Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA - Interview with Shawn Mercer Founder of Mercer Financial Group Discussing Inflation & Rising Living Costs

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Mercer Financial Group is a full-service financial services firm committed to helping individuals, families, and business owners build confident, sustainable financial futures. Based in the Wichita Metro Area and proudly serving clients nationwide, we specialize in personalized retirement planning and long-term investment strategies designed to balance growth with safety.With a comprehensive suite of services—including retirement plan design, portfolio management, and access to a wide range of investment options such as stocks, bonds, and other diversified assets—Mercer Financial Group provides the guidance clients need to navigate every stage of their financial journey. Their approach centers on understanding each client’s goals, risk tolerance, and vision for retirement, allowing us to create tailored strategies that support both wealth accumulation and preservation.At Mercer Financial Group, they believe retirement should be lived with confidence. Their mission is to empower clients with clarity, thoughtful planning, and trusted expertise so people can enjoy the financial security they’ve worked hard to achieve.Learn More: http://www.mercerfg.com/Copyright 2025 – Wealth Watch Advisors (WWA) is an SEC registered investment advisory firm and only transacts business in states where it is licensed to do so or exempt from registration. Please note that registration with the SEC does not denote a particular level of skill of the advisor or imply an endorsement by the SEC. All information provided is intended to be general in nature and does not represent personal financial advice. This site is not a solicitation or an offer to invest or purchase any specific product or service. All investments involve risk of loss and are not FDIC insured or guaranteed by any governmental agency or organization. You can view and download our Privacy Policy, Disclosures, ADV Part 2A, and ADV Part 3 CRS. Shawn Mercer is an Investment Advisor Representative of Wealth Watch Advisors and Mercer Financial Group is not affiliated with Wealth Watch Advisors.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-shawn-mercer-founder-of-mercer-financial-group-discussing-inflation-rising-living-costs

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, Sean Mercer, who's the founder of Mercer Financial Group, and we'll be talking about inflation and the rising. cost of living. Sean, welcome to the program. Hey, Mike, it's really great to be here with you. I've been following you for quite some time. I think you're kind of about almost coming up on 10 years doing this podcast, and I feel extremely honored to be on here. And, you know, since you're

kind of the wily veteran, my wife has always said, I'm not quite the sharpest knife in the drawer, so take it easy on me today. But at least you're not a wooden spoon. So there's that. That's right. That's right. Yeah. So I know this topic of inflation and rising cost of living is not, you know, a wonderful feeling to think about.

But sometimes in life when you face those strange and tough topics and you kind of have a little bit of a better grasp on them, it helps reduce the levels of fear because it's like, okay, I got a little plan here to move forward on. So we'll dive into that in a second, but give us a little bit of your. story and background and how did you get into the financial services industry? Well, thanks for having me on the program first and foremost. And I kind of am sort of a child of financial service and insurance. My father was in the industry. And then in 1994 was when I first kind of got licensed, a little bit more on the insurance side. And then that morphed into owning a registered investment advisory firm in the Colorado area and did that for a number of years and then sold that practice and then moved to the Kansas, Wichita area where my wife is from to kind of settle in and take care of some elderly parents, her elderly parents. But as far as my background and sort of what got me interested, you know, when you're a little kid, you just,

don't really, what's the word, understand really what you're seeing at the time. Yeah. And I had a very influential grandmother in my life. And she was in a little small town in Wyoming. And when I was a kid, she used to take me over to the laundromat, which was on Main Street. And I used to love to go over there with her. And I would clean out all the lent out of the dryers and help her and collect all the nickels and dimes and quarters out of the machines, and then we would go and sit at the

kitchen table, and she would roll all of those coins to get them ready to take to the bank. And I really didn't understand it until later on in life, but it was like every single one of those nickels and dimes were like gold to my grandmother. And she also used to collect cans as well. So she used to go around this little town and collect aluminum cans out of, you know, the dumpsters behind the restaurants or the convenience stores. And she was doing that because she had to. And you don't really realize that when you were growing up as a kid. You're just spending time with your grandparents, having a good time.

But as you get older later on in life, you realize. that that was a source of income from my grandmother. And every one of those nickels and dimes was like gold tucker. And so in realizing that, that was sort of what drove me to get into financial services, to be able to help people to make sure that their money was protected if it needed to be protected or growing sufficiently in a way that it needs to maintain their lifestyle moving forward. So they aren't necessarily in a position that my grandmother was in.

You know, it's interesting that probably you remember those little, I guess, cartoons back in the day, Saturday morning cartoons when you'd see the little, you know, character on the person's left shoulder and right shoulder. And one saying, do this and the other, no, don't do that. It makes me think of your story there when you're working with your clients. It's almost like you've got the little idea of your. grandmother where you're saying, you know, I'm giving this advice to this client. I want to make sure that I'm watching over there, nickels and dimes and quarters and dollars and making sure that they're taking care of. And that message just comes through loud and clear. Absolutely. And it's one of those things. Everybody's pile of money is a lot of money to them. Yes.

So, so it doesn't matter if it is the person that has, you know, a five million. dollar portfolio, that's a lot of money to them. Or the person that has a hundred thousand dollar portfolio, that's a lot of money to them. And so you really have to be cognizant as a financial advisor to realize that the concerns for the smaller investor are just as important as the concerns to the larger investor. And in most cases, even more important. And then that kind of gets us back to our topic of just kind of, you know, inflation and the cost of living because I think people have really experienced that to a larger extent here just in the last three to five years than probably what they've experienced over the past, you know, 20 years. I certainly,

you know, feel like you walk into the grocery store nowadays and it's just, you spend a hundred bucks and you're basically walking out with two sacks. And you're just like, man, where in the world did it all go? You know? And so that very much is an issue, I think, for people today. It really is. And that's the age old inflation question. You know, the money that I used to have would stretch this far. And now it only stretches way, way less. And we've seen that over and over again. So talk a little bit about that aspect of inflation that we'll be facing. And it really actually doesn't matter what year or date or time that we're talking about. Because guess what? One day inflation is rearing its ugly head. The next day inflation isn't and it always is changing. But what should retirees

understand about handling inflation in relation to their retirement portfolio? Well, I really think what happens is is the message comes down the pike as people get older, you need to be more conservative, you need to be more conservative, you need to be more conservative. And I agree with that to a certain extent. The problem is, is that people are living substantially longer. So therefore, being overly conservative and really hurt. a person in retirement, particularly if they have longevity in their family and they say are retiring at 65 or even, say, a little bit later, it seems to be people are retiring a little bit later closer to 70. It's still very high probability that that person is going to come pretty close to touching 90 or even into their 90s, at least one of them will live to be. in their 90s. So with that said, the only way that you can outpace inflation is with equities.

There's no other way to do it. So as a person who's constructing a portfolio for somebody, we really have to assess the longevity, how much time they really feel that they are going to live in retirement. And then based upon that, you know, provide them with some guidance and some true understanding that at 65 years old, you can't just go take all your money and throw it in the bank, particularly if you're not one of those individuals that has, you know, a very large retirement and it doesn't matter. Okay. Those people are few in. and far between that have, say, a retirement portfolio of $5 million or higher. And it's basically like they have more money than they can spend because most likely they've

paid their house off. They've been very, very diligent. They have $5 million. They can literally let it sit in the bank and they are not going to outlive their money. Now, if you're a normal person and let's say that your retirement portfolio is somewhere in that $500,000 to a million-dollar range, you are going to have to have some exposure to equities to be able to keep up with inflation moving forward

because the purchasing power of your money is going to constantly be eroded over time. Yeah. And if you are going to be in retirement for 25 to 30 years, I just, it's my personal belief that you are going to have to have some hedge. And so what we like to do is create a strategy that, number one, I always tell my clients, you never, ever, ever want to be retired and with me. drawing money from a position of weakness. And what I mean by that is, is you do not want to be spending money out of your retirement accounts

in a losing situation. Because everybody's heard of dollar cost averaging and how great that is. Well, it's super great when you're working because you're buying equities at a lower price. You're getting more shares. And it's super great when you're younger, when you have a lot of runway to recoup any potential losses. Absolutely. But once you're retired and you're pulling income out, you now are dollar cost averaging

in reverse. And the, basically the damage that that can cause, particularly if you're in early retirement, it can be devastating. And it really happened to people in 2008, people. people that retired just previous to the crash. And then all of a sudden they're wanting to take out some money. They take out money and just a prime example, say it, they pre-crash it, took you 100 shares to redeem, to create your income.

Well, then imagine if it took 200 or 300 shares to redeem to create that exact same income level. It is literally done. devastating. So back to that position of weakness is you have got to create a strategy that can provide you income. And we kind of call this the foundation. You have got to have a source where you could actually take income out for, say, three years consistently that it does not matter what the market does. So that is going to be a safe? go ahead it's going to be a safe and guaranteed bucket that you can write out the ups and downs of the s and p 500 i'm sure you've probably heard this before the s mp 500 has only lost three consecutive

years in a row like three times in its history so you're going to be fairly safe with that that it's like hey i've got a bucket over here that is completely safe and guaranteed that when the stock market goes up and down, I'm going to be able to take my income out of there and my equity positions can maintain. Then you utilize sort of that equity position, and when it's in the good years, then you use that bucket to replenish the first bucket. And then your second bucket can be, you know, bond alternatives, can be bonds, could be bonds, could be, uh, Structured nodes could be some different types of strategies that can provide you some income as well and just create a multi-bucket strategy that can allow you to maintain your lifestyle and replenish and keep up with inflation. So, Sean, you work with a proprietary process called the Pinnacle Path method.

Tell us a little bit about how that works and how that helps retirees stay ahead of these rights. rising costs. Yeah, this is really just a proprietary retirement method that we have put together. And so what is going to do is it's just really going to take a client down the, down the path, the process to put together what their goals are, lifestyle that they want to achieve, what their beneficiary requirements are, if they want to do legacy plans, meaning, whatever it may be, it's going to be a comprehensive plan that is going to take them from A to Z, from retirement to fulfillment of the will, as we like to say, and put together exactly sort of what we've discussed

based upon what their mitigating factors are, what their income needs are, what their health care situation may be, and then what their plans are for any of the monies that are left over. And so that is ultimately what that is. This really isn't anything new. pretty much every advisory firm is going to have their process to take a client from A to Z, and this is what our process is. And we feel that it does have some unique things to it because, as just stated, oftentimes you get a lot of people probably on this program that they really talk conservative, conservative, safe, this, that and the other. And like I said, I feel that they feel that. That's great for certain people, but not necessarily for everybody because your money is not going to keep up with the times.

And with any plan, it has to be reviewed. So you put the plan into place, knowing the facts that we have in the moment. And then every six months to 12 months, you're reviewing it to see if anything changed. Not that the plan was wrong, but, oh, this external factor adjusted a little bit. So we need to make these changes or, you know, inflation went up or down or the cost of living. So how often are you recommending that your clients sit down and relook at that plan, kind of like an annual review or semi-annual? Yes, absolutely. You know, at a minimum on a yearly basis, sometimes clients will want to sit down, you know, on a quarterly basis or at least just sort of check in quarterly.

The nice thing about having a multi-asset allocation type plan is that not only in the down years, do you have a strategy, but then in the good years, you also have a strategy. And you're not, quote, unquote, missing out. You're trying to stay balanced. I think that's the most important thing. And oftentimes, once again, as stating at the start of the show, I think people in retirement can get too conservative. And we're not talking about trying to hit major home runs here. You know, it's just they just get paralyzed and, you know, get stuck into some very low interest rate environments. And then all of a sudden, when there is some inflation that comes down,

down the pike, it really, really hurts. And I think you're kind of doing a disservice to a person by not showing them alternatives to where they can, you know, grow their wealth, grow their nest egg with some sort of, you know, security or at least not necessarily security per se because there is no security. and equities, but at least feel comfortable that they're not, you know, outstanding in the middle of the intersection waiting for a train to run them over. Yeah, with unnecessary risk. Correct.

It reminds me of, have you ever heard of a shiny object syndrome where it's like, oh, let me try that, let me try that, let me try this, because it looks neat. Well, when you have a plan in place, you know it's dialed in, locked in, you stay the course unless something drastic happens. Don't get tempted to try all the new fangled things you see out there online because there's about 4,000 a day that you can get distracted with. So I think having that plan in place and then just watching it a couple times a year, just kind of making any adjustments just makes a whole lot of sense. Absolutely. You know, and the importance of it is that say, for example, a person is wanting to

take out $3,000 a month in income today, even at a 3% inflation rate in 20,000. years, the purchasing power of that amount is going to be down to $1,660. So that's a 44% loss in purchasing power just over a 20-year time frame. So you sit there and you look at that from age 65 to age 85. I think the majority of your listeners probably feel that 85 really isn't that far of a number out there for most people, particularly today. That basically in a nutshell, you know, makes it pretty crystal clear that you better, if you are the normal person, okay?

And that's what I like to use, the normal person that, you know, has worked hard, has saved their money and put together as a decent nest egg. Okay. Let's use that million dollar figure. I think that's probably sort of the normal person range. Okay. you can obviously see how important it is to be able to keep up with inflation if you're going to spend down that money over a 20-year time frame and make sure that you still feel halfway cozy when you're 85 and your nest egg's not $100,000. So plan for the worst, have a plan in place.

And then if the worst doesn't happen, you're well ahead. And if the worst does happen, you've got a plan in place. That's been some really good insights there, Sean. If someone is interested in reaching out and connecting with you to learn more and see how they can put that plan into place for them, what's the best way that they can do that? All of our contact information is at our website. It is Mercer, M-E-R-C-E-R-F-G, so that is Frank George or Financial Group.com. So MercerfffG.com. and they can send me an email, get a hold of us there at the office, whatever it is,

and would greatly appreciate the opportunity to be able to chat with anybody on one-on-one basis. Thank you, Sean. I really appreciate you coming on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. Hey, Mike, it's been great today. And once again, thank you very much for the opportunity. And having me on the show, it's been wonderful. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders to learn more about the resource

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