Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA - Interview with Patrick Cotter, Founder of Cotter Financial Group Discussing Navigating Uncertainty in Retirement

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

Cotter Financial Group, LLC. is a community-based concierge-level retirement planning firm helping pre-retirees and retirees in the most critical phase of retirement known as the Retirement Red Zone. 10 years before and after retirement. They are a lifestyle-based planning firm. They do incorporate the numbers aspect while helping families and individuals plan for maximum enjoyment in retirement, while keeping in mind your values, relationships, and, more importantly, how people wish to spend their precious time. So whether they are in retirement, on the verge of or just starting to prepare, they will help get you ready for what matters most and take action with more confidence. Focus areas are:Retirement Income Planning – safe, predictable, and guaranteedLegacy Planning – maximize to whom and what is left to heirsWealth Transfer – tax-efficient transfer strategiesEstate Planning – Wills, Trusts, and Asset ProtectionSocial Security Optimization – claiming strategy guidanceWealth Management – safe and tax-efficient strategies for inflation riskLearn More: www.cotterfinancialgroup.comCotter Financial Group, LLC and Kinetic Investment Management, Inc. are two separate entities. Insurance products and services are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents in all appropriate jurisdictions under Cotter Financial Group, LLC. Investment Advisory Services are offered through Kinetic Investment Management, Inc., a registered investment adviser. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial adviser and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-patrick-cotter-founder-of-cotter-financial-group-discussing-navigating-uncertainty-in-retirement

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 us Patrick Cotter, who's the founder of Cotter Financial Group, and we'll be talking about navigating uncertainty in retirement. Patrick, welcome back to the program. Thanks for having me back again, Mike. Really appreciate it.

You're welcome. You've got a flare for making complex concepts really, really clear with some of your examples and stories. So I'm excited to hear how you're working with your clients in preparing for the unexpected. So let's start off with how can retirees prepare for unforeseen financial challenges? that's very much like if I were to call you and you were my neighbor Mike and I said hey what are you doing tomorrow and you say I don't know Patrick what do you want to do I said well let's jump in the car and let's just let's drive to Seattle even though we're in south Florida let's drive to Seattle tomorrow and you're going to say well isn't that going to

aren't we going to have to sit down and do some planning and and I might say no man let's just get the car and go and you're going to look at me and say Are you crazy? What about all the road bumps? What about all the problems that could arise on the road that could, that could, you know, could cause us to just, you know, have just such a horrible time? So when it comes time for financial planning and retirement planning, it's no different, Mike.

You have to, you have to take a look at what are the different risks that you could be challenged, with going into retirement, and then you have to prioritize those risks, which in my opinion, longevity risk is number one. And then you have to tackle them by having a plan in place, and you have to be very proactive because in all, and handling all these different retirement risks, you just don't have time to be reactive. If you have to be reactive, it's too late. You're done.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And you don't want to be in the thick of things making decisions reacting. You want to prepare ahead of time so that you're making logical plans because the worst time to make some really powerful, important, life-changing decisions, the worst time is right in the midst of it all. That's correct. And let's talk a little bit about, you know, how do we handle the longevity risk and the financial aspect of longevity. heavy risk how much how much money are we going to need you know well that you know that's going to come that's again that's where you need to hire a specialist and that has the appropriate tools so when

somebody comes in and we take a look at ask them you know how much retirement income do you need you know that's the paycheck how much do you want and what do you want to do for you that's the play check we have i have so many financial tools these sophisticated algorithms and software that if there's a gap if there's a shortfall and we take a look we do the social security analysis and if we find out that there's a shortfall and what they need compared to what they're going to get with uh social security is in the technology that we have we can just put down. Oh, Mr. Jones needs another $2,500 a month. How much money is he going to have to put in that he can get this on a guaranteed basis for the rest of his life? And oh, by the way, if he

passes away, it'll continue for his wife as well. So there is joint survivorship with, and I've talked about this before, with these income annuities. It's not just covering the life of one person. It can cover the life of one person or multiple people. And so we do have the tools that we can do those calculations. But I always like to stress, let's talk about the human side. Let's talk about what are your wants. Are there any legacy planning that you want to happen? Tell me about your grandkids. How do you want your grandkids to be taken care of? There's so, when it comes to retirement planning it doesn't always have to come down to just income and money there's everything else that comes into it about you know I'm very big on leaving a legacy you know

because there's uh Mark Twain everyone's heard of Mark Twain Mark Twain Mark Twain has a famous quote and the famous quote is everybody dies twice in their lifetime and this to kill this, I don't want to ask that I can't, I use this in the workshops. The first time somebody dies is when they take their last breath. The second time somebody dies is when their name is mentioned

for the very last time. And that is, comes into the legacy planning, which again, we do here and we do it very well at Cotter Financial Group. let's go a little bit deeper on that you brought up legacy planning a couple times and i want to dive into that how do you help your clients align their plan with what they value most regarding generosity legacy because i think that a lot of times people think i need this much money to retire

i'm going to retire at this age and i'm going to die at that age and i need it to last that long but the problem is that does not calculate in legacy and passing money onto their family right so where do you approach that with your clients well we approach that we start out with uh we offer what's called the east state plan uh which is a a turnkey estate planning package but without getting complicated today is we find a lot of people that come see us when remember on the on our previous interview the three questions i asked people you know why did you buy that and who is it four there's probably 50% of the times the answers i get is i'm never going to use this money it was set aside to go to uh either my wife or i want the or a lot of i want this to go to

my grandkids yeah you know it doesn't matter how much it is almost every single time people want not did you notice who i skipped in there i skipped the kids not not not everyone likes their kids but they all but i know for a fact they all love the grandkids so it goes straight to the grandkids i want to make sure my grandkids uh i do something for my grandkids there's only one way you know there's only well there's multiple ways you can do that you know uh through investments but the the i like to to take advantage of leverage if i can guarantee somebody that gives me a hundred thousand dollars that they want to leave the four grandkids oh each grandkid's going to get $25,000 you know if I put it in an investment you're

going to get each kid's going to get $25,000 plus or minus market returns but what if at the same time I could take that $100,000 and turn it into a tax-free $400,000 so each kid is going to each grandchild will now get $100,000 no market risk tax-free people people look at me and they said, I can really do that, say, yes, you can. Yes, you can. Yeah. Wow. And so that is the power of, drum roll please, life insurance. We utilize life insurance. I'm going to say we are not life insurance salespeople. We utilize life insurance in a financial plan when it makes sense. And life insurance is a big part. And it's the most integral part. It's the most cost-efficient manner for legacy planning. Legacy planning and wealth transfer planning, you cannot beat the tax-free rates of return

utilizing life insurance. You know, I think it's like a lot of things in life. When you hear one word, don't make an immediate assumption and write it off. Like life insurance, like, oh, I see that on late-night TV. You pay $20 a month for a minute. I don't need that. Well, you might not need that, but you might need a properly structured life insurance plan that accomplishes X, Y, and Z that you're talking about, yeah. Well, a lot of people, I'm glad you brought that up.

A lot of people come to my seminars and workshops, and they say, oh, well, Susie Orman doesn't like annuities or Dave Ramsey doesn't like annuities. And they say they're too expensive. And I'm like saying, if a product has no fee, where is the expense? Now, they're talking about the old type of annuity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. that were around, you know, as you had mentioned on a previous interview that, you know, some products have gotten a bad reputation. There's over 2,000 different annuities out there.

You know, we don't specialize in variable annuities that can have three, two, three, four percent in fees. No, everything we do is fixed. Fixed has no fees. Every now and then, if we have to put a long-term care rider on an annuity contract that will double, the income, if someone can't perform two of the six activities of daily living, yeah, those come with a fee

typically less than one percent. You know, so these are virtually de-neutral products that, and I would pose the question to them other than Social Security and pensions, which most people don't

have what is the other source of guaranteed lifetime income because there is none that's that there's no other product that i can use the g word with yeah guarantee yeah right can't do it so i'm passionate about income let's talk a little about um flexibility yes because guarantee is huge that gives you some flexibility in your retirement because you know here's the gap that I have. If I have a gap, we closed it with guaranteed income. Talk a little bit about flexibility in the retirement plan. How can that be achieved? Meaning, what happens if some things changed? Like, oh, I want to now go travel a little bit more. So I might need to have my retirement plan flex a little bit. Can you factor that into the plan? And how would you approach

that? Yes, we can. And, man, I'm glad you asked me this question because this will make sure that people listening are not assuming, oh, he's all about annuities. No, I'm not. I'm all about annuities in covering your income needs. Remember that rule of 100? Somebody 70 years old, they know what their income is. We have that covered. They can go to sleep. I call it the Swan Plan. My Swan Plan means sleep well at night. Because My clients know that their expenses, their monthly expenses are covered. So a 70-year-old with a million dollars, we got $300,000 of that roughly invested in the market. And guess what?

We can get a little aggressive with it. Why? Because we have his monthly income covered, guaranteed. So I had mentioned to you before about, in the previous interview, about the largest wealth management firm asset manager in the world, BlackRock. They put out a paper called How to Optimize Retirement Income. Now, Grant, just remember, BlackRock is a asset manager. They're not an insurance company.

BlackRock is telling people, and anybody can just go on Black Rock's website. and going to the retirement planning section, you can print it out. But there's a quote here, from BlackRock, adding guaranteed lifetime income combined with more aggressive asset allocation generates 29% more annual spending ability

from one's retirement savings, excluding Social Security, and reduces downside risk by 33, Do you know how powerful that is? That gives a piece of mind. Are people peace of mind? Swan sleep well at night and allow your money to grow, keep pace with inflation. So guess what?

You want to take that. You want to take your grandkids to Europe next year on a 10-day cruise. Go ahead and do it. You don't have to worry about, oh my God, what if the market goes down? Are we going to run out of money? No, you're not. So right below that in this Black Rock article, and it's bold, it says, on top of that, this goes back to something else we talked about, Mike.

On top of that, delaying retirement and claiming Social Security benefits from 65 to 67 boost total annual spending another 16% and reduces downside risk by additional 15%. This is why, these are the principles that I follow. This is why, in my opinion, I am, I need to, I'm trying to get my message out there. I want to educate people on how they can live their best retirement. Make it your best retirement ever. Why? Because you're only supposed to do it one time.

And you know what, Mike? Years ago, when our parents were working, they retired at age 65. What was life expectancy back then? I don't know. But I was going to say maybe 70 and nowadays is probably well over 90. 92. So back in the day, that's one of the reasons why pensions went, out. Because back in the day, people retired. They worked till 65. They retired at 65, passed away at 70, 72. They only enjoyed five years of retirement. Now people are retiring at 60, 65. They're living in 95. They're retired for the same number of years or slightly less than they worked. So it's more important now that we can stretch out.

their retirement income, and when I mean stretching it out, I don't mean taking chances, oh, I got to earn 12% this year. Yeah. You know, no, it's guaranteed. Everything I work in the world of certainty, not uncertainty. That's my world. You know, that's just so powerful because that's a gift you're given to people that swans, sleep well at night. Let's wrap up with this thought.

If you could only track three indicators each year to keep, a retiree-owned course. What would that be? Three indicators. Number one is make sure you have a plan in place for lifetime guaranteed income. That's number one by far. Take care of longevity risk. Number two, have a plan in place to cover a long-term care event for a U.S.

and your spouse and Mike there's many ways we can do that that you don't even have to buy anything it's just a matter of of reallocating resources into another product that has a hundred percent money back guarantee completely safe liquid so that would be number two have a plan in place for a health event and number three which is by far the most important important is don't worry retire happy hire a specialist that's my message is if you if someone comes in and they learn they get educated you can't make a you can't when you when you become when you're pushed against a wall and you have to become reactive you're going to make a bad decision.

Yep. If you come in, have a consultation with me, and you tell me what your concerns are, and we address those, and if they're a big enough concern and you want to take action on it, yeah, we can help you implement that. But at no point in time, have I ever been accused of trying to jam a square peg into a round whole. Don't need it, don't want it. I'm here to educate, enlighten, and help. Well, in light of that, if someone feels like they need a little bit of educated and lightning and helping, what's the best way they can learn more and reach out and connect with

you, Patrick? Awesome. Thank you. The best way to reach out to me is go through my website. There's lots of content on there. And that is at W-W-W-W-W-C-O-T-T-E-R-C-O-T-T-E-R-C-T-E-R-C-R-R-FINcial group. And come to one of my workshops or seminars. Meet me in person. Come to my office. I love to meet you. Shake your hand.

Excellent. Well, Patrick, thank you so much for coming back on. It's been a real pleasure chatting. Thank you, Mike. Thanks for having me. This was a lot of fun. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show

or listen to past episodes, visit www.com. Influentialentrepreneursradio.com.