This week on the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett chats with Matt Ruttenburg, CMO & Shareholder of Life, Inc. Retirement Services. During the episode, Matt and Jeremy talk about retirement planning for owner-operators. From helpful advice on investments and insurance to practical steps to get started, the conversation covers all aspects of what owner-operators need to do as they look ahead to retirement. All that and more on this week’s episode.
Key topics in today’s conversation include:
- Matt’s background and experience in the financial industry (3:18)
- Defining financial independence (6:53)
- How does an owner-operator go about saving for retirement? (10:42)
- Investment categories for retirement (15:44)
- Is it too late to start investing if I am older? (17:49)
- The benefits of working with a financial advisor (21:40)
- Life insurance options (31:24)
- Final thoughts and takeaways (36:32)
Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com.
Transcription
Matt Ruttenberg 00:12
Independent contractors who are in total control of your life in that situation. So retiring early is more of a personal choice. If you want to retire, you like working, that’s a totally different thing. But having enough assets, whether it’s a liquid or illiquid, or, you know, a business is an asset, right? So having those pay for your bills and your lifestyle, to the degree that you want it to, that is considered financial independence.
Jeremy Kellett 00:38
Welcome to the Oakley podcast, trucking, business, and family. This show is brought to you by Oakley Trucking, headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The purpose of this podcast is to communicate with Oakley owner-operators and their families by giving them up-to-date information concerning Oakley Trucking and the trucking industry. From business advice to safety updates to success stories. Also to give an inside to outside truck drivers that might be interested in joining the Oakley family. Hi, this is Jeremy kellett director recruiting here at Oakley trucking and I’m your host for this podcast. This is the Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. And as always, we’d like to give you good information to our independent contractors and their families. And whoever else is out there listening. We know we also get a lot of recruits that listen and watch the podcast and we sure appreciate that. But we sure try to give you some good content every week. And this week, I have a financial expert with me, Matt Ruttenberg, and we’re going to talk a little bit about something different. I know. You know, it seems like all the time on this podcast. I mean, we’re talking trucking stuff and a lot of times you don’t think financial responsibilities retirement is a comes up a lot in this on this podcast or in general when it seems like when I’m talking to truck drivers, but I think is very important that you guys out there have a retirement plan and a retirement plan that that produces for you a good retirement plan, not just a backup plan but something that is gonna you’re gonna prosper with. And that’s something I want to do and visit with Matt Ruttenberg and we’re going to talk about that kind of stuff, financial independence, what you can do as an independent contractor to help you with that. I mean, whether you think you need a financial planner or not, is it too late to start? Those kinds of things we’re going to talk about a little bit with Matt here in just a minute but first let’s get going. Let’s do it Oakley update sponsored by Arrow Truck Sales. Arrow Truck Sales has been in business for over 60 years and a longtime partner of Oakley trucking and the Oakley podcast, Dre visor and Keith Wilson do a great job at putting you in the right truck to fit your needs and our needs here at Oakley. They carry all makes and models to choose from with on site financing through transport funding. So whether you’re a seasoned owner operator or a first time buyer, be sure to contact Keith Wilson at Arrow Truck Sales at 573-216-6047. And tell him you heard it on the Oakley podcast. Okay, let’s get right into this. Matt, I sure appreciate you joining me on today’s episode. I know, this is the first time we’ve met. So we’ll get to know each other during this episode too. But I really appreciate you doing it and helping our independent contractors go because by just looking at some of the stuff you’ve done, you seem to be involved in that retirement and financial planning and stuff like that. And especially any advice you’d give to independent contractors is very beneficial. What first, before we get started, can you give our listeners a little bit of background on you? So they kind of know who’s talking to?
Matt Ruttenberg 03:59
Sure. Yeah, my company is. We’re the third party administrator. We’re an administrator for a retirement plan. So foreign K plans, SIMPLE IRAs, anything that has to do with implementing a retirement like a group plan for anyone who’s got employees or independent contractors, building and designing 401k plans or other types of retirement plans. That’s what we do. I’ve been in the financial industry for about what year? Oh, geez, almost 20 years now. So I’ve seen every corner of the financial industry when it comes to investments in retirement planning, financial planning. I have owned my own financial planning firm for several years. And I call myself more of a generalist in that so having a good background on building a retirement or a financial plan, I guess where you’re touching every corner so the insurance, the financial peace, the investments, estate planning, but I wanted to be more of a specialist So, maybe about eight years ago, and I ended up merging that corner of my business in with life and Retirement Services, which is the company we’re at now, in building a specialist company. So all we do is work with business owners, independent contractors, and so on and so forth. So have quite a bit experience, work with every type of business owner out there, whether it’s, you know, truck drivers, like independent contractors, or companies with several 100 employees, whether you have an entity or not, as long as you have self employed income, meaning you’re filing a Schedule C or something, which we’ll dig into here in a little bit. That is who we talked to, and those are the people we work with. And that’s kind of our specialty.
Jeremy Kellett 05:46
Where are you from?
Matt Ruttenberg 05:47
So I’m from Ohio, originally lived in Florida, North Carolina, currently in Hawaii at the moment, and I’m not sure after this. So I’m a completely independent location independent individual at this point.
Jeremy Kellett 06:03
Nah. So that kind of feels good. So what do you have as a family?
Matt Ruttenberg 06:09
Yeah, yep. Yep, wife, two girls. We moved here about, oh, nine months ago, that was part of selling my business to, I was kind of cornered into Southwest Florida for a little cheese 18 years or something like that. And didn’t want to be in the bottom corner. So I decided to move up to North Carolina for a few years. And then now we quartered ourselves in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. So that’s kind of where we’re, at this moment. Being very versatile at the moment. So I’d
Jeremy Kellett 06:46
say that’s probably a pretty nice place to be cornered into.
Matt Ruttenberg 06:49
Yeah, I’m not complaining, I’m not gonna lie.
Jeremy Kellett 06:54
Well, so, you know, financial independence is something that I think a lot of people strive for. But I also think there’s a lot of people that feel like they’ll never get there. And it’s hard for them to get out of that mentality. But I believe it’s, everybody has that opportunity, what I guess what’s your definition of financial independence? And maybe, what do you think they need to do to achieve that?
Matt Ruttenberg 07:21
Yeah, financial independence is actually it’s a, I don’t want to call it a coined term at this point. But it is a massive global community, to be honest with you financial independence. There’s a large community that discusses it’s called the Fire movement or fire community, it’s financial independence, retire early. And the definition of financial independence, just by definition, is having enough assets to pay your bills, without relying on somebody else to do that for you. So whether that’s passive income through investments, whether that’s real estate investing, whether you’re I mean, to a version of this as being self employed, right, independent contractor, you are totally in total control of your life in that situation. So retiring early is more of a personal choice. If you want to retire, you like working, that’s a totally different thing. But having enough assets, whether it’s liquid or illiquid, or, you know, in a business is an asset, right, so having those to pay for your bills and your lifestyle, to the degree that you want it to, is considered financial independence.
Jeremy Kellett 08:30
What are some examples of those assets that, you know, would pay for your bills? If you didn’t,
Matt Ruttenberg 08:36
yeah, so you know, let’s say you’re on liquid, let’s say you’re stockpiling savings, and you want to get to a point where the dividends or interest off of your investments like mutual funds and 401k, plans, IRAs. There’s a rule of thumb, it’s the 4% rule. So inflation is a problem. Long term, for sure. Even short term, and 4%, basically. So if you have a million dollars saved for retirement, for example, that would produce a $40,000 income, and that should last you for your lifetime. Because inflation allows for any fluctuation, lifestyle changes, things like that. So that’s kind of the low end. You know, then you’re stacking security on top of that, any pensions, things like that, that you have your spouse’s income, but that’s off of the liquid assets. That’s 4%. Something else is you know, real estate investing is a really big positive, if you will. So long term rentals. Short term rent long term rentals are one year leases. Somebody else is paying your mortgage for you. All of a sudden, after 2030 years, you have this paid off mortgage and you have X amount of dollars in equity. And the idea behind that is somebody else is literally paying for your retirement at that point. And then business owners though, so if you graded this business to where you’re able to step aside and have others run the business and you’re kind of just overseeing it from afar. An absentee owner, if you will, that is also another form of financial independence.
Jeremy Kellett 10:16
Right? Yeah, I think those are all good examples of where we want to be at some point. I hope everybody, you know, aspires to do that at some point, how are we getting to that point to where I’m financially independent, and I don’t have to rely on anybody, you know, to, to make a living. And if I don’t want to work, I don’t have to work. You know, that’s where everybody wants to get to where they can do the work they’ve, they really want to. So here we have a, we got a one man business, you know, all of our independent contractors, they own their truck, and they drive their truck. How do these guys go by saving for retirement? What are some of the best avenues that they can help themselves with? Being an independent contractor? What’s some of the best avenues they can go about? Benefit and saving up for retirement?
Matt Ruttenberg 11:10
Sure, yeah. Whether you’re using an entity or not, right, that’s a question we talked about prior to jumping on here is, you know, let’s say entity,
Jeremy Kellett 11:19
entity, you mean, Incorporated, LLC,
Matt Ruttenberg 11:24
LLC, filing as an S corp, whatever you’re doing, okay, whatever your accountant or CPA has advised you to set up, you know, so that means your checks would come in and be paid to your LLC, for example, versus yourself. But even if you don’t have an LLC set up, and the income is coming into, you know, coming to you, as an individual, you’re still earning self employed income, right. And anything that you’re doing that is not You’re not a W two employee is considered self employed income. So if you do not have an LLC, or you’re not filing as an S corp, you are filing your taxes on a schedule C, right? Independent contractor, that’s, by definition with ads for self employed income. If you are an LLC, and maybe you’re filing as an S corp. S corp, then you are required to pay yourself a W two employee, so you have X amount of money coming into the business. And then you turn around and stroke yourself a check as an employee of your own company, you’re giving yourself a W two and you have a set salary that you give yourself, that would be the other side of it. Both sides, you have you’re considered self employed, and it opens up it broadens your horizons to being able to open a self employed retirement plan. And at that point, it really comes down to what do you want to do? How much do you want to save? What are you able to earmark towards the long term future? And, you know, we’ll get into you know, what you can invest in things like that. But starting at the very bottom, you know, it’s 2023, there’s all new contribution limits that come out, there’s all new tax credits that are coming out, you can start as just an individual IRA, that’ll get you started if you want to that’s below $6,500. And you can go all the way up to it’s called a solo 401k. So, a 401k. You know, if any of you have worked at an organization where you were a W two employee, you were probably offered a 401k plan. And they may have done a match they may not have. And in essence, since you are this independent contractor, you are a business owner, you are able to open up your own foreign key plan. Even though you don’t have employees, you are your own employee. And they earmark it, it’s called a solo 401k. It’s a one man shop. You could include a spouse on that. So if you have enough revenue coming into your business, and you want to put even more towards retirement, you are allowed to put his spouse inside of a solo 401 K plan.
Jeremy Kellett 14:02
What’s it limited to the solo 401? K?
Matt Ruttenberg 14:05
Good question. Good question. So in all self employed retirement plans, I’m just going to start with it there. There’s two kinds of contributions, there’s employee contribution. So you yourself as an employee of your own business, it will go up to $22,500 100% of your income for 2023 $22,500, that’s you as a as your own employee, okay, that’s gonna come out of if you’re a w if you are an S filing as an S corp, it’ll come out of your paycheck that you’re paying yourself. If you’re an independent contractor, just filing a Schedule C, it can still come out of the corporate account. It’s just earmarked as an employee contribution. Okay. The second type is an employer contribution. So, technically, this is like profit sharing. You’re giving yourself profit sharing out of your own business, right. And this is calculated a few different ways So the absolute maximum between these two is $66,000 per year. Why? Yeah, and there’s ways to even do more than that. But if you are an LLC, you’re filing as an S corp, give yourself a W two. Every year, it’s 25% of what that number is, whatever your W two is, is 25%. You stack that right on top of the 22,500. And that’s what you make. So keeping it simple, if it’s $100,000, that you’re earning $25,000, on top of the 22. So that $47,500 is what you are maxed out at for that particular year.
Jeremy Kellett 15:41
Nice to put in your own 401k. Well, that’s yeah, I mean, that’s probably above and beyond what most anybody ever does, or would do with that opportunity. But there’s still a way to do that. And then in that, you, since it’s your own solo 401k, I guess you get to pick what it goes into. You’re the one making all the decisions.
Matt Ruttenberg 16:07
Yeah, you’re the boss, you’re the one choosing who you work with. So investments are quite broad, on what you can do with these, with these types of investments. Whether it’s a solo 401k, whether it’s something else is called a SEP IRA, which is SEP IRAs, in essence, just the profit sharing portion, just the employer portion. So the 25% of whatever you’re paying yourself, that is a SEP standalone by itself. So if 25,000, for that example, is all you need, that might be the best way to do it. It’s having a personal conversation with someone and asking the questions which one is best, that’s the best way to go. But the investments are broad, like I said, so you can go keep it simple, get into the mutual fund, get into index funds, stocks, bonds, we can even do cryptocurrency now, if that’s something you’d want to get back into, but and then we have a fair amount of clients who put money, they’re buying real estate inside of their 401k. You get a mortgage inside of your foreign K, it’s paid for by your 401k. All bills, all taxes, everything has to come through that funnel. And but it’s being housed, and you get the tax benefits of the four okay to do that. So that’s a question. Well, does that make sense? Maybe not. That’s an individual conversation, but it is broad, you can do a lot. And that’s the second part of the equation. Step one is how much do you want to put away? Step two is how do you want to invest it?
Jeremy Kellett 17:48
So if I’m an independent contractor, and you know, I’m making 250,000 a year gross. And I want to be, let’s say 50 years old, and I have nothing for retirement? You know, I guess this is why I need to look at the solo 401 K, if I’ve got an extra $10,000. I mean, can I if I put in? I guess it’s just a matter of calculating it, Matt, but I mean, if I’m 50 years old, I don’t have any retirement. Is it too late for me to start? And how much do you think I need to put into retirement if I want to retire? 20? Yeah. 15 years.
Matt Ruttenberg 18:33
So business owner, so what you have against you is time, right? The compound interest is what you’re losing. So just as a food for thought on this, if you were to put $6,000 One time into an investment, and let it compound at 10% per year for 55 years, that’s $1.5 million off of that one time $6,000 investment. So compound interest is massive. Now we have that against this. So now we’re stockpiling and we’re aggressively saving at this point. Once you’re in your later years and past the middle age Mark, I guess and what to enter, the IRS code is built for business owners, it is absolutely beneficial. It’s hard to get a mortgage sometimes because you have all these tax write offs and they don’t look at it that way. But if you can, so 250,000 If you’re 50 you are qualified for something called a ketchup from the IRS inside of these foreign keys. So I mentioned 20 to five earlier 20,500 add another 6500 On top of that is what you’re allowed to as an employee if you’re in business so you said 250,000 You are easily going to max out the solo foreign case. So I said 66,000 Right. Add that 6500 to it. Now you’re at $72,500 250,000 We’ll max that out. And there’s even more you can do on top of that. We’ve heard of pensions right. Back in the old days, Ford and GM had pensions, and they’re not really exist anymore. But as a business owner, you can do that, you know, and you don’t have to worry about all your employees getting all this money with you and you alone. So think of it upside down three tiered cake, right, you have your bottom layers. Now the smallest is 22,500. If you’re under 5050 years old, let’s just keep it simple with that. That’s the smallest portion, the middle portion now in the middle is the profit sharing, which gets you up to 66,000 as the employer contribution. And then you have what’s called a defined benefit plan. Even more than that, and its defined benefit plan is a pension. They’re also called cash balance plans. So think of the term defined benefit, you’re defining what’s coming out on the back end, right? That is how it’s calculated. It’s not a defined contribution, like you’re defining the contribution in the foreign KPS, the defined benefit is we’re earmarking and we have actuaries looking at how much we’re going to get on the tail end. And those if you’re 65 years old, and you can put away more than $300,000 pre tax per year, combined with all those together. So you’re not stuck to the 22. Five, or you’re not stuck to an IRA, there are so many beneficial accounts available for business owners, and a lot of are just not talked about. Yeah.
Jeremy Kellett 21:31
Like you know, the key is, of course, you have to be working and make that kind of money. So you can, yes, put it away and be smart with it for sure. Is it? Do you see a lot of people, I mean, that have their own business like this? Is it better for them to get a financial advisor to help them with some of this stuff?
Matt Ruttenberg 21:54
Yeah, and you know, a financial planner is someone who will help you organize, let’s call it a general practitioner type situation, right? You go to the doctor, they’re looking at everything. They make sure it’s all paid. And then they’ll bring in a specialist, right. And we act as a specialist for the retirement plan. Space. We work with CPAs all the time. I educate and I answer questions for CPAs on a regular basis, because we’re in this level of expertise that a lot of folks who are more of the general practitioner part of it. Don’t dive that deep into the iris coding in that area. And having a general practitioner like a financial planner, will help you prioritize, you know, do you need insurance first? Do you need to pay off debt first? Do you need to save for retirement, which one comes first? And that type of individual will help with that. If you feel like you’re pretty educated and kind of a DIY type person, then maybe you don’t know, if you’re young, and you are, the goal is to stockpile and let it grow as much as possible. Things are a little bit more simple, right? It’s get the account set up in save, pay off debt, just save as you get older, the more need for a financial planner like my previous, you know, career, you’ll need that more just so you can kind of know which direction are you in the right, more like a checkup making sure you’re doing things, right. There’s different kinds of financial planners out there too. So if you ever need one, just reach out, I’d be happy to introduce you to multiple ones. And yeah, I think it’s a good idea. Is it necessary to open a foreign key plan to have one? No. You can DIY it across the board if you want it to. But if you need help, that’s, you know, there’s always a step. And I guess
Jeremy Kellett 23:51
the best way to do that if they want to DIY, just get on Google and start searching and figure out the best way to do it. And I mean, it can’t be that difficult, I’m sure to be able to open it up.
Matt Ruttenberg 24:05
It can be it depends on there’s a lot of you know, in the foreign case, in the foreign key world, you know, there’s a lot more compliance. If you’re a foreign key, there’s a lot more compliance meaning there’s extra tax filings that you may or may not have to file, it’s called a 5500. It’s step one, ask questions, you know, reach out, educate yourself, find someone to talk to, and that’s the first step is pick up the phone.
Jeremy Kellett 24:33
Do you recommend it? I mean, I do and I think it makes sense to me, but for people to first get out of debt before they Yeah, that isn’t that the biggest key to being financially independent and success down the road and being able to retire? Yeah.
Matt Ruttenberg 24:52
Yeah. 100% that debt is a killer industry especially its high interest debt, right. It’s Credit card. It’s not one for paying off mortgages first, just because usually, you know, okay, we’re in a high interest rate environment right now, you know, not historically speaking, but we’re higher than we were last year, for sure. And it’s still considered low. And if you can earn more than that, than what your if you can earn more comfortably, not I’m not saying buy in hedge funds and you know, earn 600% in cryptocurrency or something like that, but a balanced portfolio can earn, it can beat what you’re paying in interest, that’s arbitrage you’re beating. So if you’re, if you have a 5% mortgage, and you’re earning 10, you’re netting five on that DOT, that specific dollar amount is a little bit more complicated than that. But that’s basic finance one on one. And so but getting out of debt is absolutely the first priority, creating a buffer, you know, an emergency fund is very important. You know, being a business owner, independent contractor, a little bit more in control of your money and the income and I’m a big fan of having multiple sources of income to write about . To me that is more important than diversification in your investments. So having because, you know, during the pandemic, for example, a lot of people’s income just stopped, right, and being able to say, Okay, I still got this much coming in earmarking, your money is, and having say, Okay, this amount of money is going towards my bills, this part is for this, and this part is for that, and having that being able to pivot if you need to an emergency is really important. The emergency fund, what helps with that?
Jeremy Kellett 26:42
What are other sources of income? So let’s say, you know, there’s some people out there that they don’t want to mess with the investing, discharge? Oh, I’m scared of it. I just don’t know enough about it. Don’t want to do it. What are some of the other sources of income that you think would be, you know, be good to get into? Yeah,
Matt Ruttenberg 27:05
good question. And as far as you know, let’s say someone’s nervous about the stock market. These pre tax this, these are tax plays, right? When you’re putting money into retirement, it’s a tax play. You can be as conservative or aggressive as you want inside of the inside of these things. But other than you know, real estate is huge, in my opinion, I think real estate is, is so important, because, one, it creates an income source, you’re buying an asset. And two, you have if you have renters, you have someone else, you have somebody else paying for your retirement, they’re saving for retirement, right. And if you’re building an asset, you can lend against it if you need to. There’s a big community out there. It’s called bigger pockets, the bigger pockets community, it’s all about real estate investing and how to start with nothing? Or how do you buy 50 doors over the course of five years? It’s all real estate investing, and I love it. And I work with a lot of real estate investors too. And it’s a great place to start and get started on that. But that’s just one form. And being able to make sure that, like I said, having two three sources, if you’re married, that counts is another one. Just being able to because diversifying and being able to pivot is really important in real estate is just one, you know, having a second business as a side business, or who else are you talking to? What else can you do for the people you speak to? Things like that? And that all helps?
Jeremy Kellett 28:29
Yeah, I like that too. Because I mean, you know, investing is the way out, why this out? And I know nobody really asked me for my opinion, but it’s it. So investing is no maintenance. It’s all patience. It’s no maintenance, there’s no, nobody’s calling me with problems with anything. It’s just patience of being patient, and how long do you have the you know, top deal. To me, that’s what’s important to me, is the time, you know, I can invest money, and I can just watch it. And as long as I have patience, I know what’s gonna go up and down. But, you know, you don’t watch it every day. Then the other side of me, I like getting a check every, you know, on a regular basis. So, you know, I’m not getting a check from the investments. It’s not in the mail or not in my direct deposit, you know, I’m saying it’s making money and you can look at your financial investments and see that it’s making money or losing money. But the other side of me is locker rental, like you’re talking about or something to that, trying to think about what can I do there to get a steady income coming in, but the least amount of I don’t need to be working another 40 hours, you know, trying to maintain that. So I think to me, that’s the hardest part of weighing those two options right there. What do you think?
Matt Ruttenberg 30:07
Yeah, yeah, you know that I don’t want to say The Godfather this but you know, the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad is a great book that explains buying assets and producing income. Get Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And I’m sure a lot of your listeners have heard of it. It’s been around for decades. Yeah. And it just explains the importance of buying income producing assets. And that’s just that, it’s a really good book. To get into
Jeremy Kellett 30:37
your work to check that out.
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Jeremy Kellett 31:27
Now I also have more things to do. And I’ll let you go. One, you’re also kind of changed a little bit. You’re also in the life insurance business. You mentioned that, you know, what kind of life insurance would you recommend for these independent contractors?
Matt Ruttenberg 31:43
Yeah, and a lot of it ties in with the foreign key business because we educate the participants on some personal finance, and we educate the business owners on what they need. And sometimes life insurance comes into that. And there’s types of retirement plans that involve life insurance, like something called deferred comp, which is something we haven’t talked about yet, but for the individual term insurance is nine times out of 10. Term insurance is the way to go. Probably more than nine times out of 10, probably 19 out of 20, I’d say and terminate. And the reason is, as you’re building your wealth through achieving financial independence, right, as you’re growing your wealth to achieve financial independence, once you achieve financial independence, you don’t need life insurance. Because you are technically self insured, right? You don’t need to have enough assets. And you know that it’s not that 4% rule that you need to be above and beyond that, because if something happens, then you need to be able to dig into your own assets. So, term life insurance is basically like leasing a car. I know, you know, a lot of people don’t like leasing cars, but at the same time, you’re renting somebody else’s deeper pockets until you fill your own life insurance. And the actual chance is I think they pay out maybe 8% of term policies payout actually pay out to the beneficiaries. And they’re much much cheaper than buying a cash value life insurance policy. And, you know, to compare that it’d be like buying an asset. So if someone’s really into investing in real estate, they might understand the fact that if you’re buying a permanent policy, you’re building a cash value, which is kind of like equity. However, its pricing is a little bit different. So in a term policy, you’re the cost of the insurance if you pass away, or if you die, in a permanent policy is when you die. So we all pass away, not to turn this into a morbid conversation, but they know you’re going to, they’re going to price it as such, versus the term is, and we only have to pay out a percent of time. So we’re gonna make it a dime a dozen. So obviously the younger you are, the better it is to buy these things. It’s based on Agen, multiple other health concerns. Industry is also another thing that they look at underwriting and there’s different kinds of underwriting but a term insurance is again like using it because most people need a lot you know, a million dollars is not difficult to have an argument that yeah, you need a million dollars there’s that’ll go quick. Especially if you have a young family and you know, they rely on your income and so on and so forth. So you need to have several million dollars life insurance and it is way cheaper to go with term. And you’re able to stockpile the rest of your assets into a retirement plan or something else to get to that financial independence level.
Jeremy Kellett 34:46
So term insurance term life insurance is a way to go unless you are financially independent. So if you know, if you pass away today, do you have enough assets? To take care of your spouse, to where they can live comfortably on just like they are now, and not have to worry about it. Because to me, if you’ve got a, if you’ve got a mortgage, if you got any kind of debt, you better have term life insurance. Because if you Yeah, if you pass away, and I’ve seen this not to get in on the morbid conversation, but have seen this with drunk drivers, you know, and they pass away unexpectedly and their spouse is in just a dire straits of what to do trying to sell the truck in jail. I mean, don’t know how to pay for it, and what are we going to do? And I mean, if they had that term life insurance set in place, because it’s not as expensive as you would think it would be? Then that would be sure. I mean, it wouldn’t take care of the agony and the pain, but man, it was sure make things a whole lot better when you get when you get
Matt Ruttenberg 35:56
takes away the financial stress. Yeah. And yeah, it takes away the financial value. And it’s really, it’s based on, you know, if someone is relying on you, yes or no, yes, then you probably need the insurance if you don’t have the assets. So the question you need to ask yourself is, if I am no longer around, what would my family need to do? Do they need to move? Do they need to get a second job? Do they need to do this? Do that? It pays off debt? How do they get to that point, and then you can kind of back into that number that’ll get to that point? Well, I want
Jeremy Kellett 36:35
All our owner operators are financially independent. I think it’s less stressful, it can absolutely ensure better control of things when you don’t have any debt. And whether it’s a business or yourself. And that’s something I think all of our guys strive for, to do become financially independent and enjoy retirement, whether that is working some, you know, the way you want to work, which is, that’s great. But you’ve got the, you got the funds to be able to do that, and live comfortably. So it’s really nice to have, Matt, anything else you’d like to have? Like that? Yeah, I
Matt Ruttenberg 37:16
I was just gonna say, I’m a big fan of the retirement side of things. I’m a fan of not retiring cold turkey, you know, like, inching into it. So because there’s so many stresses that come in, when you just cut that you cut that income source and move on to your assets. It’s just a little bit even if it’s just, you know, 1000 bucks a month, every little thing is, you don’t have to worry about if the market drops in that the year, you know, it’s a sequence of returns, as they call it is what’s what is the market doing the years you first retire? You don’t have to worry about that. And you know, I still call it the honeymoon stage when you retire. You’re going to spend more of your desire initially, because you’re going out and vacationing and spending money on dinner and lunches and all sorts of retired life. It does cost. Yeah, yeah, you’re on vacation now. So it’s fun. But yeah, I’m a big fan of not retiring cold turkey, as I like to
Jeremy Kellett 38:13
call it. That’s a good point. Because I see a lot of guys like to try to do that in six months there. But back to work, per you’re wanting to know people who spend all their money.
Matt Ruttenberg 38:20
Thanks, Jeremy.
Jeremy Kellett 38:25
Yeah, well, I’ll tell you, man, really appreciate your input and coming on here and trying to help our independent contractors. And give them an idea of what they need to do and give them something to think about to those where they need to start. And it’s a whole lot easier to start when you’re young than it is trying to play catch up. But there’s you can do it, you can do it, you can absolutely do it no matter what age you are or what financial position you’re in, you can get it done for sure. Matt, give us if you don’t care, people might want to get a hold of you or ask you some questions or anything like that. Do you mind giving out some information or whether it’s email or phone numbers?
Matt Ruttenberg 39:05
Yeah, I’ll just give the website it’s pretty . I have two websites. So for the 401 K retirement plan, stuff, it’s just 401k.com/experts. We have that for that on our website, 401k DOT expert. And then that’ll get a hold of us. But if you want just information on life insurance, only just the term part of it. Then surely.co It’s s u r e like, Sure. And then I like life insurance. So surely.co.co
Jeremy Kellett 39:34
So you Thank you very much. All right. Well, if I get any questions, I will forward them to you. Something that if our listeners want to get in touch with you, sillies. Thank you very much. I appreciate you joining us here on the Oakley podcast. Very beneficial, very good information. And I can’t thank you enough. It was really good to meet you too.
Matt Ruttenberg 39:55
Likewise, Thanks, Jeremy.
Jeremy Kellett 39:57
Hey guys, thanks for listening to the Oakley podcast. Once again. This week, we appreciate you joining in. And I hope this helps you in being a successful independent contractor and if you have questions you don’t tell me I’ll be glad to give them to my app to check out his website and let him know what’s going on. And once again, we appreciate you. Thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode with Oakley podcast, trucking, business and family. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate or review the show in the podcast platform of your choice and share it with a friend. We love hearing from our audience. So if you’ve got a question, comment or just want to say hello, head over to our website, the Oakley podcast.com and click the leave a comment button. We’ll get you a response soon and may even share some of the best ones here on the show. We’ll be back with a fresh episode very soon. Thanks for listening.