Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:05 This is annuity Straight Talk. Since 2008, your host Brian Anderson, has helped clients nationwide navigate the complex market for annuities With Brian's assistance, hundreds of clients have achieved a profitable and secure retirement. I would know because Brian has answered many of my questions concerning annuities and retirement planning so that you can benefit as well. Let's get started. Here's Brian.
Speaker 2 00:00:48 Hello and welcome everyone to the Annuity Straight Talk podcast episode number 65. Got a bit of a different backdrop this time and I took a week off last week because I've been traveling, do kind of an annual trip with a couple of friends and it's been a lot of fun, but the distractions being what they are, I did not get all the work done that I wanted to. I kept in touch with everybody did get a chance to keep on top of pending business and things like that. So if you need something, I am definitely here. You gotta schedule an appointment or wait a little bit for a callback. But as far as the creative side of things, I've been out pursuing content, if you will, living my life and enjoying things. But for about the past two weeks, and this is before you guys will see it, but I've been in Kansas hunting deer at a friend's ranch, kind of an annual tradition that goes back to 2011.
Speaker 2 00:01:46 Reminds me of my days of guiding in Alaska for a couple of reasons. So my friend Dave who owns the ranch, he's an incredible guy and I met him when I worked in Alaska 20 years ago or so. For anybody that knows me well knows that my beginning of the financial career kind of overlapped with doing that cuz fishing in Alaska as a guide, you know, you can do it for a few weeks or a few months a year. And kind of one of the things that I did for the first few years is I'd go back to Alaska but we became friends and one of the things about Dave is he got the money to take the expensive trips but he kind of wants to know how to do things. And so we became friends because he thought we got along really well together, had a lot of things in common and he wanted to, Hey, maybe I'll just go on trips with you rather than just pay for this fancy place.
Speaker 2 00:02:34 Anyway, so we did a lot of that stuff over the years and I remember 12 or 13 years ago, whatever it was he had said, you know, I talked to him about how I like to hunt whitetail deer and he lived in Kansas and makes a good living and he is pretty progressive about business and all that stuff. And he called me one day and he said, Hey Brian, I just bought a ranch that you can always hunt in Kansas if you want. And so that was kind of exciting. And after he did it, I, that's the first year I came down here, I got my tags and that's what I do every year. And I like it because the weather is usually a little bit nicer than Montana. Now people from Kansas will say, oh the weather's not that nice. But back home in Montana, we're getting snow right now and I'm here in kind of, it's an extension of fall, which is my favorite season.
Speaker 2 00:03:21 So 55, 60 degree temperatures. It gets cold at night and you got some wind but it's typically not that bad. So I always liked coming down here and it's kind of been something I've done for the last 11 or 12 years. So in addition to Dave meeting him in Alaska, I got my buddy Spud who's one of my best friends from my guiding days. He was a guide with me when we were in Alaska. He started a couple years before me, spent nearly two decades on the professional side of the fly fishing business and he's one of the best technical trout fishermen I know when I met Dave Spud was with me and we both talked about how we like to hunt whitetail. So we share that passion as well as fishing. And I remember Dave when he called me, it wasn't just me, he said, there's a spot that you and Spud can come hunting anytime you wanna do it.
Speaker 2 00:04:12 And so I make it down more regularly in Spud. But this year we kind of had it planned out that Spud and his dad, his dad calls him Josh and I don't know why, it's just the weirdest thing when his dad calls him Josh, but his dad being a avid listener to the podcast. So shout out to John in Pennsylvania. But those guys drove out from PA and met me this year for a bow hunt in Kansas and it's uh, kind of a fun chance to spend time in a cool place, private land and just have her way around it and reunite with old buddies. And it brings up a lot of really good memories when I think about Dave who owns the ranch and Spud who was my best friend from guiding days, it makes me think back to those times that really got me where I am today and kind of got me to think and imagine and try to do something with my life that was productive while still being able to revisit the things that I really like to do as a kid.
Speaker 2 00:05:10 So this trip in particular kind of gave me a specific idea based on something I've seen in the, throughout my financial career and something that's kind of come up several times in the past few weeks. And because Spud my guidance buddy is gonna know exactly what I'm talking about as it relates to fishing in Alaska, I ran it by him and then John, his dad being an avid listener thinking. So I had like a little focus group this past week and I thought, oh, I'm gonna tell you guys what I think and this is why I did it and I should have done it last week but I didn't. So I'm doing it a week late, takes me a while to collect my thoughts and try to present it in the right way. So I'm gonna start with talking and telling the stories. Now back in, if you wanna look it up, the best annuity training possible, I don't know, maybe it was episode 43 or something like that where I talked about how guiding in Alaska taught me to communicate with people of retirement age when I was very young and that I consider to be very, very, very good training.
Speaker 2 00:06:16 So, and I, I mentioned in that podcast how I had a lot of different little stories that this is one of those little stories that I could pull out of that. So when I was working in Alaska, probably I would say half the people I took were married couples. You know, on a lot of occasions, most occasions it was the husband who really liked to fish and sometimes it was the wife who really liked to fish and was proficient at it and stuff. And so it happened both ways, but majority of the time the husband really liked to fish and in a lot of cases the wife was just going with him cuz he loved her and he wanted her to go and enjoy what he enjoys and all that stuff. And I think a lot of it was like, hey, if, if she really likes it, maybe we'll get to go do it more <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:06:58 But on those trips, like we'd sit there and I'd be in the middle of the boat rowing it down the river and I'd put the husband in the back, I'd put the more experienced fishermen in the back because you can't necessarily see what they're doing but you trust that they kind of know enough they, they can take slight directions in in either path. And so let's just think for a second, we're doing a specific example where we got a pretty good fisherman who's a husband, he's in the back and the wife who is a novice in the front. Well a lot of times, and you know I know this based on me getting a divorce right now and I think a lot of people would agree that sometimes it's hard for husbands and wives communicate passions to each other in different things. And it's really tough for a husband to teach a wife to fly fish.
Speaker 2 00:07:45 And I know that for a fact. So I'd get the wife would get frustrated cuz the husband's sending her information from the back and trying to tell her what to do and he is not worrying about his own fishing. And again, think about we're in Alaska and I know this fishing and I don't care if you're a hot shot saltwater fly fisherman and you catch bone fish left and right when you go to The Bahamas or you're a bass fisherman on the pro tour, when you go to Alaska it's different, it's a different area, it's a different type of thing. Even though you're a great fisherman, it takes a different type of direction. So some of those guys would sit in the back and they might be really, really good smallmouth bass fishermen from Missouri or wherever, but they're trying to impose that type of knowledge on their wife who's trying to learn to fly fish in Alaska.
Speaker 2 00:08:39 And there would be a point in time where you could sense a little bit of frustration between the two. And I try to tell the guy in the back, Hey, just shut your mouth, just chill out, relax, I got it. And if he wouldn't listen to me and you could see the wife's kind of of at the end of a rope and she's really not enjoying it, but she's in a beautiful spot, no reason she shouldn't, that was my opportunity to say, Hey, do you wanna out fish your husband? You're not gonna like a low soft quiet voice. Do you wanna out fish your husband? And she kind of roll her eyes and say, oh yeah, right, that's, wait a second, I know what I'm doing here. He might be a good fisherman elsewhere but he's not been here before. I'm gonna help you out.
Speaker 2 00:09:21 And then she kind of decided maybe to go along with it, I could ignore the know it all in the back of the boat, right? And just let him do his thing. So most of these guys that thought they were really good weren't really all that great and they could do fine, but I'd prove a point to them by taking the wife, teaching her to fly fish, showing her where to go. And because she didn't have prior knowledge and experience, once she became comfortable with me, she was more malleable and I could get her to do exactly what I would do if I were fishing in that situation. Now, like I was an expert at doing that type of fishing, not saying I'm the expert fisherman everywhere by the end of the day, in most cases when that happened, and I know a lot of guys would agree with this who worked up there, you'd ignore the guy in the back of the boat.
Speaker 2 00:10:13 He might be kind of frustrated at the end of the day, but when he saw how happy his wife was, he thought, oh wow, this is great because she'd catch more fish than him maybe bigger fish too. And at the end of the day she'd be pretty dang handy with fire out. So it was interesting and I would like, I always thought about like when you step into somebody's area of expertise, you have to listen to them and a lot of those things translate to retirement planning as well. So on a fairly regular basis I run into married couples who can't necessarily agree on the correct path for retirement. And I understand, and this is more of a 50 50 deal sometimes I've known guys who run their business and wives who handle the finances and the guy who runs the business has no clue how the financial system works or the financial side of it works.
Speaker 2 00:11:10 He just makes the money. I know women who make all the money and shovel it home and the guy handles the money. It's a 50 50 deal when it comes to retirement. Now fishing may be like majority men do it, but again, I'll tell you like there are a lot of women that they were the experts so to speak and the husbands were kind of going along with them. What I'm gonna say is like the thing that runs similar is the person that has, well let me back up a little bit. I understand that within a married couple in finances, there oftentimes is one, be it a husband or a wife who literally will say, I want nothing to do with it, I don't even care. And that goes back to my guiding days. Were on a few occasions there'd be, and then most times this was a wife, I remember one lady who had binoculars in a book and she was bird watching and reading a book.
Speaker 2 00:12:04 They sped for this expensive trip. She didn't care about fishing at all. She said, I just think it's beautiful to be out here. So she had the right frame of mind, it was great. And she read her book and she'd pick up her binos and identify a bird, something like that, which is kind of similar to like the people in retirement planning and finances where one spouse really wants nothing to do with it. And but what I'll always say is like the person who's less experienced is more malleable. And it's not to manipulate anyone or anything, but a lot of times when you are so focused on finances throughout your saving career for your career in saving, a lot of those things that you learn are irrelevant when you retire. And it takes someone who doesn't know to recognize the simple path forward. I always say this is more simple than people realize.
Speaker 2 00:13:02 And I think, and I don't mean to patronize anybody at all, but a lot of you guys need to unlearn many of the things that you learned getting to this point. Congratulations, you've been successful, but you've gotta relearn new things. And a lot of times it takes a blank slate to get that done. So in married couples, when they decide to work together, if one is less experienced than the other, the less experienced one will have a better time understanding it because they don't have all of these things clouding their mind that are totally irrelevant. Just like bass fishing is totally irrelevant to fly fishing in Alaska. Not even the same thing. And a lot of times you'll see stuff like, well the husband's like, yeah, my wife's involved in the decision, but I'm just gonna explain it to her and don't worry, she doesn't need to be here.
Speaker 2 00:13:53 Well I know exactly how that's gonna end. He's not gonna explain it correctly. And it's not because he is not smart enough, not because he doesn't know, but because his perspective comes from a different place and he's probably clouding it up with a lot of the previous information that's totally irrelevant. So not all fishing trips and retirement plans are set for disaster. Most of them turn out really well. And the whole only thing is to say, and this goes back to episode number one in the podcast, the 10 reasons people don't buy annuities because husbands and wives don't agree on the appropriate path. And I'm gonna say you need to trust your spouse and you need to trust yourself. You need to unlearn some of the things that you think you know and give a lot of credit to the spouse, the husband or the wife, whatever side it is who comes in this with a more innocent mind so to speak, and recognizes the simple approach that it takes to get things done.
Speaker 2 00:15:00 It's not that it's more complicated, it's not about salesman manipulating people, it's about like stripping everything down to very simple terms. And that's why everything I talk about is very simple. And I think some of the people who consider themselves to be experts at this or in finance, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but you have to realize that you've gotta strip things down and take all that away and realize that this is a very simple game we're playing. And if you want to be successful, you gotta step into my world a little bit and humble yourself, not because I know more than you and I don't know more than you, you wanna talk about fishing in Alaska. I will crush you no matter who you are, right? You wanna talk about annuities and asset distribution and protection of portfolios in retirement.
Speaker 2 00:15:55 I will crush you. It's totally different than what the majority of people are talking about. It's not tarping fishing in the Caribbean, it's not bass fishing in the deep south. It's a different thing. And you have to realize that you gotta strip away everything you think you know and go back to the basics. And that is exactly why this is as simple as it possibly can be. And that's why it's not that hard. A lot of the people that I've worked with and come to work with over the years have been able to do that. Or they come in maybe already realizing that they kind of want things to uh, you know, they wanna see a simpler path to do things and the end result is easy success. And it's very, very simple without having to worry about all of the issues like the social issues, economic issues, the news, and all the different things that distract you.
Speaker 2 00:16:51 Get down to the basics. Understand protection is key, growth is important, but there's a careful balance between the two and someone telling you growth is the only way to do it. Or someone telling you that protection is the only way to do it. Those guys are all wrong and it's gonna come down to what you want. But again, take it back and take it to the simplest form and you will be successful. Just like if I took you fishing in Alaska, forget everything you ever know, do what I say and you'll be just fine. So anyway, I appreciate you guys joining me. Now I'm sitting in a shop in Kansas on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. I got an old like 70 something F two 50 that's waiting for a new transmission. My buddy Kent runs Dave's ranch. He can do anything. He's a mechanic.
Speaker 2 00:17:42 He's a welder. He's welding the cake box on this thing and he is putting a new transmission that's supposed to be coming in any day now. I thought it was a cool backdrop just to present this topic and keep in touch with you guys. Sorry I missed a week, but here we are. I'm in south central Kansas. I'm headed back for Thanksgiving. I guess you guys are gonna see this right after Thanksgiving, but I look forward to uh, touching base with you soon. If you wanna get ahold of me, you can call me at (800) 438-5121 or schedule a meeting using the top right corner of any page on annuity straight talk.com. Again, husbands, wives and annuities. Doesn't have anything to do with annuities, has to do with retirement planning, but I put the annuities in there and the clicks go up. But anyway, thought it'd be a cool time to share a story. You gotta get on the same page with your spouse. You gotta respect the person that maybe doesn't have as much experience as you. And if you humble yourself, there's a good chance that you'll come to a consensus and have an easier path to success in retirement. So again, thank you for joining me. I look forward to seeing you guys for episode 66 next week and have a great day. I'll talk to you later. Okay, bye.
Speaker 1 00:19:06 You have been listening to annuity straight talk. The preceding information is for informational and educational only and does not represent tax, legal or advice. The views expressed by on his program own and do not necessarily reflects of the talk or his partners. No information presented to today should be acted upon without meeting with the qualified and licensed professional. It's important that you all insurance contract disclosures carefully before making a purchase decision guarantees based on the financial strength and claims pain ability of the insurance company.
