Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA - Interview with Bill Wilson President of Wilson Financial Group Discussing Guaranteed Income

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

Wilson Financial Group focuses on helping people keep what they work hard for when it comes to their retirement. It’s about how you get from where you are right now to where you want to be. It is about achieving your personal financial goals and enabling you to enjoy the fruits of your labors without having to worry if tomorrow will be a good or bad day in the markets. It is important to plot your path, have a plan for how to get there and get the right advice along the way. “We Help Clients Get to Retirement and Through Retirement.”Learn More: https://wilsonfinancialgrp.com/No Rendering of Advice. The information contained is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to substitute for obtaining accounting, tax, or financial advice from a professional accountant.Presentation of the information via the Internet is not intended to create, and receipt does not constitute, an accountant-client relationship. Internet subscribers, users and online readers are advised not to act upon this information without seeking the service of a professional accountant. Any U.S. federal tax advice contained in this website is not intended to be used for the purpose of avoiding penalties under U.S. federal tax law.While we use reasonable efforts to furnish accurate and up-to-date information, we do not warrant that any information contained in or made available through this website is accurate, complete, reliable, current or error-free. We assume no liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in the content of this website or such other materials or communications.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-bill-wilson-president-of-wilson-financial-group-discussing-guaranteed-income

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 this Bill Wilson, who's the president and CEO of Wilson Financial Group, and we'll be talking about guaranteed income. Bill, welcome back to the program.

Well, thanks, Mike. It's good to be here. You know, there's certain words in the English language that you think, you know, a certain immediate reaction. And you've seen those tests before. When I say this, what do you think? Well, guarantee, that's a good one. So I'm excited to hear your perspectives on guaranteed income. Talk a little bit about what guaranteed income is.

And then let's move into why is that so important in maybe. making sure that's part of a solid financial plan. Well, you know, you're talking about certain words. Let me give you two of them. Know-so money and hope-so money. Yeah. When I'm talking to an audience, I said, all of you in this room have a combination, I would hope so, of hope-so money, and what is that?

Well, that stocks, bonds, future funds, and what we're hoping for? We're hoping for growth on that money to get to a certain level where we can certainly have a lifestyle with that. And know-so money is your pensions. No-so-money is your Social Security. Know-so-money might be an income stream. It's guaranteed by institutions that will certainly be delivered day in and day out. And so I ask people, when it comes to your retirement, how many of you are more comfortable with hope-so-money or no-so money?

So when I share that, they kind of understand, okay, well, how do I guarantee some of that money? because as I mentioned earlier, you know, income is lifestyle. I don't care, as I shared, you know, you can have all the assets in the world and you can be very proud of what you've done. But again, you know, what kind of income can be produced on that on a reliable, consistent basis compared to, you know, take the assets you have and now what would that produce for you on a regular basis? So that's key. That's what guaranteeing income is all about. because, you know, retirement is not about worrying about what the market's doing every day. When you're retired, you know, enjoy your love and enjoy yourself and that's less stress.

I mean, if we're going to have longevity, you certainly don't want to be worrying about your money every moment, okay? So it's all about peace of mind. Yeah, absolutely. Peace of mind is what I sell. I sell peace of mind and sleep insurance, you know, it's on my website. I love it. Yeah. And you probably don't want to put this on your website, but it really has a,

actual connection, which is the more peaceful and less stressed you are about your money, the longer you live. And that's been. Yeah. Isn't that true? Yeah. It really is. I mean, and if you can remove things from people's, you know, a mind that worries them,

keep them up at night. If their neighbors and friends are going, oh, my word, did you get your quarterly statement and did you see what the markets did? And even if the markets overall are good, you know, the place where someone has their retirement funds might. being a sector that took some hard hits. Well, if you can say, hey, I don't, I don't pay attention to that anymore because my money is guaranteed. What a, what a huge position that is. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Piece of my mind. So can you think of some examples where you've worked

with a client that maybe came to you over the years and they'd worked with another strategy and they're kind of at wits end and then you put something like this together and then what kind of results were they seeing, not numbers or anything, but kind of what did that provide for them? Well, just a real-life case just a few weeks ago out of Florida. I'm licensed in a variety of states and, of course, I've done some work in Florida. And this was a referral. I do a lot of trust work. I'm not an attorney, but I do trusts and I go through a company that has a battery of attorneys.

And so we'll talk about that a little bit later. But this particular couple, former military guy, and put a good 20-plus years in the military, so he has a pension with that. he's married his wife has a social security check come in he has a social security check come in he had other investments at banks and all that

but he's kind of steered away from more growth and all that so and he's paying taxes on all of that so as I sat down with them there was a trust to be done a living trust to be done I started to ask some questions just on their income streams

and the assets they have and one of the things I had shared with the two of them. I said, what happens if the husband passed away with the military pension? And the husband kind of hesitated. He kind of had his head come down a little bit as well, you know, that goes.

My wife gets none of that. And so I look to her and she goes, and I asked, well, does that bother you? And of course, obviously it does to her. Because again, income streams are going to change if death occurs. She loses her social security check because his was greater. She gets his. She loses

that pension, which is a pretty sizable amount of money. And so I did some plans, some restructuring to take those dollars that he's got the bank paying taxes on. In other words, he had enough money going in that he could take some of those dollars and reposition a more a tax-deferred basis. And the program I set up was designed that if something happened to him, short-term or long-term, that money that she would lose, is going to be there consistently.

Yeah. And that's, again, income. Her lifestyle is great with the two of them together, but I want her lifestyle not to skip a beat because all of a sudden God takes her husband home, you know. Yeah. So that's one of the things that I could, you know, Ralph the bat.

And, you know, another couple I just did recently where, you know, he wished he had put more money into 401K. Kind of a little bit of a late bloomer in doing that, right? And, but again, the consistency of income. And we're talking, you know, the money was a very high profile institution. But unfortunately, that institution can't give them any guarantees. And so he basically had him and his wife had to sit down and really determine,

okay, we're going to retire. We got to make sure we have some income that's going to be there that we can count on because our paychecks are gone now. And so that's really, you know, some real life studies, people I've worked with. it's all about income it's all about lifestyle you know just is so important and it just hits home when you see how it really hits real people and that's such a huge a huge port a point to remember it's not just numbers on a paper um now we're talking about guaranteed income and all the benefits it brings and peace of mind and all of that let's talk about a few of the common sources on when

someone hears the word guaranteed income what does that really look like well i had shared with you earlier, I always sit down with people with A, B, and C. You know, A is the bank. B is an annuity. C is securities. We know we really can't get any guarantees of income with securities. Certainly have it for growth. We can certainly get a return from the bank that's A, but we're not going to get a whole lot. So I introduce B. Now, that's an annuity. Some people, gosh, they think of the annuity word. It's like a dirty word. But, you know, annuities today command billions, that's be as a boy in dollars. People are shifting money from Wall Street to that. And why?

It's the guarantee income that comes in. You know, if you looked at any lottery ticket, you know, whether you're one of those people to go to the gas station to scratch off a car and maybe you get $5,000 a month for the rest of your life, guess what? There is an annuity and insurance company behind that making sure that that income stream is going to be there for the rest of the rest of. of your life. You know, as I share with people about longevity, you know, about the Mount Everest, you know, going up the mountain is great, but now going down the mountain, we still have to go through retirement, the importance of that income being there all the time, no matter what happens, no matter who is the President of the United States, no matter what next terrorist attack

or oil embargo or whatever, whatever hiccup is happening to the economy, that income stream is coming in because you're dealing with institutions that are legal reserve. companies that basically bailed out the banks during the depression time. So annuities are definitely a tool. And there's a variety of them. There's a multi-year, they call it migas, multi-year guarantee annuities. So if I have people in the audience that are CD lovers, but that money just sitting there, you know, I'm going to share with them how to get more interest on that. If they're living on that, it shows how to bump that up more. If they don't, I'll put that on a tax-deferred basis so they're not paying taxes on a 10,

and they're getting a 1099 every year. So that's probably one of the biggest sources when it comes to a guaranteed basis. I'm not talking guaranteed. The principles of is guaranteed. The income stream is guaranteed, Mike. No matter what happens, it's going to be there. And so it's structuring that. And maybe we have some annuities for growth. We want to piggyback. We want to link our money to an index, but we don't want the risk of that index. We just want the upside of the index, not the downside of the index. We want to have the ability of locking in gains for income streams down the road. Sometimes I'll ladder these. I'll ladder them for income now and income in the future because we have inflation to deal with. We want to have a bump up, like a raise and pay as we get

older with some of the program I'm dealing with. And when I sit down with people on, you know, what's important to you? Gains, is the liquidity or is it protection? Most people, About 99.9, you're going to tell me, well, Bill, at my life right now, I want protection. And to get protection, you've got to make sure you've got guarantee income. Yeah, 100%. You know, and also it makes me think, too, about our conversation about long-term care. You know, when we're talking about maybe not setting up the old traditional stand-alone long-term care, don't some of these annuities these days have the provision to have some long-term care, you know, factor it in somehow?

Absolutely. You know, if someone said, Bill, I agree with you. I need to get some type of plan to, you know, for long-term care. Now, you know, annuities have income riders and they have long-term care riders. Now, it's not a long-term care policy in the general sense of the word, you know, but it will produce income. In some cases, you know, people want to stay home. You know, some of these, and again, you have to be careful what annuity you're purchasing, what kind of LTC rider it would be.

But people want to stay home and they want to have the income to pay. pay for a day nurse, whatever, to be there. And they don't want to go to a nursing facility. Some riders will only produce that if you're going to an actual facility, you know, a skilled care facility. But there are, you know, without having to prove insurability, they have the ability of having more income because, you know, whether you know it or not and go to my website on my home page there,

you would see how what it would cost for home care. In other words, how many hours is somebody at your home taking care of you? you know you might have your spouse you might have your children but they have you know children have their lives too and their families and your wife you know trying to move a body and help out you you'll need some help to come into the house someone who's skilled to do that well that takes money and you'd be surprised what that's going to cost and in my website you'll you would know what the cost is in 2025 and you will know you know what cost would be 10 15 20 years from now you know in most cases, and granted, this can happen, you know, 70% of people in 60s, whatever could have

a long-term care issue. I find most challenges start to happen while people, it could happen earlier, but most of it happened, you know, in their 70s. In my mother's case, it was in her 80s. That was a sudden she had some challenges, you know. So I certainly wish people good health and a good ride through their life, but you want to have some kind of plan laid out if you're insurable. Certainly, you know, I always tell people, you want to spend your money, money or somebody else's money. You know, because the latter, it's somebody else's money. Well, that's putting, you know, not a premium.

It's picking dollars. You're going to spend down anyway with no multiplier. If you had $100,000 and it had to be used for long-term care, that's going to get spent down. Take that out of your equation for lifestyle because that money now is going to try to help a lifestyle to stay at home for care coming in the house. So, you know, if we can multiply that two, three times that, that 100,000 turns to 300,000 if used for long-term care.

And if not, fine. It's not a used or lose-it plan. You still have your 100,000 earning interest to be passed on to your children, your spouse, whatever. You haven't lost it all. So it's really proper planning. And there are even annuities that will give you something on a guaranteed basis if you're not insurable. So it comes back down to, you know, what people are looking for and putting the plan together.

But the arena we have today in the financial world, we have the ability of protecting that. Yep. I love it. And, you know, when you think about protection, you also think about risk. And when you think about risk, it's like, ooh, I need to mitigate limit, limit, reduce as much as possible. And I know one thing that I've heard in the industry, this concept of sequence of returns risk. So I want to talk a little bit about that where guaranteed income can help level that out a little bit. So can you define that and then tie in how does guaranteed income help to kind of smooth that out?

Well, you know, there's a good example. And I show this when I'm doing public speaking, I talked about Mr. Green and Mr. Brown. And they both have a million dollars each. They're both the same age. They're both earning 6%. And whatever the market's doing good or bad, you know, taking it 30 years out, they still have the same amount of money. There's no hocus pocus, whether the market was out of the gate doing well or you know, you're about to, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're not taking the income. But the thing is, you're not taking the income. But that sequence of returns start to get really, uh, interesting is when you're pulling income out at the same time, the market's either up or down. You know, people say, well, I've got a brokerage account. I'm going to tell my broker, give me X amount of percentage. And guess what? Yeah, you're right. That percentage is going to come to you for income. But what's not told or really understanding,

is that if that market starts to go down, okay, if you're pulling income at the same time the market's going down, your longevity of that account is going to shrink. The income you're going to get is going to be there. But all of a sudden now, you realize, hey, wait a minute, if I have longevity in life, I could run out of income, okay? So you have to have plans that if the market's going down, it's not going to affect your principle. How important is that? That's where, again, allocating proper monies to growth and for guarantees is so important today. And that sequence of returns is an eye-opener for people. I could tell you a quick story of a gal.

You know, she had a lot of real estate, decided to sell it all to go to Charles Schwab. But one of the things she did was she had a margin on that account. And as the markets were doing well, what's the margin? You can actually borrow on the value of your stock to buy more stock. Well, guess what happened? 2008 came around. And I sat down with her. I met her at one of my meetings.

And I shared with her some of the rumors things. Sure enough, that was taking place with the S&P drop 38%. Well, she was very much in her blue chip stock. She was getting a dividend. And I shared with her, well, you know how dividends are determined, right? Determined by the board. I said, if that market starts to drop enough, you think the board might get together and decide, you know, guys, we can't pay this dividend.

Well, didn't listen to me. Her sister did, moved to her money, but she didn't listen. that went through a million dollars. Why? Because that margin had to be paid every month. If she didn't have the cash for it, they sold her stock to take care of the margin. And so talk about sequence of returns. She went through a million dollars because she didn't listen. She should have gotten out of that market. And of course, people think, well, it'll come back. Well, when you had 2008, it took five years to break even. So when you're losing money in an account, it's going to take a while. Not a year or two. It's going to take a while for you to kind of get back to where

you were. And that took five years. That bare market took five years for people to finally break even. And that was your time to retire. You have to look at your wife and say, you know, honey, especially if you left your job, you might be working for a Walmart, whatever, it's a stock boy, until the market goes back so you can't retire. So sequence of returns can certainly affect everybody likes the markets but what if the market you know your crystal ball is no better at mind what if the market goes down the day you retire and it goes down not just for a year like like it happened in 2001 and two in 2001 and two is three straight years the market was flat could that happen again absolutely so a sequence of returns is a key and it's something you got to be very much

aware of because again it's going down that mountain you get up to the summit but going through retirement sequence of returns can certainly affect that yeah you know i just love how clearly you bring these topics together and and it just really is something that's if you were to ask someone pull out a blank piece of paper what should i you know keep in mind regarding two and three retirement or guaranteed income most all of these points you're bringing up so clearly people just would scratch their head and go never thought of that so having those protected type of accounts are so important to have that guaranteed income to smooth out when these risks come in. And we don't know if or when, but we know it's going to happen.

And I think that is so powerful. So let's wrap up with this. If someone is interested in kind of having a second opinion or a look at their portfolio and retirement accounts to maybe verify that they've got some good guaranteed income in there, what's the best way that they can do that, Bill? You know, perfect, Mike. You know, I've got my website, Wilson Financial, grp.com. And as soon as you go on that website, there is an element that comes there that will ask you how important is income for you. And is it a growth play?

Is it an income play? Is it a legacy play? By you clicking that, it will literally share with you what particular programs out there can help you. So if you certainly go to my website, you'll see that also on long-term care. You can go in and see exactly in your state what it would cost for daycare, assist in living care. semi-private room, private room. And kind of an eye-opener, what the inflation would be on that as time goes on. And I have an office number, 480-220-3-449.

It's 480-2203-449 to get a hold of me. Love it. Well, Bill, thank you so much for coming back on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. Well, you're welcome, Mike. Thanks for having me. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders to learn more about the resources.

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