Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA - Interview with Russell Thompson with H&R Insurance and Financial Services-Guaranteed Income

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Russell brings a unique combination of market insight, relentless work ethic, and a passion for education to his role as a financial advisor. With a deep understanding of market cycles and a commitment to going above and beyond for his clients, he is uniquely positioned to help business owners, individuals, and families pursue and protect their financial goals with confidence. In 2014, after a 24-year career in industrial construction and professional MMA fighting, Russell made a pivotal shift into the financial services industry. His decision was driven by a personal realization: many of his business owner friends and family were unprepared for the financial risks that could erode a lifetime of hard work and asset accumulation. Since then, he has developed and refined a comprehensive planning process designed to help clients set clear goals, uncover potential risks, and implement personalized strategies to protect and grow their wealth. Russell lives in Daytona Beach, where he enjoys an active lifestyle that includes weightlifting, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, golf, and time at the beach. He’s also passionate about motorcycles and regularly attends local biking events and live music venues.Learn More: Email: [e-mail] or www.hr-ifs.com Securities offered through Regulus Financial Group, LLC, Member FINRA /SIPC. Advisory services offered through Regal Investment Advisors, LLC an SEC Registered Investment Advisor.Regal Financial Group, Regal Investment Advisors and Regulus Financial Group are affiliated entities. Registration with the SEC does not imply any level of skill or training.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-russell-thompson-with-hr-insurance-and-financial-services-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 us Russell Thompson with H&R Insurance and Financial Services, and we'll be talking about guaranteed income. Russell, welcome back to the program.

Thank you for having me. Hey, I think that there's certain words in life that people really resonate with, and I think the guarantee is one of those words because it's like, give me a guarantee on anything. Whatever that it is, I want to hear about a guarantee. And when we hear guaranteed income, that's pretty powerful. So first, let's start off with just what's defining what guaranteed income actually is. Yeah, a lot of people want guaranteed income. And when they say that, I want guaranteed income,

they don't fully understand what comes with that word guaranteed. So guaranteed income means it's contractually backed. So like Social Security, a pension, or some type of annuity with an income rider, those are backed by a third party. So, you know, Social Security is government backed. Pensions are planned backed. And then annuities are insurance company back. And they are contractually obligated to pay you what they say they're going to pay you by contract.

Now, if you're talking about what in my industry we call reliable income, that's different. That's not guaranteed. You can have a portfolio of aristocrat stocks that pay a dividend that's never missed one. All these things that have been reliable and you can count on it. But they're not guaranteed. They're not backed by a third party. Yeah. You go around.

You know, it's kind of the rule that something can go around eventually. It will go around. So the guarantee part means someone is telling you, you give me this amount of money. and I'm going to give you as income this amount of money in year until you pass. So there's no fluctuation in that income coming in. It's easier to determine a budget based off money, you know, for a fact, that will be coming in. And again, that word guaranteed has to be backed by something. You know, I like the comparison between reliable and guaranteed, because I think if we look

you know, some, you hear some people talk about the market and go, oh, well, over the last 30 years, it's, it's averaged X percent return. That's reliable. Well, but if you kind of zoom in, you're like month to month, quarter to quarter, it's like volatile and way high up and way high down. It doesn't feel very reliable. And to your point, like, oh, this company's always paid a dividend until they don't. So reliable isn't guaranteed and it always happens a certain way until it doesn't. correct you know it's um if it's reliable there's still a sequence risk yes the market performed on average this much over the last 30 years and then you dig into the 30 years and you get really granular and you break it down year by year and then month by month and on the reliable income if it is down and you have to take your distributions because that's what you're relying on his income and that's it, that will affect the overall performance of that reliable income. And if there's a big pullback in the market and you still have to take that same amount of money, it's really hard to recover from that if you even will. You know, that's a really good point

there, which we could dive in for about another hour and a half on that one concept. But when you start needing to take out X number of dollars of your retirement portfolio, you know, and if most of it's in the market, and we're talking about volatility, you might have to take it out because you've got to pay the bills. You might have to take it out because of the required minimum distributions that we have to take at a certain age. Well, it's all fine and good when the market's flying high and you just pull out a little piece and you never even feel it. And, you know, the money you made and interest, you know, is way more than even what you pulled out. Yay, that's good. But what about when the market starts going crazy and down? You are seeing,

your portfolio drop and you need to take money out. So now it's a double whammy. And then the thought hits you. Well, I got to hope that it comes back enough to recoup that. Well, if it goes down 15%, you got to get way more than 15% to recoup. So now you feel a little bit tempted to maybe, well, let's take a little bit more risk and see if we get that, you know, that recoup our losses. Well, then you're chasing. And now that adds fuel the fire.

So I think that's never a good strategy. So you bring up a great point there on that volatility. It's like you're chasing a never-ending solution. Yes, and chasing it is what most people do. Yeah. When you have an emotion to your investments and you don't have the discipline to ignore it, and most people do not. And I've been guilty of it myself. So it's arbitrage, right?

you're trying to get each year a little more than what you're taking out. And to your point, if the market's down 15, 20%, and you're taking 6% of your portfolio out as income to meet your needs, the mass is easy. Now you're not down 20%. You're down 26% and they're recovered 26% within the next year or two years, why you're still taking more money out. That gets hard. Yeah.

Huge. Well, you mentioned a couple examples of, you know, the contract-based guaranteed income like Social Security, like pension, like annuity. Well, pensions these days are few and far between, you know, and maybe someone still has one out there. Social Security for now, I mean, I know that people have said, oh, what if Social Security goes away? I'm 58, and for the last 30 years, I've been hearing that same question. Well, what if Social Security goes away? You know, it's probably. like back in the day when the banks were failing, it's like this is just this company or this bank is too big to fail. We're going to always prop up Social Security. Maybe there's some little tweaks and nuances there. But I think people are very familiar with those two. Talk a little bit about that

other insurance backed guaranteed income of an annuity because I feel like sometimes people have some misconceptions there. Yes, there's a lot of anchor bias. toward annuities. So years ago, annuities were expensive. When you started with drawing money out for income, there was no more growth inside that annuity and you could deplete it. So the contracts were just different. And people kind of had a bad taste left in their mouth. So, you know, But even some of them, say you were in this annuity and you were taking income and you passed two years later, there was no death benefit. So that was years ago. Now they've gotten so much better to where when you get into each annuity and it's structured and there's a contract written, Sam, okay, you give me this amount of money and they will actually do a spousal rider on it.

so that when the first person passes, the second person still gets that amount of income per year, which is great because, you know, Social Security is not like that. But this is for both lives. And you give them $200,000, and in five years you're going to start that stream of income. They will tell you the guaranteed amount that they will, pay you for the rest of you and your spouse's life or you if you're single. And it's,

there's a pool of money these life insurance companies have and they're required and it's audited to pay these. So it's not just them. They're credit rating is important, but it's not just them saying they're going to do it. There is a system set in place to make sure they have the money to do it. Yeah. And this is really reliable. Bible. I'm not heard of any. Again, I'm 55, and I've never heard of a life insurance company person that has gone under that has filed bankruptcy. They get consumed by other life insurance companies who honor those obligations that that was to happen. Because it's contractual. Exactly. So that money has to be somewhere waiting for you to take it as short money.

You can actually Then like you said, pensions are few and far between them. Outside of a government job or state job, you really don't hear of them anymore. And because there's a lot of legacy costs in the pension and businesses have learned that they obligate yourself to pay this pension. That is an expense to them that they are obligated to pay.

They can't get out of it. so they went more toward pushing 401ks. But you can move a portion of your 401K, it's called a 401K rollover into an IRA into an annuity. So you're moving some of your retirement into this income stream that you know will be there when you retire. So it's very important to sit down with a professional

and keep an open mind and don't listen to what your grandparents said about annuities or your parents because that's based off their experience or what they heard of an experience of things to happen many years ago. Yeah. And I think we could keep talking for a long time just on that one point alone. But I think that back of the day, annuities had a black eye, but all those things mostly have been. fix you got to just get the right one for you and it's contractually obligated to pay you how it's set up and that ties into that guaranteed income because it's not a you know it's not it's it that's a little bit different than guarantee because we guarantee that annuity you're never going to lose that's a

wonderful guarantee but when you turn on the income stream now that helps you close that gap if there is a gap between what you need in retirement and what's the security or pension or whatever else have. So that's a big thing for people to keep in mind is that annuity guarantee, and it also brings a guaranteed income stream when you set it up that way. Yes. And people just need to realize because I have clients who are ultra wealthy and people who work their entire lives and save and do all the right things, but they don't sit down with a professional to make sure when they retire, they retire stress free. They don't have to worry. And that's why. what this does. It gives you peace of mind, knowing that that money will be coming into your bank account.

You know, we talked about the word volatility, and then you just said peace of mind, and those two words don't go together, right? When you have your money in the market and volatility rears its ugly head, you're watching the news or logging under your computer or getting your quarterly statements and your, you know, your heart sinks in your stomach because it's like, oh, my goodness, volatility and it was down. And that peace of mind is something that is so important. And I would venture to say maybe you even have heard of this before, but there's probably studies out there where people, when they have their money buttoned up nicely and you have

that peace of mind, you're actually going to live a longer life and a more peaceful life because of that versus, oh, I'm always worried that my money is going to be going down. That's such a good point. There's tons of things. I wish I had that in front of me. of how it is tied to life expectancy. So what happens when you retire, you pay more attention. Because as you're working and gaining wealth and building your retirement,

you just work and you put money back. They take it out of your check into a 401k or whatever avenue you have that you're putting into retirement. But studies do show and they change industry recommendations. So I remember years ago, probably 15, 20 years ago, the financial professionals would tell people, look, you can take 5, 6% a year out of your investments. Well, when people retire, now they're watching it. Because they have time, they're paying attention. They're bored before when they're growing up, they're not paying attention. They just know it'll be they want to retire.

So as that more people retire off investments rather than pensions, what has been found out and what's recommended now is 3%. the year. And the reason being people can't leave the loan because now they're watching. And when they see this news on the market going down or whatever happens, it causes volatility. And there's lots of things that causes market volatility. It's like, what can we do to stop the bleeding? So they'll call their advisor and say, I want to go to cash. I don't care. Go to cash. And they're down. And then they wait until the market's back up to get back in. They won't, they have a hard time just relying on, on the system and how it works. So they make bad decisions.

And that's that money that's recommended taken out percentage wise is based off the emotion of retirees when their money's all in the market. Because they're concerned. What happens if I live long? What happens if the market just goes away? way. Now, I hear that much. You know, worst case scenario, the market goes away. Hypothetically you say that, I'm not sure what the world would look like if that happened. But, you know, when you have this annuity, you peel off some of your profits and you put it into

this guaranteed income, you don't worry about it. You don't watch. You may base what vacation you're going to take off market volatility and time. or when you buy a new car or how often you got to eat. But as far as your bills and your income, you don't worry about it. It's like you're working and getting paid. And that's what it is. You have, you know, you go to work, you work X amount of hours for X amount of dollars. And you know, when you go to work, you are confident that business is going to give you that paycheck.

Now you're retired. and you're not working. You can't just work more hours or you can't, or you don't know, not maybe physically able to take another job. So all this cuts that out and stress is just a huge killer. So if you remove that stress out of your life, you'll have a happier and healthier life. Yep.

Yeah, it makes total sense. You know, I know you talk about income structure. Talk a little bit about what that looks like and why that is so important when you're talking about guaranteed income because I'm sure at a certain age, you need to be saying, hey, we need to move a good percentage of your money out of the market into some of these guaranteed vehicles so that, you know, we're structured the right way. But talk a little bit about income structures. Yeah, so it's a great point. Now, most people don't, well, it's not recommended you put all of your money into annuities for income because they are not liquid.

and people need to realize that. There's surrender periods, usually for income is anywhere from seven to ten years, meaning if you change your mind and you no longer want this income, you just want to cash, what comes with that guaranteed part is you are obligating that money to be there for a minimum of seven to ten years. So if you go, okay, I just want my cash. I think I can do better. There's a penalty for that.

Now, that's the reason you don't want to put it all in there. You need liquid money. So structuring what becomes your reliable income is very important. So you have your guarantee money or Social Security, maybe a pension, and an annuity. And then you have the rest of your money. and you will have it in a portfolio of dividend paying stocks. There's tons of very savvy strategies to create income that are tied directly to the market. So you can go in and pull whatever some you want or need from that.

So you have your guaranteed money that you knows want to be there, allows you to play a little bit more with your reliable income as things. change and needs change. So when you have both reliable, guaranteed, and then a portion of it still in growth, some type of a growth portfolio, so that you're getting more growth. And what comes with the more secure or reliable investments is the growth potential is not as high as something where, say, you're just in the S&P 500 and it grows great. So you have multiple strategies there for your retirement money that allows you to get more growth and you have the guaranteed income and then, again, your reliable income.

And a lot of times a reliable income will pace with inflation. Yeah. But it won't outperform it. So that growth factor hypothetically should over time outperform inflation. So that's the reason it's so important to structure your money in retirement. You know, it really, again, just gets down to something I mentioned in our previous conversation. All of this makes sense, but I couldn't figure it out, do it, Google it, or AI summarize it because there's so many variables. So if someone is interested in learning a little bit more and seeing how some guaranteed income strategies could factor into their retirement, what's the best way they can reach out and connect with you, Russell?

Yeah, I would love to hear from everyone. It's just email me at Russell at hr dash IFS endem Frank Sierra.com or just go to her website at www.h.h.h.com. IFS and then frangiaria.com. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming back on. Talk about guaranteed income is really, really important. I really appreciate your time, Russell. Thank you for having me.

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