#33: Reaching retirement alpha, with Tom Hegna

Tom Hegna is back with more great advice on how to make sure your clients have a safe, secure and happy retirement. On Episode 32, you heard Tom lay out his seven steps to an optimal retirement – and drive home the need to educate your clients about life insurance strategies.

Tom is a popular speaker and author who’s built a career on crafting happy retirements. Among his key tenets: a financial advisor who claims to uphold the highest standard of care but ignores annuities is doing a disservice to clients. Put another way, the rate of accumulation doesn’t matter if the de-accumulation phase leaves clients out of money or afraid to spend what they have.

[powerpress]

SHOW NOTES:

01:35  In his books, Tom has talked at length about the important concept of sequence of returns. He says clients and advisors don’t understand sequence of returns risk, and he gives an example of that.

03:10  Tom wrote a book called “Retirement Alpha: How Mortality Credits Improve Retirement Outcomes.” What does he mean by “retirement alpha” – and how can advisors put mortality credits to use?

07:40  Tom gives his take on indexed universal life, which has grown to one-fourth of all individual life insurance sold today.

10:20  There was a time when mutuals did not like universal life very much, yet many are offering it now.

11:30  Part of longevity protection is long-term care insurance. However, we’ve seen a huge drop in that market – and there are only a few carriers even interested in writing it these days. So should people still buy individual long-term care policies?

13:10  Tom works with a lot of agents and advisors across the country. What are some effective strategies that he sees them putting to use?

16:20  All of the stress around those “just in case” assets can actually reduce life expectancy. Meantime, peace of mind actually increases life expectancy.