Linda Poole With New York Life Insurance Company

Intro: [00:00:03] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Richmond, Virginia. It’s time for Richmond Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:15] Lee Kantor here another episode of Richmond Business Radio and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor War Cry Consulting Solutions, supporting women to lean into their purpose, craft their vision and crush their goals. Today on Richmond Business Radio, we have Linda Poole with New York Life Insurance Company. Welcome, Linda.

Linda Poole: [00:00:40] Thank you, Lee, for inviting me. I appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:43] I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about your work. How are you serving folks?

Linda Poole: [00:00:47] Well, yes, I am a financial strategist. I was a former executive at Altria, where I ran a lot of the finance departments. I retired at the age of 54 in 2016, and I was immediately hired by New York Life Insurance Company as a as an agent. I worked my way up from an agent to a register rep, and now I am a financial advisor representative with New York Life Insurance Company. So it’s been quite exciting time for me over the span of the last 40 years, But I’m really excited to be where I am.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:27] So can you talk a little bit about who your customer is? Like, Who’s your ideal customer?

Linda Poole: [00:01:34] My ideal customer is really someone who wants to invest in their financial future, invest in their financial welfare, and learn as much as they can about the financial world and help them grow their wealth along the way. So I serve clients anywhere from landing their first career job. A lot of people go to school to learn that that first job, but no one is training them how to manage the money that they make from that job. So I work with people from landing their first job, getting the protection that they need as they journey through their working world. I help them accumulate and grow their wealth. And then during retirement, as we get older, we want to distribute some of that income so we can raise the bar on ourselves and have a wonderful life. So it’s the full gamut of starting their first job all the way through retirement.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:29] And that’s an important part. A lot of folks don’t concentrate on the youngest people, you know, people who are at the start of their career. Can you talk about why it’s so important for young people to start some sort of planning and saving at that early age so they can benefit from that beautiful compounding effect?

Linda Poole: [00:02:51] Absolutely. Most of us are financial frontiers, which means that we may be the first person in our family to actually grasp the concept of saving money and storing money and growing wealth. So it’s very important because if we don’t have that knowledge or have someone to help us along the way, we’re just going to spend our money frivolously and we’re going to look up one day and we won’t have anything to show for our hard work. So when you start young and be conservative and start saving small, you never get to a point where you have to do a big. I’m saving dump as you get older in life. So if you start young, start small and work your way up, it’s much easier to climb that mountain to retirement than it is. Start doing it at age 40 or 50 or 60.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:51] And when you’re saying start small, how much money are you talking about for those kind of beginners at this?

Linda Poole: [00:03:58] Well, for protection, it can start as little as $20 a month from an investment and saving perspective, we could start as little as $50 a month. And I think that’s important. What I try to do is get people in the in the mindset of protecting themselves, growing their wealth, and then they start to like it and then they want to do more of it. So it’s very important for me for them to get comfortable in that zone first and then adding money as you build higher and higher, building your your wealth strategy and your financial legacies.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:38] And can you talk a little bit about because there’s a lot of DIY folks out there that think, you know, how hard is this? I’ve seen some of these commercials where it just happens kind of I set it up and I don’t have to think about it. But can you explain the benefits of having a trusted advisor like yourself by their side to help them and advise them through this process?

Linda Poole: [00:05:00] Yes, I love that question because most of the listeners, even if they’ve started their first career or in their jobs, they should be striving to be experts in their field. I am an expert in my field, so there are really no mistakes made with me. So one of the things I already know, those funds that are working well, that are operating well and I can go straight to those funds versus trial and error. A lot of our clients are rookies at this, so they go and pick some funds not really knowing how to do the proper research or even having the history and the experience with those mutual funds or stocks. So that’s my area of expertise and that’s what I do for a living.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:50] And then isn’t it great to have an advisor by your side, especially when there’s kind of a turbulent, chaotic economy going on? Like it’s one thing when the stock market’s going straight up and whatever you’re guessing is probably okay. But when it’s turbulent is when you need that steady hand with you helping you.

Linda Poole: [00:06:09] Oh, absolutely. And that’s why it’s important to already have an established advisor before the turmoil takes place, because they should be setting the stage, helping you to understand the business. We all should know that the market is not going to be upward for the rest of our lives, consistently upward. So some of the things that a financial advisor could do is look at some of those trends that are happening that are leading indicators of what’s going to happen with the market. They could actually reinvest in different things or pull some money out and put into something safer. So that’s the job of a financial advisor and it’s also a financial advisors job to teach people on how to understand the financial world about investing. We’re I typically don’t harbor that information myself. I want to expand and to share it with my clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:07] Now, are you primarily working with kind of entrepreneurs? Do you work with folks that have like kind of a job in an enterprise level organization where they just need help, you know, kind of going through their benefits? Do you work with these corporations? And so they then in turn you can help their employees, Like, how are you finding these individuals?

Linda Poole: [00:07:30] Thank you for that question. I actually work with all types of clients. I am a business solution specialist as well as a financial advisor representative. So I have the full gamut. I have the full licenses. I am a CPA as well, so I understand the full gamut of the financial world. So I can help a business owner, I can help an individual who is working in a corporate world. I can I can touch base and help everybody with the full gamut.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:01] Do you have a favorite group that you like to work with?

Linda Poole: [00:08:05] Ideally, yes. It is really that young person coming out of college landing their first job, because if they are reaching out to you, then you know that that’s something that they really that they’re passionate about and want to do. So at that point, they’re healthy. So we can we can set up a baseline for them that will protect them for life starting from A to Z. So that is the ideal client. But I do work with people from a retirement perspective that have worked really hard all their lives and they’re looking at retirement and just trying to figure out what to do with their four one case, with their savings and just trying to solidify things from that point on.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:51] Yeah, which is a totally different kind of part of your brain you have to use, right? Because there’s one thing of accumulating wealth and then there’s another thing of accumulating wealth of how do you when you have just that set amount, how do you kind of disperse that over the future for the rest of your life where you don’t know how long that will be?

Linda Poole: [00:09:10] Oh, absolutely. And there are some key age ages that people need to be mindful of. For example, if you’re in the corporate world or you’re building your retirement savings, if it is paid by your employer at age 59 and a half, you want to get to that milestone because that means that you can utilize some of those funds without a 10% penalty from the IRS. So you have to be mindful of that. And when you’re putting your money in your 41k, you have to be strategic, you want to match, but you may not want to put it all in your 401k, You may want to put it into another account so that you have easy access to that money and not be subjected to the 59 and a half penalty. Then age 62 we’re ready for. That is the beginning of where you can start to draw Social Security. Some people want to do it and some people don’t. I’m personally trying to wait until my Social Security bank get to the maximum point where it can be. So that means I’m sacrificing myself at age 62 to age 67 or even 70, just so I. Can accumulate as much in my Social Security bank as I can. Then age 65 is when we all can get on medical care. That is the national health system, and I strongly encourage everyone to vote because there are some political parties that want to get rid of that. So we really want to vote to protect our rights. And then the last age is age 72. There’s something where if you have qualified funds, which are funds that your employee has set aside for you at the age of 72, if you haven’t used any of those funds at that point, there are assets going to start coming after you because they want some of their taxes. They want you to pay taxes on that at age 72. That’s called a required minimum distribution. And we all are subjected to that If we have monies that we haven’t paid taxes on at that point.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:18] And that’s there are so many things that the average person just isn’t aware of. And you have to have a trusted adviser like yourself kind of guiding them throughout this process because it is so complex. And if you make a mistake, this isn’t it could be a big mistake, right? Like if you misallocated some of these funds, there’s penalties. There’s there’s a lot of ramifications of doing it wrong.

Linda Poole: [00:11:44] Absolutely. It could be very costly. So here are some things that some people don’t think about. Even if you have that financial adviser that you absolutely love, love, love, and they’re making some game changer recommendations for you, you can always reach out for a second opinion to another financial advisor. And it gives you that that peace of mind that you’re moving in the right direction. And I do respect the fact that people already have a financial adviser and love the person that they’re working with. But it’s really your responsibility to get that second opinion just like you would if you were going to a doctor.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:23] Right. Having more information is not a bad thing.

Linda Poole: [00:12:28] Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:30] So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Linda Poole: [00:12:34] Well, I really want to promote learning about finances so that people don’t feel like they’re illiterate in regards to finances. I’m very down to earth, very laid back, and I want to make and create a conducive environment for people to learn. So that’s very important to me because you learn if you’re in a non-threatening or non intimidating environment. And that’s why I’ve gotten all my credentials by someone really invested in me. I want to invest in all these people who are looking for financial security, people who want financial guidance, financial understanding. I just want to be able to reach those people who are willing to to go down this journey of being financially successful.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:31] Well, it is the gift you’re giving these people. I hope they appreciate it, because if you get in the right habits early, that’s going to pay off dramatically down the road. Dramatically because the power of compounding is real. And the sooner you start, the bigger that pile will be at the end of the day.

Linda Poole: [00:13:52] Yeah, and a lot of people don’t understand, for example, New York Life Insurance Company is a mutual company. That means for the majority of our products that our clients purchase, they get dividends. So in addition to that compounded growth, they get dividends. So it’s like a double factor where you’re getting dividends on top of compounded grow. So all that stuff is very important for people to understand and the power of a custom whole life insurance policy where people can truly grow their wealth that way and get dividends and then be able to utilize that money for emergencies or retirement is it’s a game changer.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:34] Well, if somebody wants to connect with you, what’s the best way to do that? Do you have a website? Is it best through LinkedIn? What’s the best way, you know, social media? What’s the best way to get a hold of you?

Linda Poole: [00:14:45] I am on social media on Facebook. My name is Linda Baskerville Pool. I do have a social excuse me, a social and a business page. I am on LinkedIn as Linda B pool. People can also reach out to me through my New York life email address. It is L Pool. That’s Linda L as in Linda p l, e at F as in Frank, T as in Tom Dot New York life spelled out.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:20] Well, Linda, congratulations on all the success and you’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Linda Poole: [00:15:27] Well, thank you, Lee. I really appreciate that.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:30] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Richmond Business Radio.