79. Retirement Planning with Content Differentiation with Ryan Kilkenny

Brock Briggs  0:00 

Hello and welcome to the Scuttlebutt podcast. This show is an exploration of the world's most interesting veterans. My name is Brock Briggs. And each week I bring you a conversation with a veteran at the top of their craft, everything from authors, entrepreneurs and today, financial planners.

My conversation today is with Ryan Kilkenny, the founder and CEO of Atomic Planning. Ryan is former Marine Corps and after a few years learning financial advising at Edward Jones, started his own practice with a focus on retirement planning specifically. Expect to learn the must dues for your money while in the service, the differences between financial services companies like Edward Jones and starting your own practice and how to use content as a way to differentiate yourself and your business. You can find this episode as well as transcripts, videos and other written content all at scuttlebuttpodcast.co. Please enjoy this conversation with Ryan Kilkenny.

Brock Briggs

So you were just telling me that you are about to be a dad for the first time. What is going through your mind? You said you're about eight weeks away.

Ryan Kilkenny  1:20 

Yeah, about eight weeks away. So it's coming up real quick. And a lot of people don't know this. I mean, our close family and friends do. But what's going through my mind at this point, a lot. I guess we're kind of at that point where having a little bit of like, the freakout mode, like this is about to happen. So we know life is going to change as we know it. So today, I'm 36. My significant other, she's 38. No kids to this point. So life's about to change. So we're doing what everybody would kind of do in this situation and kind of getting prepared, doing all the stuff we need to do. The office that I'm in right now is actually going to be the baby room. So we're in the process of kind of flipping the house and making a new office and all that sort of stuff. But fun times ahead.

Brock Briggs  2:13 

As somebody who like works in, like your entire job is like basically revolves around planning, does it stress you out to think about like or anticipate how to plan when it's like such a big unknown? As I mentioned before, like I'm also going through the same process, got a baby here in a few months and I enjoy planning and like talking to other people and getting ready for something. So I can just, it's as painless as possible, but I know full well like going into it, there's a certain amount of this that you just like, you can't prepare for it.

Ryan Kilkenny  2:52 

Yeah, I mean, uncertainty, we cannot eliminate it. So you can't eliminate it within financial markets. You also can't eliminate it when you're trying to have a kid. So life kind of happens, it comes at you fast. You have to roll with the punches. You have to know that whatever like that perfect vision of what we have in like, hey, in a perfect world, it would happen, like A would happen then B then C then D, that's probably not going to happen. And so we're gonna have to roll with it and be flexible. But I think knowing that, that we have to be flexible and that things are going to change. Not everything's going to happen according to plan. I think just that realization alone helps kind of lower the level of stress.

Brock Briggs  3:40 

Maybe compare and contrast, like how have you differed and how you're approaching this versus maybe how your wife is.

Ryan Kilkenny  3:48 

It's funny, like I'm a financial planner for a living. But there are a lot of things that she's better at planning than I am. So like, I'm really good at planning certain things but she's very, very detailed like this, like she's got the list of, we've got like a shared Apple note of all the things that need to happen between now and then to make this a success and she just kind of like she's got her checklist and we're checking things off. But yeah, I mean, she's very, very organized and especially with this and so there's some things where I'm a little bit less of a planner. This is one of those just because I know things are gonna go kind of array. Like we have a due date. All I know is that the baby's not going to come on the due date. That's about the only thing that I can say for sure. So, but right now at this point, we're just happy that all the scans everything looks good. So we're just grateful for that and excited to meet her when she arrives.

Brock Briggs  4:54 

That's super exciting. Yeah, it's so funny hearing you say that because my experience so far has very much echoed that I enjoy the planning piece. But my wife has been the one that's like, hey, like all of these things, we got to get all this done. And I am kind of one of the types of people that like when I see that list, like I see that as constraints almost. And I want to like have the flexibility of like going into it. And it's like, hey, if we need to change something up. I don't even know what will be good. And so it's hard to really like look out in the future just because it's such a big change and unknown. Have you had like any weird, like life crises? Like what is my legacy type of personal questions going into this? Or are those still on the horizon here?

Ryan Kilkenny  5:44 

I guess, kind of still on the horizon. You know, it's important to me to be a good father and to be able to be a good mentor for her and to raise her in a way where I think she's going to be successful. But I haven't really, I guess, being so young, I haven't really thought about, like what the legacy looks like at this point. I haven't been, I guess, scared straight to this point. But I'm sure that that'll come down the road.

Brock Briggs  6:18 

So you were in the Marine Corps and for a little while there you were working in aviation logistics. Is that right?

Ryan Kilkenny  6:26 

So I'm an aviation supply officer by trade. That was my MOS 6602. But all Marines are riflemen. All marine officers are rifle platoon commanders or provisional rifle platoon commanders. And so that's kind of what I was trained to do. But I served four years and Marine Aircraft group 39 in Camp Pendleton, California. So that's the largest rotary wing aircraft group in the Marine Corps. So you got all your Hueys, cobras. At the time, they had the sea night, but then that sundown happened and now they have the MV-22 Osprey.

Brock Briggs  7:05 

So were you in like a level you said Marine Aircraft group. Is that something that oversees all like multiple different platforms? Or is that platform specific? Like, is it just more to do with what command you are at rather than just saying, oh, I worked in this specific line of aviation?

Ryan Kilkenny  7:25 

So I guess my MOS wasn't specific to a tight model series, so to say. It was aviation logistics and then I guess, like I've never worked with fixed or sorry, with fixed wing aircraft. And so like, I don't have any experience with the logistics of that. But the longer you stay in, you PCS, you're bound to go from one to the other or vice versa. And so you kind of learn that stuff. But yeah, the aircraft group fell under Third Marine Air Wing, which is in Miramar, California. But yeah, it's just part of the MAGTF, so the Marine Air-Ground Task Force.

Brock Briggs  8:14 

So you were in from 09 to 18. Was kind of the Marines, what you thought it would be in that I'm not sure how much of that like that may be one extra reenlistment on top of the first? Did it kind of like fulfill your expectations in the way that you anticipated?

Ryan Kilkenny  8:35 

I guess yes and no. So I consider myself very fortunate. I had the opportunity to serve with so many great people from so many diverse backgrounds. A lot of great combat leaders I served under. So very, very, very fortunate, you know, like it's just motivating to be around people that are all working towards the same mission. Like that's super, super motivating. I guess, in a way where my expectations were, I guess it didn't meet expectations because I wasn't able to deploy. So that was kind of a frustrating thing for me. And it took me a while to kind of, you know, I guess get over that, so to say.

But, yeah, as I came in, was trying to think Iraq kind of dwindling down Afghanistan. So part of being in the wing is that there were three or sorry, four aircraft groups. And so when it came to doing like mu or anything like that, only one officer from the entire wing got to go on that. Captain or first lieutenant and so yeah, that was kind of frustrating. Deployment didn't happen. But in so many other ways, it absolutely met my expectations. And I think it's one of the things that I'll kind of look back on and be most proud of that I was a part of.

Brock Briggs  10:16 

Do you think that the pride comes from that common goal? Or do you think it was more so maybe the personal change that you maybe underwent during your time in? Or what about it do you think, what is the main driver of that sense of pride?

Ryan Kilkenny  10:31 

Maybe a little bit of both. I think, you know, I needed the Marine Corps, you know, in my life, like, I was a good kid. I worked hard, make good grades. But I lacked discipline, lacked focus. And I needed that, you know, I needed that in my life. And so the Marines were absolutely, like huge and instrumental in kind of shaping me into who I've become and who I'll be, you know, years down the road. I guess that's how I would answer that.

Brock Briggs  11:09 

It's super difficult to like, look back and imagine your life different ways, like without maybe how the services influence or contributions to your life. I know that I've looked back on my life several times and wondering. I'm like, man, I don't even want to think about it. Because it was such a big kind of turning point for a lot of the reasons that you just listed. With the lack of deploying, do you think that you took that personally? I know that I have several friends that were kind of in similar positions that didn't just kind of by luck of the dice. You can't really control a lot of those things didn't deploy, that's something that's like, really weighed on them since. And a lot of people I know that, like stayed in long enough, just so that they could do it. Do you think that there was a tying of some sort of, hey, like, I will have maybe fulfilled something once a deployment happens or something similar?

Ryan Kilkenny  12:10 

It's certainly possible. Yeah, it's certainly possible. I mean, so I was in Camp Pendleton for four years, that's not normal. Usually, you're on station for three years and then you PCS, so I actually extended on station with a hope of being able to deploy, but it just didn't work out. So I was in my MOS. Then I went to work for the aircraft group and the CO, the colonel there as a fiscal officer and then went back to the MLS and, and so it was with understanding that I was going to deploy and that ultimately didn't materialize. Somebody else was selected to go. And then, you know, I ultimately wasn't selected for that.

And so, yeah, took that a little bit personal, perhaps, I guess. But that's not to say that, you know, I didn't enjoy my time in Camp Pendleton. So I absolutely love my time there and got to do a lot of things that I had no idea that I'd ever be able to do when I was young, 25 ish, responsible for a warehouse with millions of dollars of aircraft parts in it. Classified material that you know, if we miss handle that or misplace something like that, you know, that's the type of event where you get fired. So a lot of personal responsibility at a young age.

Brock Briggs  13:40 

You've gone on to and entered into, like the financial services space since your exit. Were your finances like in good shape while you were in? I always love talking to people that get out of the service and go on to work in this space because I feel like there is maybe I'm not sure so much to the officer side. But I know on the enlisted side, certainly there's just this massive, like, people are young. You know, they're mishandling money. And it's really, really hard to kind of get ahead and just a huge portion of people are living paycheck to paycheck. I'm always curious to hear how you kind of manage your finances and like why or why that why not that that maybe contributed to you going on to work in the space after?

Ryan Kilkenny  14:31 

I would say for me, it was a little bit of a journey. So I had to make some progress in that area - wasn't perfect then, not perfect now. But when I first first commissioned, you know, that was the most money that I'd ever made, like hitting my bank account. Like I worked a part time job in high school, worked a part time job to get myself through college. But I had a lot of student debt. Like when I graduated from college. And so anyway, like, you know, commissioned making what was really good money for me at the time. But what I realized is that money was coming in, money was going out. At the end of the month, I still had about the same amount of money, like in the bank account, things just kind of remained level. And so it was a journey to kind of figure out like, what did I need to do to be, I guess, successful?

And so I started to, I guess, one of the first things that I did to kind of help me with that journey was I actually amended a spreadsheet that we used within aviation supply. We used it for like the accounting division. And basically, it was a spreadsheet and it showed, okay, here's what my budget is. Here's how much I've actually spent. Here's the percent of my budget that I've spent. Here's how much I have leftover. And so I made an Excel sheet. And I started to monitor my spending. And when I started to actually look at, like, where the dollars went on a monthly basis, I learned a lot about my finances. I learned a lot about how I spent money. Now, the one thing that I absolutely had to do is I had to be vulnerable, I guess, with myself and I had to be honest like, you know, garbage in garbage out.

But when I was really honest and I like reported like no kidding, like, I kept every single receipt. I entered it into the spreadsheet. If it was like an electronic payment or whatever, you know, I would check my online account and then enter it in there. And I categorize it so that I could see like high level where was I spending my money, but I made good money when I was in the Marines. I felt like, once I like realized where my money was going, I realized, okay, I'm actually like my BAH. I think at the time, it was about like, 1800 ish dollars. My first apartment that I rented just outside was off base. But it was like $1,200. So I realized, okay, there's an extra $600 here. And so like I said, I graduated with some student loans. And so I started to apply that $600 and throw it towards the student loans to where it was a couple years later, but I was finally able to pay that off, which is about the size of a nice car.

Brock Briggs  17:27 

Yeah, it is like, there's so often such a large disparity between what is actually happening with your finances and what you think is happening. And then sometimes, like being forced to see it and sit down, like is the big game changer on like, oh, am I actually spending that much money on this and like, kind of holding your own self accountable. It's super difficult to do that. And it's uncomfortable. But seeing things like that, I think the BAH is a really good example. Because if you know, hey, my mortgage is this and my BAH is this, that the delta between those things like you should have that extra in your bank account every month and that should be stacking up. But if it's not, I think that that's like a good kind of indicator that something is not right there.

Ryan Kilkenny  18:18 

Absolutely. You know, it was one of those things where I just realized, like, I had some work to do in this area. And once I had a process like that was very, very important. For me, it was like, okay, here's the process where I know that if I just put, at the beginning of the month, I refresh the spreadsheet and it's very, very simple. Okay, my income. So my base pay and my BAH is at the top, here's what it adds up to. Here's how much it hits my account. Okay. Alright, so my after tax amount and okay, how am I going to allocate that? Like, I think it's Dave Ramsey or somebody says, you know, each dollar needs a name.

And so I started to just assign each dollar a name and like, okay, my rent is 1200. Here's how much electric, here's how much this, here’s how much I'm putting into the Thrift Savings Plan my Roth IRA. And then I got down to the point where the goal is to spend every single dollar. Now that sounds weird, but I'm not really spending every single dollar. I'm just giving it a name, you know, some of those dollars that I'm spending, they're going towards retirement accounts and savings and stuff of that sort. But that's how I kind of worked it out. And it made sense for me. That's not to say that it's the right thing for everybody.

Brock Briggs  19:45 

You think that financial education and or like financial behavior in the military is better or worse than maybe outside of this service with a similar group of people?

Ryan Kilkenny  20:01 

That's a great question. It's really hard to say. I can see it both ways. What I would say, though, that is unique about being in the service is how some people will target young service members because they know that they have that paycheck. They've got that paycheck coming from the government. It's basically as safe as it can get, right? I mean, United States Government pays your income. You know, you don't have to really worry about them going out of business like any other job. And so I would say the way that it's unique is, I mean, you hear about it, you know, young private, gets, like the 20% car loan, has the Camaro or the charger or whatever. And it's like, absolutely can't afford it. So I would say that's how it's in that respect, it's kind of unique. Brock Briggs  20:59 

If you were let's just kind of put our imagination hat on here for a second. Let's say that you were appointed today to be in charge of financial education in the military, like all DoD wide, what do you think would need to change like tomorrow, the very first thing that you would want to like, see people improve on in like a meaningful way?

Ryan Kilkenny  21:25

I guess in that like, hypothetical scenario, I'd want to, that's a tough question. I guess I would want to see something that actually made a difference. And so like, I'll tell a little bit of a story here. So every command or at least as far as I know, has like a command financial specialist. So on bass at Camp Pendleton, there was somebody, I forget what their actual title was. But they trained command financial specialists. And so those are people, it's like the unit, for lack of better term subject matter expert that is supposed to help mentor and coach, I guess, service members on things money related. Now, you're not an expert, you really don't have a lot of training. I think you went for like, a couple days, maybe it was a week of training. But I just don't think that that was enough.

Like it wasn't enough to be, I think, super impactful and the people that you're trying to help it definitely it wasn't your primary job, you know, being a command financial specialists, it was, it wasn't even a GI Bill, it was just like another little duty that you might have had a collateral duty, so to say. But I'd like to see something where, and I hate to go like off the deep end and be like, we need more PowerPoint or we need more mandatory training and stuff like that. But I think there's a lot of training that I got in the Marines, where it was like, this is pointless or it's like DoD mandated, you know, and it's like, okay, this is the same exact thing that they told me last year. So I guess, one of the things that I would recommend is that it would be relevant, it'd be relevant, it'd be interesting.

But some training just to educate people on hey, for many, folks, I mean, this is the first time you've really made any money, here's how to make best use of it or to at least know where it's going and kind of just help people find, I guess, their way to be able to manage money in a way that's right for them, so that when they get out there, you know, they're prepared. They're prepared. They're in a good financial position. And they're not living paycheck to paycheck like I was right after I commissioned.

Brock Briggs  24:09 

If you were to like maybe sum up, like what the top like three things that every junior or maybe even senior person in the military ought to be doing with their money today that they probably aren't, let's just to kind of like, take what you said and make it a little bit more concrete. And, you know, everybody's financial situation is a little bit more nuanced and kind of maybe some tweaks here and there, but maybe a couple of heuristics or principles that you think about that you could kind of say, everybody needs to be doing this, this and this, what do you what are those kinds of principles that you maybe found yourself hinging on that you preach maybe in your practice today, which we'll get to or have found successful and like when you were going through that process of kind of like itemizing your own life?

Ryan Kilkenny  25:01 

Sure, definitely. I'm a retirement planner. And so of course, I'm going to tell you, you know, make use of those retirement accounts. So the Thrift Savings Plan is a fantastic retirement plan. So you've got, when I first joined, you just had the traditional TSP. You didn't have the Roth. Now you have the Roth TSP. And so you can put quite a lot or quite a bit of money. Sorry and that each year. And when I first joined, you didn't have a match. Now, some service members can qualify for a match. And so you put money into the Roth TSP, what have you, you get a little bit of a match from the government. And so I would say start as early as you possibly can, make use of those retirement accounts. Your future self is definitely going to thank you. You'd be shocked. I don't have the numbers in front of me right now.

But you'd be shocked how much the compounding effect has to wear, like if you front load and account with money. And then it earns a return for a specific number of years, how quickly that can grow over time. But so definitely make use of the retirement accounts, keep things simple, like keep it simple, like you're never going to be able to eliminate uncertainty. So your plan needs to be simple. It needs to be flexible. You need to be able to build flexibility within your plan. And so one of the things that I think, you know, I never really heard or just really wasn't focused on was, not all of your money should be going into a retirement account. So I know I'm saying like make use of the retirement account. But retirement accounts by and large, you can't touch until you're 59 and a half. There's a few exceptions to that.

But if you try to access that money early, largely, you're gonna pay a 10% penalty. And if it's a pre tax account, like a TSP 401k, traditional IRA, you're going to owe income taxes to federal state if your state charges that, but you need to build flexibility in there. And so what I'm really getting at is a brokerage account. So a brokerage account is a great way to have a flexible plan. So that would have helped me a lot, you know, like, going from W-2 paycheck to then starting my own business, like having a brokerage account would have built more flexibility within my plan. The other thing that I will say is that you need, you're young, you're not going to live forever, but you're going to live for a really, really long time. And so you're probably going to need to own stocks for a long time. I can't tell you how many service members, like I don't know if this still happens with the TSP.

But when I was a command financial specialist like we'd sit down, they logged into their TSP and their money sitting in the G fund. Like it's essentially not earning anything. So we need to make sure like the yes, contribute to your retirement accounts. But then make sure that those dollars are invested in a way that it makes sense for you. For most young people, they want to own stocks. And basically a stock or a stock represents ownership in a business. Now within your TSP, you're going to own a fund or maybe like the lifecycle fund or something like that, like a target date fund. So like lifecycle, for example, 2050, would be hey, I plan to retire in 2050. And so they'll take care of all the investments for you. But some other people might want to select, you know, the CSI fund. So you've got like your S&P 500, you've got your small cap stocks and then international stocks as well. But so those things like use your retirement accounts, take advantage of those to capture the government's match if they're going to match your contributions. Keep things simple, be flexible, plan to live a long time. And another thing with the TSP, I don't know if this option is built into it or not.

But every single year, like if you're not maxing the account, what I'd recommend is increasing your contributions by 1%. So if you're doing you start out, you're doing 3% like this year in 2023. Well, hopefully next year, you're doing 4% or 5%. So some retirement plans will have a button to automatically increase your contributions by 1%. And so when you're doing especially with like a workplace retirement account, you want to use percentages. And the reason you want to use percentages instead of dollars is every time you get a pay raise, you're automatically contributing more and then you know, like let's say I'm making $50,000. And then I get a pay increase and I'm making $55,000. Well, if I'm doing 10% contributing 10%. Obviously, if I'm making $55,000 10% of 55,000 is more than 50,000. And so I'm automatically contributing more. And then next year if I put 11% in, I'm doing even more. And so but those are, I guess, a few of the recommendations that I would have for people that are either currently serving or you know, they've moved on and they're a veteran today.

Brock Briggs  30:35 

Yeah, those are great. I think that there are a couple things in there that you highlighted that are really worth kind of touching on again, that it just for some reason, it's not really talked about a ton, but the amount of people in the G fund is just like, it's crazy. I did that when my now wife and I got together. Oh, she's like, hey, like, I was going to school for finance at the time. And she was like, well, you look at this and make sure that this kind of looks right or whatever had looked at it. And I'm like, why is this all here? Like this is, you know, if you're under 40 years old, certainly you shouldn't be kind of in like this safe or conservative of a thing. And that's what they out in boot camp. They're like, oh, this is the most safe. And it's like, well, these are all people that are 18 years old, you don't need to be safe.

So that and then that changed to where they offered the match. I kind of got some mixed feelings about that. And depending on how much you know about the blended system, I'd love to kind of get your take on it because they touted it that it was like this really good thing like, oh, we've got the match. But kind of on the backhand. It's like they've took a blow to the retirement percentage instead of like the high three, it's now like 40% of whatever the new number is. And then also, I feel like they're kind of banking on the fact that people aren't going to take the match. And I think that that was, while there maybe you get more out of it.

If you're maxing it out the new blended system. I'd say on the whole, the government is like not, they're not doing the people a service by that, like, I would imagine that they are lowering pension liabilities and drastically trying to reduce the amount of money that they're giving to people for retirement. And I think it's because most people won't take advantage of that. And I don't know, I still haven't totally solidified my thoughts on it. But that felt kind of, I don't know, shady is the right word. But it didn't seem to be in the best interest of I'm thinking like junior person just coming out of boot camp, 18 years old and knows nothing about money.

Ryan Kilkenny  32:47 

I would agree. So when the Blended Retirement System came about it was right before I left the service, maybe like a year before I left. And so I absolutely agree with you. The the military is one of it's one of the few places like I mean, in America used to have pensions. So you had defined benefit plans. And then largely those have disappeared. And now you have defined contribution plans. So like the retirement plans that we think of today, like TSP 401K. And so you know, when I entered it was the high three, you know, so high three, when you retire, if you do 20 years of service, you get 50% of your pay. And so every year, right? Is worth two and a half percent. And so for every year pass that you get two and a half percent more. So ultimately, if you do thirty years, 75% of your final high three pay would be your retirement, right? And then they created the Blended Retirement System.

And so what that does, you qualify for a match. I don't know what that is off the top of my head, like how it has changed. I want to say it may have went up to about 5% match something like that. But then they decreased the pension to 40%. So if you do 20 years, it's 40%. Every year pass that, you get to 2%, right? Something like that. And so I feel like what did I do? All right, I knew I was getting out. And so I elected I opted into the Blended Retirement System and then for like that last year that I was in, I captured some match, but I did that because I knew I was getting out. So it didn't make sense because I mean, I wasn't gonna be able to make use of the pension. But I think it could help people that this is an area where I think service members could use a lot of planning. But now it's you know, they pretty much, every new person coming in it's Blended Retirement System, right?

But it could help to think of different retirement accounts or retirement dollars in different ways. What I'm getting at is the pension, that's guaranteed money. If you do this, this will happen. And you can count on that on a monthly basis like that checks going to hit for, you know, a retiree, right? Your retirement accounts, that's not guaranteed. Social Security, those are guaranteed payments, and no, there's a lot of discussion, you know, on the health of the program, longevity and stuff of that sort, but it's guaranteed, it's a guaranteed payment. So it's going to stay the same. Now, your pension has cost of living adjustments. So security comes with cost of living adjustments. Last year, it was 8.7% to kind of account for inflation. You know, I guess I don't have a strong feeling either way.

But I do feel that service members at the time, if they were going to stay until retirement, they were probably better by staying in the legacy system because they're just not going to have enough time to take advantage of that match. Whereas like, a younger service member, like say, they're 18 to 25, they're getting that match. They do 20 years, 20 years of matches in there. They retire, they're pulling 40% of their pay, maybe they serve a couple more years. Maybe it's a little bit higher than that. But it's hard to say like, what's better? What are the motivations behind it? I absolutely do think that people that are serving today need to be taking advantage of that match.

Brock Briggs  36:56 

Yeah, most certainly. You got out and then went on to do financial planning or as like a financial advisor at Edward Jones. How different of an environment is it like coaching, maybe junior Marines on their finances versus going into like an official kind of planning or advising role in like a professional capacity?

Ryan Kilkenny  37:21 

I mean, it's quite a bit different. I mean, in some ways, it's similar. But with younger service members more focused on budgeting, credit cards, building kind of good habits, making sure that they are contributing to accounts. Whereas once I started as a financial advisor, that's more like helping people that have already kind of been doing that for 20-30 years, maybe. And so they have entirely different challenges on like, one group is trying to save and the other is trying to figure out, okay, like, what do we need to do with what we have? You know, what we've built up, like, hey, we've been a good steward of our money, built up a certain amount of assets, you know, what do we need to do? Or what should we be doing?

Brock Briggs  38:17 

Solving a different problem than basically.

Ryan Kilkenny

Absolutely.

Brock Briggs

I know that Edward Jones is very vocal about like hiring veterans and they have like, kind of a program to bring in like new advisors and go through their pipeline. What was your experience, like going through that? And then I guess, would you recommend that you've obviously gone on to start your own practice, for some reasons we may talk about here in a minute, but would you recommend that pipeline for somebody, maybe that's looking to get into financial advising to, I don't know, get their certifications paid for? Get the training that they need to if they're maybe even if their long term goal is to kind of do what you're doing?

Ryan Kilkenny  39:01 

Sure. So Edward Jones was a good place for me to be able to start. I had no experience, like you said, there's certain certifications that you need in training to be able to work with people and provide financial advice. So it was a good place to start for me and to get that training. I met a lot of great people there that are very, very well intended. There's a large veteran community of advisors. I know one advisor, for example. He is, I believe, still in active duty or sorry, he's a reserve army officer. He's a colonel. And I remember him telling a story of he went and he had to deploy. And so they brought an advisor to sit in his office while he was deployed and then when he came back, his office was there. You know if that was me in my situation, I don't know that that would have worked the exact same way. So there's pros and cons, there's trade offs to it. I think it's a good place to start to learn.

But at the end of the day, what I realized is I wanted to be a financial planner. But really, when I was at Jones, I was there to do financial sales. Like that's what the job was. It was financial sales. I had to be registered as a broker. And that was something that, you know, I didn't want to sell financial products for a living. So that's just something that I just disagreed with, you know. And so ultimately, like you said, I decided to move on from that. But I think for some people, it could be a good place to get started. For others, I would recommend that they try to find their way into an RAA. And so and RAA oftentimes, they're independent firms that are largely fee only, really all that means is that it's industry jargon for they don't sell financial products. I believe that, you know, if you want to kind of eliminate some of those conflicts of interest that I started to have, like an internal struggle with, like that may be the better place to start and to learn to be a financial planner as a part, instead of learning to basically sell financial products for a living.

Brock Briggs  41:24 

Edward Jones, I know, is one of them. Another company that I think falls under that same bucket is Northwestern Mutual, where as like, either getting out of the service or like a new college grad, they're kind of courting in a big way a lot of the population that's entering the workforce in that way and kind of selling it as like, hey, you know, you're this financial representative or whatever. But I think at its core is a salesperson, kind of as you highlighted. Who is that actually right for? We're going to talk about, like what you do now and like why this is a better position for you. But I've had several people approached me with like opportunities at both places, kind of asking, hey, what do you think about this? And you know, I just kind of, basically regurgitate what you just kind of said here. Who is that position right for? And I guess what does it take to have longevity at a place like that?

Ryan Kilkenny  42:22 

I guess it's right for somebody that understands what they're getting themselves into. So that model is a model where you are a generalist. You're not really a specialist, you work with anybody and everybody. And that may sound good, I believe. But I think that we should be specialists and the people that we're working with and be super familiar with the issues, the specific issues that they're likely to have in their life or that they're going to face down the road because of some nature of their career or the stage in life that they're at. It's a good place for people that, I guess, want a proven process, like they just want to sit in the chair, have all the decisions made for them and just operate. But if you want to be creative, if you want to serve your clients in a different way, if you want to create content, have a newsletter, have a podcast, have a blog, have a YouTube channel, you're not going to be able to do that there.

And so yeah, for the person that just wants to kind of plug into the program and operate and sell financial products, it could be the right place. Ultimately, to kind of get to your like, what do you have to do for longevity is you have to produce on a monthly basis. And so I remember like my regional leader, once a month would send an email and it had categories of different advisors and like the top performers, which was all around gathering assets. So that's the name of the game, sell financial products, gather assets that fees are charged on. And that's what they ultimately I guess that's what they celebrated. So that's what I knew they cared about. Just like all my training was sales related. It wasn't how to give good financial advice. It was how to talk to people, how to relate to them. It was sales based training, similar to training Marines get if they're on recruiting duty.

Brock Briggs  44:42 

How do you think that that model is going to work in like the next 20 to 50 years? And I know that that's a big swath of time, but it seems like the industry is moving more and more towards. It's about planning as you're saying. It's about tailored specific advice, weather for different time periods of life. It's about knowing unique circumstances that don't fall under a big umbrella. Maybe it's a tax focus, maybe it's a big family endowment, maybe it's all of these things and it just doesn't really get the attention and the coverage at just like a big AUM base platform like Edward Jones and it's more so like, hey, it's your money is going to do fine in an index fund for the next 20 to 30 years. Where do you see companies like that going?

Ryan Kilkenny  45:38 

I think they're going to struggle, honestly. I think they're going to struggle in an environment where I mean, the situation has changed, right? It used to be you had to go to somebody to get access to financial markets to buy a stock, to buy a bond. It's not that way anymore. You know, you can open up a Robin Hood account and probably fund it before I can finish this next sentence. So it's largely changed. It's no longer access to information. Now it's what do we do with the wealth of information and how do we make it relevant to your life? Like, you can google your financial question, but Google doesn't know your life, doesn't know what's going on the circumstances, doesn't know your family, the things that are important to you. So I view like the shift has been, it's going to go from information and the shift has already started, it's underway. But it's going to go to how do we take all this information?

And how do we make it relevant to your life? Good financial advice should be specific to your life, it shouldn't be generic. But I believe that they're kind of backed into a corner. We've got this large 19,000, I think plus advisor organization, half of I mean, they're still all registered as brokers to sell financial products. They're not or they weren't doing training on how to give good financial advice. And so I think that it's gonna be a tough shift for that organization. And I think you're kind of seeing signs of that and frustrations from people like me that were in advisors there. And they're moving to a different place. They're joining another firm because financial planning is important to them. And they realize that their clients need that or they're starting their own firm like I did. Because they realize that, just like we were trained in the military, right?

We were trained to look out for one another, right? Like to have each other six so to say, and so when you see like, you're an advisor and you see that things are going to happen to the families you're serving and you want to be able to do something about it, but you can't, you know, I think that, yeah, it's gonna be a big shift. And it'd be interesting to see how they kind of navigate it, but I think they're gonna struggle.

Brock Briggs  48:11 

Are there noncompete rules or restrictions on like if you go to start your own gig after leaving a big firm like that?

Ryan Kilkenny  48:19 

So it depends. So there's a thing called the broker protocol. And if your firm that you're at is in it and the firm that you're going to, like, let's say, for example, Edward Jones and Merrill Lynch, right? If both are in the broker protocol, then you have more flexibility to be able to reach out and to contact old clients that you worked with, like at the previous firm. But if both firms are not a member of the broker protocol, which Jones is not, then basically, the information, clients information, their phone number, cell phone, email content, basically any contact information, that's a trade secret or I think that's the right way to say it. It's a trade secret, but it basically belongs to the firm.

So the important thing for people to know is that if you go and you work at a big firm like Edward Jones or you know others, that those are not your clients. They’re clients of the firm, you're just sitting in the chair and serving them, but you can easily be replaced or thrown away, you know, just because in any circumstances. I've seen that happen to where for relatively small things or small issues, where advisors I feel were treated unfairly and fired. And so they worked their entire career building up a practice and then they're just disposable. They're another number and another cog in the wheel.

Brock Briggs  49:56 

One of the beauties I see of being a financial planner is the ability to, you're compounding more than just money. You want to have a client and be able to benefit from compounding that relationship that you have with somebody, as you know, we're going to get into kind of what you do now and how you differentiate. But a lot of older people who have, they've been with retirement or their planner or their financial advisor for decades, like they don't want to change. And it's because you get to just continue to build that relationship. They could be losing money every year, but they're not going to change because they have that buy in with that person. And I think that a model like that really doesn't where the value is aggregating to the firm and not the individual is kind of the incentives are not there. And I think that highlights your move and probably is the right move for somebody that's wanting to, over the long term, aggregate the value to themselves and not elsewhere.

Ryan Kilkenny  51:00 

The financial planning when done right is best on when you know somebody extremely well. And so that's why we value long term relationships. So the better you know somebody, the better you know their life, the things that they've been through the things that are important to them, the things that their kids don't know, that's where you're really able to do some cool stuff and to and to be able to help them and deliver value over long periods of time. Because at the end of the day, if you're not delivering value, if you're not that's an excess of your fee, then why is anybody paying you?

Brock Briggs  51:36 

Do you want to talk about your own practice now, Atomic Planning? Maybe if you're willing to share, get into the number of clients that you work with kind of where you started and where you're trying to go to over the next 5 to 10 years?

Ryan Kilkenny  51:50 

Sure. So I've got a small independent firm. It's called Atomic Planning. I'm here in a suburb of Kansas City, just about 30 minutes away from Kansas City. And my firm is specialized in working with people that are retired today or are going to retire in the next few years. My specialty or what I really love doing is helping people that have built up. They've been really good stewards of their wealth. They've built up pre tax accounts like traditional IRAs, 401Ks, TSPs, and stuff of that sort. And the large bulk or the large majority of their assets are in those pre tax accounts that have never been taxed. It's like the tax bill is an IOU to the government. And one day that IOU is going to come due. And so these people have been very well intended. They're blue collar, hard workers, just good people.

And so my firm specializes in helping them kind of plan their retirement and plan it in a way where it's tax smart and the decisions that we're making. We're not making them because of tax decisions. But we're not making them with blinders on. And so we're keeping in mind like, Hey, what is it? What does it look like? What does your lifetime tax bill potentially look like? What's that estimate? And we're looking for ways to be able to mitigate that and to lower it over time in a way that makes sense for them. That's something that I could not do. Where I was at, I could not do tax planning and couldn't recommend to a client, like, you know, a lot of times people have the question, should I contribute to traditional IRA? Or should I do a Roth IRA?

Should I do regular 401k? Or should I do a Roth 401K, couldn't really answer those questions, didn't have the tools to be able to do that. I also, if somebody needed to do or I thought that a Roth conversion might benefit them. I didn't have the ability to help them with that and show them the potential value of it basically just had to refer them to while we're kind of getting into tax stuff. And so I've got a, you need to talk to your tax advisor about that. And I don't really feel that that's delivering value for a family.

Brock Briggs  54:06 

How do you like choose to carve out a niche and like retirement focus? Did you have a client right off the bat that was interested in using you and you said, oh, maybe I'll just go with this. Because obviously, as you've kind of alluded to through this whole time, there's a lot of different areas even within financial planning that you can kind of specialize in. I'd imagine that there's a financial planner out there that really specializes and maybe 20 to 30 year olds that are like maybe entrepreneurs and like make, you know, a huge sum of money off of an exit or something like that. There's just so many different unique niches that you could serve within that. How did you think about choosing that and maybe how do you think about differentiating yourself in that market?

Ryan Kilkenny  54:55 

There were a handful of families that I was serving at the time that I started to see these issues like pop up or that they were incoming, so on the horizon. And that really, it got me into asking questions of myself like, am I in the best place to be able to give them the best financial advice that I can absolutely give? And I had to be really honest with myself and the answer that I came up with was, I was not in the best place. There were other people out there doing things that I believed, you know, would be a better fit for the people that I was working with. And so my focus was, okay, well, how do I make it so that I feel that I'm the best person to be able to serve the families that I'm currently serving? And so like I said, there were a handful of them. But I started to build my practice and the services and offerings that I provide around helping the people that I already was serving.

Brock Briggs  56:01 

How do you go about finding those people? One of the things he talked about on your website and in a couple other interviews is you are leaning into working in a virtual practice, you're able to kind of serve anybody at any time, virtually. And that kind of offers you a ton of flexibility but also gets in the way of being the guy down the street that people happen to drive by. And checkout is particularly interesting for people that maybe have less of a tech focus and are more of going to be looking for like the local guy that happens to do it.

Ryan Kilkenny  56:37 

Sure, sure. So when I began my career, I began it by going door to door and knocking on doors and introducing myself to them and getting kind of comfortable with those conversations. And so that's like how I began. Now, how I'm building the practice today is much different. So I believe you need to be a subject matter expert. You need to be a specialist in today's world. And so one of the ways that you demonstrate that is you need to talk about things, talk or write or whatever, talk about things that are important to the people that you serve or that you want to serve. And so for me, I really wanted to start a podcast. I don't know, like I think what you consume is like something that maybe just naturally kind of interesting to you.

And so I listened to a ton of podcasts. And so I wanted to have my own and I wanted to create basically a show for people where, you know, they could tune in, it's short, it's quick, it's oftentimes. The episodes are 20 minutes or less, if I have a guest on it's a little bit longer, but I wanted them to just be able to walk around the neighborhood or drive to work and be able to learn something, learn something new and to basically just walk away from that better off than they were when they first hit. And so yeah, I've got the podcast, got the newsletter. And those are how I'm attempting to reach people today.

Brock Briggs  58:13 

Why do you think that that is, like you're saying that that's how you're trying to reach people? Why do you think that that's a differentiator? Or why do you think that that's maybe more or less but why do you think it's more valuable than going door to door or another way of kind of collecting clients?

Ryan Kilkenny  58:32 

I think it's a little bit of a differentiator in the aspect that it's me, it's my thoughts on various topics. So you actually get to see who I am, what I believe, all those things that you won't be able to catch from somebody just kind of knocking at your door. When I was at Jones, I was only able to post certain things on social media. They had to be pre approved. I remember actually getting my hand slapped because I posted an article that was relevant to Kansas City. Kansas City has a huge engineering community. It was COVID going on, you had an engineering firm that retrofitted an HVAC system for a building to kind of filter the air. I thought it was cool. And so I shared the article and then I got the nasty gram from home office about hey, that's not from a pre approved source, like USA Today or whatever and you need to take it down.

Brock Briggs  59:30 

So you couldn't share an article that was pertinent to you personally, that had nothing to do with financial, anything?

Ryan Kilkenny  59:38 

Exactly, exactly. Couldn't do that. If I wanted to change even my LinkedIn biography, that had to go through marketing, had to go through the compliance, that could take upwards of a month to get that approved. Same for my branch website. So really at the end of the day, what I realized was that I wasn't able to have an opinion and I wasn't able to be myself. I wasn't able to tell people what I believe. And that was very, very frustrating for me. So I think a huge differentiator is working with somebody where they can actually have frickin opinion and tell you what they believe and be real because at the end of the day, the things that you're gonna go through in life are very real. And I didn't want people to have that like corporate cookie cutter, suit and tie like feeling I just wanted to be myself and show up every day for people in a way that is authentic to me and that resonates with the people that I'm trying to serve. Now I am, absolutely, I'm building a virtual practice.

And so I realized that that's not going to be a good fit for everybody. But for my type, the person that I serve well, they absolutely like they have to be able to get online. If we can't do a zoom meeting and screen share, we're probably not going to be a good fit. And that's okay because, I mean, there's plenty of advisors out there and they'll probably find somebody that will do a good job for them or I hope that they do. But my clients there, they don't have to be tech savvy. So to say it's just, they'll get the email link with a Zoom meeting, they click it, puts them in the meeting. And then we're able to meet at their convenience, they can be wherever they're at, I can be wherever I'm at. And what I've found is there's a lot of secondary benefits from doing a meeting like that. I can't tell you the number of times like I forgot to tell somebody to bring in this or that or they forgot it on the kitchen countertop or a conversation went in a direction that I didn't know it was gonna go at the beginning of the meeting and we didn't have the information that we needed to be able to really have an intelligent conversation around. It will now be in virtual, they can screenshare I can screen share and we can we can look at whatever is on their mind in that given day. So I found a lot of benefits from that.

Brock Briggs  1:02:08 

There are so many crazy unique benefits from creating content in your niche. For somebody that's like in your position, I see it as like, one, you give the ability to practice publicly, like you got to be like, get over the fear of like looking dumb or like saying something maybe that isn't right or just even the fear of like people talking about it. But you get to practice your like, saying, hey, this is what I think about xx retirement plan and being able to share that. To you like naturally aggregate people that are interested in that type of content. Two, you and people that don't listen, they're probably not for you anyway, it's okay. It's like this natural way of like forming your own and intimate circle.

And then three, from like, if you are going to sell something to people, eventually, it's a warm lead, like your those people are listening to you because more often than not, they're going to be wanting your services because they've been listening to you for so long. And they already have the buy in into you from listening to you reading what you write all of those things. It's just, it's a crazy all of the value as we were talking about earlier, the value aggregating to the firm, it's like, it's all going to you. You're getting the benefit of it. And you know, it takes a long time for that value to kind of accrue. But I think that that's the right way to go about it. And it's certainly pertinent to more than just financial planning. You could probably apply this to just about anything.

Ryan Kilkenny  1:03:42 

Yeah, I mean, I'm really I'm trying to build my tribe of like minded folks. There's a lot of different viewpoints out there on how to do things correctly. We all have, every financial planner has a little bit of a different kind of viewpoint, a take on things, but really what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to build my tribe and to kind of speak to the power of creating content. Like one thing that I really like about the podcast is I'm not asking you for anything. I'm not asking you for any information. You can just tune in on your own time when it's convenient for you. And hopefully you learn something from it, but I'm not asking your name. I'm not asking your email or anything like that. Now, obviously with the newsletter, like kinda like, I don't know, maybe it's just habit, but I was taught in the Marines. You give them the appropriate greeting of the day, right? Like, good morning, sir. Good morning, ma'am.

And so rather than like say, oh, hey, they're like, I asked for their first name. So I do ask for first name, email address because obviously, we got to deliver it to the right place, right? But the power in creating content, it's super, super amazing. I don't know a better way to say it, but I'm kind of looking at it right now. And like, I've got Buzzsprout pulled up for the podcast. And people in like all seven continents have listened to an episode of my podcast. Now, obviously, I only serve people that are in the United States because I'm only registered in the United States, but 37 countries, 782 cities have listened to the podcast. And so that's something like, I never would have been able to reach those people without creating content. And I have no idea why they decided to spend some time with me. But at the end of the day, that really motivates me to keep going and to keep creating and to keep trying to help more people than I could possibly ever serve.

I think earlier, you asked how many people or like, how big would I like the firm to be? And I don't know. I don't really have a great answer for that. Oftentimes, I'll say, something like 50 families or something. It's because I don't really know what my capacity is. I'll know when I know. But I think what I'd like to do is I'd like to reach somewhere in the neighborhood of about 50 families. And when you're doing financial planning at the level that I want to be able to do it at and serving families in the way that I want to show up and serve them, you can't work with a million people. You can't have 200 family practices or you can't work with 1000 families, like I saw where I used to work. And so I think 50 is like a good, it's a good round number. Maybe I'll reach 50 families and then I'll decide, you know, I think I still have the capacity to be able to show up. But I never want to build at the sake of affecting the people that I already serve. And so when I build, I'm like the families that I already serve are kind of at the forefront of my mind.

Brock Briggs  1:06:55 

One of the questions that you like to ask people, I thought that this was like a really powerful question. I'd love for you to kind of elaborate on it. You said, why is money important to you? Can you kind of elaborate on that question and then maybe answer it for yourself? Like, why is money important for you personally?

Ryan Kilkenny  1:07:14 

Sure. So this question I did not come up with, okay. This was not

Brock Briggs 

I'm trying to give you credit here, Ryan. Come on.

Ryan Kilkenny 

I know, I know. But I need to attribute this. So Carl Richards, Carl Richards, he wrote a book called The Behavior Gap. And it's one of the best books I've ever read. I used to actually have it on the bookshelf behind me, but I took the books down. But the behavior gap ways to stop doing dumb things with your money. It's a short, quick read, but really, really good. And one of the questions that Carl recommends that advisors ask is, why is money important to you? And it's basically just a conversation starter. It's like an entry point. Usually what happens is folks will say something that's not the true answer. It's like a surface level answer. And then you have to kind of go deeper to be able to figure out why money is important to them. And the reason I think that he recommends asking that is because it's like if I asked you, you know, what are your goals? It's like the worst thing that I can ask anybody.

And it's like, I don't know what my goals are, like, are my goals with money, like? So I think good financial advice, being a good financial planner is helping people through like figuring out what's important to them, figuring out what those goals so it's just like guesses, like, hey, I think this is important to me. I think that's like really, where financial planning shows up and creates a lot of value for people. But in terms of like, why is money important to me, I view it as a tool that helps me to be able to spend more time with the friends and the family that I love, doing things that we enjoy doing. And that's my financial purpose. Like, that's my statement of financial purpose is, as Carl Richards would say and then all the decisions that I'm making around money are like my goals. They should align with my financial purpose.

And all the, I guess, action items that I'm doing to achieve the goals, they should align, they should help feed into that. So that really, at the end of the day, my goal, even though we're never perfect, is to try to align my money with the things that are important to me and the things that I value. The very worst thing that I think anybody can do in life is to put their ladder on the wrong wall and find out that, you know, they've already climbed the ladder and it was leaning against the wrong wall. I can't remember who said that. But I thought that that was a very good kind of point to kind of illustrate the importance of planning because kind of like you said earlier, like I didn't realize like where my money was going. A lot of people will tell you something's important to them. But what they're actually doing is completely like, they're headed in the wrong direction like, hey, I know that I'm trying to get to, I'll just say, I love San Diego.

So I'll say like, I'm in Kansas and I'm trying to go to San Diego. That's what's important to them. Well, I can see that they're not headed in that direction based on the things that they're actually doing with their money. So sometimes being a good financial planner is being an accountability partner so and helping kind of point out those things that hey, is that truly important to you? Because here's what we're doing today. So I just want to make sure that what we're working towards, you know, is actually important to you.

Brock Briggs  1:10:53 

Have you read Die with Zero by Bill Perkins?

Ryan Kilkenny

I haven't

Brock Briggs

I was just curious. There's like this book been circulating around, it's been, it's kind of about like, literally dying with $0 in your bank account, not literally, but kind of echoes a lot of the same things that you were just talking about, about spending your time and money on the things that are important and valuable to you. Might be an interesting read for you, if you're interested in that.

Ryan Kilkenny  1:11:18 

Kind of it makes me think there's an episode that I've recorded. Maybe by the time this one's out, that episode will be out. But I interviewed somebody on the podcast and they said, their travel advisor or vacation advisor anyway, they said, spend your kids' inheritance, like with them, like creating memories and stuff like that. And he kind of like divers zero, he made me think about that.

Brock Briggs  1:11:45 

Yeah, yeah, it's along those same lines have some really good good lines in the book on that. Ryan, this has been really, really good. If we were to take away one message today from you that we could go and implement in our lives today, what do you think that that would be?

Ryan Kilkenny  1:12:00 

I would say that everything is a process. I talk about financial plan. The plan is not the most important thing. In fact, oftentimes, the financial plan is worthless because it's a snapshot in time, it's a moment in time, it's a screenshot. And as soon as we get out of that meeting, life is going to throw us all sorts of challenges, things that maybe we didn't see on the horizon, things that we didn't expect, but it's how we adapt, how we change, how we overcome those things that are gonna happen in life. And the process of financial planning is a process. It's like a thinking process and making course corrections, making wind adjustments, stuff like that.

And it's how we make those adjustments and how we adapt to the things that are gonna happen in life, like nothing's gonna go according to the plan. But if we have a simple plan that's executable, if it's flexible and we're willing to make changes and course corrections along the way, I think we're going to be successful, despite all the uncertainty, all the negative things that we see in the media. I believe that this is a great time to be alive. I mean, I'd much rather be alive today than like 200-300 years ago. Yeah, people are going to be, they just need to be flexible. Keep things simple, keep them flexible and everything will kind of it'll take care of itself.

Brock Briggs  1:13:39 

Fantastic. Last thing for you, what can myself and or the listeners do to be useful to you?

Ryan Kilkenny

I don't like to ask for anything.

Brock Briggs

This is your chance. I'm offering it. So you're not asking. I'm telling. Even if you just want to send them to your website or if let's say somebody wants to reach out and chat with you.

Ryan Kilkenny  1:13:59 

Sure. So what I would say is I'm always willing to help people. So and I am building my practice. I cannot promise people that I am a good fit for them. But I'm at least willing to have the conversation. And if I believe that there's somebody better for them, I'll help point them in the right direction. I'm trying to build my tribe. And so I would say the biggest thing right now, my focus, trying to be a little bit more consistent about it.

So the episodes are coming out weekly, but building the podcast and so give it a listen. And it's called the Atomic Retirement podcast. But give it a listen. If it speaks to you, keep listening to it I guess. If you want to reach out, have a conversation. I'm happy to do that. But if you think of anybody in your life, where you're like, hey, this really spoke to me. I think somebody would benefit from it. I'd appreciate it if you share it. That's all I want to ask. I don't want to ask anything else.

Brock Briggs  1:14:51 

I'll be sure to include links to your website and the podcast in the show notes. Ryan, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Ryan Kilkenny  1:14:58 

Thank you for having me.