Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA - Interview with Shelby Green Retirement Expert with Retirement Heroes Discussing Achieving Financial Clarity and Peace of Mind

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

Retirement Heroes specializes in helping retirees and those nearing retirement secure their financial future with confidence. Whether it’s ensuring a reliable income stream, protecting assets, or planning for healthcare costs, we take a personalized approach to understanding what matters most to each client. Our mission is to provide the guidance and strategies needed so they can enjoy their golden years without financial stress.Financial security in retirement isn’t just about numbers—it’s about peace of mind. I’m here to help retirees make informed decisions so they can enjoy life on their terms, without the fear of outliving their savings.Learn More: https://retirementheroes.org/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-shelby-green-retirement-expert-with-retirement-heroes-discussing-achieving-financial-clarity-and-peace-of-mind

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 the Shelby Green, who's a retirement expert with retirement heroes, and we'll be talking about achieving financial clarity and peace. of mind. Shelby, welcome back to the program. Mike, I appreciate the invite. You're welcome, man. And I think

that this is something that is like that, that, you know, elusive dream that people would say, you know, just give me peace of mind. You know, financial clarity. Okay, I can get that because I can learn and I can, you know, work with and have financial clarity. But that peace of mind seems like that extra level. So how do you help your clients balance achieving financial clarity and then escalating to that peace of mind. Yeah, I think for me, this is maybe my own definition, but throughout my career, peace of mind really just means lack of stress, like the absence of stress. And when it comes to finance, specifically financial stress.

So not having to worry about what's going on externally with things that you can't control. I can't control the rate of inflation. I cannot control the market. I can't control really even how long I live. But what can I control? I can control where I have my money, how much risk I have. I can control, you know, I guess what exactly buckets of money that I take from. I can't control health care.

And so you want to really think about the things that you can't control to have some sort of plan, no matter what happens to where you're still going to end up retiring successfully. And I think that that lack of stress is going to give someone complete clarity and peace of mind. You know, and I think that you're exactly right. I think that's spectacular. And some of the things that would allow. someone to have that lack of stress is knowing clearly, you know what? I want to retire at this age. I want to have this much money coming in every single month because I have even less than that

going out in bills. So I know that I've got, you know, stability that way. That gives me peace of mind and stress. And when that happens, because that's the result of a good financial plan. You've sat down and you've planned it out and then you've checked it out every six to 12 months or so and things are going well. But when you have that lowered stress, isn't it a statistically, isn't it proven that you end up living longer because you're less stressed?

Because there's so many diseases out there that are tied to stress. Well, if we can lower that because we gave you retirement clarity and peace of mind, then that's a great thing. Yeah, 100%. I think something that is proven true time and time again is that people with less stress live longer.

And I think a big stress that people have in their day to day, no matter what age they are, what part of life, is financial stress. And taking away that financial stress from somebody, I think it really allows them to enjoy retirement more. I think it avoids a lot of unnecessary arguments with couples. And it just allows you to be a lot more free and have a lot more of that flexibility in retirement to do the things that you really love to do. And ironically enough, you end up in a position where you have complete clarity over your financial situation. you're not stressing about anything. You're living longer. Ironically, though, as well, on the other side of the coin, you technically need more money.

Because you're living longer, right? Which means you need to have a good plan, which means you need to test it and stress, test it, and check it. All of those things, right? But those are like, that's kind of like saying, well, you know, you need to make sure that you aren't spending more money than you're bringing in even before retirement years. Those are some of the obvious things. So when you have that plan in place, what are you saying are the first steps that? that people need to put into place to get that clarity? Yeah, I think number one, the first thing that you have to do is create an income plan.

The income plan is just going to say, hey, here's exactly where my bills are going to get paid every single month. Once that's completed, the next thing they need to do is also then stress test it. You stress test it by just saying, hey, if these other things happened, I'll give some examples in a second. But these other things happen, am I still going to be okay? If market 10, 30%, are you still going to be okay? If your spouse passed away unexpectedly, are you still going to be okay? If you need a home nurse care or to live in a retirement home, are you still going to be okay? If all of a sudden you had to get surgery tomorrow and it costs $20,000 or you need repairs in the house that you didn't expect, will you still be okay?

And then from there is the things you can't control to take less risk in those categories, making sure that, hey, if you answered no to one of the things that you can't control, if one of those things are going to be able to, be, you know, put you in a position where you're not going to be okay, how do you remedy that problem? So then I would say remedy the issues that you actually can't control, like health care, like long-term care, market volatility, inflation. If you already plan for those things that you can't control, well, now you know that you're now in control of your retirement, right? If you know that every single thing that happened you've already planned for and every single risk that happens, that you already have a plan in place, and you don't have nothing to worry about. You know everything going according to plan.

100%. Yeah, that makes total sense. You know, when you think about that comprehensive retirement plan so that you have a peace of mind and clarity, what are some of the things that need to be addressed? What are some of those pillars without getting into detail and whatnot? But what should people be thinking about? And even I'll bet you that there's a pillar or two that people are like, oh, yeah, that makes sense, but hadn't really thought about that. Well, I think something that a lot of people don't think about just to put in perspective, for example, is going to be things like home equity. Some simple things that people think, oh, and I'm not thinking about home equity because I don't want to sell my house. Yeah.

I've had situations where somebody came to me and they said, hey, I don't know what to do. I have $100,000 in a 401k and I have Social Security and this is how we're going to live. I put together an income plan for them. I was like, ooh, every single month, you're going to have $100 to spare. That's it. That means no traveling. no having any excess amount of fun. Literally one thing that I recommended to them,

which is something that I can't even do, mind you, was I said, hey, have you considered maybe utilizing some of the equity in your house? They said, oh, no, we don't want to sell. We want to live here forever. I was like, okay, but do you guys have any reason that you're not using the equity? They said, what do you mean?

We don't want another mortgage. This is a paid off house, by the way. I said, well, you can do a home equity conversion mortgage. I've had many clients do that, and you could actually get right now 40 to 60% of your equity out of the house, and now you have all the money to do. the things that you want to do. That's going to put you guys in a better financial situation. And it was just something they didn't think about. They were like, I guess I didn't even see

as an option because it's not something that's talked about. Or maybe back in the day, 20, 25 years, 30 years ago, they heard something bad about a reverse mortgage. And they're like, oh, no, those are bad. They didn't even look into them because they just heard bad things about them. The old reverse mortgages are not the same thing as the new ones. Right. Yeah. You actually can get the appreciation. The bank doesn't have to take your house. You get a bigger line of credit every single year. There's a lot more benefits than people think. And sometimes people just aren't looking at external sources.

They're just doing kind of the plans that everybody talks about every day. I call them cookie cutter plans. Yes. That's a really good point. Yeah, that's cool. And I think that too, here's something I know speaking from my personal perspective, I watched my dad lose his house, our house, to foreclosure back when I was 12. and for me, I knew that I was driven to not have a mortgage on my house because I didn't want the same thing to happen to my family.

So if someone came to me and said, hey, why don't we do a mortgage or a reverse mortgage or take a loan out? To me, it would be like a stressor. But for other people, you know, like that read Robert Kiyosaki's book, you know, rich dad, poor dad, they would go, hey, why don't we take a mortgage out and use arbitrage and invest and make the difference and it's a tax deduction? So everyone's wired differently, right? Everybody's wired differently. And the main thing is even with that the fact that you mentioned is people who I guess don't like the idea of debt, well, this is debt that you never have to pay back. And on top of that, they can't come for your house for any reason. Matter of fact, if you're paying a mortgage, if you have more equity than you own your mortgage, you actually will remove your entire mortgage payment.

I have some clients with a $3,500 a month mortgage payment. I'm like, hey, if you remove $3,500 of your expenses, I think you'd actually be fine in retirement. Yeah. All you have to do is this to do it. and then boom, they did the home equity conversion mortgage. Now they don't have to make those payments. And if anything happens, they still get the house no matter what. Nobody can take it away from them.

And it also lasts for both of the spouse's lifetimes, whereas it used to only last for one. So a lot of nice benefits there. Yeah, 100%. So what do you think that would cause a retiree to feel uncertain, even when they've got a huge amount of savings set aside? But yet they're still like, I feel uncertain. How do you help them realize that? we've got a plan in place and this is sufficient. Honestly, I think sometimes people just need something drawn out.

A lot of times when people have a lot of money in there in a position where they still feel uncomfortable, it's because they haven't seen it actually mapped out and stress test. Once you stress test somebody and you say, hey, no matter what happens, you're going to be good and you also show it to them visually and you kind of draw out, here's your income, here's what it's going to look like every single year. We do that for all of our clients. So we literally say, hey, here's what income is going to look like for you every single year. We stress test it with different things.

Once again, kind of like I mentioned, what if inflation goes up? What if the market goes down? What if you need long-term care? What if health care expenses come up randomly? Right? And so we look at kind of everything. You know, and this is the way that we plan is we simply say, hey, it's going to remove a lot of your stress if you already have everything accounted for.

And sometimes I just think people need to see it drawn out plain and simple in front of them and stress tested against anything that could potentially go wrong. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. So how does someone know it? if they're truly prepared. You know, that plan is in place and they see the numbers. But isn't there a shred of doubt really that they're like, yeah, but what if it doesn't

work out that way? Do you have to wait until, you know, each quarter comes and then here comes the income coming in for them to kind of really believe it? Or what are some of the things that you're helping to assure them of? Yeah, that's a good question. I think typically speaking, when people look at, you know, things that might impact them, the first thing to think about once again are going to be those potential risks. If a person is not utilizing a professional like myself or somebody else,

then it's very easy for them to just say, hey, hopefully this works. Well, hope is not a plan. I would say, hey, do you want your retirement to be a guarantee or maybe? Like which one? From there, we say, okay, if you want it to be a guarantee, we need to first make sure that no matter what happened, that you're going to be fine. All the things you can't control once. again. I know I say that a lot, right? It's like a broken record. But those are really the most

important details. The things you cannot control, if you start to control them, now you're really in control of your retirement. And this is what's going to give that peace of mind that we talked about. And I think that if somebody can do that on their own, perfect, awesome. Love that for them. But that's the whole idea of why I have a job, right? Is because AI is not going to help somebody navigate all the nuances in retirement. Right. Google.com and whatever reviews you find are not going to help you with what your day to day is going to be because it doesn't know who you are specifically. Knowing exactly how you want to spend your money, what you want to do with your money, what the

plan is, all that stuff is very pertinent in creating a full out holistic plan. You know, when you sit down to work with a client and they describe what their retirement looks like and you help them achieve that. You know, I know that's a simplistic statement. Like, what does retirement look like? And here you go. Here's your plan. There's a lot that goes into that.

But when that plan is in place, what is that peace of mind knowing that that plan is going to deliver, allow that retiree to do? And where I'm going with that is this. They've spent 40, 50 years working and they've been working 40, 50 hours a week. And now all of a sudden I'm retired. I'm either bored to death or they're like, yeah, but now I wanted to start that nonprofit. Or I wanted to go visit the grandkids more. Or I wanted to whatever the case is. What are you finding some of your clients now that they've got that free?

freedom and peace of mind. What are they finding that they're able to do that they didn't think that they were going to do during their working years? You know, something really interesting about, I guess, the behavioral side of money is that when we're really young, we have a lot of time, but no money. Yeah. And as we get older, we lose time. We don't really have time. And depending on what our age is, we don't even really have that much money. I think retirement is the first time where people have an opportunity to have both time and money. And, you know, and, And I think it's really cool when people have the time and money. The question is not anymore, can I afford this or, is this a good idea?

Instead of it being, should I go on a trip this year or not, it's where do I go this time? Yeah. What's next? Every single month, it doesn't matter that your friends are at a steak restaurant and you're thinking about your budget. No, it doesn't matter because you know if you spend 150 bucks on a T-bone or ribeye that you're still going to be fine. Well, that's what the question becomes is, well, what do I feel like getting now? You're fully in control. You get to do whatever it is you want.

If you want to Mercedes-Benz instead of a Honda Civic, go get you a Benz. If that's what you've been, you know, preventing yourself from having your entire working years, but now because you're in a financially good place in retirement, you have time and money, go ahead. Maybe you wanted to donate money to charity or church, and you were afraid of running out of money if you kept doing that. Now you're like, well, I guess I could do that. Why not?

Or I can volunteer my time. Yeah. Right? And I think that's a really cool place to be where you're no longer looking for discounts. It's just something that sounds very simple, but I've had a client who just now, they want something. This one client I'm thinking of specifically, he likes clothing. He loves to just dress up really sharp. And I love that for him.

And literally he gets his clothes now custom made because he has a check coming every single month. He knows he has to spend. So he's like, well, I'm going to get this custom made suit. I'm going to buy things without having to go to three different stores to find a clearance rack. It's just a different lifestyle. Right. Because he knows that he's got a plan and place. to deliver what he needs.

And, you know, I think that sometimes people get so distracted. And I know you've heard this analogy before, like planning for retirement is like climbing Mount Everest. It's really hard, you know, getting to the top. But really, it's harder coming back down the mountain because you tend to strive and grind and grow to get X amount of dollars set aside for retirement. But then the mindset needs to be preservation and decumulation. and, you know, preservation of your wealth as it relates to taxes and all of that kind of thing.

But where I'm going with my point is some of the points that you just made, it's like, okay, it's fine to have enough money for retirement. Now I need to have enough money to get through retirement, not just to retirement, but through retirement. But then for some people that have enough means, they want to go even past that and create that legacy. Because if I know I'm going to die at whatever age and I'm going to have two cents. leftover. Okay, great, I made it. That's a good thing. But what if I wanted to have a big chunk of

change left over to give to my heirs and have that legacy? Where do you help guide your clients on that for the ones that have those means? And then what are some of those strategies to help them put that in place, which again, ties into financial clarity and peace of mind? Yeah, 100%. I think having your income or your money, giving it like a purpose and a mission, I think is the first step of what I usually would do. So an example would be is, hey, you have XYZ funds. Let's use that for your bills. Then we have these funds over here.

That's going to be your legacy money. The goal is to not touch that. We just keep growing it. That's our money, typically speaking, that can be also more aggressive because you're not growing it with the purpose of actually having to use it. Right. If your goal is to grow it to leave it to your kids, you actually can now be more aggressive with that specific bucket of money

because your kids have a lot longer of a time horizon than you do. Yeah. Right? And so that's number one. Number two is, well, and this actually just happened is sometimes people when they have RMDs, they technically don't usually need the money. They're being forced to take the money out because they didn't spend it already. If they needed it, they would have probably already spent it before they were 73 or 75 years old.

Not all the time, but this is just typical. So if you don't need the money and it's something that you're having to force yourself to take out, If your biggest goal is legacy, well, number one thing that you can do, number one is you could start obviously going through estate planning. You could build a trust, make a will. Don't let things go through probate. I've seen it with so many different clients. I've also gone through it with my grandparents. And it is not pretty.

Everyone's yelling at each other. It's long and drawn out. It's contentious and it cost a buck or two. And it costs a buck or two. So not only do you have to spend money, you have to spend time. Yeah. It's a headache. it's just something you don't want to do.

So I'd say get the will done, get the trust done. And then on top of that, if you don't need the RMD money, well, what leaves legacy better than life insurance? If you're healthy, I think that people, they're thinking, oh, I don't need life insurance. I have a million dollars in the bank. I would agree. You don't need life insurance.

But if you have no purpose of the money and you have a million dollars in the bank, well, why leave one when you can leave two? Yep. Just my thought. If we don't need the money and we have no goal for it except leaving it to family, there's no better vehicle for leaving money to the next generation than life insurance, if, of course, you can get it. If you can't get it, that's a different conversation.

Yeah, that's a really good point. And we don't need to go really deep there. But the point is in many retirement planning strategies, you need to have that plan put into place well ahead because like what you just said, if you get it, well, if you waited to get this really elaborate, well put together life insurance plan to accomplish like what you said, you might want to have it when you're very healthy versus, oh, yeah, I guess I should do that. You know, I'm in my 70s. Well, maybe the rates are sky high.

Maybe your health is not where it needs to be. So having those thoughts well ahead of retirement help you to maybe even qualify when maybe later on you wouldn't. And that's the thing, Mike, is that a lot of times when people are in their 70s, even if they're healthy, they see the bill for the insurance and they just automatically go to the know. But my question always is, it does not matter what the cost is. If I was in a room of all of people and I said, hey, raise your hand, if you'll trade me a quarter, if I give you a dollar.

Yeah. How many people's hands do you think are you raised? All of them. And I'd raise too. All of them. Now, if I said, the same question said, but you can't use the money only your kids can. I still think most of those hands would stay up. Yeah.

And the idea is that even if the cost is, I don't know, I'm going to name something outrageous just because it doesn't matter. If it's $2,000 a month, because I just quoted somebody, it's $2,000 a month, which was about what their R&D was going to be. If you have no use for that money, why not put it to use? Yeah. Yeah, it's $2,000 a month. And without getting into, again, more and more detail, but there are, don't just hear the word life insurance and think, nope, there are so many what's called living benefits that go into having a life insurance. a good life insurance plan like maybe some long-term care and be able to re-access the money that then could benefit you now but also your heirs later. So there's all of those things that

help you put a plan into place that give you that clarity but also that peace of mind. Exactly. Yep. Like I said, a lot of people, they go, they just hear the cost, but, you know, and they immediately shut it down. I'm like, well, would you trade $24,000 for $500 if your kids get it, Tax-free? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's life insurance. Yeah.

Right. Oh, it's life insurance? Never mind. Right, right, right. But how about that 24 in the, yeah, I want to know about that. Well, I tell you what, Shelby, this has been really, really helpful and uplifting. So if someone is interested in maybe exploring a little bit more, what's the best way that they can reach out and connect with you? Yeah, I mean, connecting just takes, you know, maybe a little bit of your time.

It doesn't require anything to actually, you know, have a conversation except for five to 30 minutes of your time. So I'd say the best way. My name is Shelby Green, green with just like the color, no E at the end. Shelby Green at Retirement Heroes, that's h, h-E-R-O-E-S dot org. And they can shoot me an email and just say, hey, we'd love to chat with you. It's no obligation to you guys or anybody who's listening currently. So I'd say, just give it a shot. We'll chat about it.

And I'll just give you my own personal advice. And also build you your own plan so you can kind of see everything stress tested against what could potentially happen. Excellent. Well, Shelby, thank you so much for coming back on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. You as well, Mike. Thank you so much.

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