Episode 168: Financial Wisdom and Hollywood Insight with Andrew Winnett – Transcript
[Rennie Gabriel]
Hi folks, welcome to episode 168 of the Wealth On Any Income podcast. This is where we talk about money tips, techniques, attitudes, information, and provide inspiration around your business and your money. I'm your host, Rennie Gabriel.
In past episodes, we spoke about how to understand the numbers from your business, how to measure the level of pleasure based on where you spend your money, and how to track your money in five to ten seconds, what determines how close you are to complete financial choice, and how to run your business without being in your business. Last time, we had Myriam Rose Kohn, a career counselor, who takes you from a career that you're unhappy with to one that brings you joy. And today we have as our guest Andrew Winnett.
Andrew is a dynamic professional, excelling in finance, and Hollywood producer of impactful films like The Retirement Deception and The Baby Boomer Dilemma. He showcases creative brilliance in the entertainment industry. Andrew, welcome to the Wealth On Any Income podcast.
Thanks for having me, Rennie. Glad to be here. So, let's start with the first question.
Okay. Tell me more about the work you do and why you do what you're doing.
[Andrew Winnett]
Sure. Okay. Well, so the name of my company is Retirement Renegade.
We're renegades. We will not lose your money. We will not charge you fees.
We will not dress in a three-piece suit. I've been there, done that for years. But we're really world-class when it comes to tax planning, income planning, and making sure our clients never run out of money before they run out of life.
So, that's what we do. The reason why we do it is because my mom found herself in a financial pickle when my father passed away at the young age of 45. And she made some really bad mistakes with her financial advisor.
This was right around the global financial crisis. I was actually working at Wells Fargo during the time. I was kind of part of the problem, Rennie.
I was the guy saying, oh, dude, you got to invest in this stock. We said dude and bro a lot in California. It just means friend.
But dude, you got to invest in this stock. And it's going to go to the moon. And I was so confident about this particular stock.
And when the global financial crisis hit and everybody lost on average of about 40%, that stock didn't lose 40%. That stock went to zero. And I had the pain of having to look my friends and family in the eyes and tell them I'm so sorry.
I was wrong. But by the grace of God, Rennie, I was little. I was micro.
I was just dipping my toes into that world. But the guy next to me at Wells Fargo, he was big time. And this dude had like 200 clients.
And I got to see good people in their 70s and 80s that were living the dream previously, going to Rome whenever they wanted, hanging out with the grandbabies, going out to lunch every day. All of a sudden, they knew they were going to have to go back to work. And they were ready to physically fight this advisor next to me.
And I saw the devastation of what the market can do. And I just knew there had to be a better way. There had to be a way where you could participate in market upside, but be insulated from downside risk.
There had to be a way where you didn't have to pay so much in stinking fees. According to Forbes, 2.1% per year across the board in America is the average cumulative fees that you pay in your retirement accounts. One to one and a half will go to the advisor and the rest is expense ratios and account fees.
There had to be a way where people wouldn't run out of money. Right now in America, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, about one out of two Americans are running out of money before they run out of life. And so these were the problems that we wanted to solve along with the tax problem, along with long-term care and Medicare and the whole thing.
It's a big puzzle. And most advisors are not able to talk about all those things because the mothership won't let them. So they just focus on growing your money, but unfortunately, there's a 50% failure rate in America.
And frankly, that's unacceptable.
[Rennie Gabriel]
Thank you, Andrew. I appreciate that because I know exactly what you're talking about. I got a lot more years on you and I've seen how that can happen.
And one of the things that I talk about is that wealthy people are not limited to stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.
[Andrew Winnett]
That's right.
[Rennie Gabriel]
So I know you're on the right track with what you're doing. Now, one of the things my listeners know and anybody who's read my materials realizes, I donate 100% of the profits from my books, from my programs, from my coaching, from all the work I do educating other people. And I do this because I can, but more importantly, my guests also need to have some philanthropic attitude.
So tell me about the charity that means the most to you and what they do.
[Andrew Winnett]
Well, so we do. So first of all, I love that. I think that generosity should just be like breathing air.
I mean, we were, you know, I believe in Jesus. He's my Lord and Savior. And we are called to be benevolent because look at what he gave us, right?
I mean, he gave us everything. So we give to a lot of organizations, but right now, the biggest one we're going after is 821 Campaign, which is Christine Kane. It's an anti-human trafficking, human sex trafficking organization.
We're doing a gala event in November. I've donated 100,000 to this gala event. And we're trying to raise as much money as we can to end human sex trafficking here in our local area of Nashville, because it's a massive problem.
A lot of people, they don't realize how bad it is in their area. I mean, if I got four kids and if one of my kids was taken, holy cow, I'd move heaven and earth to get them back. But these are someone's daughters.
These are someone's sons. These are their grandsons, granddaughters. We've got to unify and we've got to tackle this problem because if we don't, who will?
And so we give a lot back to 821 Campaign to end human sex trafficking among other organizations that we give to.
[Rennie Gabriel]
Great. Thank you, Andrew. I appreciate that.
And I also donate to that kind of organization that's operating here in Los Angeles. The next is a two-part question. The first is, tell me what your biggest failure was, personal or business?
And I think maybe you hinted at that when you were with Wells Fargo. But the second part is, I think that we also touched on that. What your biggest insight was from that failure and how you use that to create success?
[Andrew Winnett]
Well, I've had a lot of failures, to be honest with you. I'll give you three. I'll put three quick ones of what I learned because there's no like massive big one.
I mean, I've had big ones, but the three big ones was number one, I lost a bunch of people's money in 2008. The takeaway there was that I didn't realize, it's kind of like the same mindset that a lot of Americans have right now with the stock market is it's never going to go down. And if it goes down, it'll come back tomorrow.
We've had such an unbelievable ride that we have forgotten how bad things can get, especially with our demographic problem here in America, which leads to a stagnant stock market. Just look at Japan and Germany. But I learned from losing people's money that as you get older, it's not so much about how much do you earn, it's how much do you not lose.
And you should put your money in the market when you're going up the retirement mountain, the accumulation phase. But goodness gracious, when that paycheck goes away and now you have to start drawing from your savings, having safety of principles is important. So that's the first one.
Second one, I got sued because in my previous organization that I started, we were very recruiting driven. I was training other advisors to do what I did. And we had 200 advisors across the country.
And I would take them from an unlicensed agent, if you would, and help them with that process. You've been in the financial industry. You know how long it takes to take somebody from zero to making $10,000 their first month.
That's a miracle. And that's what we were doing. And we had another competitor who was taking our advisors.
And so I did a private video in our private Facebook group. And my wife that morning told me, Andrew, you shouldn't do this video. And I was so pissed off because my agents and advisors are being poached from a competitor.
I spent all this time and money training them and helping them succeed. And I did the video, and it got leaked to this competitor. He sued me.
We ended up settling out of court. He sued me for defamation. And the takeaway there is, listen to your wife.
I don't know what it is about women, but God gives women discernment. Even if they can't articulate why, you got to listen to that, man. I could have avoided a lot of headaches.
And then the third one, I started, this is back in the day, I started a rattlesnake removal company in California. I think you know where this is going, right?
[Rennie Gabriel]
Yeah.
[Andrew Winnett]
And I learned this from this guy who was doing so well catching rattlesnakes in California. He's making $450 an hour. I'm like, dude, I can catch rattlesnakes.
And so I started it, but here's the thing. I never had enough momentum to make it a full-time position. So they just, it was kind of a hindrance because I had to have another job.
And when I get the phone call, it was hard for me to break away. And so whatever you're setting out to do, there has to be a big enough opportunity to actually make a living in it. And I wasn't solving a big enough problem for enough people.
It's a fun little story, but yeah. So I had a rattlesnake removal company for a little while, but it wasn't big enough to make it. So those are the three ones that came to my head.
[Rennie Gabriel]
Okay. Well, those are fun ones and I appreciated hearing those. Well, this is guesswork on my part, but I'm going to ask the question anyway.
Even my listeners can probably figure out what this answer will be. But what benefit, goal, objective, or outcome do people achieve who follow your advice? And give me an example or a case study or a story to illustrate that.
[Andrew Winnett]
Yeah. So what we try to do is we try to look at all the angles of retirement. It's not just about your money growing.
That's important. But what about estate planning? What about long-term care?
What about tax planning? What about income planning? Longevity risk, Medicare, social security optimization, all of those factors.
So when we take on a retirement account, we have minimums at our firm for a reason, because we try to offer that white glove Ritz Carlton service that they deserve. And if you go online to Google and Better Business Bureau, I'm pleased to say, Rennie, we have the highest reviews of any financial advisor in the entire state of Tennessee. And there are thousands of advisors.
Now, we have clients across the country. We work in all 50 states. But when we take a client, number one, we're looking at taxes.
So we on average save our clients about $250,000 in taxes over their lifetime and whatever's left behind to their children. I had a client last week, a little bit of a higher client. We saved $500,000 and we didn't even convert most of his pre-tax accounts.
Right now, taxes are on sale. Taxes are going to go up in two years, probably about 30%. If there was ever a time to look at tax planning, it's now.
So what we do is we also make sure that our clients will never run out of money no matter how long they live, guaranteed, and that it factors in a very realistic inflation rate. Inflation is a problem. And I hate to say it, it's not going away anytime soon.
And then finally, not to be long-winded, because you can tell hopefully I've got the gift of Gab and I can just go and go, but social security is headed for a cliff. Olivia Mitchell, in my first movie, who's the foremost expert of social security, not just in America, but in the world. Other countries have their own pension plans.
They don't call it social security, of course. But she talks about how we're so wildly underfunded with social security. We have such a booming elderly population, they call it the silver haired tsunami.
We don't have enough taxpayers to cover the rising costs of social security, social security disability, Medicare, and Medicaid. And in 2033, as it stands today, social security will be cut by one third across the board. And that is going to devastate millions of Americans that are dependent on social security.
So what we do for our clients is we set up something that we've termed the social security stopgap fund. And what it does is it's a bucket of money that grows, and it grows around 8%, by the way. It's pretty strong and you can't lose money in it.
If and when social security happens to be cut by a third, this thing kicks on and our clients will experience zero standard of living reduction. And in many cases, it'll actually be more than what they were earning in social security. Now, for some reason, we solve this problem and we fund it correctly.
Well, that's just a raise for them. But many advisors are not, in fact, I venture to say 98% of advisors don't talk about that problem that's coming and looming. And they're doing their clients a massive disservice because they're either ignorant and don't know about it, or they're purposefully not telling their clients about what's coming.
And that's unacceptable.
[Rennie Gabriel]
And my guess is it's mostly uneducated, ignorant about that looming problem.
[Andrew Winnett]
I agree.
[Rennie Gabriel]
So let me ask you two more. Well, one more question that's really important. Okay.
People who are listening to this will want to get ahold of you. But I want to know if you've got some free resource that they can get that will also connect them to you.
[Andrew Winnett]
Yeah. So I've written four books. I'm just finishing up my third Hollywood film that's coming out this month.
And then I'm on the radio every single weekend. I'm on NBC every weekend as well. I have three books and a movie completely free for all of your listeners.
All they have to do is go to nomorelosingmoney.com. nomorelosingmoney.com. They can see the three books.
The Joseph Strategy. So I believe Joseph in the Bible was the greatest financial advisor to ever live. There's that old saying, if it's new, it's not true.
And if it's true, it's not new. This is 3,500 year old wisdom that has stood the test of time. I built my entire firm off of it.
The Joseph Strategies included. We got her safe retirement. This is a crazy statistic, but four out of five men will die married.
Whereas four out of five women will die single, divorced or widowed. I don't know what it is about us guys, but we die first. Maybe we eat too much hot chicken.
Maybe we're doing backflip gainers off ladders too much. We're playing hot potato with dynamite. We die first.
And when we die, the women are more vulnerable to making big mistakes financially, just like my mom. And so this is seven strategies for women to retire safely and comfortably. And then finally, the third book, it's called Escape to Tennessee.
And it's basically the pros and cons of retiring in Tennessee. A lot of people are moving here from the blue states, if you would. And it talks about the benefits and the drawbacks of Tennessee.
And honestly, it's a really wonderful place to retire. And then finally, the movie that I'm going to give everybody, this is called The Retirement Deception. My mom's in it.
I'm in it. And we just basically interview people across the country about, hey, you've got a pretty insane retirement. What did you do to obtain that?
What are you invested in? What did life look like before and after? It's a wonderful film.
We didn't pay anybody anything. We didn't give them any sort of script. They're just trying to tell people about what they did that's working.
So all that is yours. NoMoreLosingMoney.com, and you can get those free resources.
[Rennie Gabriel]
Thank you. That will be in the show notes. People can just click on the link and get right there.
And I will also be going there and checking that out because those sound like fabulous resources that I want to be sure everyone I'm connected to is aware of. And Andrew, thank you so much. I want to acknowledge you.
And I want to, again, thank you for being on the Wealth on Any Income podcast.
[Andrew Winnett]
My pleasure. Thank you, Rennie.
[Rennie Gabriel]
You are welcome. And to those who are listening, if you'd like to know how books, movies, and society programs you to be poor and what the cure is, then log on to WealthOnAnyIncome.com forward slash TEDx. You'll hear my TEDx talk and can request a free nine-step roadmap to complete financial choice and philanthropy and receive an occasional email with tips, techniques, or inspiration around your business or your money.
And if you'd like to see how you can increase your wealth and donate to the causes that touch your heart, please check out our affordable program, Wealth with Purpose, or check out Andrew's offerings from the link that will be in the show notes. To my listeners, thank you for tuning in. You can listen to the Wealth on Any Income podcast on your favorite platform and please rate, review, and subscribe.
Until next time, be prosperous. Bye-bye for now.
