Business Innovators Radio - Interview With Shawn Milton Founder of S&S Life and Financial Services Discussing Retirement Pitfalls

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Shawn was a missionary for 10 years after which he got married and felt led to start serving people in their finances. He has always had a knack for money talk and helping people. As far back as I can recall, he has always strategized when it comes to Finances. He loves helping families get out of Debt with my program and helping them plan a robust retirement plan. Shawn has ran tons of debt-elimination illustrations and designed a lot of retirement income plans.Learn More: https://sandslifeandfinancialservices.com/ or https://debtfree4lifemaryland.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-shawn-milton-founder-of-ss-life-and-financial-services-discussing-retirement-pitfalls

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 a Sean Milton, who's the founder of S&S Life and Financial Services, and we'll be talking about safeguarding yourself from retirement, pitfalls. Sean, welcome back to the program. Thank you for having me, Mike.

Hey, you know, I always love when I hear like a title of a talk, you know, safeguarding yourself from retirement pitfalls. That tells me that there are actually pitfalls in retirement and we want to find out where they are so you can point to them and say, there's one. Let's move around it and go around it over it, under it, you know, something to where I don't want to deal with pitfalls. So I'm excited to learn what your views are on these retirement pitfalls. Can you kind of clarify and articulate just a few examples? What would some retirement pitfalls be that you're working with your clients on protecting them from? So, as you know, like being in retirement, that you're limited now to sometimes, in most cases, you're limited now to a budget and stuff like that. And even before retirement,

One of the things that a lot of persons are not thinking of is just longevity. Am I going to be able to outlive my money? You know, some of the other things would be market risk. How can I safeguard what I've saved up in my nested from the market risk, inflation costs, tax risk, you know, and the big one, long-term care. Yeah. You know, and I could even add another one in debt. Nobody wants to think about debt, but that could also be one of the pitfalls that

government losing an income and just how that will impact the surviving spouse or the family. Yeah, and in order to be prepared for those kind of pitfalls, because some of them cannot be avoided. We know that. But what do you, you need to have a kind of a. strong retirement portfolio to be ready for that. What do you consider a strong retirement portfolio? What does that look like? So with a strong retirement portfolio, we have to remember that one side doesn't fit all.

So what I'm about to say is more general information than specific to one particular person. Yeah. So when you think about having just a strong retirement portfolio, you want to, you're thinking of diversity, diversity in your portfolio, not just be looking at things that are directly tied into the market, where you're looking at the tax-free, tax-deferred, and tax-advantage money, and also looking at how can you be layering your retirement income? as well. So, so let's say when are you going to activate that 401k, when are you going to activate

your, that annuity, when are you going to activate your tax favored accounts, you know, so that you can have, um, you can have money throughout the, the entire scope of your, your retirement. Yeah, it's almost like you need to begin with the end in mind, as Stephen Covey used to say, like, what does retirement look like? What do you? you need dollar wise in retirement. And that's a big thought and process too, because I think a lot of people get that wrong. You know, oh, well, I need X number dollars in retirement. And then when you start talking about like, oh, well, I guess I am going to travel a little bit more now that I won't have to work. And I guess I will want to, whatever, give to ministries or charities. Once you've

articulated that, you feel like, okay, here's what I will need in retirement. Here's what I probably will have. There could be a gap. So now you're getting into what you just mentioned. having those layers and those stages to be able to prepare for that retirement portfolio. Maybe it's 401K, maybe it's IRA, maybe you're having to roll something out of an old company retirement policy, but you got to have that clear picture. Do you ever feel like you become kind of a life coach of sorts to help people guide that process? Yes.

I was about to say that most times, I'm going to say a lot of times, but I would say up to like 80, 85% of the time. when you sit with someone, they know that they're getting a match at work and they're matching that, but they're not sitting down, kind of asking the question, how much am I saving towards?

What's the goal here? They know that they have their social security coming in, but they're like, okay, have you gone on the social security side, check what the projected benefits might be? And then what is that lifestyle in retirement? Are you going to be? be just working part-time, you know, just to keep busy? Are you going to be around the grandkids

more? Are you going to be traveling and seeing places that you haven't really, really, really, really been to? Or are you moving out the country? Yeah. There's so many questions that I find that sometimes my clients, they're not thinking of. And that's not the shame on anybody because, you know, once you're on the train, you're on the train. And sometimes you don't think about the ride. You know, so I feel like that's what's, that's most times what happens with, with, here, you just, you go to work and you're told, open a 401k and we'll match it. And that's what you do.

You open a 401k and you put money in for it to be matched. But the end is never in mind. So I'm always happy when I may be able to sit with my clients and be like, okay, this is the project amount that you will have here. This is going to be what might be your taxes. You're going to need to speak with your C. and then these are some stuff that we can execute on to make sure that you don't outlive your money. You know, and Live kind of jumps out of me because I know that having protection on your life is important.

So a lot of times people go, oh yeah, I need life insurance. I've got that one policy I got, you know, 27 years ago or whatever. But talk a little bit about how life insurance fits into a smart and strong retirement plan. So as you know, in our interview last with the debt elimination, you know, we have people who are planning for retirement, they have a lot of debt. One of the ways, one of the beautiful things about eliminating your debt using life insurance that you can always turn on the cash value later on after you're done to be a supplement to your retirement income. So you do have insurance policies out there that you can design to actually help reduce your tax burdens by using the cash value in the policy. And you have different designs of policies that can that can that you can actually execute on to make sure that you have either more insurance. sorry, more income that is tax-free coming out or supplemental to whatever you have coming in.

Or I heard you had said earlier on about, you know, a Roth conversion into a policy that can actually help with that income projection. Or if you're in that space of, you know, you can overfund a policy with the end goal in mind of using that to supplement your income. there's a lot of ways actually utilize a life insurance policy to help you with projecting income for the future and also getting some tax favor planning in your retirement income strategy. Yeah, you know, I think a lot of people have a misconception that they hear the word life insurance and they think it's one type of life insurance, term life. You know, and maybe that fits in a need for some people, but what you're describing just opens up a whole world for, you know, opportunity because when you have some death benefit, that's wonderful. That's how we think of life insurance. You know, when you die, you get death benefit. But you describe so many things that you can access and benefit you while you're still living from the debt elimination aspect, from the, you know, writers that you can use for different things or borrowing against it. And I think a lot of people don't. realize that you can accumulate money, cash value, and dividends inside of a life insurance policy. And they should consider, you know, don't just say no just because you heard the words life insurance.

There's some opportunities to at least consider. Yes. And we also can use life insurance as a strategy of safeguarding that income, too, because some of these life insurance companies, they do offer what is known as living benefits. So I only named one of the living benefits, which would be supplemental income from the policy. But you have some living benefits being terminal illness. Something terminal happens. Then you could ask the insurance company to advance you some of that death benefit.

So you're planning out your retirement income with life insurance. But what if something terminal happens? And that takes a toll on your finances. The life insurance policy would be there. you have chronic illness, you know, not being able to do two of the six daily living activities, that the insurance company can advance some of that death benefit. And that's going to go ahead to replace some of your income. So you have some income coming in.

I always say to my wife, if there's something catastrophic that happens to me, I lost the ability to feed myself and clothe myself. I wouldn't want her to be lifting me up and putting on my diapers. You know, I would want my life insurance to come in, take care of that while she can be there to support me more mentally, physically. You know, I wouldn't want her to be lifting a button. Hey, let's plan to have somebody come in and help with that so that it's not a strain on you. And our marriage can continuously be healthy if that situation ever comes up. And then we have the critical illness.

and with a critical illness is cancer stroke, heart attacks, sudden cardiac arrests, etc., where you can also, if anything like that happens, then you can advance some of that death benefit to help with situation like that. So, yes, we might hear life insurance and we're thinking of the death benefit, but there's so much more that is offered through various companies that can help us to save, to build a really, the robust planning strategy when it comes on to retirement income. You know, I think a lot of times people know the old saying, you know, don't put all your eggs in one basket and, you know, diversify. And I think there's a lot of wisdom in that. And we're talking about having enough money to last through, you know, your retirement. And who knows when that's going to be? You can live to be 112 or, you know, or not. So having that plan in place is important. We've talked about several of these.

instruments that can help. What are some of the alternative investments for wealth building that you see clients considering and that you might recommend? Because I feel like sometimes people go, okay, stocks bonds, mutual funds, insurance annuities, those are the main ones you hear about. But what are some of those alternative investments that are out there for consideration? So one of the things that I, that I've seen clients do is having precious metals, which is gold and silver as a part of their portfolio. Adding precious, adding these physical metals, silver and gold to your holding balances, it kind of balances out all of your dollar assets.

And I guarantee that most, if not all retirement accounts is tied directly to the dollar, which is your savings account, real estate, the stock, bonds, annuities, social security, everything. Right. So you need to provide some kind of. counterbalance, which is exactly what gold and silver do, because historically, they have the inverse relationship with the market. When the market and real estate prices fall, that's when typically your precious metal rises. And with the dollar continuously being devalued by inflation, the current economic uncertainties and the financial storms on the horizon, now is

a time to own some piece of, that piece of physical metal, right? So when the inflation, it's going down, the goal is going up, and then you could sell portions of that goal to keep your diversity, at the 10 to 15% of the retirement account in gold and silver. And when one's goal goes up, you can sell that position, sell your position to make you have, you maintain that 10 to 15%. And then I have clients as well that works with real estate companies. They don't like the market.

They feel to, they feel uncertainty is just not what they're looking for. So they also use real estate that offers a double digit return in the year to help them with their real estate portfolio. So those are two things all the top of my brain that, that comes the gold and silver and also the real estate opportunities. Yeah, you know, and I'm one that falls into the camp of real estate where I recognize the value and, you know, rich dad, poor dad. I get all of that and rental real estate and depreciation, but I've never and I have no plan to ever get into buying real estate because it's just a world I don't want to get into and, you know, the knowledge and the fix up or the, you know,

repairs. But talk a little bit about, I don't think that a real estate investment, trust a REIT is a true alternative investment, but it ties to real estate because someone could go, okay, I recognize that real estate is a good, solid investment. There are some funds out there that incorporate, you know, maybe storage units or maybe apartments in a investment trust that people can, you know, invest in and it becomes, you know, an investment and good rates of return. Is that a good alternative investment to consider as well? I think depends on where the clients, where they are, with their risk, their risk, that word is alluding me right now. Tolerance.

Your risk tolerance. There you go. So with the real estate developer that I work with, they have been there for 70 years. And with our program, what we do is that the developer, the developers, they have money in the game already. So it's not our own, it's not our clients are not the only one. You know, some of these real estate companies, it's only the investors who are skin in the game

and not actual, the actual developer. So our developer have skin in the game, and that's after they have invested some in the project, then they come to us. And we fund, we help fund the, fund the, fund the deal. And one of the things that I love about our developer is that they could easily go to the bank.

They could easily go to the bank and save money on the loan. But they want to help people like you and I who are trying to get to that focus retirement nest egg, they're putting money back into our pockets, right? Which I think that that's that for me, that's a thumbs up. When you have somebody who could actually get somewhere money cheaper to lend, but they're like, hey, I prefer to take it a little bit more so that the persons who are investing alongside with me, they can get some more. I love that because with that, my clients is able to get a little bit more than what is being offered in the market.

And there's that security. And there's different level of security in the programs. Right. I know that rental is something that a lot of persons are going into, but the rental market right now, people are getting smarter. Yep. And you find that people are not willing to pay rent,

and then you just have all of these laws that you end up losing money. And I don't know if I would really trust my retirement fully in rental. in this economic climate, you know? You know, one of the things or the thing that I love about your answer to that question when I said, tell me about a real estate investment trust. You said the word, well, it depends. And that is so powerful because if you have a financial professional that goes, yes, let's go. Well, it does depend. It depends on the client and your goals and your needs and your current situation and where you want to be and the investment, the opportunity.

it really all depends. There is no one size fits all template that fits everybody. And I love that you said that because that tells me when you sit down with a client and you say, let's see what you need. Tell me about this and where it is, where your current funds are and where do you need for retirement. Then you can just start mentioning some of these opportunities from many of the things we've talked about, insurance or annuities or whatever the case is, but it all depends. Yeah, this is something that I've seen in the financial industry too where, you know, an agent would be out there on social media or whatever. And they're saying, hey, this is what I suggest. Yeah. And I'm like, it's almost like you go into a doctor and say, hey, I'm ill. And the doctor says, oh, I'm going to suggest that you go home. You take some title. You take this.

And you're like, what? How? I didn't tell you how I'm ill. Yeah. I didn't tell if it was a knee. I didn't tell it from my stomach. I didn't tell you if it was a cell in my body. You know, there's so much diversity there that you coming in.

And I always say, like, anyone that gets financial advice either where somebody's going to be like, okay, just do this. Run the next way. You know, because they have, well, I don't want to make any accusation, but it almost sounds like there's an agenda. You know, versus serving you the client, taking the time out to do my due diligence and making sure that whatever recommendation I have come up with, it's going to be personalized to what your needs are. Yes. You know, I think we'll just wrap up with that thought because that is probably if we had a microphone, we could drop it and hear the clang and go. that's the most important thing. If you have an advisor that starts telling you, do this, do this, and they haven't gone

through a really extensive, comprehensive questioning process with you, run because they don't understand what you need. They're just trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, which is their product to fit you. And what you just described there is so powerful. You want to learn and you want to understand what people need. So I think that is so powerful that you said that, Sean. If someone is interested in learning more and then also reaching out and connecting with you, what's the best way that they can do that?

So S&S Life and Financial Services, that's S for Sam and S, life and financial services.com. That's where you can find me. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you again. Thank you, Mike.

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