Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA - Interview with Jack Peregrim, Founder of Fourth Quarter Advisors Discussing Invisible Money

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

Jack Peregrim is the founder and President of Fourth Quarter Advisors and he has a long career in business and strategy including his 30 years as the founder and owner of PARAGON Development which focused on providing strategic management services to many Fortune 50 global corporations.On his ‘retirement’ he personally recognized the complexity in Social Security options as well as Medicare. And, there is very little support and education available other than that offered by individuals and organization driven by revenue received for selling products and services.Jack and others are trained and committed with Certified Financial Fiduciary® designations. And, we are volunteer presenters for workshops sponsored by a number of non-profits which are non-profit 501(C)3 organizations and support programs in a wide range of retirement issues.Jack is a Certified Financial Fiduciary ™ in addition to his involvement in numerous professional and personal organizations.Learn More: https://www.fourthquarteradvisors.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-jack-peregrim-founder-of-fourth-quarter-advisors-discussing-invisible-money

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 Jack Peregrim, who's the founder of fourth quarter advisors, and we'll be talking about invisible money, the hidden wealth strategy, most retirees miss jack welcome back to the program thank you and and you're i am so glad to be here

today talking about one of my very favorite topics well i tell you what i i really feel like a lot of people you know resonate with oh i don't want to miss out on something so we want to hear about the hidden wealth strategies that most retirees miss so first let's kind of define what is this invisible money that you're talking about? Well, invisible money is real money. It's just in the future. That's the only reason we don't see it. It's the money that comes from us understanding what we need to do,

us doing things now that are going to generate it. And there are so many reasons that we don't do these things, and a lot of it comes down to education. People aren't educating us on the differences in our retirement and retirement transition that are different than our income employment years. And we lose money. And I'll call it invisible money because if I do A and B now start doing it in 10 years, I'm going to have X amount of dollars I would not have had. Or if I do A and B now, I will end up with more money than I would have because I did not pay as much in taxes. So there's a lot of things that we can do that we need to understand and we will end up with money we weren't going to.

We just need to realize that invisible money sounds ephemeral, but it's real money. The only reason it's invisible is that it's in the future. it's interesting because that makes me think about radio waves and I'm not a scientist but I've remembered this from you know high school days you know right now if you stop and listen you don't might not hear anything in the airwaves but if you tune that radio right to this certain channel there it is that you know it's picking up it's it's there but we don't sense it just yet so that invisible money concept is huge it's future money it's it's it's something that's there and and it's interesting I would even

venture to say this would be a factor. What do you think? If you don't know what it is and you don't make plans for this invisible money, you can compound bad decisions, meaning you might not take advantage of something based on that invisible money to come. And if you didn't take advantage of it, all of a sudden now that's a big detriment. Absolutely. You're hitting on exactly what we like to educate people on. And that is what is it that you can do and get then the specifics of things you can do in which you and your family end up with money that would not be there if you just kept following the same course you have now?

That's a passion of us. Great. Hey, so what are some of the biggest ways people are losing invisible money? Well, losing invisible money, there's many ways. but one of the biggest ones is taxes. We make assumptions. See, we're working, and we just assume that when our employment in years are over,

we'll be in a lower tax bracket because our income will be gone. And that in many cases is not the truth. Now, for several reasons. Number one, your taxes are based on several things, what your income is and what your tax rates are. Well, we now have extended the lowest tax rates we've ever had in our life, and yet we're running huge deficits. Budget deficits, and overall, the deficits of almost $40 trillion with a T.

Our deficit is in Argentina territory in many cases. It's over a year's worth of GDP that we're running as a deficit. Well, that's not, we can't have that forever. So we are going to have to make adjustments from the lowest rates we've ever had that are not covering our costs to have higher rates, at least moderately higher rates somewhere in the future. We're going to cut services that we're going to demand we continue to get. So I know we're going to have higher rates in the future. But people don't realize that the amount that they're going to be. get an income. They're not projecting it accurately. The people we talk to have no understanding of

how much their Social Security could end up being, which there'll be a tax burden in that. They don't know what they're going to have to take out and require mental distributions out of the money they set aside that, you know, when they're working, they're setting money in their 401k's and 403Bs and 457s and all their retirement plans. Well, that's going to be 100% taxable. And the government has formulas that you are going to be required to take funds out of those with their formula, whether you need it or not. And we just keep letting that money grow and grow and grow.

And it's amazing the hit that we're going to have in taxes. Now, I'll give you one example to try to make it real. I very recently talked to somebody and they said, well, we have, between husband and wife, we have a million dollars in our retirement accounts. And I repeated it back to them. I said, you have a million dollars in your retirement accounts. And they said, yes, we do. I said, no, you don't.

Yes, we do. I said, no, you don't. You have maybe $650,000 with an eye. the state and federal governments for $350,000. Yeah. And they said, well, we didn't look at it that way. I said, that's how you need to look at it. That is an IOU.

Yeah, you see that balance in your accounts. It's just not all yours. Right. Now, and if you have an IOU of 350,000, what if we made the IOU 250,000? said a 650,000, you would have what? 750,000, right? Same funds, but you end up with more of it. Now, you know how you end up with less IOU?

The same way you do, you eat an elephant. You do it one bite at a time. So in one year, what if you can take $34,000 as an example, and you're going to pay half the tax you will somewhere in the future. You have just reduced the amount that you will have to pay tax on that money. And so you do what rich people do. You do tax harvesting, tax washing, but you're basically, you're paying the taxes when they're less.

And in the overwhelming majority of cases, it is always better to do that. And here's just one more example. if I have $100 today and I can see that somewhere in the future, a couple will be at a 22% tax break. Now, they quit working. So for a period of time, they're going to pay 12% federal tax on the same amount. And to show you what will happen, I'll make the math easy by saying my $100 somewhere in the future, grows to $200. Now, if that money grows to $200,

and I will be taxed at 22% in the future, maybe it's 15 years. And I pay 22% tax, that's going to be $44 out of the $200. So I'm left with $156. What if I could pay that tax at $12 today, $12? My $100 becomes $88.

But now, if I make the same investments, same period of time, I don't change anything that money doubles. And my 88 becomes 176, not 156. So I ended up with, and it will be real. I will have more money based on the money I have today because I didn't lose more of it in taxes. So now we want people to understand how they, and that's just one way, but now you want to coordinate that with Social Security. And, well, you know, people's plans are, oh, I'm going to take Social Security early, and what are they losing out there? Well, Social Security this year, if you delay taking it one year and you do not contribute another penny into it, you're not employed, it's going to grow at

8% plus a 2.8% cost of living, which means it's going to have a safe growth of 10.8%. Do you have any other investments that safely grow at 10.8%? If you do, I want to know about it. And by the way, when you do get those funds, the maximum tax you'll pay on that is you'll pay, you'll pay, declare 85% for tax reasons, which means you're not only getting an incredible increase, but 15% of it will be tax-free. Your money in your IRA, none of it's tax-free. So you're not only getting more money, but it's going further because you don't pay taxes on as much of it. Right.

So now I'm going to coordinate maybe delaying my Social Security and paying less tax on the 401k in the short term. You do a projection in every case you'll see money that in five years, eight years, 15 years, you'll have invisible money you would not have had. and you're not doing anything sophisticated. You're just ending up with these funds following basic practices and principles. And the key thing, we're not being taught this because the people we're listening to, it is not in their best interest for you to get this invisible money because they're not involved in it. And in many cases, they end up with less money. because if I took money out of my 401k,

an organization or an individual are benefiting from that through fees and bonuses and guess what? If I take money out of that, they no longer get fees on what I took out. So they don't want us to do this. We can wash tax out by putting money in loss. And I love talking about lots.

And that's such a subject that we, We couldn't get to in a short discussion. That is one way that we can also end up with more of this individual money. And that's one of the things we love educating people on, and the many ways that you can end up with invisible money. And we love people. We share, we'll provide tax tables now, what tax level will be in the future. I like to look at, you know, everyone,

the advisors always have your income that they're showing for you each year, but they never talk about the tax implications of it. And I like to do 10-year, 15-year projections because I want to look at the tax-level people who are going to be at each year and look at those as opportunities to capture invisible money they wouldn't have because they are not diluting their accounts like they would have. the IOU is being limited. You know, I think when people hear tax strategy and you can reduce, they wonder or worry,

I want to make sure it's legal and ethical. But what you're talking about is not eliminating. You're talking about doing things that are legal, ethical, and just mitigating, just lessening as much as possible. You've got to pay your taxes, but you're just plugging up as much of the holes of the bucket is possible. I couldn't say that better. There is nothing that is unethical.

As a matter of fact, for me, all you're doing is you're paying your taxes and you're even paying them sooner than you might have. Yeah. But nobody is explaining that you're better off paying taxes when they're at a lower rate, even if it's sooner. And now the key there is if you can pay it at a significantly low rate,

it's a large benefit. It's a very large benefit. But see, our problem is our purview. We only look, and especially we're doing retirement planning. You know what we're thinking about is the vacations we're going to go on, the things we're going to do in the first year or two, the golf cart we're going to buy or whatever we're looking at, and we're not looking longer term with it.

We just want people to look further out in the future, recognize that there are things they can do, that 10 years from now looking back, they can say, thank God that I did these because I am much better off. And if you want to look even further out, that's a whole different subject, but it's on the legacy issue. I know that I've taken care of myself and my family, but then I'm going to be leaving money to my family too. How can that be left in a better way? they can get enormous tax hits or they can get the benefit of not having any tax hits at all. And yeah.

I think legacy planning is a massive topic that probably should be a whole weekend seminar in and of itself, which I know exist anyway. But the point that I, when you mentioned that, it made me think of something. Too many times I feel like people think I am going to retire at this age. I need to have this much money in my retirement account so I can do what I want to do. And I'm going to live to this age and I need the money to last. And I know that no one can quantify exactly to the penny or to the day all of the things I just mentioned.

But the problem I feel that people miss out on is, well, you pretty much want to end with $0 in your account and you made it to the end. But what about the legacy and passing things onto your family and you didn't pass anything on? shouldn't you be thinking about that? And if you have X number of dollars left to legacy plan, shouldn't you make sure that it's going to pass with as little tax as possible? And I think that's a big mindset shift that people have to make.

And that is really another aspect of invisible money. Yeah. Because I don't see it today. And I may not see it when I'm not around, but my kids are going to see it. And or other beneficiaries are going to. to see it. And I wanted to be there for them allowing, you know, while I'm alive, allowing me to utilize my funds as I have a right to after working 40 years and contributing,

but utilizing my funds in the best possible way. But I also, it's one more aspect of it. You know, Invisible Money, I feel like most people would say, oh, yeah, yeah, that's where I can get more of this and get more of that or save some of this. And like you mentioned, saving and tax, taxes. What about invisible money from reducing fees? And I know this is not a popular topic. And I know that people don't even recognize how impactful this is. But in a lot of the accounts that people have in retirement, mutual funds or whatever with these fees and loads and layers of fees, it's kind of like reading your power bill. You know, it's like what kind of line items are these that come out of there and you just roll your eyes? Talk a little bit about fees because that can be,

tapping into draining your wealth, and that's an aspect of invisible money, too. Fees are one out of ten issues you're dealing with. We found, first off, yes, fees are important. They're not nearly as impacting as doing the right things that are more common sense and good and best practices, which are reducing taxes, maximizing social security, because of the investment value, looking at it like an investment, they'll have a greater impact. Understanding what your money needs to do for you in retirement, so your investments do what they need to. Now, the fees are dilutive. So, of course, they have an impact.

And yes, there's many times that we pay fees that have no value at all. I know that one of the detriments on getting insurance-based investments are that they have to put fees and they put riders into things. And a rider is just a sneaky fee. It's just another name that call it a fee. And they put in fees that are not providing value based on what the fee is. So that's something we challenge in question. However, if I had a, when I've dealt with advisors, and I've moved from different ones over my years.

And they've said to me, you're just trying to avoid paying me fees. And I have told them. I said, no, I'll pay you 10% fees if you guarantee me 20% return. Yeah. So key is what are you paying the fee for? And yes, in many cases, we are paying fees that do not bring us to value. And the reason for that is companies, they're all trying to make money off of us. That's their compensation.

And they're going to get, they're going to live on the fees from us. So it's in their best interest to charge us fees. We just have to know that it's in our family's best interest that we keep more of our money and we end up with more of it. So we want to reduce the fees. You know, it makes people think, why is invisible money not discussed by other advisors? And you answered it right there. It's because they are focused solely on managing. your big portfolio because they get a percentage of that.

And I think the laughable thing we see out there in the news is, you know, those commercials that say, we only make money when you make money. And that is that is 100% correct. But it's also half of the equation because do you lose money when I lose money? Do you give back some of your commission when my money goes down? And the answer to that is no. No. That was a great marketing.

gambit, I have to admit that. Because if, yes, they make more money, if you make more money, they also make more money if you convince them to give them more money of your own without them earning it. So they want you to transfer money out of your bank into their accounts and then they make more money because all they're doing is making more money based on the size of an account. I can tell you that if you are in a downturn, you'll never be told that you should take your money out and stop losing the money because then they don't get any fees. So even though they're making less money, that's much better than making no money. Yeah.

So their advice is always keep it with them regardless of safety issues. or whether it's in your best interest. You know, and you mentioned a couple times compounding and downturn. And I think that that calculation really is impactful that is within invisible money because it's almost like an invisible calculation. Like compounding, you know, we've heard like, oh, when you put X number of dollars in for 30 years, it compounds to, you know, why? That's great.

But then compounding can work against you in a downturn as well. when you have invisible money from the expenses and the market's going down and you have to take money out to live and for RMDs, now that compounding is working against you, right? It is. And I've mentioned this before, but a real key to getting invisible money is one of the things that will have the largest impact over your retirement years and your legacy years is, understanding what your money needs to do that is in your best interest. And an example is in our retirement, we need to draw it down on funds. And if we have to draw down 4% of our funds and with ever increasing percentages,

well, if we're not earning more than 4% safely, because if we have a downturn and we draw it down, we never recover. it's not like when we're living in our income years where we have a downturn, we live on our income, we just wait for the recovery. Well, that recovery doesn't happen if we're taking money out while we're trying to get back up there. And anyone good with a spreadsheet can put a few scenarios into it and look at what happens in 10 or 15 years, the invisible money that they'll end up with. But now, if I know what my money needs to do and I set it up to generate more,

than my downturns, I'm sorry, more than my money that I take out, my drawdowns. I will always end up getting more money because the money I draw down in is coming from never increasingly higher number because that's growing. And when I take that percentage the government requires of me to take out or that I know I need to take out, I might have funds and I say, okay, I need to take out six, of those funds every year in my retirement and I will, my funds will not go down and I'll have the money I need. That tells me I need to earn more than 6% net. So that's including fees, net and completely safe. Well, now I have targets of things that I need to set my money up to do.

I can tell you that that will have a huge impact because most people will say, okay, the best thing I can find today because my limited advisors or my financial advisor that wants me to put it in stocks. And I say, I don't want to be in stocks or mutual funds. I can lose money. Or I go to my bank and I have three banks and I talk to them and I do a little bit of a Google search. And I say, best thing I can end up with is earn 4.4%. But I'm drawing down 6% a year. I am not going to have the money that I need in retirement and in legacy. So what did I learn? I learned that I need 6%.

Now, that means I have to look in places I haven't. There could be some research, or you get a hold of somebody that you trust that can help you identify some things that aren't coming up in a typical AI or Google search. Well, but when I set up that money to earn more than six. percent as an example or 5 percent, whatever it is. I am going to have money that hasn't been drawing down. That's that invisible money. In 10 years, I'll have money in my account because they didn't draw it down out of it. And I would not have had it if I didn't look at it and understand what my money needed to do. So, I mean, I can go on on this, but a big key is understanding

what your money needs to do and that will also create invisible money, which is money you will end up with that you would not have. And I want to emphasize it's real money. The only reason it's invisible is because it's in the future. But it's not ephemeral. It's not this investment that may come in. It's real. And it's based on very practical, practical approaches to it. There's nothing, no sophisticated investment schemes. It's just understanding what your money needs to do, understanding invisible money you can capture, recognize that it is there,

it's up to you to understand and be educated on the things you can do that people, and know that there are things, people just aren't telling you about it. And where you can recapture some of that, you know, money slash income side of things and also mitigate and lessen some of the expense side of things. And I know that you have touched on, you know, taxes and things like that. And for, you know, like right now we can say the tax rate is this and the buckets are that. And so we know what that is,

but then they change, you know, because we know that taxes go up down and all around. There's another aspect that I think that would factor into invisible money too, which is inflation. And that's a really hard one because inflation is like it's high one day and low one quarter. But that also drains what your money can do. It doesn't take money out of your pocket. It just limits the power of what your money can do for you. And that's one thing that it's tough to project. But if we look at what's going on in the economy and if our interest rates are over 2.5%,

is considered inflationary. And we got to realize there's an incredible incentive that our governments have to keep it under that because right now a third of our huge deficit, a huge of our, a third of our whole budget is paying debt charges, paying interest on our existing debt. So if there are high interest rates, our government can't do it at one. to because the money isn't there. They're paying for debt servicing. So it isn't, you know, there's a lot of incentives for our government to keep the interest rates down. And they still fail doing it. So it's up to us to say, all right, if I want to target what my money needs to do,

and I need to say, all right, I will just target three percent drawdown because that's the inflationary, drawdown. And then I'm going to say just to make sure that my money is earning something with future buying power, I need to target that money earning 5%. The power that gives you is that I will now look for investments. I won't settle for investments that are not doing less, at least 5%. Yeah. If I do that and I take all of my money and it ends up being. increasing without me breaking a sweat. It ends up increasing all of my money by 2% per year compounding more than it would have. Look at that money you'll have in the future.

And it's just a very simple discipline. I need to know what my money needs to do. I need to set criteria and say that this is what I need. I can now go and research options. and when I engage anyone and I ask them, can you give me 5% net completely safe return? They say no, I say thank you. They say, but wait a minute. I said, no, thank you.

Yeah, but I can do that. No, thank you. And I do that and I will end up so much better for myself, my family in the future, because I'm not settling for things that are not in my best interest. So it's just another way, some of it's a little bit of discipline, but criteria is going to give you invisible money too. Understand what your money needs to do. And do not settle for less.

Be patient. I may wait a couple of months before I get what I need. But now I've set up money that will more than pay the dividends over time. You know, I tell you, it's just really interesting when you start doing the big moves, like the, you think about let's talk about Medicare, let's talk about security optimization. And then you start drilling in a little bit deeper to this invisible money concept. You're just kind of putting a little polish here, but it really is a powerful thing because many times it's the invisible money concepts you've talked about that really make sure that

those final returns are where they need to be. So, Jack, this has been really eye-opening. And if someone is interested in having some of this invisible money conversation with you to see how that can benefit them. What's the best way that they can do that? Well, they can reach me by email at Jack, J-A-C-A-C-C-4th Quarter Advisors.com. And that's spelled out, F-O-U-R-U-R-T-H-U-A-R-D-V-I-S-O-R-S-O-R-S-O-R-S. And that's really about helping people in their fourth quarter.

And we have a website. There's videos and new content, always being added to that, and that's fourth quarter advisors.com. Jack, thank you so much for coming back on today. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. Right. It's been my pleasure, too. Thank you.

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