Episode 7

full
Published on:

4th Nov 2024

212: Scott R. Tucker and Mike Seabolt Discuss How Military Retirees Can Turn Their TSP Savings into Lifetime Income

212: Scott R. Tucker and Mike Seabolt Discuss How Military Retirees Can Turn Their TSP Savings into Lifetime Income

Also available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/cU9OfxSYino

Jen Amos takes a break from hosting to showcase US VetWealth's Founder and CEO, Scott R. Tucker, and Life Insurance Case Design Specialist Mike Seabolt.

Scott and Mike discuss financial planning strategies specifically for military retirees, highlighting the unique challenges they face during their mid-career transition. They cover the importance of transforming accumulated assets, like the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), into guaranteed income streams through financial products such as fixed indexed annuities.

Scott and Mike share insights on how annuities work, their benefits, such as zero downside risk and guaranteed lifetime income, and options for increasing income based on market performance. Lastly, they address the importance of managing financial risks and securing a stable post-military financial future.

Get in touch with US VetWealth today: https://usvetwealth.com/usvw-complimentary-strategy-session-intake-2/

Read our Monday, Nov. 4th, 2024 newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/649405ef0b0b/holdingdownthefort

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Do you want to do more than “follow orders,” think outside of the box, and manifest your dreams? Then you’ve come to the right show! The award-winning podcast, Holding Down the Fort by US VetWealth, returns for Season 8 to highlight motivational stories of personal growth, financial awareness, and autonomy in our military community. The show is hosted by Jen Amos, a Gold Star daughter, Veteran Spouse, and Entrepreneur.

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We're also excited to be featuring replays of the "Take A Knee" Live Show with US VetWealth Founder & CEO Scott R. Tucker and Blue Water Advisors CEO Mike Wallace, which discusses career progression for military retirees. Tune in every Thursday!

Our main sponsor, US VetWealth, proudly offers Life Insurance and Annuity Strategies for The High-Income Military Retiree. Let's help you capitalize on your above-average health and substantial income-earning potential for post-military life. For a free consultation, https://usvetwealth.com/

In the Fall of 2023, Jen Amos was sought after by InDependent to co-host the 8th annual InDependent Wellness Summit™. In August 2022, Jen Amos' work on the podcast was recognized by Disney Institute and she was hand-selected as the only non-Disney employee to moderate the first Military Spouse Employment panel for the Veterans Institute Summit. March 2022, former co-host Jenny Lynne has voted the 2022 Naval Station Norfolk Armed Forces Insurance Military Spouse of the Year. November 2020, Jen Amos was awarded “Media Professional of the Year” at The Rosie Network Entrepreneur Awards! The show continued to collect award nominations in the following years. In September 2021, the show made the Final Slate in the 16th Annual People's Choice Podcast Awards for the Government & Organizations category. In November 2021, the show was an Award Finalist for the 5th Annual National Veteran & Military Spouse Entrepreneur Awards. December 2021, the show was a Golden Crane Podcast Awards Nominee. September 2022, the show was a Finalist for the 13th Annual Plutus Awards presented by Capital Group for “Best Military Personal Finance Content.”

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Transcript

Unknown Speaker 0:00

Music.

Unknown Speaker 0:05

Do you want to do more than follow orders? Think outside of the box and manifest your dreams? Then you've come to the right show. Welcome to the award winning podcast, holding down the fort by us that wealth. I'm your host, Jen Amos, a gold star, daughter, veteran, spouse and entrepreneur. For season nine, we continue our partnership with the Rosie network to highlight motivational stories of personal growth, financial awareness and autonomy in our military community. We're also excited to continue showcasing our partnership with blue water advisors.

Unknown Speaker 0:46

Now let's get started.

Unknown Speaker 1:02

You

Unknown Speaker 1:05

Hey everyone, welcome back. Welcome back, welcome back. Hope you all are doing well, I sure am, because it's fall season, if you haven't been following along, I detest summer. Some people will just totally like unsubscribe. Just hearing me say that like you don't like summer unsubscribe. Well, I had a whole story about it that I talked about in the post commentary in the trailer episode. So feel free to go back to that episode. What episode was that? I don't know. I remember what the number was. Wait, let me check in case you're curious, you're like, What? What? Why does she not like summer? Go to episode 206, and listen to the outro, and you will hear me talk about it, if you care.

Unknown Speaker 1:41

hich you will see manifest in:

Unknown Speaker 2:03

I'll be talking more about that in the season finale in the upcoming week. So stay tuned. But for now, it's been a really, really awesome time to just focus on other things and really use, like have podcasting as a supplementary, you know, marketing tool for everything that I do. And it's been great. That's all I have to say. It's been great, you know, for having published over 200 episodes, 212 at this point, it's been quite a journey, and I will tell you, and if you haven't been following my journey, you know, it's not like I just hungered down and pumped out like 212 episodes. It's not like that. It's been a journey in the last five years where I've had to find different sources of inspiration to keep the show going. I've had different levels of accountability, sense of responsibility, or just, you know, like other forms of motivation to been able to make it this far. I didn't know I was going to make it to 200 plus episodes. By the way, I was just on the journey, and I still am. I'm so very much on the journey, and in this stage of my journey, I am very grateful to be adjusting my pace,

Unknown Speaker 3:05

tives, which will roll out in:

Unknown Speaker 4:04

this episode is gonna be about the Thrift Savings Plan. So if you're sitting on a thrift savings plan and you don't know what to do with it, take a listen to this episode. In this episode, Scott and Mike discuss financial planning strategies for military retirees, highlighting the unique challenges they face in their mid career transition. So this is like military transition. They cover the importance of transforming accumulated assets like the Thrift Savings Plan into guaranteed income streams through financial products such as fixed index annuities. Scott and Mike share insights on how annuities work their benefits such as zero downside risk and guaranteed guaranteed lifetime income and options for increasing income. Increasing income, I like to highlight things that I think are positive increasing income based on market performance. Lastly, they address the importance of managing financial risks and securing a stable post military financial future. So.

Unknown Speaker 5:00

If you have you know, accumulated this asset, the Thrift Savings Plan. And one, you don't know anything about it, or two, you are in the headspace to learn more about it, then this episode is for you. Go ahead and take a listen. I hope you enjoy it. Sorry or watching,

Unknown Speaker 5:15

because I keep forgetting to say this. We're available on YouTube as well. And often these conversations with Scott and Mike, they do some screen share, so feel free if you're wondering what they're referencing, then all the more reason to go on our YouTube channel and see for yourself. All right, happy listening or watching, and I'll talk to you in outro. Bye for now.

Unknown Speaker 5:37

Hey Mike, welcome back. How's your week been? It's been tremendous. Man, been tremendous. I had a ski weekend in Montana last weekend, which was amazing, really, yeah, yeah. I was up in Whitefish, Montana, which is in the very northwestern corner, almost in Canada. I've never been to Montana as I have it, either. Dude, it's my first time that it was, it's, it's wide open. There's not a lot of people. There's a lot of space, so I loved it. Fascinating. No, super cool. No, I didn't realize that. I just all I knew is, you didn't have to deal with the time zone change,

Unknown Speaker 6:09

ment. And here you are at age:

Unknown Speaker 7:19

where now it's like all right, now we got the good next job and the incomes lined up, but I still got at least 10 more years of working, saving, accumulating assets, but incomes good. I don't necessarily need to, you know, build a huge nest egg, because we have, we have more stability and security than we had before. And so how do we, you know, take what we've saved and rather than keep it at risk in the stock market, if we don't need to, and just transition it into another pension, another guaranteed stream of income, so that you can kind of take a lot of those uncertainties about, how am I going to replace that, you know, back to military income, post military income combination. You know, when you are fully retired, what does that actually look like? So you can say, okay, there's a plan for that, rather than just make the account bigger, so I can tap into it one day. And, you know, kind of have that general uncertainty out there. So that's the theme for today's discussion. Got a, you know, a couple slides to set the story? A little bit. Mike, anything you want to hit on, you know, to introduce us a little bit, yeah, no, I love that we're stepping into this. Scott, I have many of, you know, conversations daily with our transitioning veterans. And then the question comes up all the time, is, what to do with tsp, and what are my options? And so again, as of everything we do, options is where we lean into and so, yeah, so on. Most folks, I ask the question, what's the money for? Well, in some form, it's for my retirement. It's from providing, you know, some sort of retirement benefit. And so then we step through, okay, well, let's guarantee that. And that's kind of what we do, yeah, and we often talk about that, obviously, with the Survivor Benefit Plan decision, and that, you know, is on the left life insurance side of things. But we do a US vet Well, we focus on the insurance of assets, whether that's income sources or existing assets. So we're always talking about insurance products and vehicles and solutions for the most part, or as part of the overall plan and more chess strategy. And so yeah, while you can't do anything with tsp, while you're on active duty, now, when you're in post military life, that's when you actually could roll it over if you want. And there's options. You can, of course, leave it in tsp. You could transition it to a new 401, K plan, or, if you went with the government, move it into your other tsp. Of course. You can roll it into a self directed IRA, or just an individual retirement plan, whether Roth or traditional. But what do you do with the money inside the IRA? Of course, now you've got all sorts of, you know, self directed the idea is you can put it in your own mutual funds. You could use a financial professional or firm or investment advisor, you know, use some sort of portfolio. Technically, you can even do real estate inside that. But what most people don't realize is you can actually roll it in.

Unknown Speaker:

And within the IRA structure. So if it's a Roth IRA, you'd maintain the tax status just one of the vehicles you can purchase is an annuity, and a fixed in income. Annuity is what we'll be talking about today. But it's an option, as Mike said, it's an option. But the reason why you consider this as an option is what annuity means is stream of income. Your military pension is a stream of income. It is an annuity. SPP payment, should something happen, is an annuity. Technically, it's actually not a death benefit, like we'll see, in that kind of sense. Now we're talking about streams of income one way or the other here. And so the whole point of, you know, doing the financial planning, you know, saving, you know, as you're during the accumulation phase, is to build the nest egg so you could use it for a stream of income. And what gets forgotten about is, you know, what? How do we manage that phase of our life? Because one way or the other, you're going to stop working and need to draw income. And we always say you can't bounce. You're not going to bounce the last paycheck or check on the day you die, you're retired, you're going to have assets, and so, you know, managing that smartly so that you can get the most bang for the buck, you know, whether that's your military pension, you know, so you can keep more of that instead of paying for SPP, or if you have saved good retirement dollars. That, whether it's being able to guarantee you can use it while you're living and not be afraid to use it. I think that's what happens a lot of times, is, you know, all of a sudden, your TSP is worth a million dollars. The stock market drops 20% now we're afraid to even tap into it, because we got to wait for it to bounce back. And just that level of uncertainty. If we can remove that, then we can truly, you know, offer golden years. And I'm just these are cliche terms, of course, but, but instead of kind of looking that linear timeline, those are the things we know are going to happen, what we don't know are the uncertainties. And we always talk about all these different risks. Usually we're talking about kind of the health risk and and from that perspective, we're saying the risk is you're not you're not getting rewarded for being healthy. You know, we just had a client who we thought had some Sleep apnea. It was probably going to get a less than standard rating. Go, who's going to need extra medical exams? And turns out, boom, got approved and like, and it's like, okay, cool, you got the reward. Now, you know, you have options, right? You know, military retirement, the main risk there is, what's my next job? You know? So once we've kind of knocked out some of these other uncertainties, the one thing we can never control is the financial risk. And just to show that, if you've never seen the US debt clock, I mean, these numbers have been bouncing around a lot lately. It's just, but it's always been bad. This is, you know, kind of a well, I mean, I mean, I don't know who's sourcing this data or whatever, but anyways, this is just an illustration to show that, you know, we've got issues in our economy. We're spending, I think the did you hear we're spending a trillion dollars every 100 days now, it's ridiculous. Yeah, so ridiculous. You know, I just pulled it up, Scott, I just pulled it up. So I'm not sure when this screenshot was taken, but as of right now, that 33 trillion on the top left is 34 five. So that's a real exactly what you said, a trillion dollars in a short period of time. Pretty soon, 1 trillion, 2 trillion. We're talking about real money here, yeah. And so that's why I think it's important to talk about actually, what you know, given that situation with the majority of the American you know, workforce is going through, this is yet another advantage that military retirees have that you know, you don't always see in the day to day. And of course, until we get that next job and know what the income is going to be. We're not really realizing that, hey, we're now in that kind of top 10% of income earners, sometimes even top 1% you know, once you get into the kind of mid six figures of annual income, you were just talking about somebody we're talking with, you know, with a spouse income, you know, six retired, getting about 130 got a, you know, DOD contracting job. I think another 170 from that, and then the spouse is employed, you know. So they're making almost half a million dollars a year, you know, from one year to the next, kind of, you know, almost doubled their income. And so when we think about all this in this context, like, yes, you know, to keep up with inflation, and maybe they're going to be raising taxes a lot of times the way out of this isn't to build a bigger nest egg, but to build more guaranteed or more increased streams of income, right? So one way to do that is, of course, your job, and so wherever you end up on this chart, that's up to you, of course, where your ambitions and skill sets take you. But then we also can't forget this is now the income level and lifestyle that we're probably going to want to be closer to replacing not what your active duty military pay was. You're going to be many years removed. You the free benefits of the military, things you didn't have to pay for, the lower tax that all balanced out by the time you're in your 60s, you draw an income. So that's really what we're planning for. And you know, we've talked to hundreds and hundreds of retirees over the years, we do the same thing over and over again. You know, folks are looking for, you know, more certainty, and you know, what they want to do with their lives. Hey, what kind of career do I want? How do I spend my time? On kind of a personal level, but then on the financial level, it's not like people are coming out excited about saying, hey, I want more insurance or, you know, let's get into this investment stuff, you know. And.

Unknown Speaker:

And build out portfolios. No, your focus is elsewhere. You just want to people tell us they just want a good, solid backup plan, and kind of know where they're going to be withdrawing the resources from and how. So that's why we've redirected our strategy. Instead of being linear, because we don't know how things are going to play out in the future. We just want to be able to control the sources of our income. And so that's why the war chest is all about privatization. You know, when you can qualify, then you get more control, right? And the fact that we can still get growth on the accounts, we're going to keep getting profits from it. But as we said earlier, our focus is on safe money, guaranteeing what you've already earned, whether that's a pension or assets you've already accumulated. So protection is big part of this. And oftentimes you got one or two of these things going for you, like with with your with your pension, you know, that's protected and privatized, but there's no way to profit from it. It's just a set thing. So our focus is, you know, redirecting benefits or assets you don't need to take risk for anymore, and put it into this plan where we can give you all three from a conceptual standpoint, here's what Mike's going to get into this a little bit more show as an example, run some actual numbers. But what we're saying this is in my book, forgot to mention my book, my new book. That's how you can download it for free on our website. It's on Amazon as well. But you know, the idea is, just have it up there so you can get a print version if you prefer that. But I got at the cheapest price, or Kindle, of course, 99 cents. So leave us a good review. But you can download it from website. I also send you, when you download it, access to a calculator where you can run some numbers and some other insights as well. But the idea here is, if you have saved, you got to save something in your TSP. But if you save, let's say, a quarter million dollars, and you're still young, you're about 50 years old, you know, plus or minus, and you're planning on working another good 10 years for retirement. Is there a way to lock away what you've already earned into an account where it's protected? And that's where the annuity comes in, annuity as an insurance vehicle. So we're insuring it still get growth over time. There's that 10 year accumulation period. We're not planning to touch it, because, again, this is money inside an IRA. It's penalized if you touch it before age 59 and a half, so we're thinking around age 60 plus. But you could access it if you needed to. But we're focused on getting principal protection and gains that lock in, you know, over those 10 years and beyond. But at some point you can start drawing the income as long as you live, and if you live long enough, we think there's a very good chance, even for as little as $250,000

Unknown Speaker:

that you'll have would been able to withdraw close to a seven figure income, if not more, and that's on modest projections. So Mike, well, just real quick, it kind of when we're talking about the difference between a traditional, what you'd put inside of an IRA, you know, ETFs or mutual funds, those are stocks. Your money's invested. You have a share in an in companies or a company, and you get rewarded based on that performance. These annuities are contractual agreements, and so it's not the same. That's why your money is not at risk. So we'll talk about that. Of course, when you have questions, this is stuff, we get into a lot more detail, these presentations are meant to be high level, to show you conceptually how they work. Run some numbers so you can see what it looked like for you. And then, of course, we'll go into detail if you want to chat with us more, but Mike, if you want to share your screen, I'll pass it over to you. Yeah, love to thanks. Scott, so I'm going to pull up an example of some of a recent case. I removed the client's name just to make it compliant. But the idea was, this is exactly the scenario we talked about. This is a officer, oh six getting out. And he got out, actually a year and a half ago, but he's 50 years old and he's ready to move his tsp into a more efficient vehicle. And we asked the question, by the way, can you see my screen? Scott, Oh, no. Okay. That'll be helpful. That's our share button helps. I think there we go. Is that better? Yes, sir, perfect. So again, the question I asked this individual was you saved? In this case, it was around $250,000

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in your TSP over the last you know, 23 years of service. What's the what's the goal? Well, what's that money for? And and I asked this question, anyone that's on this call has heard me ask the question, and then probably, and the answer is, generally, Mike, I not exactly sure, but it was something about retirement, and it was and my thought is, gosh, if I could use this to give me that secondary income stream in retirement in addition to my pension, that would make my retirement that much more fulfilling. And so many have heard of the Wall Street 4% withdrawal rule. It's actually 2.9% now, but the idea behind the four points withdrawal rule is, when I say Wall Street, the large investment companies I'll pick on Merrill Lynch will tell you, Hey, you should be able to withdraw 4% of your assets further, and it should last you the rest of your life. And I don't love sound, I don't like the word, should I rather? I'd rather replace should with guaranteed. And so the idea behind what we're talking about here is converting that 20 plus years of saving and investing and growth inside that tsp into a guaranteed lifetime income stream, a second pension at an income stream that is paid to four as long as you.

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Shall live and never goes away. And so that's kind of the message, and just being more efficient with the dollar. So again, I saved this. You've done the hard work, you've done the heavy lifting, you've saved them up, and now it's our job to protect it. And what if we can? What if we can give a design, a solution that has good growth, as Scott mentioned, 468, percent a year. So good growth, zero downside, right? We don't want to take losses when the market goes down. We only want to participate on the upside, and that when we're ready. And again, age 60 is a good proxy for a 50 year old. I want to guarantee an income stream in addition to my military pension for the rest of my life. And so this vehicle is perfect to do that. So the company here is called a theme product is called agility 10. It is what's called a fixed indexed annuity. So indexed means that's how the money grows. The money grows based on one or more index options. So think S and p5, 100. That is one of them. There are several others. The way these things work in practicality, the money we deposit, our premium, our tsp rollover, goes into the general account of the insurance company. So it's never directly invested in the stock market. But the money grows based on these indexes one or more. And again, as I alluded to earlier, the good news is only to the upside. So the participation on the indexes is only to the upside. There's zero downside participation. So your worst case year is you don't lose anything. For example, 2022 the S P was down 20% our clients that were in this product had zero they didn't lose anything, so no downside. So a safe money approach, which, you know, consistent with everything that we do, good growth. But really the story is guaranteed income, not just gig income, but with this particular contract, anytime we have a positive return, anytime the index return is positive, the income the next year goes up by the same percentage. So it's an increasing income story. Think of it as an inflation hedge. So for the rest of your life, anytime we have a positive return in this index, and again, six to eight is kind of what it's averaged, six to 8% a year, we get a bump in income the following year. And again, it is a fully guaranteed lifetime income. So that's kind of the big picture. Of course, with anyone there's a, you know, the devil's in the details. So we talked about your individual scenario. So this is an example, but to give you an idea of what this looks like. So you look at my screen here we have a 50 year old male. He's an oh six, and he had saved $250,000

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inside his tsp. And so we use that 250 we rolled it into this Athene agility contract. Again, this what this does for us, the dollars remain tax deferred. So the dollars remain tax deferred, just as they were inside of his TSP, the dollars grow based on these indexes we're looking at here. The dollars do not lose when the market corrects and again, when he's ready in the future guaranteed income. So this particular contract has a 10 year kind of accumulation period, or wait period prior to taking income. So again, for a 50 year old there, and about early mid 40s to early mid 50s, this is my favorite story, because of number one, there's a nice bonus you see on the bottom left here. There's a bonus of 45% of the premium we put in. So we put in 250,000

Unknown Speaker:

we get a bonus day one of 112 that's kind of nice. The bonus goes into something called a benefit base. If you can see my screen there, what is that? The benefit base drives the income. So the bonus goes to the benefit base, which drives the income. And then we start income out at age 60. So I'm just going to jump down to the numbers here real quick. These are some of the index options we're looking at. We can go into a deeper dive on that at a future call. But one of the things that's kind of interesting, as I mentioned earlier, the likelihood of a 0% year is really the worst case scenario. So this dark blue column says, what's the probability of getting a zero with these 1237, indexes, I've selected this, S, p5, 100, UBS, Bank of America, etc. The likelihood of a zero year is very, very low. The most likely is this one at one out of four. That means three out of four is going to have a positive turn. This one almost never has a zero year. So very, very, very low volatility, very consistent returns. The far right is the average annual return of these indexes over time. So you see they've done quite well. I said six to eight. So good proxy. As you can see, it's on a little bit better than that. So that's the returns on these indexes that we're looking at. So I'm just going to jump down to the numbers. These first numbers we're looking at are the guaranteed values. So if you see on my screen, on the top. This assumes 0% return every single year. This assumes that we, the market, every market in the whole world, is down every single year, forever. So again, I don't want to say Armageddon, I don't want to say impossible, but that is both Armageddon and impossible, but on a fully guaranteed basis. Here's our 250 that went in. There's our one 362 is with that $112,000

Unknown Speaker:

bonus. And then the income starts out at age 60 of about 14,000 a year. And this is the cumulative number. So this one, the income stays the same, because again, we're assuming zero growth. So this income is guaranteed for lifetime. I'm carrying it forward, carrying it forward, carrying it forward. So let's say this individual lives to 95

Unknown Speaker:

Five the income was about just under half a million dollars. So nothing, nothing spectacular about that. But again, this is guaranteed no return whatsoever. More appropriately is these numbers. This is based on what this contract has done over the last 10 years, as it reads on the left, most recent 10 year period. So again, not guessing, not hoping, not speculating, not looking back, literally, if you own this contract, over the last 10 years with these specific indexes, this is what you would have received. So there's the same number that looked at before. Now we have a little bit of growth on it, 4% the first year, 6% 3% etc. Here's a big year. Now we're starting let income at age 60, and the first year, it's $33,000,

Unknown Speaker:

here's the increasing income story. That year the index was up 4.78%

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the next year's income went up 4.78%

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the next year went up six. The income goes up six. Here's a three goes up slightly. Here's a big year, 24 it goes from 38,000 to 48,000 and then here's our worst case, year zero. And a zero year, we get the same thing we got the last year. So anytime this is positive. The income goes up by the same percentage. Again, never goes down, never goes backwards. So here's cumulative income, 400,000 500,000 I'm gonna go to the next page. We're at 75 here now. We're in our 80s. We're 140 150,000 per year, per year, 160 200,000 per year, going going forward. And God willing, this individual is the 95 he put $250,000

Unknown Speaker:

in this contract. He's taken 5.2 million out in income. The last thing Scott that I want to touch on, then I'll pass it back over to you, as you see all these zeros on the screen. So people ask, what does that mean? So there becomes a point in the future, and I'll go back up a page where we've taken out more income than we put it. So in this case, at age 75 we've taken out about a million bucks. At that point, there's no more value in the contract. No more value in the contract. However, this is a lifetime income benefit, so even with a value goes to zero, this income is paid for the rest of your life. Okay, so this money goes to you for the rest of your life, and even when the values go to zero. So you live a long time income for the rest of your life. What about the other side of the equation? What if you put your 250 grand in this and, God forbid, something happens. So we're going to go back to the top, and let's say that we put our 250 in this thing. And you know, let's say at age, I don't know, age 60, before we take any income out at all, our plane falls out of the sky and we pass away. Life happens, right? So in this case, any monies that have not been paid to you in income is paid to your family in the form of a death benefit. So if this individual, again, unfortunately, passes at 60, he put his 250 in, his family gets $500,000 so anything that's not again, that's not paid out goes, and another way to look at it as down here. Let's say, for example, at age 70, age second, passes away. Again, he's put in 250 he's taken around 500,000 in income. And there's a, there's still a death benefit of 354,000

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that goes to the family. So the message is, again, live a long time, income for the rest of your life, fully guaranteed. Pass away early, unexpectedly, whatever, anything that's not been paid to you goes to your family, so we never lose control of the asset which is meaningful. So that's kind of how these things work. I was very high level, very brief, but the idea behind this, it fits into everything that we do, which is safe money, protecting your assets, protecting that tsp dollars, and making sure and turning it into that pension. Awesome. Thanks, Mike, yeah, that's, you know, these illustrations and, well, it's like any financial plan or prospectus. It's a lot, you know, dozens and dozens of pages and stuff. The good thing about these illustrations is we can put in your variables and run them based on, you know, exactly how the contract's set up and how the performance is done, and so on and so forth. But just to go out on again, what we're highlighting here, the principal protection, of course, is the big aspect that we're hitting on, anything you put in, any growth that's received, gets locked in, but we're not capped on the upside for the growth. You're not going to get all of it. We'll explain how that works. But the fact that, if there are, there were some good years, but if there's some really bad years, or any bad years, we're staying at zero, and that's kind of the big thing here. And of course, guaranteeing that lifetime income stream, that's the point of saving the money in the TSP or other retirement accounts. Of course, this can work for other retirement dollars as well, but yeah, that's the that's it for today. Thank you all for listening. Obviously, let us know if you have any questions, I can go on our website real quick and show where we've got some stuff, where you can access more. So here's our new website. We're still working on it, but when you go to the who we serve section, if you're a military retiree, you can dive in a lot more to you know what we're doing, what our strategy is. You know how we're different, why we're specific to other retirees. But of course, you can get the book. So download the book. It really goes into everything we talked about today, and shows some more specifics on the various risks that we're avoiding or that we should be aware of, specifically what we call the sequence of returns.

Unknown Speaker:

Earns risk, and that is the risk that if, on that day, let's say, age 60, you want to start withdrawing your money, and it happens to be in a year where there's a big market correction, you know, what happens if your your account does drop 20% and then you also got to take out that, you know, 4% as well, and that starts to compound on negative years. And so we got a calculator that shows you how to play around with that and cool, we'd love to get your thoughts on it and let us know if you got any questions or anything you'd like for us to chat about on a future episode of war chest workshop. But that's all for now. Thanks, Scott, yep. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker:

Jen,

Unknown Speaker:

hey there. This is your host, Jen Amos, thanks again for listening to today's episode of holding on the fort by us. Fetwell,

Unknown Speaker:

visit holding on the fort podcast.com to access the full show notes of this episode, including resources mentioned and bonus content. Once again, the website is holding down the fort podcast.com

Unknown Speaker:

Lastly, stay after the outro for a little something Extra. Thanks again, and chat soon. Bye for now.

Unknown Speaker:

You

Unknown Speaker:

Hey, everyone, thanks for joining me in the outro. I hope that you enjoyed this discussion between my husband, Scott and Mike Siebel, our life insurance case design specialist, about how military retirees can turn their tsp savings into lifetime income. If you were really taken by this conversation and you want to learn more or speak with anyone from our company, you can actually visit our website, usvetwealth.com, and that'll be in the show notes as well. And you can sign up for a complimentary strategy session. So in this strategy session, actually, I'm gonna pull up the website right now, not on screen, but I'm gonna, like, pull it up for myself so I can read it to you. So when you visit the complimentary discovery consultation website, you will see four specific steps. First, it'll tell you to watch the video that's on this page. Pretty much understand what to expect when you fill out our complimentary discovery consultation application. The second thing you'll do is you'll fill out the intake form you know, to be able to have this complimentary discovery consultation. And then from there, you will be scheduled to be on a zoom call with one of our colleagues. And then afterward, you'll get a follow up email with additional resources or recap of the conversation, etc, etc. So yeah, if you're interested in that, again, it's free. It's absolutely free. There's no strings attached. Really, our primary goal here at US vet wealth is to offer you alternative education and information and resources that are different. It's a different perspective from what, let's say the government website say it's neither good nor bad, it's just different, you know? And that's one thing we often stress when we talk about these things, because we often get that comment of like, Oh, are you anti like, SVP or anti TP? Like, no, not at all. If anything, we just really value, you know, education. We value giving you different perspectives, especially if that's what you're looking for, if you're looking for a different perspective on your military benefits. So once again, if you want to check out, if you want to have a complimentary strategy session with us, go ahead and visit usbetwealth.com today. Also check out the show notes of this episode, or visit holding ontheforts podcast.com if you do not know how to check the show notes of this episode. And other than that, if you want more stuff, I mean, that's already a lot of stuff, but if you're like Jen, like, I'm so deprived because you're not releasing two episodes a week, how dare you if you want? Wow, first and foremost, how dare I. But yeah, if you if you want more content, you could always check out our private podcast inside the fort, which you can have access to now by visiting hold on the fort podcast.com. Forward slash portal, and I'll see you there. I'll see you on the inside. Otherwise, I'll chat with you all in the next episode. Bye for now you

Show artwork for Holding Down the Fort by US VetWealth

About the Podcast

Holding Down the Fort by US VetWealth
Stop following orders, think different, and manifest your dreams with the award-winning podcast, Holding Down the Fort by US VetWealth! For Season 9, we highlight motivational stories of personal development, financial awareness, and independence in our military community. The show is hosted by Jen Amos, a Gold Star daughter, Veteran Spouse, and Entrepreneur.

The show continues its partnership with The Rosie Network. Read more at https://issuu.com/therosienetwork/docs/me_mag_2023/16

We continue to showcase US VetWealth's partnership with Blue Water Advisors, which will feature conversations with Scott R. Tucker and Mike Wallace about career progression for military retirees seeking employment in post-military. Watch the most recent "Take A Knee" Live Show at https://www.youtube.com/@USVWTV/streams

Our main sponsor, US VetWealth, is proud to offer Life Insurance and Annuity Strategies for The High-Income Military Retiree. Let's help you capitalize on your above-average health and substantial income-earning potential for post-military life. For a free consultation, https://usvetwealth.com/

In the Fall of 2023, Jen Amos was sought after by InDependent to co-host the 8th annual InDependent Wellness Summit™. In August 2022, Jen Amos' work on the podcast was recognized by Disney Institute and she was hand-selected as the only non-Disney employee to moderate the first Military Spouse Employment panel for the Veterans Institute Summit. March 2022, former co-host Jenny Lynne has voted the 2022 Naval Station Norfolk Armed Forces Insurance Military Spouse of the Year. November 2020, Jen Amos was awarded “Media Professional of the Year” at The Rosie Network Entrepreneur Awards! The show continued to collect award nominations in the following years. In September 2021, the show made the Final Slate in the 16th Annual People's Choice Podcast Awards for the Government & Organizations category. In November 2021, the show was an Award Finalist for the 5th Annual National Veteran & Military Spouse Entrepreneur Awards. December 2021, the show was a Golden Crane Podcast Awards Nominee. September 2022, the show was a Finalist for the 13th Annual Plutus Awards presented by Capital Group for “Best Military Personal Finance Content.”

Holding Down the Fort has also been featured in multiple media outlets including Military Entrepreneur (M.E.) Magazine, MOAA’s Never Stop Learning Podcast, The Leadership Void Podcast, Lessons Learned for Vets Podcast, Sisters in Service Podcast, Get 2 Vet, Blue Star Families of Dayton & Southwestern Ohio, Legacy Magazine, U.S. Veterans Magazine, The American MilSpouse, VeteranCrowd Network, It's a Military Life, VirtForce, Military Veteran Dad Podcast, and much more.

"Jen has a beautiful way of capturing the essence of her guests. She listens with an open mind and heart to help expand the words spoken- bringing life, connection, and deeper understanding. The military life is never “easy” we merely learn how to adapt the best we know how to. It’s through continuing to build the community up that we will see a decrease in the mental hardships we sometimes face. Thank you for your work to bridge the gaps, build awareness, and give a voice to so many of us. With a variety of guests, there is truly an episode meant for you to hear. I look forward to continuing to support you Jen!" - Candice E. Van Dertholen, Ep. 190
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About your host

Profile picture for Jen Amos

Jen Amos

As the co-owner of US VetWealth (i.e. Scott R. Tucker’s “better half”), I assist in creating educational content for military retirees seeking alternative options to the Survivor Benefit Plan and privatized financial strategies for your military retirement.

From growing up in a military family to becoming a Gold Star family member at 10 years old, I have first-hand experience with how a sudden transition to civilian life can impact a family emotionally and financially. 20+ years removed from military life, I started the podcast show Holding Down the Fort by US VetWealth in the summer of 2019 to get a pulse on the community today. I’ve come to find that our families still face similar issues that I faced in my childhood. It’s become a sense of responsibility to do my part in validating the stories and struggles of career military families. By the fall of 2020, I had been awarded Media Professional of the Year by The Rosie Networks' National Veteran and Military Spouse Entrepreneur Awards. Since then, the show has received five more award nominations and has been recognized by multiple media outlets, including the Disney Institute’s Veterans Insititute.

While the show is off-season, I focus most of my time building out US VetWealth’s Military Retirement Blueprint — the only resource for military retirees to learn about SBP alternatives and privatized financial strategies. Contrary to popular belief, retiring military officers and senior NCOs are, what we consider, high-income earners. Our FREE resource provides guides, courses, live training, consulting, and an ever-growing list of content for you to learn about your untapped potential and opportunities for post-military life. Access our free resource now by visiting https://militaryretirementblueprint.com/

You can read more about Jen Amos' work in the Summer 2023 Military Entrepreneur Magazine by The Rosie Network (Pg. 16).