Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA - Interview with Shelby Green Retirement Expert with Retirement Heroes Discussing Navigating Income Planning

Episode Date: August 19, 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-navigating-income-planning

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 the Shelby Green, who's a retirement expert with retirement heroes, and we'll be talking about the hot, hot, topic of navigating income planning for a secure future. Shelby, welcome to the program. Mike, how you doing today? You know, doing awesome. And I really like how we're, this topic is navigating income planning because I feel like so many times people think about, oh, I need to plan for my retirement, but they think of a big lump sum, an amount of money. They don't think of it

in the terms of income planning. So I really am excited to hear your perspectives on. on that. And before we dive in, give us a little bit of your background and story and how did you get into the financial services industry? Yeah, well, I mean, Mike, you can imagine, maybe just like some other people out there who are listening, I grew up in a household where, you know, my parents did their best to, you know, kind of obviously put food on the table, keep a roof above our head, you know, those kind of things. But overall, we didn't really have much money growing up. And so, you know, when I went to college initially, I kind of had the idea. And I was like, you know what?

I can't be that broke if I study finance. That was my logic. Makes sense. Yeah, I ended up with the finance degree. And that actually ended up being real passionate about finance anyway. Working in it, I became even more passionate. And right around the time that I actually got into this industry, not long before that, my dad actually retired.

And my dad retired around 2008, and obviously you know what happened in that year. And so there's a lot of things going on. And my dad ended up actually going back to work in his 70s. And I became really passionate about, you know, not just finance, but also helping retirees specifically, just because that topic, I think, is something that people kind of glance over and they think of it more as a dream versus that it could be their reality. You know, that's a really good point. And I think the thing that drove you is like I felt it as a son and watching my dad and I want to learn more. I want to have a good solid foundation.

I want to help prevent other people from, you know, having that strain. So, you know, let's dive right into this topic here. How can that income plan, a comprehensive income plan, address the fear of running out of money in retirement? Because I feel like I've seen the research somewhere that, you know, one of the biggest fears in life is speaking in public. And then a close second is running out. of money in retirement. Yeah, it was funny is when I first really, really became passionate about the idea of income planning, I actually got the information from a book.

The book was called Paychecks and Playchecks by Tom Hage. Oh, yeah. Tom Hagen. Phenomenal book. And it basically talks about the idea of if you have a paycheck coming in, you might as well spend it if you know another one's coming in the next month. This is the idea of actual income planning is that if you have paychecks coming in, it doesn't really matter what's happening with the market, your lump,

some, nothing like that, you know that you're going to have a paycheck the next month. So you can't run out of money if you consistently keep being fed dollars every single month. So I think that's the idea of, you know, income planning and you don't have to fear it if you know it's coming in, right? Yeah, that's a really good point. And it's similar to the concept of if you knew you had a certain amount of money that had guaranteed cash flow income coming in. And you're not having to touch the principle. you feel a little bit better spending the money because you're not dipping into the principal. Although, have you seen in some of the clients you work with,

sometimes people actually do get a little bit touchy going, yeah, I know that, but I want to let it build up and build up and they need to allow themselves to have a little fun and live a little bit in their retirement years. Yeah, I think people should just go back to what they thought retirement would look like when they were in their 40s. Yeah. I think whatever they imagine that to look like, whether it's, you know, maybe volunteering on the weekends and, you know, donating money to charity and doing a bunch of

things like that they're passionate about, or if it was somebody who wanted to just sit Pinacoladas on the beach or going to cruise every single month, whatever it is that the person saw, traveling the world, et cetera, I think we should go back there, back to that. I think that that's kind of where everything really begins when it comes to retirement. If somebody has a lump sum of money, a lot of time is that they feel wealthier than they are because they're looking at a lot of a lot of cash at once. But they have to figure out, well, how do I navigate this to not actually run out of it later down the road, knowing that you're going to be doing all these other things? And so, you know, instead of people being afraid to spend money, which ends up being what happens,

if you don't have income and you just take it from a lump sum, I think if you know money's coming in and you can figure out, hey, what amount of money do I need to live on? Get that guaranteed coming in every single month, get the paycheck. Now you know you can spend it and you won't have anything to fear because there's literally no way you can run out with money. You know, you mentioned that lump sum amount of money and I know that we don't need to get into the weeds of this, but I know you agree with the fact that that lump sum might not be 100% all yours because you've got that silent partner, the government that needs their little hand in the pot in case you've not paid taxes if it was in like a, you know, pre-tax IRA 401K kind of a thing. So there's all kinds of things to calculate

in there. But one of which is looking at the kind of the analogy of like the bucket of water and the holes in it, you know, money comes in. and money flows out with those holes. You've got taxes that can flow out. You've got expenses, health care, all of those things. What do you recommend for people that have their money still in the market related to volatility? Because we all open up the news and watch the markets online. And we see some days up down and all around.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. I mean, just like anybody else, I do love the market. I think the market's a great place to accumulate wealth. Now, one thing that I think people might even get greedy sometimes when it comes to retirement is they still have the same mindset from their working days in retirement because it's kind of hard to shift. And when you're growing money, you know, you're in your 30s, your 40s, your 50s, you're growing your wealth. It makes sense to take that extra risk. It just makes sense. You have a lot of time on your hands.

You don't even have to touch the money. But I think what people forget in retirement is you don't technically need to really grow money anymore. It's time to figure out how to actually take what you've been growing. for the last 30, 40 years of your life. And I think the easiest way to manage market volatility because you can't really control it. But what you can control is the other levers that you can take from when it comes to your dollars in retirement. So an example, if you know you have a paycheck coming in, if your income was, you know,

$5,000 a month, let's just say. And expenses are $3,000. Well, you know that it doesn't really matter how aggressive you are in the market because you know your income goals are going to be covered no matter what. This is the idea of having income for what you need, and then you can grow your money in the market for what you want. But as long as you have what you need coming in, it doesn't really matter now what the market's doing because you know that even if your entire portfolio somehow tanked overnight, that you're going to survive. And I think that's the real powerful part of income planning. Yeah, that's huge.

And I think the volatility aspect, like you mentioned, you can't do anything about it. You know, it's like, don't worry about it because you can't control it. But one thing you can control is how much money you have in the market. And so I think that, you know, you can say, oh, well, it should be 70, 30, 60, whatever the number is. The point is take as much money and put into safe guaranteed buckets as possible so that you don't feel that worry. I think that's a really, really big point. And that ties right into peace of mind because if you've got all your money in, you know, highly volatile, you know, accounts because that's the way you've done it since your 20s, well, you had a lot more. runway back then. Well, now in your 50s and 60s, you might not have a lot of peace of mind

because of that. So talk a little bit about developing that piece of mind and having the right financial strategies put into place so that you can sleep good at night. Yeah, 100%. I think something really important to remember is it doesn't really matter how much money you have if you know, once again, a paycheck's coming in. If I have a million dollars in my portfolio, but I know every single month, I'm going to actually sleep fine just because my paycheck's going to come no matter what. I don't have to watch the news and get scared that the market's down. I don't have to worry about tariffs. I don't have to worry about political views. I don't worry about anything that's external outside of how do I spend this money the next month. What do I want to do with it? Because at the

day, I spent so much time building it, why would I not want to spend it? I should enjoy the fruits of my labor. If I spent 30 years working on something, I want to now go ahead and utilize what I've been working on. And that's exactly what retirement is. And, So, you know, I think the peace of mind just comes from knowing that it's going to be there no matter what. And, you know, I think that that's going to be the real power. You know, you brought up something that made me think about. This actually has come up several times. It just didn't talk in with friends. There's a lot of times people are like, I need to keep my head down and grind and work and save and all of that. And I'll do all those things in retirement. You know, all those fun things, trips and travel and all of that kind of thing. But there are some cases where people, people's health, it declined to the point where now you're in retirement, quote, unquote, and you've got the money to use, but oops, my health is not allowing me.

So there's that mix and balance, right? You've got to, you know, feel like you don't want to spend it all up front, but you need to have a little balance because what if you get to those years in your 60s and 70s and you're not as nimble and able to be moving around in traveling the world like you wish you could have? Yeah, 100%. You know, there's something really popular that we call, you know, your go-go years. your slow-go years and your no-go years.

And typically when people first get to retirement, that's going to be their go-go years. Because, you know, when you're, like, maybe think 60 to 70, that's when typically you spend the most amount of money in retirement. Right. Maybe up to age 75. But then eventually, when you're in your mid-70s, it starts to become your slow-go years.

You're not really spending as much as you were when you were first retired because of the fact that you've kind of experienced it already. Now you're doing things a little bit slower. Potentially, health might decline. Obviously, we don't know. And then you have your no-go years, right? Once people get in their 80s, especially late 80s or 90s, it's not really all about, hey, let me go and figure out what my next travel trip's going to be.

Right. Yeah. Now it's how do I, you know, be able to pay for health care expenses? How do I see my, my grandkids more? How do I, you know, those are the kind of things that people are more interested in doing from my experience. Yeah. You know, I think that when we're talking about here, you know, income planning for a secure future,

I think that you have to have something in place. Like I need, you know, like the example you mentioned like, oh, what if you need 5,000 coming in or you have 5,000 coming in and you only need 3,000. How do you work with your clients to say, hey, you're at age, whatever, 55 right now? What does retirement look like for you? How much are you going to need in retirement? Because you need to have something to shoot for, right? So how do you know that you're going to have enough income coming in to meet your retirement needs? you've got to put some of those things into place.

So what is your process of helping them quantify that? Yeah, it's a good question. So first thing I always do is I always ask, hey, what are your current fixed expenses? These are their bills every single month. And as of today, is there any debt that you feel that you have now that will be paid off by the time that you retire? Yeah. An example would be like a mortgage, right?

Because if they have a big $2,000 a month mortgage expense, well, are you still going to have that in retirement? Yes or not? depending on the answer, we plan accordingly. We then say, okay, what about your variable expenses? If you were just looking on a monthly basis, what are the things that are not fixed prices that you happen to do on a monthly basis? Think groceries, gas, eating out, travel, et cetera.

Now, when you first go to retire, what are you hoping to do with your time? Because if you're working 40-hour workweek, you have 40 extra hours a week that you just have it, you're not used to. Do you want to go travel? Do you want to go and maybe, you know, do all the things that you wish you could do previously. And then we basically put it into a plan. We say, okay, well, your numbers now is $7,000 a month. How can we get that amount of income without risk? So that way, the rest of your money can just flourish. And then you can pass the rest of it on. I see way too many times that the

person says, hey, I want to spend my money. I want to do this. I want to do that. I don't want to leave my kids, you know, my two, three million dollars. But then because they didn't spend that much, they end up with a golden coffin, right? And they're leaving their kids a bunch of money, which for some people, they love it. that idea. But for some people, if they just had a better spending process, I think they would have ended up, you know, with a lot less money in their coffin just because of the fact that they spent it already. They enjoyed that life. Yeah. Oof. You know, and once you put those calculations into place, I think that's a really big piece to keep in mind. You better know. And one of the points you made a second

ago just made me think about this. How many times do you sit down with the client and ask those questions and they go, oh, I'm going to need X. And then when they get there, it's like, man, I need a whole lot more. Because I didn't think about the fact that now that I'm not punched in the clock working 40 or 50 hours a week, I've got a whole lot more time to spend money. I'm on line. I'm traveling. So what do you do about the people that miscalculated? Well, I mean, sometimes it happens. It just means we need to readjust. Yeah. I think when it comes to any sort of any sort of planning in the retirement space or financial space at all. I think life changes on a year-to-year basis sometimes. Right. And so, you know, I've had many clients, for example, that they'll come to me and they'll be married and then maybe four years later,

they're divorced. And that's going to be a big change with their financial situation. We have to now readjust the entire plan. I have some that actually end up where they got fired. They planned on working to 65. At 63, they got laid off. And now they're like, well, I don't know if I want to find a new job and go through that whole process. And they kind of not necessarily forced, but they end up retiring just because of the circumstances. Yeah. Or unexpected health comes out of nowhere. I actually just had a client a few months ago.

We talked maybe three years back about a long-term care plan. They didn't want to do it at the time just because they didn't want to pay for it. But, unfortunately, we're now having to actually completely change their financial plan because they actually need to go into an assisted living facility now. And their assisted living facility in their city is about $7,500 a month. So that's $7,500 more. We have to somehow figure out. planning with that we didn't have to plan with before. And so there's no way for us to be 100

sure, but our main goal is to always have backup plans and just make sure that, hey, no matter what happens, you're always going to be fine. And that's the goal when I do these plans, is I can give the recommendations. I'd rather give recommendations where you have a very low chance of failure, if at all, versus you have a higher chance of just making a little bit more money. I'm really focused on just making sure you can't fail. And then it's up to the person, what they want to implement out of the entire plan. So if you make that calculation and then you have to readjust, let's say, what are some of the ways to get more income in retirement? So, you know, the standard ways and then here's some other ways to consider.

What do those look like? I think the standard ways typically you're going to be like, you know, your social security, maybe your pension at work. Those are kind of some givens. Outside of that, obviously, if you have any rental income or if you have something where, you know, you have consistency coming in, and that's also going to be, you know, your standard places to get money. some unique things that I've seen, obviously, I mean, another standard thing, though, just to mention real quick, is also people who are still working, obviously. Yeah.

But some other ways to get income, I mean, I've seen plenty. I've seen sometimes that a home equity conversion mortgage makes sense so they can use some of that equity while they're still living, especially if they don't have like a sentimental property that they're trying to lead to their kids, right? That's something that sometimes people don't think about. income annuities, that's something that has been exceptionally on the rise recently, just because in this rate environment, the rates are higher. When I first started this industry, these rates are 3%. Now you can get 7, 8, 9, 10%, etc.

and they're just significantly more impactful than they used to be. Right. And so this is all things that people don't think about. What about tax planning? If I save you $10,000, $20,000 in taxes, well, wouldn't that be more income in your pocket? Sure would. And so sometimes people have to think out. side of the box of just, you know, I think the most common thing I hear in the retirement space is what's called the 4% rule.

The 4% rule basically says that whatever amount of money you have, you can withdraw 4% of it out of your portfolio without running out of money, right? Like, that's the safe withdrawal rule. Yeah. Honestly, these days, 4% for most people isn't even enough to reach their goals. Yeah. And even if it is, what if you can get a higher amount of money out of what you already have? What if that number was 5, 6, 7%, how much, how different would your month to month be

if that was the difference of what you could get is more income versus just a higher rate of return? And that's what we do. It's kind of like, you know, well, it's just the way that we've always done things around here. Well, the 4% rule might have worked whenever it was came up with decades ago. Well, now it might need to be readdressed.

And every single person has different needs. Someone might have zero debt, no mortgage, and the next person might still have a mortgage and a car loan. So everyone is different. So it kind of gets down to there is not one set of advice that some advisor can give a client and say, everyone should follow this, buy this, invest here. It just doesn't happen. That's correct.

Yeah. It's specifically customized per person. Someone else could be very different from another person. You know, I think I actually, what do you? Go ahead. Go ahead. Well, I'll just say, I've said some clients who come to me and, you know, Social Security is like their prime source of their income. And sometimes I have people who come to me and they have millions of dollars and

they're like, hey, I just want to utilize this the most effectively. So there's different, you know, strategies for both people, but it just kind of depends on what's the lifestyle that the person wants. Yep. Right. So what do you find some people doing or not doing that actually end up being a mistake regarding creating retirement income? You know, maybe they've gone off and heard this or that started doing something or delayed doing something and they come to you and you're like, hey, we got to, we got to put a little fix on this, this mistake. So what are some examples of those mistakes that you've seen? I think the top, the top mistakes that I see, number one is a lot of the people who come to me, a lot of the advice they've already been given. They're

getting it from two primary sources. And this is the problem because those primary sources, especially one of them that I'm going to name, has no idea that they exist. they don't know that individual. Number one is going to be TV in the news. Yep. TV in the news, it could be an excellent source of information, but it doesn't mean that they're going to dictate how you actually end up successful in retirement. And so sometimes the things you see on there may not always be effective,

but obviously some things might take it with a grain of salt, right? A second one is a lot of people that come to me and they say, yeah, my friend's doing this or I heard this from my friend where they heard, I heard nightmares from everybody, because people in retirement, they talk. The problem with that is, is that typically speaking, just because one person's experience with something didn't work for them or they heard something bad from somebody else, it doesn't actually mean it's bad. I've heard all kinds of things that, hey, this is terrible, this is bad, this is X, Y, and Z. I have some people who come, they say, hey, I don't want to put money in the market because I think the market's going to crash tomorrow. Well, that's not always true.

Right. I have some people who say, no, bombs are terrible. I never want to put money in bonds. Well, would you put money in bonds back in the 80s when they paid 14%? percent? Right? Because I would have. Right?

Or some people say, oh, annuities are bad. Are they? Or are there just some good ones, some bad ones? And there's certain seasons where they do better than other seasons. Right?

So there's never like, hey, this is good, this is bad. And I think that's how people take information. And they're looking at all these new shiny objects. I have people always talking about, oh, I saw online that there's something

that's 12% guaranteed returns per year. And I'm like, that just started like three years ago. I'm not sure we want to put money in a fund that might not be around. here in five years. Yes. We have tried and true things that have been out for hundreds and, a hundred years that we could do instead.

How about that? You know? Yeah. That's a really, really good point. So I tell you what, Shelby, this has been really interesting to look at perspectives on

navigating that income planning to make sure you never run out of money of retirement. So if someone is listening to this thinking, hey, maybe give me a second opinion or give me some insights on what I'm doing. What's the best way that they can learn more and reach out and connect with you? Yeah, I mean, easiest way. Obviously, we have our website, retirementheroes.org. That's Heroes, H-E-R-O-E-S. Same as my email, Shelby Green, my first and last name, at retirementheroes.

Easiest ways to reach out. I say never hurts to get your income plan. I also have a really cool income report I can build you that kind of goes over, hey, based on all these different stress test scenarios, here's what your income is going to look like at your specific goals. And that doesn't cost anybody any money whatsoever. So it's always nice to see. Excellent. Well, Shelby, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you. You as well, Mike. I appreciate it. 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.influentialentrepreneursradio.com.