Most people think life insurance is just a death payout. Brooke Thomas and Steve Goldstein are here to change that.
In this episode of The What If Show, host Mike Langford sits down with Brooke and Steve to make the case that life insurance is one of the most powerful — and most underused — tools in a retirement plan. They cover why the need for coverage doesn't go away at retirement (it sometimes gets bigger), how to have the conversation without making clients clam up, and a lineup of use cases that most people have never considered.
Whether you're a financial advisor looking to serve your clients at a higher level, or simply someone trying to understand how life insurance fits into a complete financial picture, this one's worth your full attention.
In this episode:
- Why Retirement Analyzer's life insurance tab makes the conversation happen organically — no awkward setup required
- The multiplier effect: how a death benefit can be 4–6x what a client paid in, tax-free
- Why a surviving spouse's assets often disappear faster than projected — and what protects against that
- Should adult children take over their parents' life insurance premiums? Steve makes the case.
- The real cost of dying: average funeral costs by state (yes, Retirement Analyzer has a fact sheet for that)
- How life insurance keeps family farms, ranches, and cottages in the family when estate taxes come due
- The "be your own bank" strategy: overfunding a permanent life insurance policy to build tax-free, borrowable cash value — a concept rooted in Nelson Nash's Infinite Banking concept
- What advisors without an insurance license should do (Brooke has a very direct answer)
- The danger of wills reviewed only once every 19 years — and the ex-spouses who are still listed as beneficiaries
Retirement BS segment: After a certain age, life insurance becomes less important to your financial plan. Brooke and Steve both call BS — and explain why.
The What If Show is brought to you by Thomas Gold Solutions, the team behind Retirement Analyzer — refreshingly simple retirement planning software built for financial advisors.
Chapters
00:00 — Introduction
01:28 — Why life insurance is core to any retirement plan
03:14 — How Retirement Analyzer makes the conversation happen naturally
04:42 — The certainty nobody wants to talk about
08:12 — The elephant in the room: advisors without an insurance license
12:16 — Should adult children pay their parents' life insurance premiums?
15:04 — The true cost of dying: funeral costs, hospice, and end-of-life expenses
19:03 — Keeping the family ranch in the family (estate tax planning)
21:13 — Using life insurance to pay a multi-million dollar estate tax bill
24:19 — Become your own bank: the cash value life insurance strategy
31:50 — What about clients with no dependents?
33:42 — The danger of the "set it and forget it" beneficiary
34:38 — Retirement BS: Does life insurance become less important as you age?
The What If Show
What if your next client appointment was your best one yet?
The What If Show is the podcast for financial advisors and financial planners who want to show up to every client meeting with confidence, clarity, and a plan that actually answers the hard questions. Hosted by Brooke Thomas and Steve Goldstein and powered by the team at Thomas Gold Solutions the company behind Retirement Analyzer... each episode explores the strategies, tools, and mindset shifts that help advisors deliver better retirement planning outcomes for their clients.
Because in retirement planning, every client walks in with the same unspoken question: Am I going to be okay? The best advisors don't just answer that question — they answer every "what if" that comes with it.
From debunking retirement planning myths in the Retirement BS segment to deep dives with industry experts, practitioners, and the people behind one of the most advisor-trusted planning platforms in the country, The What If Show gives you the insights and inspiration to become the advisor your clients can't stop referring.
New episodes drop regularly. Subscribe now and start answering the what ifs with confidence.
Brooke Thomas is the co-founder of Thomas Gold Solutions and one of the most experienced voices in retirement planning software in the financial services industry. Her story with Retirement Analyzer starts at the very beginning — she was the first person recruited by RA's original creator, Chuck Cravens, to test whether the platform could work for someone brand new to the business. At 23 years old, fresh out of college, with zero sales experience, Brooke went out and proved it could, turning over $150,000 in commissions in her first year.
That experience — knowing firsthand what it feels like to sit across from a client and need the right answer right now — shapes everything about how Thomas Gold operates today. Brooke oversees training, customer support, and product development with one guiding principle: advisors deserve a partner who actually picks up the phone.
Steve Goldstein spent 22 years as a trader on Wall Street before the market changed and he decided it was time to change with it. He became a financial advisor in the early 2000s — and quickly discovered that what he loved most about the work wasn't the products. It was the teaching. The moment a client actually understood their financial picture. The aha.
That obsession with clarity led him to Retirement Analyzer, and eventually to co-founding Thomas Gold Solutions with Brooke Thomas in 2010. Today the company serves more than 6,000 financial advisors and Steve is still the one who answers the phone on a Saturday morning from the aisle at Costco if that's what it takes. He travels the country leading bootcamps and training sessions with one mission: helping advisors become the most confident, capable version of themselves in every client appointment.