Money Matters Episode 246 - Safety-First Retirement Planning w/ Wade Pfau
MONEY MATTERS with Christopher Hensley
Release Date: 10/14/2019
Money Matters Episode 339-AI Workers, Not Chatbots: How Advisors Scale with Digital Co-Workers W/Jonathan Michael
MONEY MATTERS with Christopher Hensley
What if financial advisors didn’t just use AI tools—but had AI workers supporting their business? In this episode of Money Matters, host Chris Hensley is joined by Jonathan Michael, Director of Growth at TIFIN AXIS, to unpack what AI agents really are, how they differ from chatbots, and why they’re quickly becoming a practical way for advisory firms to scale. Jonathan brings a founder’s perspective from both EdTech and WealthTech and focuses on one core idea: AI should take on the operational, repetitive work that slows firms down—so advisors can spend more time where they add the...
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Money Matters Episode 338- Fiduciary in All Things w/ George Kinder
MONEY MATTERS with Christopher Hensley
In this powerful conversation, host Christopher Hensley, RICP®, CES® sits down once again with George Kinder—internationally recognized as the father of life planning and the visionary behind the global Fiduciary in All Things (FIAT) movement. Together, they explore what it would mean for our institutions, our democracy, and our financial systems to finally act in the best interest of the people they serve. Kinder explains how a fiduciary society—rooted in truth, people, democracy, and the planet—could dissolve many of the challenges we face today while preserving the entrepreneurial...
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Money Matters Episode 337 – They Didn’t Start with AI | Valarie Vest & Sean Van Moorleghem on Culture, Capacity & Digital Associates
MONEY MATTERS with Christopher Hensley
They Didn’t Start with AI. They Started with People. That might sound simple—but in today’s rush to automate, scale, and “transform,” it’s anything but. took a different path. No pink slips. No blown-up workflows. No hollow promises about innovation. Just a clear goal: reduce the time it takes to open an account from 20 minutes to seconds—without losing the quality, trust, or people that made the process work in the first place. In this episode of Money Matters, I sit down with: 🟡 , Chief Experience Officer 🟡 , Chief Technology Officer What I love about this story...
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Money Matters Episode 336- Why DEI Still Matters in 2025 | Cornelia Gamlem & Barbara Mitchell on Inclusion, Culture & Engagement
MONEY MATTERS with Christopher Hensley
Is DEI really dead — or just misunderstood? In this episode of Money Matters, workplace culture experts Cornelia Gamlem and Barbara Mitchell, co-authors of Essentials of Employee Engagement, challenge the headlines and reframe the DEI conversation with clarity and strategy. 💥 Cold Open Preview: “People started calling DEI bad, evil, even discriminatory… and it’s none of those things if you truly understand it.” – Cornelia Gamlem 🎧 In this episode, you'll learn: Why DEI got distorted — and what it really means in today’s workplace How inclusion, not perks, drives...
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Money Matters Episode 335- Human Connection at Scale: Robert Sofia on AI, Trust, and Advisor Growth
MONEY MATTERS with Christopher Hensley
🚨 Can AI actually make financial advisors feel more human—not less? That’s the bold idea , CEO of , shares in this week’s episode of Money Matters. We break down what “human connection at scale” really looks like in today’s digital-first world—and why it might be the future of financial advising. Here’s what we cover: ✅ Real AI implementation vs. ChatGPT tinkering ✅ Using data to personalize at scale (without losing your voice) ✅ How one firm doubled AUM from $20B → $40B with smarter marketing ✅ Why compliance + data strategy must come first ✅ How segmentation...
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Money Matters 334- The Man Behind the 4% Rule W/ Bill Bengen
MONEY MATTERS with Christopher Hensley
🎙️ Episode #334 – The Man Behind the 4% Rule: Bill Bengen on Inflation, Flexibility, and a Richer Retirement What if the greatest risk to your retirement portfolio isn't a market crash—but inflation? In this episode of Money Matters, Christopher Hensley, RICP®, sits down with Bill Bengen, the creator of the legendary 4% Rule for safe withdrawal rates. Now, 30 years later, Bengen reflects on what still holds up, what’s changed, and how retirees and advisors can adapt withdrawal strategies in a world of sticky inflation, volatile markets, and longer life expectancies. Whether you're...
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Money Matters Episode 333- The AI Visibility Crisis W/ Brian Thorp
MONEY MATTERS with Christopher Hensley
🔍 Why Your Next Best Client May Never Call You First — And What To Do About It In this episode of Money Matters, I sit down with Brian Thorp, founder and CEO of Wealthtender, to unpack a radical shift in how clients find financial advisors. AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews are now mediating the first impression—before clients ever visit your website or pick up the phone. We discuss: The “Visibility Crisis” facing independent advisors How AI tools prioritize structured data and schema Why testimonials and reviews are your new secret weapon The power of...
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Money Matters Episode 332- The Prospecting Crisis No One Talks About W/ Eden Ovadia & Victoria Toli
MONEY MATTERS with Christopher Hensley
What if the real problem isn't that advisors hate prospecting—it's that the system we gave them to do it is broken? Most tools treat advisors like marketers. Spray-and-pray. Mass messaging. Cold lists. But the best advisors? They don’t want to scale spam. They want to scale presence. That’s what Eden Ovadia and Victoria Toli built with FINNY: ✅ An AI engine that understands who you actually connect with ✅ A matchmaking algorithm (yes, really) that gets better the more you use it ✅ Outreach that’s compliant, personalized—and human This conversation blew me away. And if you're...
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Money Matters Episode 331- The Invisible Partner: How AI Gives Advisors Their Time Back W/ Arnulf Hsu
MONEY MATTERS with Christopher Hensley
500 hours. That’s how much time some advisors are getting back—every single year. Not from working harder. From removing the invisible work that's slowly draining them. In this week’s Money Matters Podcast, I sat down with Arnulf Hsu, founder of GReminders, to talk about what happens when AI becomes your invisible partner—not your replacement. We covered: How voice-aware AI reduces "cognitive clutter" Why compliance is the real barrier (and how GReminders solves for it) And what it really means to scale presence, not spam This isn’t about hype. It’s about freedom. Freedom...
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Money Matters Episode 330- AI, Fraud & the Future W/ Whitney Joy Smith
MONEY MATTERS with Christopher Hensley
The audio sounded perfect. Too perfect. That’s what Whitney Joy Smith—one of Canada’s top private investigators—told me when we sat down to talk about AI, trust, and the future of voice. In this special edition of the Money Matters podcast, we go deep into one of the most uncomfortable truths in today’s tech landscape: You can no longer assume a voice recording is real. Whitney shares real-world cases where AI-generated voices nearly destroyed lives, and how investigators are adjusting—not just their tools, but their intuition. And here’s where it connects to financial advising:...
info_outlineProbability-based or safety-first? What trade-offs exist between these two dramatically different philosophies for retirement income planning? Wade Pfau discusses his new book - Safety-First Retirement Planning: An Integrated Approach for a Worry-Free Retirement.
We were joined today by bestselling author Wade D. Pfau, Ph.D., CFA, RICP.
Dr. Pfau is the director of the Retirement Income Certified Professional designation and a Professor of Retirement Income at The American College of Financial Services in King of Prussia, PA. As well, he is a Principal and Director for McLean Asset Management. He holds a doctorate in economics from Princeton University and publishes frequently in a wide variety of academic and practitioner research journals on topics related to retirement income. He hosts the Retirement Researcher website, and is a contributor to Forbes, Advisor Perspectives, Journal of Financial Planning, and an Expert Panelist for the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of the books, Safety-First Retirement Planning: An Integrated Approach for a Worry-Free Retirement, How Much Can I Spend in Retirement? A Guide to Investment-Based Retirement Income Strategies, and Reverse Mortgages: How to Use Reverse Mortgages to Secure Your Retirement.
About Safety-First Retirement Income Planning
To learn two fundamentally different philosophies for retirement income planning, which I call probability-based and safety-first, diverge on the critical issue of where a retirement plan is best served: in the risk/reward trade-offs of a diversified and aggressive investment portfolio that relies primarily on the stock market, or in the contractual protections of insurance products that integrate the power of risk pooling and actuarial science alongside investments. The probability-based approach is generally better understood by the public. It advocates using an aggressive investment portfolio with a large allocation to stocks to meet retirement goals. My earlier book How Much Can I Spend in Retirement? A Guide to Investment-Based Retirement Strategies provides an extensive investigation of probability-based approaches. But this investments-only attitude is not the optimal way to build a retirement income plan. There are pitfalls in retirement that we are less familiar with during the accumulation years. The nature of risk changes. Longevity risk is the possibility of living longer than planned, which could mean not having resources to maintain the retiree’s standard of living. And once retirement distributions begin, market downturns in the early years can disproportionately harm retirement sustainability. This is sequence-of-returns risk, and it acts to amplify the impacts of market volatility in retirement. Traditional wealth management is not equipped to handle these new risks in a fulfilling way. More assets are required to cover spending goals over a possibly costly retirement triggered by a long life and poor market returns. And yet, there is no assurance that assets will be sufficient. For retirees who are worried about outliving their wealth, probability-based strategies can become excessively conservative and stressful.This book focuses on the other option: safety-first retirement planning. Safety-first advocates support a more bifurcated approach to building retirement income plans that integrates insurance with investments, providing lifetime income protections to cover spending. With risk pooling through insurance, retirees effectively pay an insurance premium that will provide a benefit to support spending in otherwise costly retirements that could deplete an unprotected investment portfolio. Insurance companies can pool sequence and longevity risks across a large base of retirees, much like a traditional defined-benefit company pension plan or Social Security, allowing for retirement spending that is more closely aligned with averages. When bonds are replaced with insurance-based risk pooling assets, retirees can improve the odds of meeting their spending goals while also supporting more legacy at the end of life, especially in the event of a longer-than-average retirement. We walk through this thought process and logic in steps, investigating three basic ways to fund a retirement spending goal: with bonds, with a diversified investment portfolio, and with risk pooling through annuities and life insurance. We consider the potential role for different types of annuities including simple income annuities, variable annuities, and fixed index annuities. I explain how different annuities work and how readers can evaluate them. We also examine the potential for whole life insurance to contribute to a retirement income plan. When we properly consider the range of risks introduced after retirement, I conclude that the integrated strategies preferred by safety-first advocates support more efficient retirement outcomes. Safety-first retirement planning helps to meet financial goals with less worry. This book explains how to evaluate different insurance options and implement these solutions into an integrated retirement plan.
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