Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA - Interview with Apryl Pope Founder of Pope Financial Planning Discussing Have I Done Enough to Retire?

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

Apryl Pope, CFP®, CPFA®, CEPA®, is the Founder and Lead Financial Advisor of Pope Financial Planning, where she helps successful professionals approaching retirement turn what they’ve built into a clear plan for what comes next.With more than a decade of experience, Apryl serves as a Personal CFO to individuals and couples typically within 10 years of retirement, coordinating retirement, investments, taxes, insurance, estate planning, and other major financial decisions. Her planning-first approach provides comprehensive guidance without requiring clients to move all of their existing investments.A former Peace Corps Volunteer and lifelong educator, Apryl was named a 2025 Woman of Excellence by the National Association of Plan Advisors. She lives in Cincinnati with her husband and three sons and understands firsthand how career, family, and life priorities shape financial decisions.Her goal is to help clients move from asking, “Have I done enough?” to feeling confident about what comes next.Learn More: https://www.popefinancialplanning.com/The opinions voiced in this show are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision.Source:https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-apryl-pope-founder-of-pope-financial-planning-discussing-have-i-done-enough-to-retire

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 April Pope, who's the founder of Pope Financial Planning, and we'll be talking about, have I done enough to retire. April, welcome to the program. Thanks, Mike. I'm happy to be here.

Hey, you know, I think this is an interesting question. We want to dive really deep into it because I know that a lot of people fear running out of money and retirement almost more than public speaking and death itself. So this is a really hot topic. But before we dive into that, give us a little bit of your background and story. And how did you get into the financial services industry? Oh, yeah, great. So I actually came into financial planning. really through education, honestly.

I still think of myself as a teacher. So that's my background. I studied economics and undergrad, got a master's in mathematics education, served in the Peace Corps and taught there. But all of it has been through teaching. So I just always have loved teaching, you know, taking time to help people understand things

that feel really complicated and just helping people understand those. And so I took all of that, all that education that I've been trained, to do and then I just really switch my subject for mathematics to everyday money. Yeah. So the way, I mean, I went from the classroom. I really started teaching and volunteering in the evenings, teaching financial planning. I got it into our local high school as a part of the curriculum and just really fell in love

with it. So I was able to eventually transition out of the actual classroom to doing this full-time, working with individuals. Yeah, but, you know, I would almost submit to you that you've never left teaching because in reality, nobody likes to have some salesperson shoving something, you know, that they don't understand in front of their face and go and just do this. So you are taking the heart of a teacher. You are teaching.

You're educating. You're showing empathy and care for your clients to help them understand really complex financial topics that can impact their retirement, right? Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So it is. It's the heart of a teacher. And I feel like the best training I've had for this and even in this industry is being an educator. Yeah. Just because we are, of course, passionate about, but it's really about making sure people understand and really can make changes or make some moves once they feel confident about what we're sharing with them. Yeah, 100%. Well, let's dive into into this topic of have I done enough to retire. If someone retired at whatever age, now there's a whole story behind.

that one little phrase there too, right? Because what age should I retire? Could I retire? Is, do I have enough? All of that. But if your accounts hit a really healthy number, would you feel like you can really retire? So that is the question that I think rolls around in people's minds is, do I have enough? And do I need just a little bit more? How do you help them to get past the feeling of I'm just guessing and hoping for the best? Yeah, that is real. You are right. And I think Mike, really what the question is there. And what we see is like, what is your life cost, right? That's important.

Like, what does your life cost? And, you know, what can you, you've built this nest egg or whatever it is, but can what you've built really support that life that you want? So as we mentioned, two people, they both can have, even if we, we hear all the time, is a million dollars enough to retire. Two people can both have a million dollars in completely different positions. Yeah. you may have, you know, maybe somebody has a paid off home and a pension, you know,

they were a teacher and, you know, modest expenses, right? And then the other, they still have a mortgage, they want to travel and help their children. And so they both could have that million dollars. So I don't really start with the account balance. We really start with their life. You know, that is a huge, whenever you see those things like online, like, oh, person A and person B, they have both have, but the unsaid section of that equation is the fact that, oh, this person spends 10 grand a month. This person spends $5,000 a month. So I think that when you sit down with someone and say, hey, what does retirement look like to you? You're going to get people that are all over the spectrum, right? Oh, well, this retirement looks like this for me and I want to fill in the blank.

Or sometimes people even say, I just don't know. I just know I don't want to work. What do you find when you're helping to coach people to set that kind of retirement kind of picture. Yeah, it really is. You have to start with what you want to do. You set it exactly right. Not everyone is the same. And so our philosophy here is like figure out what you want to do with your life. And I tell people all the time, I can't tell you what to do with your money until I know what you want to do with your life. Yeah. And so when we're looking at what that looks like, the one number that matters more than net worth to us is really seeing. what does it cost to live the way you want to live? And let's make sure we understand the way you want to live. We can all survive.

What does it cost to live the way you want to live? And how much of that life, you know, is already covered and set up by, you know, reliable income sources so that you can comfortably live that life. And that's really what we're looking for. Yeah, it really is. And I think that sometimes people go, okay, well, I need this much to live on in retirement. And probably when you drill down a little bit deeper, you bring up some things that makes them go, ooh, I need more because you know, you work your nine to five, you punch the clock, you go to work, you come back, you have a couple days off per week, you don't have as much time to spend your money, right? So if you're then not working, maybe you've got way more time on your hands to go and spend more money than you would suspect. So you've got to help people realize, hey, what really would it look like?

and then what's it going to take to support that lifestyle? That's pretty huge. Yeah, retirement, like you said, every day is Saturday. So, you know, we just got back from vacation last night. So every time, you know, when you're on vacation, there's something fun to do. Well, retirement, it's like, I don't have to go back to work every day of Saturday. So, yeah, it does. It can add up quickly.

And I think even on the other side is people think they need more than they need. And so, you know, they're thinking, you know, we. need or $10,000 you mentioned that earlier a month. We need $10,000 a month. And then when they look at, when we sit down and look at everything, it's like, well, heck, I got social security, got a pension, got all this, 7,000 of it's already covered. Like, that's coming in for life. Like, it's actually not that big of a gap. So that's also something to think about. But you need to know what the gap is, if any. So that's, that's, I think, the big thing is otherwise, if you don't know, you're guessing and then if you identify too big of a gap, then you might be tempted to take more

risks to close the gap. And then that changes things. So when you think about people, you know, retiring differently, one is relaxed and one is terrified. What does that look like and what kind of advice are you giving to help someone, you know, be confident and not afraid? Yeah, that is it. That confidence, I'll tell you, Mike, does not come from the size of the account. Yeah. It really, really comes from knowing what that account can actually do. And so when I say that, we see balances all the time. Balances are, and it's exciting, but what can it do?

So one person may know exactly where their income is coming from. So they know how much they can spend. They know what's going to happen if the market drops. They know, you know, where they're going to pull from if a major expense comes up. When you have those things already set in your mind, it's a lot easier to sleep at night. And so that other person, you talk about different, they could have the same thing. The other person may just have a very large balance and no framework for using it.

That's a really different retirement experience and honestly a little scary. And so we see these discipline savers all the time who they can afford the vacation, like they can help their children, they can make home improvements, all those things you're talking about. But sometimes they hesitate because nobody's ever really shown them, yes, this fits, the plan. It's okay. You have permission to spend your money. You should spend your money. Because the worst thing in the world is to go, you know what, we're going to do all those things and I'm going to wait till I'm, you know, fill in an age, whatever it is, right? You know, in retirement or further into retirement or and then I'm sure you can attest to this that it happens.

You get to that certain age that you've kind of stuck away in the back of your mind and now your health isn't cooperating. And so now all those things you said you were going to do, oh, well, I can't do them. Well, you should have done them five or ten years ago. Yeah, absolutely. And there's a great book called Die with Zero. Yeah. Blushes that out really well. But yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah, we don't want to. And that's the thing of lifestyle planning, what we do now. Like the whole idea is living your lifestyle now and continuing that lifestyle whenever you decide to make work optional. So we want to make sure you're taking those vacations, not ending up with a pot of money. Like, you don't want to die with a bunch of money, just sitting there.

How can you use that now to help yourself and all, you know, your loved ones and the causes you believe in as well? Yeah. So let's think about this. How do you translate, you know, this whole lifetime of growing and saving and building for retirement into a consistent paycheck in retirement that someone can live on? Because there's, like you alluded to, there's a big difference between this big, a certain number in several accounts, like you've got a lump sum of X. Well, that's fine, but now I need to actually live on it. Yeah, that is the scary part because a big balance, like, yeah, a big balance can make you

quote unquote wealthy, but a clear plan is really what makes you secure. And what we say leads that clear, secure plan is knowing where your money is coming from, just like your paycheck. You finally retired and stopped getting, you know, that. paycheck that comes every two weeks, if you want to have the confidence to spend and enjoy and do all of those things, you need to make sure something's coming in. And so that goes back to where we talked about that gap. The number I care the most about is really your retirement income gap. Right. So you've been having a $10,000 a month lifestyle and you've been bringing in that and a little bit more

for work. Once that stops, where is that coming from? So when you see that, that's where you feel a little more confident. Like I said, five, six, seven of it might come from pension and social security. Well, then we're really only trying to solve for a $3,000 monthly gap. So we can figure out how should that be funded? Many options. You can do some guaranteed income. You can do investments. You've got maybe real estate, you know, but there's also tax implications and, you know, like how much flexibility you need with those funds. But the whole idea is secure what you need to live on, Make sure that's coming in every single month or every, you know, quarter, however you want it set up until you're gone. You don't want to have that money in the market in case.

And once you put that plan into place that kind of helps you have that peace of mind like you mentioned. But then I would venture to say you don't just sit back and go one and done. I check the box. I got the plan. It's going to work forever. What are some of the things that people should stress test, you know, once the plan is in place? Should you check it every quarter, every six months, every year? So like checking on external things like, oh, the market is being volatile or there's higher taxes or, oh, my health care costs went up.

What are some of the things that they should stress test and make sure that are still working in their favor? Yes, you're right. So, of course, yeah, plans are not. The old school plans are out, you know, print some nice big binder and throw it on a, and it gets dusty on your bookshelf. Not at all. It has to, it's evolving, it's growing, it's changing. And so what we're looking at, and we're meeting with clients, whether it's quarterly or sometimes when things are happening, it's more often. It could be every two weeks.

But we're looking like what's happening with inflation. You know, we can test those kinds of things, but health care costs might increase. Like one spouse, you know, can live into their 90s or maybe one passes away. Like we can always do the stress test on that, but really it's the life that's changing. And so what I realistically see, anything that we do on our systems can test all of those things. if you need, like I said, long-term care, if this happens, retirement is shortened for whatever reason, we can test that. But what we're seeing every day is, oh, we just had another job opportunity. We're going to switch. Oh, my gosh, this, you know, our stock options are going to

invest. Like, we have to do that. Real things that are changing in people's lives, or we thought we had it set up. Another one we see, oh, my aging parents are actually going to have to move in. I wasn't expecting that, but they were supposed to go somewhere else and that's not the case anymore. So now we need to adjust. Life just keeps lifing. And so we continue to evolve and adapt and grow and change the plan. A financial plan is a living and breathing document. Yeah.

And if there are updates that need to be made, it doesn't mean, oops, we made a mistake. It just means that now with this new information, right, inflation has, you know, reared its ugly head. So we need to make this tweak or whatever the case is. And you brought up something interesting about living longer. I feel like a lot of people these days, you know, back in the whatever few decades ago, advisors were using the lifespan of whatever it was, 65 or 75. And now it's like, man, people are taking better care of themselves. They're working out.

They're eating better. And health care is better. And so they're living a little bit longer. So that means that from the day you retire till the day you are guesstimating that you need your money to last, that might be a lot longer than people used to calculate for. Absolutely. Literally, my grandmother is turning 100 in October. Wow.

And so think about the, she was a teacher here in Ohio and the pension that she has. Like, they probably didn't think it was going to have to go this long. Right. But yes, I mean, back then, 50 years ago, 40 years ago, when you're thinking about, hmm, this is it going to last 40 years? Like, that's really hard to think about, you know, how long. things are going to last and we are definitely living longer. So putting those things into place and understanding like you're in retirement for decades. And that's what I like to let people know. We spend

more time planning, you know, weddings and vacations than we do in retirement. And we're going to be for decades, decades. So we're really figuring out, you know, how does this plan start so that you're comfortable and knowing that it is going to evolve. But you're right. You can't just start it, put it away or just put your money on your mattress and hope it's going to be the same in 40 years. I don't know if you've noticed, but things are a little more expensive even now than they were. Yeah. Times just change. Yeah. Hey, so what do you think are some of the biggest signs where someone might look financially ready to retire on paper? But then when you dig in, it's like, ooh, we've got some work to do.

It's when they're leading with their balances, right? Honestly, we see this all the time. and it's, you know, yes, we have five, six million, three million, two. It's in the millions, right? So it looks like, I should be okay. We should be okay. If we were just looking at numbers, I mean, yeah, anybody could be okay on that. When we really dig in, it's the lifestyle and what's spending. And, you know, it's kind of like, all right, yeah, you could be okay if you move to the Midwest and, you know, get a nice, you know, have a nice local.

cost of living. And cut up the credit cards. Yeah. And do that maybe and maybe like six vacations instead of 12. So you could do that. But really when we get under there and we see what their lifestyle is, that's where we focus on helping people understand the difference between needs, wants, and wishes. And so we're not trying to guarantee everything and make sure you're okay.

You know, we would love that. But we want to make sure your needs are taken care of first. So then you can move on to those wants and then you can move on to those wishes. But when you think of them in those three buckets. it helps you feel more confident that you're not, the things you have to have to survive, you're not worried about those. That lets you have a little bit more fun. And then that big pile of money looks a little more fun once you, you know,

taking care of what you need. Because you've polished up the needs a little bit better. So that's a great point. So let's wrap up with this April. If someone came to you and said, I want to retire in two years, what would you need to know before you could tell them whether they're truly ready? Ooh, that is a good question. Two years. Well, that's appreciate them. Give me a little time. We've had some where they're like,

I'm retired. I'm retired. Fourth quarter. Fourth quarter of what? Yeah, right. So, yeah, it's all about what are you, what's your lifestyle? So the first question we always ask when we do our initial conversation is what are we trying to build? What does that lifestyle look like? We have to know the details. And I would say we're getting nosy, but we are. We need to know what is it that you want to do. So if you're two years out and you have a pot of money and you're trying to decide, is it enough to make it work, I need to see what's going to happen.

How are you spending down that money? What do we need to do? So the easy, easy, if somebody just wants to do this on the back of an hour, going to go home, like you could just look, what do I need per month? You could just start out. What do I need per month? Think about really what you want. And when you see that, where am I going to get that money from?

That's how we can help you. you can come up with the, I don't know what you need per month. Once you figure out that and we help narrow that down, then we can say, does this part of money? Because it might be, it might not need to be two years. You might do that calculation and go, there's no gap. You've got an extra cushion. We've, you know, kind of run some initial stress test.

And even if this or this or this happens, we got some wiggle room there. You're good to go in two years. And maybe that two years turns into, well, maybe next year. And it just really helps them to clarify. I think that's a great, a great point. Yeah. Now, we've had that and we've had people where we can't even get them to retire. We do that.

They come in and we lay everything out. We say, you don't have to go. You're good to go tomorrow. Yeah. What? What? Well, I'll just wait a couple years. But to that point, that gets into a whole other conversation.

Maybe we have it another time, but the emotional impact of I've been valued. I'm valuable to my company. I've been doing this work. And now I'm doing it no. more, you've got to figure out some ways to keep yourself busy, to contribute to society, family life to where you personally are feeling like I am not at a loss. And so that's a big point there that you brought up. So that's a good one. So have I done enough to retire has been a great, great conversation here, April. If someone is wondering if they've done enough to retire,

how can they learn a little bit more and reach out and connect with you? Oh yeah. Well, they can always reach out. They can find us on our website, Pope Financial Planning.com. And then anyone can always schedule a call with me at Meet with April. My name does have a Y in it, though. So it's meetwithapril. That's APR-Y-L. Awesome. Well, April, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate it. It was fun. 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.