 937-8-898-2273, or complete solutions. Again, but don't hesitate to get on our website. I do some financial podcasts on there, and a lot of financial podcasts. You want to shoot yourself in the head after about 10 minutes of it because it's kind of boring and not too exciting. But I try to make mine kind of fun and exciting and make you smile. If you're smiling, you're paying attention.

If not, you're sleeping and nobody's learning anything. You got it. I got some podcasts right on my website. You can kind of listen to it. But you don't have to put in your email address. You don't have to sign up for enough. You just click and listen, which is a beautiful thing. Perfect.

Scott, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you today. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate your opportunity to be on your podcast. It was fun. Thanks much. 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. www. Influential EntrepreneursRadio.com.