Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Shawn Maloney Founder & CEO of Retire Wise

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Shawn Maloney, is a certified retirement planner, fiduciary, national bestselling author, and the owner and CEO of Retire Wise, LLC. With over twenty years of experience and a passion for helping people be ready for retirement and retire happy, He has dedicated my career to ensuring that individuals are equipped with the education and tools they need to grow and protect their retirement savings. It is also just not all about the financial side, and he helps and coaches people on the non-financial aspects of retirement as well, to get a more complete plan. Utilizing his transparent and comprehensive approach to planning, known as the “Retire Happy FrameworkTM,” Shawn helps to provide their clients with peace of mind about their future. In addition to helping people with retirement planning, he finds solace in spending time with his family, giving back to the community and church. Join him on this journey towards a fulfilling retirement, and let’s make the most out of every day!Learn more: http://www.retirewisepro.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-shawn-maloney-founder-ceo-of-retire-wise

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 us, Sean Maloney, who's the founder and CEO of Retire Wise. Sean, welcome to the program. Hey Mike, thanks for having me on, brother. Hey, you are welcome. I'm excited to talk to you because I always love looking at someone's business name or website address or email address and looking at, you know, the message behind that. And, you know, how much clearer can you get than let's help people retire wise.

So I want to learn all about what you do and how you do it, but get to get started first with your story and background. How did you get into retirement in financial services? Yeah, no, great. question. It's funny. For me, it goes way, way, way back. People after left when I say this. It started for me way back in the eighth grade playing the stock market game before the internet was even invented, right? It was all paper. Real stock market, but you do it on paper. And it just got me hooked at a young age. I went to, you know, college did all that typical thing, you know, learning the ins and outs of industry from the foundational standpoint, but got that bug at an early age. And through life, you know,

after graduate in college, went to work for different advisor firms and those kind of things. Learned a lot over the years. Took a little detour for a minute and then came back into the industry. I've always been in finance, but it took a little technical turn there.

But what really focused me in is one, starting my own company, one, so we can act independently and serve people to the best of our ability, not being tied to an individual company. But then when you look back at, you know, what happened, you know, all through the different dips in the markets over the years and what it impacted people's retirement. You know, we really just feel we do a service by helping people, but we say retire happy, you know, with that right wisdom, right knowledge.

So they can enjoy their retirement. So while we do all the other stuff, we love coaching and helping people with that retirement journey. You know, you mentioned a word that stuck in my mind down. I want to go a little bit deeper to really bring out the true value of it, independent. And I think that sometimes people don't get the full feel for what benefit that brings to them. So talk a little bit about the difference between working for a big name that you see on TV or whatever and like, oh, yeah, I work for this company. But maybe that's a little bit limited in what you can offer your clients. But then when you started your own firm and now you're independent, what are some of the benefits that brings to your clients?

Yeah, so it really helps us, you know, to be a true fiduciary, meaning acting in the best interest of our clients. So we're not tied to one set of products, one set of avenues. We're able to properly analyze, you know, a person's or family's needs and match it up with the right services, the right, match it up with the right products, right investments, right plans, you know, and that means, if that means looking at, you know, 50 to 60 different companies, you know, so it be it, and then we whittle it down. So I think it's really the only true way to properly serve each individual's needs, right? Because everybody's plan for retirement, everybody's financial plan, everybody's life is different. It's not a one size fits all. So while I try to pigeonhole it into one individual company, this gives us the flexibility to best serve our clients is the easiest way to say it. Yeah, that really is huge.

And I've heard people in many industries, like the mortgage industry or financial services, say, you know, I was at XYZ company. and I kept having clients come in to say, man, I wish I could do X, Y, Z, and I was so frustrated because I didn't have a product for that. And as soon as I went and started my own firm, now all of a sudden, all of these people that needed this, whatever the product was, I now have it. And I can, you know, put this puzzle piece in here and put this other one here and really structure a nice plan. And I know that when you're talking about retiring safely and with wisdom and all of the things that you do for your clients at happy, risk is a big, big factor. And anytime you have money, quote, unquote, in the market, there's risk. So talk a little bit about how you serve your clients to teach them and educate them on risk and how you help them, you know, keep that under control. Yeah, no, it's a huge part, right? I mean, we look at

the retirement planning process of trying to, you know, remove or mitigate six main risks in retirement. Part of that is one, we want to educate. You hit it on the head and why we also have in our name is educating people first. We want to make sure everybody understands what it means, you know, with the plans that we're putting together, what all the different avenues mean. And what the taking the risks off the table, just like your portfolio is going to be diversified when you're accumulating, when you have a retirement plan, you're not just going to have one kind of account.

You're going to have multiple type of accounts because there's not one account out there that can solve all the different risks that are out there. So we want to mitigate or remove those risks as much as possible, which means to diversifying the type of accounts that you use. So going back to being an independent as well, that enables us to have those different outlets and those different solutions to mitigate those different risk. And then when we put the plan together, you look at those different risk and divide it out. We divide it into three main categories, right? We have this safe and secure category, which makes sure that your nest egg is going to generate that paycheck, right? You don't have to worry about it.

And then the second piece is we go in kind of the low risk and moderate risk. And each of those categories serve a different portion or a different phase or different aspect of the retirement. And so we go to what we walk through that and make sure. And of course, we're doing it with our recommendations, but also within the risk tolerances of what our customers are, you know, comfortable with. Yeah. You know, and I think that the word mitigate is so important because it doesn't mean eliminate. You know, you can never eliminate risk.

There's always risk. And in some cases, risk can be good. But you have to mitigate it and just kind of keep it under control and kind of like when you make a chess move. You know, you move your piece and you keep your finger on it, you look around. Is this the right move? Okay, it is. Take your finger off. So that's mitigated.

Just making sure you understand every single move that's going to happen. And when you can make those recommendations and keep risk down as low as possible, boy, that does help your clients enjoy that happy retirement. So I know that some people come to you and they're not brand new, you know, just married, just got their first job and saying, please guide us. Sometimes they've done things on their own or made maybe even mistakes in the past. And they come to you and you kind of look at the landscape and you see a couple low hanging fruit of like, ooh, we need to address this, fix this. What are some of those mistakes you're seeing that people make when planning for retirement? and then let's kind of, you know, bring that out to see how they can, people can avoid it. Yeah, you know, one of the first things is, and everybody, you know, this kind of planning,

financial plan, and retirement plan is often something that people push off is, oh, I'll get to that or I'll do it. And it ends up getting pushed down the road. That's the first thing is don't push it down the road, right? That is, is, is, let's plan for it ahead of time. And I always tell people, look, when you're within eight to 10 years of retirement, you really need to start putting that true plan place. You're not just accumulating. You're shifting from an all out grow to a protect plus grow, and you really need to start thinking about that dispersion phase, right? And you need to start positioning your assets properly for retirement plan, for that risk mitigation process. And by the way,

when we talk about risk mitigation, you know, it's not just a one-time thing. That's a walk alongside you through retirement and make adjustments as you go kind of thing, right? It's risk management. But I think, you know, people don't account for that the drawdown phase or the decumulation phase early enough or at all. And that's vital and key to anybody's retirement plan is that they just haven't thought about that. Well, okay, once I get there, how am I actually going to draw this stuff down and make it last? And you really want to start that, you know, at least eight to 10 years ahead of retirement. What all possible. Now, if you haven't done that within that time frame, it's never too late. You always want to have a a solid plan in place regardless of when and where you're at.

You know, that brings up another good point is it's not ever set it and forget it. It's not ever like, oh, well, here's your risk mitigation or here's your retirement plan or here's your, you know, whatever the case is. Like, oh, we set up a whatever the strategy is, whatever that you're talking about. It always needs to be looked at whether it's every six months, every year, because not that the plan itself was wrong and oops we got to fix it but the factors outside might be you know like the external factors like oh inflation might have crept up or whatever might have happened externally that now is impacting our plan so how often do you recommend um doing like reviews of the plan

yeah we have to do a little more than normal uh we always do the annual reviews that's the major checkpoint right just to force a check in reanalyze the plan or whatnot but we We also do quarterly touch points, right? We look at the plans and where people are at on a quarterly basis. And one, we reach out to see how they're going or how they're doing. But the other side of that is just to have a check-in, you know, the markets and economy and life happens. And often things, you know, happen a little quicker than other times. So I think, you know, waiting for just the year point is a little too long these days with the way the markets move and the way life happens.

And so we like to do it quarterly, the big one yearly, but we'll do a check-in quarterly. And if we need to make those adjustments at the quarterly touchpoint, then we'll certainly do that. And then, you know, of course, you utilize technology and whatnot as well to have some alarms sound off if something passes the threshold, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's kind of like, I don't know about you, but I find myself tethered to technology in a good way. I'm really, really balanced. But I do have in my business life reminders. And it's like, oh, today I need to do the following.

And maybe it's a pop up on my computer, remember to do whatever. And I think that if you have those triggers in your retirement, you know, a plan for either yourself looking at it for the clients or even the client, that's really helpful. You know, one thing I see on your website that I find interesting and I want to kind of dive into one of your services, you say retirement drawdown plan. Well, it makes me think of this. And now this is where I want your insight. You know, you strive and claw and scratch all through your life to plan for and get to retirement, have enough money to retire.

And that's the big question mark. Will I have enough money, you know, to last through retirement? But at some point, there has to be a time, there will be a time where you're taking money out of those accounts, the drawdown type of thing. But is it just, oh, I've got these many accounts, three, four, five, six accounts. I need X number of dollars this year. I'm going to grab it. No, you need to have a plan for that because, from what I understand, if you take a certain amount from a certain account too soon, too late, too much, too little, you know, you need to have

a plan. So talk about the drawdown plan. Yeah, it's critical, right? It's a vital step to ensuring that you're taking the right steps of the right time. It's, you know, some people might have heard of things like the percentage rule, like a 4% rule or something like that, which kind of really oversimplifies it in our mind. That doesn't account for things like market shifts and inflation and all those kind of aspects. With the drawdown plan, we also factor in the phases of retirement, right?

We look at three different phases of retirement. There's the go-go years, right? When you're just retired and you're going, you're excited to do more stuff, your expenses are higher. The slow go is when you're, you know, you slow down a little bit. Your mind says, you know, let's go. Your body says, not really, I don't think so. your expenses aren't quite as high. And then on the backside, on the no-go, it's like your expenses are a little bit higher

normally because of health care. That's just, you know, it's overall that people probably have heard of the retirement smile that forms that smile, but there's different phases and it's a little bit different for everybody. But you got to factor in not only how much do you need at what time, what phase you're in and why you need that money, right? And then you allocate your resources, your assets, your investments to fund those different aspects of retirement, so they're available properly at the right time. And then, of course,

you want to be tax efficient. You know, you've got to draw out money out of the right accounts in the right order to be tax efficient. We want to lower your overall tax burden, you know, over your lifetime of your retirement. And that just takes the proper planning, you know, across your different type of accounts, across the different phases to suit your needs, but done at the right, you know, done at the right time. And of course, there may be adjustments along the way. But, But without a proper plan and you're just taking money out, we see that fail often than not. You know, by just trying to do simple math at the front end. You need a full plan that takes into account all those factors.

So that stretches your money longer. The thing I love the most about my job is people coming into the office and saying, you know what, I don't think we have enough, right? Or they have money all over the place. They have that jump drawer of investment accounts. You consolidate it, organize it. And when you see the relief over their face when they when you when you, because you put a right plan in place that their money was probably going to last for them and they can make it through the retirement through retirement, just not to retire. Yeah.

Nothing better than that. You know, and again, talking about the plan, the drawdown plan. Um, this past Saturday I was at my nephew's, uh, baby shower and my in-laws were there and they were at somehow, I don't know how we brought up the topic of required minimum distributions, RMDs. And I know that there is a plan needed for that because if you take it out in a certain account and oops, it should have come out of a different account, then that's something to plan for. But also one thing that I've always heard too is there is such a requirement for these required minimum distribution that if someone goes, oh, you know, I sold my RV. We got some money. I don't need to take anything out this year. You might be in trouble because you're required to take these out and you might be facing penalties, right?

100%. While the Securac 2O increased the RMD age to 73, and if you were born in 1960 or later, it's going to be 75, but you're required to take them out. And if you don't take it out, then they're going to penalize you. And the penalty is 25%. Now, if you correct it soon enough, it can go down to 10%. But hey, who wants to pay that penalty, right? Right. Money. Let's not pay that penalty. So by planning it properly, one, be aware of it. But here's the other thing is when you're planning there's RMDs, whether you need or not, they're going to force you to take it, which can have a tax impact, right? So not only is it going to be a taxable event for you, it could also affect your Social Security benefit, because that may throw you into over that provisional amount that then they come back and they tax part of your Social Security benefit. We want to minimize or eliminate that if we can. So by putting that, all that information into the right plan, you can navigate that a lot better. And sometimes that means, and by the way, sometimes that means converting things to Ross that don't have R&D requirements, right?

Those are just tax deferred accounts that have those. And that strategy sounds wonderful when you hear it all laid out, but it's not the perfect solution for every single person at whatever age. So it means you need to talk with someone well ahead of the time you need money for retirement because like that strategy, you might need a handful of years ahead of retirement to allow the benefit to kind of come to fruition. So you said something interesting too. it's not just getting to retirement, it's getting through retirement.

So like you might think you need a certain number for retirement, but then how long are you going to live in retirement? Question mark. You know, we don't know. No one knows that. But we're taking better care of herself. We're eating better. We're exercising.

We've got better health care. So the tables from decades ago of, oh, you need to plan to live to X age, those are changing. So I think that having this kind of plan and approach in place allows people to make sure that they are going to, you know, check the box. Can I get through retirement? So wrap us up with some final thoughts, Sean, and then how could people reach out and connect with you and learn more? And I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing is let's, you know, if you don't have a plan, don't be embarrassed, reach out, whether it's us or someone to get a plan in place for you, right? It's having the right plan and making sure you account for that drawdown phase is the most critical

component. And it accounts for all these different things that we talked about here. in the last few minutes. It's vital to do that. And it's personalized, right? Every plan is different. It's not a one-size-fits-all. Let's customize one for you that you're comfortable with that's going to get you through that retirement piece. You can check us out at our website, retire-wisepro.com. You can actually get a free copy of my book out there. You can download it. It's absolutely free. We have some retirement tool kits that you can get access to. And of course, we're always free to book an appointment with us. We'd be happy to talk to your free consultation, just to get you started.

We love talking to people, meeting with people, and making sure you have that happy retirement. But let's put that right plan in place for you and not just kind of do it off the cuff. Excellent. Well, Sean, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. Thanks for having you, Mike.

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