How To Get Out Of Debt and Prepare For Retirement w/ Anna Felix

[00:00:00] I'm not that advisor that ate the whole piece of pie, but the piece of pie that you are able to control guaranteed income from, create your own bank where you're growing some money tax-free, it's using insurance-based products to have definitive protections. Anna Felix, she's a smart money strategist. After becoming a widow, Anna quickly learned how unforgiving the financial system can feel and Anna turned her pain into purpose.

[00:00:28] She now helps her clients become financially bulletproof. What I do is use life insurance to grow money. It's a safe way to grow money. You can grow it significantly and it's smart. When you say significantly, what does that really look like? Typically 6% to 8% a year and in that strategy you are able to take the growth of the market without any of the losses and that's what's huge.

[00:00:55] From a dollar perspective, in order to retire, what is the magic number? It is an individual formula. What I help people do is... So Anna, thank you for being here and I'm just so grateful that you're giving us your time and your knowledge.

[00:01:17] Oh, well, thank you so much for having me, Hilary. I'm always so excited to share because if it can just help one other person, it will make me so happy. Well, and as I said, your journey is something that is unexpected, right? Your education, linguistics, and your relaunch that happened really, really changed everything for you. Can you share with us how life changed in an instant for you?

[00:01:49] Yeah, well, it actually had two instances that were big deals. In 2005, we had a severe car accident and my husband and daughter had severe brain injuries. And I say that quickly when I tell my story, but as you can imagine, there were so many things that that entailed and that we were dealing with. And I felt like we were doing a good job with that. But then my husband, my daughter was making good progress, but then my husband passed away at the end of 2010.

[00:02:17] And this fight, this journey that we'd been on, I thought we were making progress and all of a sudden we weren't. And it was just the hardest time ever, as you can imagine. And on top of all the other things that typically come up when something like this happens, the big thing for me was the financial piece. I just, I had so much medical debt. I was really going to have to start over at age 42.

[00:02:44] We had sold a business at the beginning of this journey. And I was just like, what am I going to do now? And, you know, in our relationship- You mentioned on our call the first time that you were almost 200,000 in debt with just the medical bills. Yes. And you were like, okay, well, how do I, how do I even start? But then you had a daughter after your husband died.

[00:03:10] It had only been five years after the accident and he passes. Was it directly related to that accident? Yeah, it was, it was some consequences of medication that he was on for the brain injury was affecting his heart and we didn't catch that. And so, yeah, it was, yeah, it was, it was all consequential. So, yeah, I mean, it's, it is a lot and it's a lot to navigate all at one time.

[00:03:37] And, you know, the financial piece wasn't the only piece, but that was what was at the forefront for me. I was really fortunate between my faith and my family to have the support that I needed. And, and, you know, you're just navigating one day at a time. But what was keeping me up at night was like, what am I going to do moving forward? Like, what does this look like? How, how is this? And, and there was a lot of other little things that came in.

[00:04:03] Um, one of the things that paperwork didn't get done correctly and I wasn't going to get my husband's pension and things that I thought were in place, just, they weren't going to happen. And so it was like, wow, okay, this is a lot. And I don't know how to navigate this and I don't, you know, know what I should be doing. So the next logical step was, well, I should, you know, start looking at what I should do.

[00:04:30] And so do you want me to tell you what I was told to do? This is going to make me like the hair on my neck. So they're going to stand up. It's like, oh yeah. Share with us. What, what did you do at that point? Cause you're feeling like, you know, I'm at a loss. I have no money. I have so much debt. I've got a lot of, you know, responsibilities with my daughter and you took it into your own hands and you, you did something and it was shocking results.

[00:05:00] Yeah. So it didn't seem like a, you know, the most obvious step is meet with an advisor, right? Meet with someone that is knowledgeable in this field and that can help guide me, give me some ideas. And I knew going into this, that I wasn't, you know, I knew enough about the industry to know that I wasn't the ideal client, right? Like typically, you know, they want you to have a lot of money under management.

[00:05:26] And I knew that I wasn't ideal, but I was just looking for something, you know, give me one thing, give me step one, give me something that I can, that I can work on. And so, you know, looking at my situation, you know, he said, you have a lot of questions and I would say that in your situation, you really just need to marry a rich guy.

[00:05:50] This is where I just, you know, I just got sick because I heard the same thing when I got divorced and I was actually, I'd had a very successful career. And my financial advisor's like, you know, the best thing is go out and marry a rich guy because you're going to run out of money in two years. Wow.

[00:06:12] Yeah. So when I heard you say that, you, you literally had the same thought I did where it's like, what? And that was, that was a very common answer. You have no money. You're going to run out of money. Go, go find a guy that's going to be able to take care of you. But you decided to do something different. Yeah.

[00:06:38] Well, I mean, and I would say, you know, to the name of your podcast, that was the relaunch moment for me, even though I didn't know it at the time. And I was just so overwhelmed with so many different emotions. But it was literally walking back to my car from that appointment because I very abruptly ended the conversation. Because I, like I said, there was just so many things go. I wanted to cry. I wanted to yell at him.

[00:07:06] I mean, I was just like, this is crazy. But walking back to the car, I thought, you know, as a human being, I would have handled that conversation way differently. And it was the first time I had heard, you know, that given as an option for a financial plan. And so I was just thinking, is this what women are hearing on a regular basis? Like, this is shocking to me. This is your, what we call a relaunch your I'm done moment. This is when you're like, I'm done. Like, I heard it in my head.

[00:07:36] Like, I'm done. Like, what? Huh? Yeah. Yeah. And I just, you know, and obviously since then, and to your point, you heard it too. And I, you know, women tell me all the time that those are things that they hear. But, excuse me, for that, for me in that moment, I thought, this is not okay. And this needs to change. And I don't know what that looks like, but it's got to change.

[00:08:03] And so what I did personally is I just started doing a deep dive into financial things and strategies and trying to understand it myself. I mean, you know, I learned several languages in my life when we were faced with brain injuries, did a lot of, you know, research about the brain. And so I thought, okay, life is calling me to, you know, figure yet another piece out. And so that's what I did.

[00:08:28] And I had no idea that was the path that I was on, but it was like, I've got to do something. I got to take, you know, one step forward. That was a disaster. And there's got to be something better moving forward. And you were able to crawl your way out of debt because of what you learned. And then you started to say, hey, I'm sure there's other women that need to hear what

[00:08:58] I've done and what I learned. And so you've been doing this for how long? 12 years now. 12 years. How many people do you think that you have helped? Oh, I don't know, several hundred. And then, you know, people that you talk to along the way, you don't know who's been affected by the information, but it's been, it's been so rewarding. And that's really what happened was as I learned these things, I was just asking people

[00:09:27] in my community, people that knew my situation, like, did you know that you could do this? Did you know that you could grow money tax-free? You know, just all the little things I would learn. And then they would be like, no, I didn't know that you could do that. Okay. So see, we have to be talking more about these things. And as I talk to women, you know, have you sat down with your husband and have you had a conversation about where things are, who, you know, who has what, where your accounts are.

[00:09:55] And, you know, I could tell you 90% of what I hear is no, or we haven't done that in a long time or no, we need to do that. But yeah, we just haven't got around to it. That's what I hear most of the time. Okay. You're like just, you're like the fire hydrant giving me so much goodness here, but I got to go back to, and yes, don't worry. I wrote it down, everyone. I'm going to get back to the, you know, money tax-free.

[00:10:25] How do we do that? I will get there. But one of the things that you and I talked about is that, especially for the middle-aged woman, we have aging parents or we have kids that are heading off to college. They're about to go out on their own and trying to do it all, trying to help, trying to figure

[00:10:51] out your own financial situation of, you know, we're in it right now, aging parents need assistance financially. How can we do that? Which means everyone is thinking like these strategies that you and I talked about the last time, people are not thinking that way. And I want to ask you, and I think that what we should be teaching our kids is a totally different podcast.

[00:11:21] Let's keep to right now. How can women get themselves into a position that they, there are a lot of myths out there of what you should do, shouldn't do, what works, what doesn't work. You've got kind of your, your hit list of what you absolutely suggest women become aware of and start to do.

[00:11:47] And I really want to talk to you about what are those people come to you and they're like, whether they have money, whether they don't have money, we've all got this situation of relaunches are happening around us and they're happening rapidly, rapidly where we could be literally that like just funnel of cash going out. What do you immediately suggest?

[00:12:14] Well, it's, it's a process that's come over time. And, and I want to say, even in just the last year, I've started to pivot more into what are your vulnerabilities? Because yes, there's all of these, you know, great different strategies that we can do. And I just like to say, I really stay in my lane with the things that I do. I don't, I don't do stocks and bonds and mutual funds. That's a whole nother thing.

[00:12:40] I'm a great proponent of having a variety of things going on in your portfolio. And so you should have a different professional that deals with those things. So I'm not that advisor. That's like, I need the whole piece of pie, right? Like a lot of times that's the, that's the thought process. Which piece, which piece of pie are you saying? This is what I want to own. Yeah. So the piece of pie that you are going to be able to control guaranteed income from that

[00:13:10] you can create your own bank where you're growing some money tax-free. It's using insurance-based products to have definitive things happening in your plan and definitive protections. I'm going to give you a really quick example. About a month ago, I was introduced to a couple that at the beginning of the year, they were getting to retire. They were, they had their first cruise planned. Everything was good.

[00:13:39] They were good to go. And their 43 year old son passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack. So, I mean, you can just imagine how heart-wrenching that is. They have four grandchildren. Well, this is what they came to find out after that. He had no life insurance. He had taken out a business loan recently. Four grandchildren, they were at risk of not being able to stay in their home.

[00:14:08] So, what do you think is happening to the grandparents' retirement right now? So, it's, you know, and these are the type of vulnerabilities that we often don't think about. And so, that's my job is to, you know, where, where are those? And if you're, and if you're just getting started like me, and in the situation I was, like the big thing for me, my big vulnerability was my debt at that time. Right?

[00:14:37] Like that was, that was a huge problem. I needed to have proper coverage too. So, you know, we take that, that thing that we've heard before. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Right? So, we pick the biggest things that need to be attacked first. And often we can do several of those at one time. We need to identify what they are and then work on how we can do that in the space that we're in.

[00:15:06] So, over time, as I was tackling more and more debt, then I was able to start to utilize the tax-free growth plan in a little bit better way. So, you start where you are and then you build from that. And you can have different, different accounts. May I ask a question here? Because there are people that we know in our world that have gotten themselves into debt.

[00:15:36] Let's talk about that first and how somebody would come to you. They have credit card debt. They've got other debt. What do you help them with? I want to make sure people really understand what you do for people. Because I'm blown away that there is somebody like you. And I really want people to feel like there is somebody that they can talk to.

[00:16:02] So, with the debt situation, do you look at where they are and then help them figure out, hey, consolidate into one type of card or one bank loan? What do you do? Yeah. So, debt isn't my huge specialty, but I definitely get them started. And here's the thing. If I feel like someone needs a real deep dive into something specific, I have other professionals that I work with. I have people that deal just with debt.

[00:16:31] And so, if we need to really dive into that more than we can. Because sometimes there is a whole thought process around it. We need to identify why you're in debt, first of all, right? Because we don't want it to keep happening. So, if it's a sudden thing that's happened and occurred, like in my case, then that's one thing. If it's a spending problem, we need to identify why is that happening?

[00:16:58] Are we dealing with something that's making us have retail therapy? Or do we not have enough money for what we are spending? And are those things necessary? So, we got to find out where that's coming from. And so, if someone needs to do a deeper dive into that, we can do that. But now- And then, Anna, are you helping them come up with a budget at that point? Because I'm hearing like people come to you. They have no- They're in debt.

[00:17:27] They're trying to come up with a budget. They're probably in their mind thinking, or at least I think you're thinking out there. Well, how am I going to pay for Anna if I have debt and if I have all these bills? And like, how do you work that? Because it's an interesting dynamic that you mentioned and shared. And I will say that, you know, a lot of people come to me. They're just looking for some of these other strategies.

[00:17:55] Not everyone that comes to me has debt. But when they do, we got to identify why that's happening and then put a plan together. And often, it's not so much about me doing it. It's about them and just giving them the tools to do that. So, the first thing you've got to know is how much money is coming in every month? How much money is going out? Do you know how many people really don't know that number?

[00:18:22] And the more money they make, the less they know about that. Because there's plenty coming in. They don't really need to think about it. And so, they just go and do those things. And then it's like, oh, the end of the month came out. Okay, well, we're going to put this on the card. And so, it's becoming self-aware often. And people can very quickly figure out, oh, okay. Here's another thing that happens.

[00:18:49] I helped a gal about six months ago recover $400 a month in her money that she had monthly. And where do you think we found that? Subscriptions. Oh, bingo. Oh, my God, am I right? I was just like, I just looked at my credit card statement yesterday. And I literally was like, whoa, that's gotten out of hand. Because I'm a quick hit.

[00:19:19] Like, ooh, I should do that. No way. That's so, okay. But wait, we don't have a lot of time here. I have to keep going with making money. So, you actually have a little bit of, you know, money that you're, or a lot of money, right? We were talking about like, you know, this is for everyone, no matter what classification, where you are with your net value, net worth.

[00:19:45] You start talking about some of these key things, these tips that, you know, money tax-free. We got to jump into that. Yes. So, what I do is I use life insurance to grow money, like your own bank, in that account. And it can be done in so many different ways.

[00:20:11] It can be done for your own retirement, have money in the future. It can be done for children and grandchildren to help them have money for college and for their future, their first home. And it can be designed many different ways. It's just, what are we doing it for? What is the goal? And it's just a tool. It's just one of the tools. It's not, you know, the only way to grow money, but it's a safe way to grow money. You can grow it significantly.

[00:20:40] And it's smart because you have access to it. When you say significantly, what I know people are thinking, what does that really look like? Yeah. Well, typically six to 8% a year. And in that strategy, you are able to take the growth of the market without any of the losses. And that's what's huge. So, it's growing in this account, but if the market crashes, you're not going to lose any money in that account.

[00:21:10] Well, and you're not paying any taxes on it. So, yeah. When you take it out. Yeah. You have to add that in there, everyone, because 6 to 8%, and then all of a sudden you're not taking taxes on it. It ends up being significantly more. And when you mentioned that, I'm like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. People need to hear this. Give us another one of your strategies.

[00:21:33] So, another one that women absolutely love is having guaranteed income in their future. So, I just did a video this morning on LinkedIn about three buckets. And I use that strategy for women as they are like they've just sold a business or, you know, they're nearing retirement. And they're thinking, I've been saving my money for my whole life.

[00:22:01] You know, this, I've got several advisors and I've done really well. And now I'm getting to the part of my life where I'm like, okay, I'm going to start using and spending this money. How am I going to do that? And one of the components is having guaranteed income in your future. The happiest people are people that know that every month I'm getting X amount of money. It doesn't matter what's happening. I think there's not a person that's listening that's like, I don't want that.

[00:22:31] No, we all want guaranteed money monthly. So, this is so good. So, how do we do it? Yeah, and you're not going to put all your money in that particular strategy. But do you want to have some of that? Absolutely. And another thing that I learned from a colleague that he says all the time, and I love it. And he says, our bills are pretty much guaranteed, right? Every month. Do you want to pay that with guaranteed money? Or do you want to pay that with maybe money? I mean, just think about that.

[00:23:02] Right? So, that's one of the things that's important to have. And you alluded earlier to women that are dealing with aging parents. And I call them the sandwich generation because that's what they're dealing with. Their parent situation is often affecting their own retirement and their own plans.

[00:23:27] Because if mom and dad don't have enough or it's not been structured for these what-ifs that can happen, then guess what happens? In my earlier example, the retiring couple, their children, their son's death affected their finances in a huge way. It can work the other way as well. And so, these are the vulnerabilities that we need to be thinking about. Yes, we want to be growing our money. We want to be doing all those things.

[00:23:56] But we've got to be aware of if mom and dad have a long-term care event, they don't have any long-term care coverage. What is it that we're going to do? What can we do now to set things up so that if that were to be a thing, we have some extra money set aside for that? So, what are examples of things that we can do to have guaranteed income? So, one of the things that you can use is a guaranteed annuity.

[00:24:26] You know, Social Security is actually an annuity. Some people know that. Some people are not aware of that. That's why you get paid that amount every month. So, you can create a contract with an insurance company. You give them a certain amount of money. And then they tell you this is how much you're going to get monthly for that. So, if we're trying to fill in gaps, if we're trying to say, okay, I want to have this much coming, you know,

[00:24:54] this is how much money I want in guaranteed income, then we can reverse engineer that, figure out how much money do I need to put in there to do that. It will pay you until the day you die. So, for people that are living longer or that have longevity in their family and they're thinking, you know, I don't know, will my money last until I'm in my 90s? I mean, I don't know. Will it? Well, that's one way to make sure that it does. Okay. Well, hold on. I've got to ask you this question because I get it all the time. Hillary, how much do I need?

[00:25:24] You know, how much from a dollar perspective in order to retire, in order to have my business, you know, actually provide if I can have an exit, if I can, there's all these ifs. What is the magic number? And I always say, you know, it's individual 100%, right? But I'd like to ask you that question. What's the, you know, how do you answer that as you're sitting here saying guaranteed income?

[00:25:54] How much should, how much will I run out of money? I know that this is a huge issue for women. Am I going to run out of money if I live too long? Yeah. Well, you said it correctly. It is an individual formula. There is, you know, nobody can say, oh, you need 2 million or, because it depends on your lifestyle, lifestyle, where you live, what your plans are, what you want to do, and how much we're starting with.

[00:26:21] So all of those things, you know, are played into that formula. And so that's what I help people do is this is how much we're working with. This is the plan. What gaps do we need to fill in? If we don't have enough, how can we maximize what we do have? And then as we're planning for the future, yes, guaranteed income is part of it, but we've got to keep making up for inflation. We've got to still continue to have money growth. So that's where the three buckets come in.

[00:26:50] You've got to have, you know, some that's guaranteed, some that's still growing, and figure out where you want to grow that. And you need to have some that's liquid always as well. So each person gets to decide. I mean, it depends on how much income you feel you need on a monthly basis. And so if you're starting to think that. Anna, do you help people figure that out? Yeah, yeah. We go through, you know, what are your expenses? What are your needs going to be?

[00:27:19] You know, here's another thing. Often, you know, people forget about the equity that's in their home. There might be a way to use that. There's a lot of little strategies. And some of them I don't even do myself. But I can direct you to someone that I work with that that's all they do. And so it's looking at the whole picture. Like, what are all the components of what I'm going to need? And a lot of times folks haven't even thought about that. Like, I don't know.

[00:27:47] How much income do I need every month? Well, we get down to calculating what that is. And then we can figure out, okay, how much of this do you want to have guaranteed? How much? What accounts are we going to pull from? And, you know, there's all kinds of things. It depends on their age. Do they have money in an IRA that they're going to have to start pulling from at age 75 because of required minimum distributions? Not to get too technical.

[00:28:14] But those are just things that we take into consideration based on each individual situation. So the crazy thing is there is no magic number out there. If someone tells you, you got to have X amount of dollars, that may not be true in every case because some people, their homes are paid off. Others, you know, have other situations where, you know, they're not going to have as many

[00:28:39] expenses in retirement because of other things that they've already done and put in place. So they may need far less and be able to really enjoy and travel and do all the things and not need as much. It really just depends on where you are in the country. Like, you know, what's the cost of living there? Like, those are all things, you know, to think about. Sometimes as I meet with people, they're like, yeah, at one, you know, at one time we thought we were going to retire, you know, here.

[00:29:08] And we're thinking, no, you know, cost of living is high there. We're, we've decided we're going to go somewhere else. And so those are all things that become part of that equation as, as we figure that out. And, uh, what I just have thoroughly enjoyed about our conversations we've now had is that kind of like relaunch, right? Where you're the, you're the middle of the, the, you're the hub.

[00:29:34] And then you have all of these, you know, different people that you, hey, you need this, more risk. You want stocks, you want bonds, you know, you want to, you want to diversify and you bring people in, but you're like relaunch is kind of like, okay, come in. You want a rich life. You want to have that, you know, million dollar life and health and wealth and relationships. And yeah, we provide the foundation and you're providing foundation.

[00:30:02] You're like, Hey, looking at it, assessing it, and then saying, have you thought, have you thought? And so we're at this point, and I know that you're doing something super special for our audience. Where can people go to find you? And what is this special gift for those that say they came from relaunch? Yes. Well, they can go to my website.

[00:30:29] It's just my name on a Felix with two ends on a Felix.com. And what I'm offering is an assessment. So a free assessment, set up a conversation with me. It's a zoom conversation and we can just see where you're at, bring what you have, bring your questions and your concerns, and we will dive into those and see how I can help.

[00:30:54] And again, if I can't help you, I will have someone that can, depending on your situation. This is so important. I'm going to be bringing you into the relaunch community. And so thank you for being here, for kind of getting our brains stimulated with the, huh? Because I think that there's just, as you said, awareness. Like, hey, have you thought about this? Yes.

[00:31:20] And for so many women, we don't think about it until a relaunch happens and we have to think about it. And so again, listeners, if you have somebody in your world that you know needs to hear this, please share this show. Go over to the actual, we'll have all of her contact, all of Anna's contacts in the show notes.

[00:31:46] Please hit subscribe so that you continue to get this valuable information because there's one thing in life I can guarantee, and that is that we will have another relaunch. It will happen. And so we need to be making sure that we're doing what we can to make sure the foundation is set so that when things do happen, we're ready. Anna, thank you again.

[00:32:14] And to all of my community, we will be back again next week. Take care, everyone. All right, your next level is waiting. Thanks for tuning in. This is amazing what we're doing right now. Relaunch into a rich life. If today's episode sparks something in you, don't keep it to yourself. Please share it.

[00:32:42] I'll tell you more later about how that actually helps you have more success yourself. Subscribe so you don't miss one episode. Let's create unstoppable momentum together. So until next time, keep relaunching, keep rising, and remember, it's go time.