Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA - Interview with Curtis Cottle, Founder of SBC Financial Discussing Social Security Timing & Strategy

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

Curtis Cottle is a Certified Financial Fiduciary, visionary growth strategist and cofounder of one of Michigan’s fastest-scaling financial services firms. He specializes in retirement planning, estate planning, and strategic tax strategies designed to help families and business owners protect and grow their wealth.At the core of his firm’s approach is a deep emphasis on strategic tax planning as it relates to retirement, helping clients keep more of what they’ve earned and build long-term financial confidence.He’s the creator of the Wealth Wellness Checkup, a planning experience that uncovers hidden financial blind spots and helps people make smart, informed decisions. The firm is built to simplify complexity, bring structure to planning, and deliver personalized strategies that work in the real world.With nearly two decades of experience, Curtis is known for cutting through the noise, building lasting relationships, and helping people create long-term security without the guesswork.When he’s not driving growth or designing new campaigns, you’ll find him investing in his team, building partnerships, or spending time with his family, living the same values his business is built on: fun, unity, and getting things done.Learn more: http://www.gosbc.net/DISCLAIMERThe content is developed from sources believed to be providing accurate information. The information in this material is not intended as tax or legal advice. Please consult legal or tax professionals for specific information regarding your individual situation. The opinions expressed and material provided are for general information, and should not be considered a solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security. We take protecting your data and privacy very seriously. As of January 1, 2020 the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) suggests the following link as an extra measure to safeguard your data: Do not sell my personal information. SBC Financial Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where SBC Financial and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. This website is solely for informational purposes. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. No advice may be rendered by SBC Financial unless a client service agreement is in place.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-curtis-cottle-founder-of-sbc-financial-discussing-social-security-timing-strategy

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 Curtis Cottle, who's the founder of SBC Financial and we'll be talking about social security timing and strategy. Curtis, welcome to the program. Thank you very much, Mike. Hey, I'm excited to talk with you because it's always neat to hear different people's perspectives

from their experience with clients on the topics. And I know that this is a broad one, you know, Social Security timing and the strategy behind it. But before we dive into that, give us a little bit of your story and background and how did you get into the financial services industry? Yeah, I appreciate that. So for me, it just seemed like I always wanted to be self-employed. I had, ever since I was young, and I had a pretty influential fifth grade teacher, Mr. Emery, and he had a, he was in public school, but he had a waiting list for his class because he decided to teach his kids in a very cool fashion about economics.

And he was kind of into real estate and rental properties, in addition to him being a fifth grade teacher. And he taught his class how to be a worker. You can be an assembly line worker or a supervisor. and then you would they were actually what we would be doing is creating money our own little what they call emery money and it's those paper money that circulated throughout the school and then the next phase as we had all in his class be able to start our own businesses and so um some of the kids around the school can bring in the inventory and get their their emery money and it was

real currency you could buy people's lunches from each other it's kind of a cool situation um all the classes would come through your class our class mr emery's class and uh we would would all have our businesses running. And it could be baked goods, a service, and entertainment, buy inventory from what the school brought in and resell it. And you really got a full feel and look of application of what it was like to run your own business in both the potential as well as the effort. And so I think that made a big mark on me. But I've always felt like I want to be self-employed. And I interviewed real estate industry and a few other ones. And I really landed on finance and investments and wealth management.

For a lot of reasons, and I just found the most meaning there, started SBC Financial 2008, so probably not the best year to start an investment firm. But I did, and it worked real hard, and I have a particular expertise in helping people grow money with a real strong element of safety and hedge, and you can imagine 2008 time frame. That was pretty popular. So I had a lot of clients that occurred to say, this lost 200 grand. I need to do something different. we started growing. I hired on my brother, Tyler, he was going to be a CPA. He got his accounting

degree from Grand Valley University. And it was about three years in. So about maybe 14 years ago or so. And he said, he was going to be CPA. I said, hey, we really need this in our industry. There's not a lot of tax planning. CPAs are too busy to do much tax planning. They do all of their time filing. And not a lot of financial advisors are in that space. So we built a tax reduction planning department. We started hiring staff, built several other departments, estate planning, income planning. Of course, we had our asset management planning and then in Medicare and health insurance division. So that's kind of where we are today, where we can help clients and have no need unmet in any part of the plan. You know, I love it. And I love from the beginnings in your fifth grade class with that

project, that seed of entrepreneurialism had to have been. than in you from the get-go, maybe latent anyway, because I'll bet every single kid in that class is not an entrepreneur, but it was in you. He fanned that flame, and it's neat to see where that came and how that's developed. And so now let's dive into this topic today. So security timing, I know that's a really powerful topic,

and I know that for me, I've heard for the last two, three decades, literally, oh, Social Security is going to run out of money. So I know that's the common concern. So it is something that, you know, tends to be on people's mind. How do you coach your clients on helping them to realize, okay, so security might, you know, you might hear a headline, but let's make the plan no matter what, before we dive into kind of some more of the strategies of things, what do you say to clients that have that concern? Yeah, that is a great question and probably a valid concern if you listen to Mike, what you

exactly said, the headlines. And if you look at the news and you hear a lot about Social Security and the news and you think, well, am I listening to positive or negative news? And usually you'll find out, yeah, I'm listening to negative news. That seems to be the majority of what I hear on Social Security is negativity in the news. And then if you start to think about anything in the news, you start to think, well, man, I'm really hearing more negative than positive on almost any topic in the news. So it's hard to sometimes get an objective look at the Social Security program. the financial stability, or just even just a clear look at what it really is in a position to do or not do.

And so what we do, and we do this a lot in our classes, we do quite a lot of classes on how to claim Social Security maximize probably about 12 to 14 classes every single month, both virtually and in person. And the thing about it is, is if you look at the Social Security Trust Fund, you can actually look up those numbers online. And you can see how many trillions of dollars are in the trust fund. fund. They grow at a very special type of an investment, a certain security that is designed specifically for social security. Nobody else can get their hands on that type of investment.

It's a very competitive fixed rate. And so there's a lot of aspects to that. You can see with the numbers before the year prior. You can see the current numbers. If you look at the history of it, you'll find we've only had a deficit, just a handful of times, the entirety of the program of Social Security. But even then, with all of that, you have, it's a pay-as-you-go system. So even if Social Security we're going to have zero dollars in the trust fund, it has almost $3 trillion right now, it has $0. You still have 77% of Social Security benefits being paid in every year in tax dollars

for the people that are drawing the benefit out. And so it has, it's different than a business going out of business or bankrupt. It's still got that pay in. capital every single year and probably one final note i would say we cover this quite a bit the generations that are drawing social security are are the large of the population and also the highest percentage in those populations of people who care to go and vote as you kind of get to the younger populations you don't see as many voting percentage and so it would really be a politician's death wish to go in and just just cut people at the knees on their social security who go on the doorstep

It reminds me of back in the day, you know, when you were talking about 2007, 2008, you know, when the banks were failing and in the government stepped in and said they're too big to fail. Well, it seems to me that Social Security is too big to fail and the political side of things like you just mentioned, they're probably not going to want to, you know, tip the apple cart. And so don't listen to the headlines, you know, just keep plugging away knowing that, you know, we got to make a plan for that. And that's the strategy you need to look at. And I think that a lot of times people think, oh, I'm going to go Google, when should I claim Social Security? And, oh, I saw this article, click, claim. But the problem is if you claim the wrong way, that could be a real detriment.

So what's the real cost of claiming the wrong way? And then let's talk about, does it make sense for some people to delay? Yeah, yeah, really powerful question. And to illustrate just a little bit of an idea of what it means to claim the wrong. wrong way. I ask people when we do our educational classes, how much money would you guess every year annually is left on the table because people don't claim it properly or don't know how to claim? And the number of sounds people, it's over $11.5 billion gets left on the table every year. And that's billions with a B. And so when you have all of these different ways to

claim. I mean, there's thousands of combinations of ways you can claim and coordinate and survivors benefits, spousal benefit, annual earnings test, all of that. And so what you really need is a powerful software to make sure you can get ultimate clarity on what are your top three options. And then you can see it and feel it and see what the impact is in your retirement and you'll know with confidence at that point what is the best way to claim very clearly. But you don't want to claim the wrong way. I mean, like I said, $11.5 billion left on the table every year. That, that's pretty powerful. And also, isn't it something where once you claim it, it's irrevocable and you can't just go, oh, no, no, just kidding, I need to change it next year or the

next year. I know there might be like a one-off exclusion, but for the most part, isn't it something where you better know your plan, know why you have that plan, make the claim, and know that it's set in stone? Yeah, exactly right, Mike. And, and The thing is, is while you, well, there are many times where you've claimed it, it does become your evocable. However, if you've already claimed, you're thinking, well, could I maximize that benefit? A lot of times you still might have some options. Of course, you're going to have much more limited options than if you just claim the right way

in the first place. But there are some options where if you've claimed within 12 months, you can actually pay back everything you've claimed and redo it and rescind it as if you've never claimed before and put all your options back on the table. Many times people, if they've, I've seen a lot of people use this before they've even taken one payment takes two, three months for Social Security to process their application. But they've changed their mind in that time frame and then they can do it differently. Or one other one is you're already claiming early. You can decide to delay that.

Stop your Social Security at full retirement age. People would be 67 years old. And then you can get the 8% increases. They're called delayed retirement credits that happen all the way until 70. But largely, Mike, I think the. biggest thing is to get it done right the first time so you're so you're not leaving money on the table because yeah there might be this deadline you miss or oh you got to pay back that so it becomes a headache so just you know kind of like the old saying measure twice cut once exactly right

hey so i know that when you think about retirement strategy so security is one of the bullet points in there but it becomes something where it's a big piece of a coordinated retirement income strategy. What are some of the mistakes you find that a lot of people are making when they're viewing Social Security as just that one-off and not as part of the overall retirement plan? Yeah, that's something that comes up quite a lot, actually. And I would say a couple of things. Key points are taxes. So Social Security lives kind of on its own island as it comes to taxes. And it's treated very differently. On one hand, you've got to be very aware of it's. called provisional income. So it's a whole different calculation for Social Security.

It even factors in tax-exempt interest like municipal bonds that increases your Social Security taxes. At the same time, Social Security can be positioned very strongly because it's a very tax favorable benefit. Some people have zero taxes. Some people are pushed into higher taxes, depending on how the provisional income equation goes. But even in a very high income earning household, most of the time it works out to be somewhere around 50% of your social security will still be tax free. So coordinating and positioning that to say, well, how do I work that with the other pillars of income? We have pensions and working wages if you're still working and your assets is a large pillar for most people to draw off of coordinating how you do the

taxes with your social security and the rest of your retirement plan could mean thousands and thousands of dollars to you or cost you thousands of dollars depending on on how you incorporate Social Security into the whole retirement picture. Yeah. And so it becomes a piece of income tax. And it's almost like you, when you're playing chess and you make a move and you leave your finger on the piece going, okay, is this the right move?

Let me look at all these options. Okay, yeah, it is. Or, nope, nope, I need to pull it back. So so many times of what you've mentioned here, it's part of you need to make sure you claim the right way at the right time, make sure that all the taxation is handled. correctly and just make sure it's done before you pull the trigger. And I know that a lot of times there's a lot of choices.

And I know we're just covering this from a 30,000 foot view and you can do a three-day weekend seminar on all of this and still not be, you know, covering everything. But talk a little bit about how married couples or widows or divorces optimize benefits because there might be some things to at least keep in mind there, right? Yes. Yes, there is. And this is a situation where if you find yourself where you're a widow, person or you know somebody that's in that position. This is a really, really powerful benefit that

can provide a lot of protection and security for the widowed surviving spouse. And so what happens is, is as a survivor spouse, you get the higher of the two social securities. That's the first protection. So if you've got a social security example, one of you is drawn $2,000 a month, the other is drawn $3,000. The surviving spouse gets the $3,000 benefit and the smaller $2,000 benefit will go away. And so that's great. But also, you need to know as simple as that is to let the Social Security program know that that this election you want to make or you could leave that money on the table. But here's where it gets a little bit of a layer of more complexity, but also a much more benefit to the surviving spouse is you have a file and delay feature. So you can actually take as early as

60 years old, which is two years sooner than normal earliest claiming Social Security age as a surviving spouse. And then you can claim your ex or your deceased spouses, rather, benefit and let your own delay. And so you get to draw Social Security from age 60 all the way, as far as you want to, but most people will take it all the way till 70. You get all the increases, all the 8% delayed retirement increases past full retirement age. And you can be drawing the entire time and then at 70s switch to your own benefit, which has grown massively and get an even higher benefit for the remainder of your retirement. So as you described that, I was just envisioning someone not understanding what you just said

and doing it opposite. And that goes into some of those billions that go unclaimed every year because they didn't do things the right way. And so obviously, people should not just go, oh, I'm getting close to retirement. Let me go Google. When should I? Okay, here's what this click, click done. And also, I know that you can get a lot of information on the Social Security website or even at a local office. Talk a little bit about the differences between getting some information from the Social Security office or online versus someone like yourself that specializes in this and has the strategy, the kind of the whole picture in view of how it relates to retirement?

Yeah, Mike, I can speak to that a little bit as far as the data goes. So there's, and these are approximates, you know, because it's hard to get exact data on this, but this is about the numbers. If you were to go to the average John Doe, the average common person, and ask, you know, a group of people who here knows an in-depth way in how to claim Social Security and do Social Security planning, roughly about 5% of the average person would have that knowledge. So 95% most people wouldn't really have a good idea of what is the best way to not leave money on the table with Social Security. Well, where it gets interesting is financial professionals.

So you have CPAs, tax attorneys, HR people, financial advisors, and financial professionals alike, only about 14% of financial professionals have an in-depth understanding on how to claim social security. So to put that in perspective, 86% of financial professionals don't have an idea of how to tell you how to claim to maximize your benefits to the fullest. And so what that means is it's hard to find information. And one final note on that is the Social Security Administration themselves. You can look up their operations manual online and the clerks there are not allowed to give you any advice. You can look that right up online and that's kind of wild if the social security office itself can't give you that advice. So I think it is really important. We've been doing this for almost

two decades to really find somebody who it's in their daily scope. This is what they work on on a day and day out week and week out basis to make sure you maximize your benefits. You know, and I think my opinion, the scary part of that 86% stat you mentioned, of the advisors that don't have that deep in-depth view of Social Security of how it fits into retirement, what percentage of those will tell their clients that they do and they understand it, but they really don't, you know what I'm saying? So there's really no way to quantify that, but it's really hard to find someone that really knows in-depth how to do everything the right way for your. benefits so that it's sequentially bringing you the highest benefit with the most tax benefit for your retirement and resist the urge to just ask your friend at work or go Google, find someone that knows exactly how this fits into the overall plan and talk to them. And to your point about the computer printout, you're not going to sit there and say to someone, here's what you must do

and they're staring off into space confused. You're going to show a printout going, here's option one, two, and three, what feels good to you? And let's talk through each one and answer the questions. Yeah, yeah. And that happens a lot. Mike, there's really two, in the financial advisory world, from my perspective and largely looking at everything from 18 years of experience, there's kind of two categories of financial advisors for the most part. You have accumulation and then distribution. So accumulating would be your working years. You're building up retirement. And then your distribution would be retirement years. You're starting to distribute or take out that money for income and retirement. And those are two wildly different

spaces. And most advisors are accumulation or kind of generalist advisors. They're there to grow money and many of them do a very good job at doing that. Now, that being said is if they've got clients that are getting to the point where they're going to need to start turning that into distribution and put a whole different plan together for how to use that money that they've accumulated, they're in a totally different climate. They're not contributing anymore. They're not working anymore. They don't have time on their side.

They've got Social Security taxes and all these other things that come into play. And of course, if you're going to give an advisor the benefit of the doubt, which I usually like to do, they're going to want to try and help you. And they're going to want to try to help you the best that they can. But it's kind of like a doctor. You know, you've got your medical team. And if your primary care doctor said, hey, maybe he's even one of the best primary cares in the country.

He said, hey, you're going to need heart surgery, and I think that I can do it for you. And now, maybe he could. Maybe he's just, you know, could pull that off. But, you know, probably doesn't make you feel too comfortable to have your primary care doctor performing heart surgery. You would go to a special. And so that's what, that's what we are. We're a specialist. This is what we specialize in.

And that's where it makes, you can enjoy the previous season of your life working with somebody who got you to where you're going. but now you want to get through retirement safely and you want to have a specialist doing what we do best fitting that into your retirement plan. Perfect. Well, Curtis, if someone is interested in learning more about what some of their security claiming and strategy options are, what's the best way they can reach out and connect with you guys? Yeah, absolutely.

We have a fun, interactive website that gives some really good information. We've gotten a lot of feedback that they really value all the content we put on their because we try to just bring you value. So our website is www.gOSBC.net. That's gosbc.net. And then if you'd like to search SBC Financial, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and all of those as well.

Our website is a really good central location, though. Perfect. Sounds great. Well, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you today. Thank you for having me, Mike. I appreciate it. 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.Influential Entrepreneurs Radio.com.