Getting Started with Infinite Banking

Chris Bay:Welcome to the Life Success Legacy podcast. My name is Chris Bay and I’m joined today with the founder of Life Success & Legacy, Mike Everett.

Chris Bay:

Mike, today we want to talk about something that comes up a lot of times in our boot camps, in our seminars that we do, as people start to learn about the Infinite Banking Concept, they want to know well how does this apply to me? How do I get started? So I guess probably the best place to start with that is going back and talking about the wind current and how most people, not everybody, but most people are really fighting what we call a headwind. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Mike Everett:

Well, in some of our older podcasts we talk about a headwind tailwind, but we’re going to just specifically talk about the headwind right now. What is the headwind when you’re talking about your finances? Do we have a mortgage on the house? That’s a headwind. Do we have a loan on the car or cars? That’s a headwind. Do we have credit card debt? We have student loan debt or bank loan debt. That is what we call a headwind.

Mike Everett:

And if you think about it, when you get paid on Friday where does the money go? It goes to the bank. And then after you get that money in your bank what do you do with it? You have to make your house and cars and credit cards and student loans and bank loan payments before anything else happens. That is what we call the headwind, you are fighting a wind current because that money is not under any of your control.

Chris Bay:

And in Nelson’s book, Becoming Your Own Banker, he talks about the headwind and he talks in terms of interest and the amount of interest that the average American is sending out the window. Talk about that amount and what that’s doing to people’s lives.

Mike Everett:

Well, Nelson talks about the interest that we spend on all of that outside debt so to speak. He says that it’s 34,5% after taxes. So can you imagine the headwind that people are really truly fighting after taxes, that almost 35% of their money is going to interest alone?

Chris Bay:

Wow.

Mike Everett:

That’s a mountain.

Chris Bay:

It is. And yet our mindset, what we’ve been taught to think about money is, okay, we’re financing all this stuff in our life and yet we’re trying to save how much and put it towards retirement or some kind of tax qualified plan, an investment or so forth. And how much are we actually sending away for those types of things?

Mike Everett:

Well, for investments, for your 401K, IRAs, mutual funds and the like, you’re supposed to be saving somewhere between five and 10%. So if you think about it you’re sending 34,5% and supposedly saving five to 10%. Well none of that even makes sense if you really turned around and you looked at it according to the airplane world. If you were fighting a headwind of 345 miles an hour let’s say, and you’re… Let’s just say you’re saving 10% and your airplane goes 100 miles an hour, well, you’re going backwards.

Mike Everett:

And the financial gurus out there are saying, “Well, oh by the way maybe we could get your airplane to go five miles an hour more.”

Chris Bay:

Yeah.

Mike Everett:

So none of this really makes any sense to be honest with you, but that’s the awesome thing about what Nelson Nash’s book becoming your own banker has taught people. There is a way to change the headwind into a tailwind.

Chris Bay:

Well, I always… When I talk with people it just makes sense when you say, “Okay, so average America has 34,5% of their dollars leaving their control in interest.

Mike Everett:

Yep.

Chris Bay:

And they’re sending another five to 10% to investments, and those investments are not guaranteed.

Mike Everett:

No they’re not.

Chris Bay:

So what would you rather have? Would you rather have the maybe eight to 12% maybe return on an investment or would you rather have the 34,5% that’s going to interest, that if you just turn the wind current from a headwind to a tailwind it’s guaranteed to you. I mean it’s pretty obvious right?

Mike Everett:

It is obvious.

Chris Bay:

Okay, so let’s talk about that. We talk in terms of outside debt, that’s money that we’re sending out to somebody else, car loans, student loans, mortgages, those kinds of things. And inside debt, we want to switch that outside debt to our side and make it inside debt and then we’re making those payments to ourselves. Can you describe how that happens?

Mike Everett:

Well, one of the things that we get people to understand is we are trying to get these things under our control, which is then the inside debt that we’re talking about. So imagine if all of a sudden you were able to create a system where you controlled your car payments and credit card payments, student loan payments, and even possibly your mortgage.

Mike Everett:

So think about those payments that you are planning on paying for the next five, 10, 20, 30 years to somebody else, and then all of a sudden we were able to create a system to where you were making those payments to yourself. This is when economic value-added comes into the picture, EVA, which is one of the most powerful things in Nelson’s book. And really all we’re doing is we’re adding value, we’re telling people, “Your money has a cost.”

Mike Everett:

And what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to transfer that control that you were making to outside debt to your control and now you make those payments to yourself. It completely changes the way you think about your money.

Chris Bay:

So if I’m able to switch my outside debt where I’m paying to other people, and I shift it over to my side of the scales where it’s now inside debt, and I’m an honest banker and I apply economic value-added, that means I’m making those same payments to myself which then I get to reuse those dollars, don’t I?

Mike Everett:

That’s correct.

Chris Bay:

Okay. So here’s the question that people always have, and if I’m listening right now to the podcast, I’m saying, “Well that sounds great but how do I get the outside debt to my side of the scale and make it inside debt?” That’s the question we want to answer right now.

Mike Everett:

Well, part of that thought process is how does this apply to me?

Chris Bay:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mike Everett:

Okay, so people go… Just like you said, this all sounds fine and great, but how do I get this thing going for me? We have what we call activators and we teach this in our boot camps. People go, “Well, how do I get started?”

Mike Everett:

Well, we throw the question out to the group, where would you find money if you were thinking about doing something like infinite banking? And some of the things that come back to us are home equity lines of credit, cash, CDs that are setting in the bank. We even have some people utilize their 401ks. There are all kinds of ways for you to access dollars and create your own activator in order to get Infinite Banking implemented in your life.

Chris Bay:

Well, I remember examples like so many of us, and this would be us included back when we were doing another program, a financial program, as we were paying extra on our debts. So we were sending extra money to somebody else that we were losing control of that money. We have folks who… Basically what it is is with Infinite Banking is we were trying to increase the amount of money that people are using and controlling and sending their direction rather than sending it out of their control to somebody else.

Chris Bay:

We want to increase the pool of money that they can control. And we help… As you mentioned, it’s all… It’s unique. It’s individual. And where do people find out what can work for them, when does that happen?

Mike Everett:

Well, it happens in a number of different ways. It really happens mostly when they come to one of our boot camps or if they go to one of our online boot camps that we do every other Tuesday. We have these online boot camps where we’re creating ways that they can educate themselves to get the tools that they need in order to make the decisions of whether or not infinite banking is for them.

Chris Bay:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah. And what’s always surprising is people may not think that they have a pool of money that they have control of, and that’s where the coaching sessions that we do with them is we help them discover where that pool of money is that they have control of and how they can leverage that pool of money to turn their outside debt to inside debt and start taking advantage of those dollars and getting multiple uses of those dollars.

Mike Everett:

Chris, this could happen really quickly for some people because everybody has a pool. Every single person has a pool but nobody has ever showed them how to take advantage of the pool that they have access to.

Chris Bay:

So when we do our client conversations we talk with people about what are their goals, those things, and a lot of times debt is one of the things that they’re concerned about. Give the listeners just a feeling of in general, how quickly are people able to shift their outside debt to inside debt?

Mike Everett:

Well, it really depends on the access that people have to their own pool. The average client, and I’m just talking about the average client, can be 100% out of debt, to any outside debt, any other financial institution I’m talking about, in five to eight years.

Chris Bay:

Yeah.

Mike Everett:

But we do have some people that have the ability to change that wind current in the first year.

Chris Bay:

Yeah, yeah. Some cases the first month, which that sounds insane to people probably but it’s pretty fun to be a part of designing those. Mike, I appreciate you talking about how people can get started. This may seem a little vague to folks and really for the best… The best way for them to find out, I always tell people, “Would you be willing to spend $0 to see what was possible?”

Mike Everett:

Absolutely.

Chris Bay:

I don’t know why you wouldn’t, but if people want to find out they can contact us through our website at lifesuccesslegacy.com.

Chris Bay:

Again, we always encourage people to educate themselves through either coming to one of our boot camps, joining us on a webinar. They can register for all of those on our website. And of course we encourage them to order Nelson Nash’s book, becoming your own banker, off of our website, and read that and educate themselves.

Chris Bay:

Next podcast we’re going to get into and it may take a couple of podcasts, and that’s getting into policy design. Why are the policies for IBC different than what you might find in other circumstances. Mike, thanks for joining us and listeners, thanks for joining us.