Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA - Interview with Michael Clanin, Certified Financial Fiduciary® with Safe Money Solutions Discussing Guaranteed Income & Annuity Strategies

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

 Michael has been in the financial and insurance business for over 20 years. He works with clients in the areas of Tax-Free Wealth Creation, retirement planning, lifetime income solution, legacy planning and business and Estate Planning. He is an advocate for the safety and protection of his client’s hard-earned retirement money.Michael is committed to delivering outstanding professional service to his clients and acting with honesty and integrity. He takes great pride in building long-term relationships with his clients to achieve their financial goals during working years and during enjoyment years.Michael’s mission is to help clients avoid losing money in the market, and instead build wealth safely, securely, and most importantly, provide lifetime income streams that will be there throughout your enjoyment years and then finally transitioning assets onto next generations more tax efficiently and possibly Tax-Free.Michael is a former educator, so naturally, his approach in working with clients is through guidance and education. He enjoys spending time with family, traveling, hiking, biking, and reading.Learn more: https://safemoney123.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-michael-clanin-certified-financial-fiduciary-with-safe-money-solutions-discussing-guaranteed-income-annuity-strategies

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 Michael Clannon, who's a certified financial fiduciary with safe money solutions, and we'll be talking about guaranteed income and annuity strategies. Michael, welcome back to the program. Well, Mike, thanks for having me back. I feel like I'm a regular here.

Hey, yeah, pull up a chair and grab a cup of coffee. Hey, you know, I want to, before we dive into this topic, which is really powerful because anything with the word guaranteed, I want to hear more about. But I want to dive in a little bit more and clarify, tell us what a certified financial fiduciary is and how does that benefit your clients. Yeah, so, you know, I'm not a financial advisor. So I could never, I mean, I used to be. And I tell people, I used to have that license to lose your money like your financial advisor does. Because I could not control my clients money if it's in the market. I can't control the market.

I can't control taxes. I can't control inflation, right? And I didn't like that, right? I like to be in control. And I want to put my clients in that position. to be in control of their situation versus somebody else. So there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of financial people out here that call themselves a fiduciary.

And basically what a fiduciary is is it's someone who puts their clients' interest ahead of their own. Okay. Now, I believe that word is just, it's just thrown around. It really, the meaning. does not mean anything that it should mean, okay? Because these individuals did not have to do anything in addition to call themselves a fiduciary. And I can tell you, and I'm not saying this is all financial professionals, okay, but I can tell you,

they are selling products or services where they get paid the most. And they're not thinking about your bank account. They're thinking about yours. Or let's just say they're captive and they only have a slut, you know, they only can market something. How can they be a fiduciary if their company does even offer that, but they're just trying to pigeonhole you in, right? The square peg and a round hole. It doesn't work, right? That's an interesting one there.

You hear the people on the radio from the big companies and it's like they only have a certain number of products, but if you get them off to the side and go, hey, off the record, are there anything better out there? Of course, because they're limited. Yeah. So what is, so here's the thing. I could not call myself a traditional fiduciar because I don't have those licenses where I can recommend people to invest money in the market, okay? Whether it's invest or sell or any of that. So I did come across a certification that was not, it was for more insurance based.

but really what a fiduciary is. And I have a, you know, here's a thing. I had to have, you know, go through training. I had to be fingerprinted, background checked, all of this, right? So it's more intensive. But basically the thing is there's a code of conduct that I must follow as a fiduciary. So for example, I can't recommend anything on our first meeting together. Why?

Because I don't know you. Think of a doctor. The doctor's not going to recommend a true. treatment if they haven't done the labs or, you know, to diagnose, right, to, to, to put the treatment plan together. I'm no different. How can I, how can I diagnose you if I don't know anything? So it's, it's asking lots of questions, right? Because I want to make sure that I'm recommending something that is going, that is appropriate. Okay. But yeah, I mean, there's, you know, there's, I mean, there's lots of practice.

There's practice of duty of loyalty, good faith, right? Treat all clients fairly. Duty of good care. That's just be, you know, exercising the skill of what I'm an expertise or an expert in. But my, the biggest thing is educate first. Yeah. And to take a holistic approach. I'm not just looking at clients' investment account.

I'm not looking at just their insurance. I'm uncovering, I'm trying to find their risk in all areas, even areas I don't do. And I want to bring that to their attention and bring the solution and let them decide, do they want to cover that pothole or not? Yep. That's great. Yeah, I really wanted to draw that out because I think that's a huge, huge point that people don't pick up on. So certified financial fiduciary, thank you for that.

Let's dive into guaranteed income because I think, again, you put the word guaranteed income. out there in people's ears perk up. So why is guaranteed income so important? What is it and how does that factor into a financial plan for retirement? Yeah. So here's the thing. Guaranteed is not a word used by most professionals, right? Financial advisors, even insurance agents, okay?

I can guarantee, like, for example, I can guarantee my clients can't lose money. Why? Because it's contractually guaranteed. Their money is not directly in the market. Their accounts can only go up or and or their accounts can create guaranteed lifetime paychecks. Okay. And it is using, and let's just call it out here. I think you already mentioned it, right?

Annuities. Right. So these are the, these are the vehicles. and it just happens to be annuities. Now, not, again, not all annuities are created equal, right? There's bad annuities and there's good annuities. And most of the time, people have heard about the bad annuities. Yeah.

And Mike, do you know what those bad annuities are, the ones that have high fees and you're in the market, you can lose money and that? Do you know what those are called? Bad decisions. They are because they find out that. Right, right, right. Those are variable annuities. And I'm not saying there's not a place. I'm not saying there's not a place.

But when you're getting close to retirement or in retirement, can you handle your 401k going to a 201k or your IRA, full IRA going to a half IRA? No, you don't have time on your side. But back of the day when people heard the word annuities and the red flag was raised or the people on the radio, you know, poo poo on them, it's typically because of those two points. They used to have super high fees. Now the industry has leveled that out to where it's not the case. And they used to be really volatile. And now it's like, no, no, no, no, that's out there still. But look at this one and look at this one where there's safety.

Yeah. I mean, the ones that, again, the ones that I'm using are no risk. Okay. They, because they protect the downside. Okay. they can create guaranteed income that a person can outlive. There was a more thing I was thinking, I don't know. I lost my train of thought there.

But, yeah, I mean, again. Isn't it true that it's also not in the market, but tied to the market? How does that correlation? Right. So basically, these contracts have indexes that you can choose that where you, what dollars you want to link or what percentage you want to link to this index. right, S&P 500 is the most common. Okay. So I usually, you know, to use that as an example, right?

So when that index goes up, your account goes up. Yeah. When the index goes down, negative, you don't lose anything. You stay there. You stay there. So in a 10-year period, you're going to have two zero percent. And that's what I call zero is your hero. Why?

Because you didn't take that negative. Yeah. Right? We don't have to play catch up. You know, we don't have to, you know, going up the mountain, there's going to be some slips. That's your working years. You can handle, I mean, people, you know, you have time on your side to get back to part, you know. But if you, if you lost 46 percent, you got to have 85 percent return.

If you lost 50 percent, you got to have 100 percent. What's the likelihood of that in a year? Not likely. Not. But that, but it's kind of like the tortoise and the hair, isn't it? Like, you know, the tortoise is sprinting out there and I'm going to chase those. big returns and then when a, you know, bad volatile time hits and knocks you in the chops, you may not recover and you certainly aren't going to recover quickly, whereas the tortoise,

they're just plodding away, plodding away. And then if there's a year or two where there was zero returns, then they just pick right back up with some good returns. And it's that steady plotting that pays off. So that's a really interesting aspect people. Yeah. If you think about it, it's going from an excitement life being in the market to really a boring life, if you think about it.

Yep. Right? When it comes to retirement, a lot of times people want that boring life as it relates to their money. I don't want the, and maybe take a little tiny sliver a certain percentage or something. Just if you want to look at the charts and whatever, take, you know, 10 grand or some number, but keep your retirement income that needs to keep the lights on and the food on the table. Keep that safe and protected, I would say. You know, one of the questions I asked, yeah, one of the questions I ask clients, is looking at your retirement accounts, right? How much of this do you not want to lose? And you know, Mike, what they always say? I don't want to lose any of it. Right. But yet, they have 100% risk.

Personally, they're taking on 100% of the risk. Okay? I'm trying to take that risk off of them personally and put it on, aka insurance companies. Now, you don't have to like insurance. I don't like insurance, but I sure love what it does. If I'm getting a paycheck, right?

If I, you know, if I'm getting a paycheck on a regular basis, now the annuity, I here's how I explain the annuity, right? Most of my clients that come to me are typically older, doesn't mean all of them, but they're already collecting, maybe they have a pension, they've already triggered Social Security, okay? Those are guaranteed incomes. I should say they're the closest thing to guarantee the income. Yeah.

Because pensions can dry up. Social security benefits can be reduced. And they will if there's no changes by 2032, I believe. People are going to see a 28% reduction in their social security benefits. Okay. Those are annuities, people. If you don't, and I say this, if you don't like that money, you need to send it back. But I know you won't because you love seeing it come into your bank account.

And that's all I'm doing. We're creating a private pension, another social security check to ride alongside those. but the thing is that income is never going to decrease. And in fact, some of those can increase and keep up with inflation. Huge. You know, there's something else that I want to address and talk about because, again, like you said, before some annuities get a black eye. Those have been fixed, but you got to pick the right one.

But aren't there some other benefits to having a properly structured annuity that will help with that retirement income as it relates to some of these extra add-ons, like that can provide extra benefits. Talk a little bit about some of those. Yeah, so pretty much all the different types of contracts, whether it's annuities or life insurance, they have living benefits, okay, which, you know, on the annuity side, you know, here's the number one concern for retirees, right, is running out of money. And we've already solved that with the annuity, right? because even if you run out of money, you're still getting the paycheck. So you're not, it's not cash flow is king, not cash.

Yeah. In my world, okay? But these have living benefits. So some of them trigger, you know, based on your health. So like if you need assistance in a long-term care facility, for example, and you're receiving, let's say, $50,000 a year in guaranteed income and ideally tax-free income, if we've played it right, But where if you go into a facility, it will double that payout for, say, five years. Okay.

You know, so again, that's free money, right? Because you're going to go through what you put into that account really quickly. Right. The idea is get through your money and get into the insurance company's money. So even if somebody, you know, we talk about this income, let's just say, Mike, they don't need income. I just like social security, they don't need social security, but I show them what is what's the, what are they, what's the downfall of them waiting to take social security at 62 versus 65 or 67? They're going to have to live to 78 before they're in the money. Well, what could that money have done during those years?

Okay. So, so the same thing, same thing on these annuities is. If, you know, even if they don't need the income, let's leverage that income that's producing and leverage it to build your wealth, your family's wealth, your legacy where you can even leave even more money than what you started with. Tax-free. Love it. You know, I think that those are the kind of things that, you know, when you factor in all of these benefits, the living benefits you mentioned, the, you know, can't lose money, the peace of mind. it really gives that kind of, you know, sleep well at night insurance, as they say.

And can you think of an example where you've had a client that kind of made the shift into the stable, guaranteed income out of the volatile, you know, I got tired of watching my portfolio dip and watching the news and feeling sick. And now it is, you know, a night and day. Can you think of an example of how that worked and what did the clients? Well, I'll use a personal one first, okay? That was my parents. They were in a market. They were put into one of those bad annuities, and it took me seven years to unwind that, which cost a lot of money, a lot of time, that that money could have been doing something, right?

But we were trying to protect it. But even with my parents, they're getting more income now than when my father was working on the railroad. Okay. And here's what I didn't do, and I wish I would have, is we have. is we had not done a Roth conversion. Because I didn't know what I didn't, I didn't know what I don't know back then, right? Now, the thing is,

I know that they're not going to run out of cash flow. Yeah. Yeah, so we're going to pay taxes. Oh, well, right? Or I'm going to pay taxes, right? Because if I inherit it, I'm going to pay taxes it might, right? So we can't do that. But the thing is, yeah, I mean,

that's a, personal one. And the thing is, guess what? They don't need it because of Social Security, railroad social security and a pension. So we are using all that money, which is about 80,000, I think, I'm going to say a year. And we're leveraging tax-free life insurance is going to leave a larger death benefit, which again, it has these living benefits also. Okay. So all the plans that we do are multifaceted. They work for other things, right? We're not having to piecemeal different plans together because these plans include everything, you know. So the biggest hurdle I have to help clients get over is to get over their, what they know about annuities. And to be honest,

most people don't even know. It's just hearsay. Right. Yeah, they heard. They heard. I have, right. So a book I usually give them, okay, is they can go out on Amazon or, you know, they can meet with me and I'll give them the book. It's called Stress Free Retirement by Patrick Kelly, who's a colleague of mine. He's already done the work. He's already educated. But this, I like this book because it's a story format. It's realistic situations. It's not jargon.

But he uncovers and explains the different types of annuities, how they, work, right? And what are the, what's the benefits of really having these? Because people don't know. Yep. That's a great point. They just don't know what they don't know. Yeah. And I, and I love that. You don't know what you don't know because there's so many things that we learn in life as adults. And it's like, man, if I can just hit rewind and have gone back to my younger self. But, you know, it gets back to that analogy about, you know, when's the best time to plant that tree for the sake of shade 30 years? years ago. Well, I didn't do it, but when's the next best time today? Right now. Right now. Take advantage of it. I say that to myself all the time. Yeah. Right. If I knew what I know now at my kids' age, we might not be talking, Mike.

Yeah. Well, but you think about this. We can't compare ourselves to other people. Like, oh, well, my friend has a bazillion dollars in retirement. Well, they're a different person. I have this. This is where I'm at. And let's maximize my, my contributions, my money. Let's do the best I can with what I've got and we move on because that's all you can do is control our effort, our effort and our attitude about it. Yeah. Yeah, you know, the biggest thing is, you know, when clients come to me, we're going to have a conversation they've never had before with their financial advisor or traditional insurance agent. And the thing is, I want clients to know what they're, you know, why does this benefit them, right? What is this going to do for them?

and their family not only today, but in the future. Okay? Because I tell clients, I'm not going to sell you anything. I want you to buy it because you see the value. Yeah. Because really,

I am an educator. That's my background. Yeah. And that's perfect. So if you don't want to feel sold or pushed and you want to learn about how you can get some guaranteed income, you know, there's our setup.

You know, so if someone has listened to this going, you know, I just like the way you lay things out, just show me some things, some options to consider. What's the best way that someone can reach out and connect with you and learn a little bit more, Michael? Yeah, I mean, the easiest way is to go to our website, safe money. That's safe, right?

We've been talking about it. Can't lose anything. Safe Money, one, two, three.com. And there they can, you know, read up on information about us, about the things that we've been talking about. And they, you know, they can put in their information and that. And I think there's a link to our calendar too. Perfect. Sounds good.

Well, thank you so much for coming back on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you today. Yeah, thank you again. 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.