Mike and Chris pick up right where they left off and continue to the ins and outs of creating the entity. Nelson spends time explaining the classification of Whole Life, which he contends should have been called a ‘banking system with a death benefit thrown in for good measure’. Remember, we used to think that potatoes were poisonous because of misclassification… rethink your thinking.
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This next section will be a multi-part podcast on the idea of Creating the Entity. Mike and Chris take a dive into the world of Life Insurance Actuaries… yeah, we know you’re riveted. However, this is critical to understand, if we are to understand Whole Life Insurance, and how it is the best tool for banking. Watch and learn, we promise it’s more exciting than it sounds!
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In this #tbt podcast we review the question that we get all the time; is Infinite Banking a scam. The original podcast was released in February of 2018, and honestly, the question probably gets asked more now than back then. We all get so caught up into our current way of thinking, that when something comes along that challenges those thought processes, we often find ourselves doubting the validity of it. If you haven’t listened to this podcast, or even if you have, it’s a great one to review.
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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. Mike, today we want to talk about a question that if you do too much Googling it doesn’t take you long to find the question, “Is IBC a scam?”
Mike Everett:
All right.
Chris Bay:
So when people bring that up in their investigation of the Infinite Banking concept, we always tell them education research, those kinds of things are going to tell you whether it is or not. We know it’s not. Everybody on our team was a client at one point.
Mike Everett:
Correct.
Chris Bay:
So including myself, this is something that we experienced personally. And then I personally left a 22 year career to teach other people how to apply Infinite Banking into their lives.
Mike Everett:
That’s correct.
Chris Bay:
The way that I got there was through educating myself. So walk us through the education process that helps people understand and learn why IBC truly is not a scam.
Mike Everett:
Well, first off you’re using a 250 plus year old product called dividend paying whole life insurance, number one. Number two, because we are using a dividend paying whole life insurance, all we’re doing is we’re re-engineering or reallocating the money. So literally we’re using this product that’s been around for all these years. So how could it be a scam if we’re using a product that is sanctioned by every state in America, and we’re utilizing it as a financing option in somebody’s life? We don’t really do anything but educate people about dividend paying whole life insurance. But the Infinite Banking concept just happens to be a strategy that we use.
Chris Bay:
It’s not fancy.
Mike Everett:
It’s not.
Chris Bay:
I tell people all the time, it’s not fancy, it’s not sexy. It is simply dividend paying whole life insurance. And then what Nelson introduced in his book, Becoming Your Own Banker, is simply re-engineering it.
Mike Everett:
A hundred percent.
Chris Bay:
De emphasizing the death benefit, emphasizing the cash value part of it, and then you have a tool that you can use to finance your entire life. That can be debt. That can be your living expenses. That can be investment. That can be business. It can be all kinds of… It could be your family members debt. Some of our clients, they’re doing very well for themselves simply by financing their extended family’s debt. They have become the bank for those people.
Mike Everett:
A couple of questions that we always ask somebody is, “Would you spend $0 to find out the possibilities? Or would you take two steps backward to go 10 steps forward?”
Chris Bay:
Unpack that a little bit. That, “Would you be willing to spend zero to see what was possible?” If a client contacted us, and we always encourage people to just call us, we love teaching this concept to people. We will never ask you. We aren’t going to try and sell to you. We just want to educate people. And when we do that, it becomes pretty clear. So can you talk about for that $0 that they’re going to pay, what do people get as they go through our education process?
Mike Everett:
Well, literally when we say spend $0, we’re talking about potentially doing one of our online webinars or attending one of our boot camps. We don’t charge anybody any money to find out what’s possible in their lives. The only money that they will ever spend, ever with us, they’re going to spend $20 if they buy the book, it’s 25 on the website, cause we got to send it to you. So we’re going to charge you five bucks, even though it costs me 6.95 to send it to them. But the bottom line is we want people to educate themselves, spend some time learning about this, because if half of what we’re telling people really does work, it would be totally worth their time to check it out.
Chris Bay:
If it were a scam do we think that our existing clients would be coming back to us to open new policies?
Mike Everett:
They would not. And I’ll tell you where this all came from. This came from back in the late seventies, early eighties, when a company called AL Williams was doing buy term invest the difference, they got kicked out of all 50 states. That should tell you something. But part of the reason why it’s been coined it’s a scam, is life insurance agents in general have not done very well in educating themselves about the products that they sell. We do. We spend hours and hours and hours educating ourselves of what is the best possibilities. What is the best design? What is the best strategy for each and every customer?
Chris Bay:
Yeah, it’s interesting. Since the time that I came on board with Life Success & Legacy, of my client base, and I’m going to say it’s, I’m going to guess, I know it’s probably about 170 or more now. Not one client has dropped their policy. Not one. Now I attribute that to several things. One, is we do an unbelievable job in my opinion of educating people up front.
Mike Everett:
Yes, we do.
Chris Bay:
And we do not let them move forward with this until they understand what they’re doing.
Mike Everett:
That’s correct.
Chris Bay:
And that if there’s a marriage that both parties are on board.
Mike Everett:
That’s right.
Chris Bay:
Secondly, we do an unbelievable job, in my opinion, of not overextending people. We design policies. We design IVC strategies to address their needs, to solve their problems.
Thirdly, we become their coaches going forward. You and I know that all day long we’re getting emails, text messages, phone calls from our clients, and they’re paying how much for our…
Mike Everett:
Zero.
Chris Bay:
Zero. We become their coaches going forward. One of our biggest challenges that we face is when we have clients who this really clicks in for them and they get down the road a little bit using their policies, they see the power of it with their lives, they want to start new policies right away.
Mike Everett:
Right away.
Chris Bay:
And what do we do?
Mike Everett:
We have to pull them off the ledge.
Chris Bay:
So many times we’re saying, “Yes, we understand, but you’ve got to wait. We got to capitalize this what your system that you’ve got in place first. And then we’ll go from there.” So yeah, we’ve got returning clients who are wanting to do more policies, not one of my clients has dropped their policy. It’s because of all these reasons that we listed. And that truly is a reason why, if you do all that, you know it’s not a scam.
Mike Everett:
That’s right.
Chris Bay:
Yeah. Well, it’s a good question. There’s, of course, lots of information out there. I’ll finish with this. I’ve read some stuff out there on the internet, around looking at IBC. And the main thing that people forget when they start analyzing it is, they look at it as an investment. It is not an investment. In fact, in Nelson Nash’s book on page three, second column, first full paragraph, it says “IBC is not about investments of any kind. It is a way to finance your needs in your life.” And that certainly can include in vestments, right?
Mike Everett:
Yeah.
Chris Bay:
Good discussion, Mike. Thanks for the time. For those of you listening in, again, we encourage you to go to our website, lifesuccesslegacy.com. If you have not read Nelson Nash’s book, Becoming Your Own Banker, it is a life changing read. Again, it is not a how-to book. It is a book about imagination and possibilities. If you want to see what is really possible in your life, we will charge you $0 to find out. Just give us a call. Thanks for joining us.
This week would have been Nelson Nash’s 90th birthday and in this episode Mike and Chris pay homage to the man that impacted their lives so much. In fact, we know he left his mark on thousands of people. We hope you enjoy this short tribute.
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In this #tbt podcast, Mike and Chris dive into something we hear all the time, that whole life insurance is a bad place to store your money. In fact, I bet you’ve either said it yourself, or heard someone make the claim. However, this is the absolute brilliance of Nelson Nash and his Infinite Banking Concept. When you take a step back and look at it through the lens of this podcast, or for that matter through the lens of Nelson Nash himself, you will quickly realize that there is in fact NO better place to store your money. If you are still in the camp that whole life is bad, I suggest listening to this podcast, you might come away with a new perspective!
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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.
So Mike, today, I want to address one of the questions that was a huge stumbling block for me. When Shawn and I first were introduced to this concept of Infinite Banking and I got a hold of Nelson Nash’s book, Becoming Your Own Banker, and I read it multiple times, there were pieces that really fit and made sense to me. But I had a mental block, and that was because I had been taught that whole life insurance was the worst place in the world to put our money.
Mike Everett:
We hear this over and over.
Chris Bay:
So let’s dig into that. There’s a lot of people out there, a lot of financial people, a lot of financial personalities, that are out in the world that are saying whole life insurance is the worst place in the world to put your money. Why did they say that?
Mike Everett:
Well, if you go and you look at a traditional whole life insurance policy and the way it’s designed, I really would tend to lean towards what those personalities have said, that whole life insurance is a bad place to put money.
But if you go back a couple of generations right now and you think, “Where did people put money before 401ks and IRAs became the traditional place to put money … ”
Chris Bay:
Tax qualified plans.
Mike Everett:
You got it.
Chris Bay:
Before those every came about.
Mike Everett:
I’m going to just tell you. The only place most of those people, and you’re talking about my grandparents and my great-grandparents, they only had one place that they could … Well, excuse me, two. They put it in whole life insurance programs, policies, or they put it under the mattress at home. That’s the only place that they did.
But if you go back and you think like Nelson does, you think long term. Whole life insurance is the safest place you can put your money regardless of how it’s designed. But because of the way in which we go about re-engineering the way the money is allocated in the policy, it’s the safest, best place in the world, and it’s got more guarantees than anything that somebody would put their money in.
Chris Bay:
Yeah, I think from my standpoint, or at least how I was taught to think about money, it’s because whole life insurance may be traditionally designed, which was designed to emphasize the death benefit. You want to pay as little as possible.
Mike Everett:
That’s right.
Chris Bay:
Right? Well, when you look at that and you’re looking at it purely as an investment, that maybe it doesn’t match up to some other things. But honestly, I’ve seen some work out there by some folks, where actually it can even show up to be better than some of the investments that are out there.
Mike Everett:
Well, in Nelson’s book, I’m going to just tell you, he uses a couple of examples, one with the twins and one with the equipment financing. If you look at this over the long haul, I’m just telling you, it outperforms the market. It outperforms inflation.
Chris Bay:
What’s interesting, when we read Nelson’s book, the examples in the book aren’t even designed-
Mike Everett:
They are not.
Chris Bay:
… to emphasize the cash value part, which is how we would design it for people.
Mike Everett:
That’s correct.
Chris Bay:
Why did he do that?
Mike Everett:
Well, the reason why he did that was he wanted to make sure people knew that it would work even if the policy wasn’t designed properly.
Chris Bay:
If it’s designed traditionally to emphasize death benefit-
Mike Everett:
The death benefit.
Chris Bay:
… and pay as little into it as possible, there’s some debate amongst people whether it would be better to do that versus some other things.
But when you start factoring in that a policy could be designed to de-emphasize the death benefit and you could emphasize the cash value portion of it, and then you introduce the whole concept of using it for banking, financing your financing needs in your life, there is no comparison.
Mike Everett:
There’s not. One of the questions that we always ask people right this very minute, “What is more important to you, cash or life insurance death benefit?” What do they all say?
Chris Bay:
Cash.
Mike Everett:
Cash every single time. What if there was a program out there where you could put money in and have access to it income tax-free all along the days of your life. We need cash from right now til the day we die. We only need death benefit one day. We can show you through the program, through IBC, through the policy, that if you did this all along your life, not only would you have access and be able to utilize the cash that’s flowing in and out of your money; but at the time of your death, you’ll end up having two, three, four, five times more death benefit than what you could purchase right now.
Chris Bay:
You know how I would phrase it is, so many of us look at, whether it’s whole life or an investment or whatever, we look at it as an either/or. Really what this is about is a yes/both.
Mike Everett:
That’s exactly right.
Chris Bay:
If you really want to invest in the market or other types of things, you can do that.
Mike Everett:
Yeah, absolutely.
Chris Bay:
But if you’re smart, you’re going to run your money through your IBC system, get all the guarantees that they offer, and then take loans against your policy and go do the stuff that you love to do.
Mike Everett:
Exactly.
Chris Bay:
Yeah. It’s a great question. It’s a hard one in our culture because so many of us have been told that whole life insurance is bad, bad place to put our money. But truth be told, it’s actually the best place in the world to store our money. It’s foundational to a whole financial economic system for ourselves.
Mike Everett:
It is.
Chris Bay:
Yeah. Great discussion, Mike. Thanks.
Folks who are listening, we encourage you as always to go to our website, lifesuccesslegacy.com. If you have not read Nelson Nash’s book, Becoming Your Own Banker, please get yourself a copy of that and spend the time to read it at least once, if not more.
Nelson wrapped up the Human Problems section with a one page chapter on the topic of Use It or Lose It. Mike and Chris venture down into the main principle, EVA, or Economic Value Added. Which is the “recognition of the fact that your own capital has a cost, as well as that which has been borrowed from banks.” Seems simple enough, but as Nelson wrapped the chapter up he states it perfectly, “Just like EVA, to be effective, IBC must become a way of life.”
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This weeks #tbt podcast was originally released January 4th, 2018. The sustainability of Infinite Banking has very little to do with the concept itself, but is a question about the insurance industry itself. I believe this question is rooted in the uncertainty of the federal reserve and our monetary system, and as a result, we feel like the insurance companies must be as unstable as those entities. However, if you take a listen (or read) to this podcast, you’ll quickly realize that the two are not equal. A lot has changed since the original release of this podcast, but the constant is that there is not a more reliable and sustainable vehicle than whole life insurance.
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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. Hey Mike, one of the other questions that we run into amongst the variety of questions that are out there has to do with, okay, once people get to the idea where they’re like, this really makes sense, why would everyone not be doing this? Right? Then they start thinking, well, what if everyone started doing it? Could the life insurance companies handle that? Is it financially sustainable if everyone started doing this? So what I’d like for you to do is talk a little bit about how insurance companies, how they design this, the work that they do, the actuaries do, the engineers of the life insurance companies, and how it truly is sustainable.
Mike Everett:
Well, first of all, life insurance actuaries work with 10 million selected lives. That means that they know how many people are going to die every year, regardless of what’s going on. And they can do this very, very accurately, number one. Number two, I guess I start to think about whole life insurance in the term of IBC, because most people, when they go to buy life insurance, what do they buy? They buy term insurance. So it’s really just a little tiny premium to get a great big death benefit. And that’s the way 90% of the people out there are buying life insurance. So you have 10ish percent that are out there buying whole life insurance, but they don’t understand how the policy can be re-engineered so they can start utilizing their cash. So you think about it from a life insurance company’s standpoint, they’re normally used to getting 300, 500, 1,000, or $2,000 for premium for term life insurance.
And Oh, by the way, term life insurance is one of their most profitable centers. So you think about it from a life insurance company’s standpoint, and you said, is this sustainable if everybody starts doing it? Well, most of the people that we work with, at least a great percentage, their premium amounts aren’t two or three or $4,000 a year. They’re five and 10 and 15 and $20,000 a year. So from a life insurance company’s standpoint, do they want a little money sent to them? Or do they want a lot of money sent to them? The more, the better. So part of the thing is we have to get people to understand that the whole life insurance company knows what they’re doing when they’re designing the policy.
Chris Bay:
So in our culture though, we always hear people talk about high risk investments. You want to get your money into higher risks because you have higher returns, greater returns, those kinds of things. Can you talk about the risk involved in kind of the investment thing? Because life insurance companies are doing something with that money. Right?
Mike Everett:
They are.
Chris Bay:
And isn’t that putting my money at risk?
Mike Everett:
Well, here’s the nice thing. When you work with a hundred year old companies, and all the companies that we work with are more than a hundred years old. That means that they’ve been doing the same thing day in, day out, day in, day out for more than a hundred years. In fact, one of the insurance companies that we work with has paid dividends for more than a hundred years. So they’re not putting any of the money at risk. So what they’re doing is they are taking those premium dollars and they are taking those out and investing them in very, very conservative ways so it’s not putting any of the money at risk.
Chris Bay:
Bonds, things like that.
Mike Everett:
Yeah. Very simple investments. [crosstalk 00:04:15].
Chris Bay:
Things that are [crosstalk 00:04:16].
Mike Everett:
Guaranteed.
Chris Bay:
Yeah. Guaranteed. That’s right. And that’s one of the surprising things to people. It actually was really attractive to me because, back in my days when I was a principal, I remember a teacher came in, would have been in 2008 and she was ready to retire. And then come the spring when the market crashed, she couldn’t retire.
Mike Everett:
The 2008 meltdown.
Chris Bay:
That’s right. And I didn’t know about IBC at that time, but when I heard that story, I filed that away in my head. And I thought, I don’t want my money at risk. I wonder if there’s a way to do, a place to put my money where I can benefit from it. And it’s not at risk like her money was.
Mike Everett:
Yeah.
Chris Bay:
Yeah. So there’s also some regulations with life insurance. Right? That kind of guarantees that they’ve got to have a certain number of reserves and those kinds of things. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Mike Everett:
Well, in the banking industry, I’m going to start with the banking industry. The banking industry, when you put a dollar on deposit at the bank, so you’re saving a dollar, they have the ability to loan out $10. That’s called fractional reserve banking. So here’s the deal. You and I put a dollar in and they’re able to loan out 10. So the question that we always ask is where did they get the $9 to loan out? Well, they got it from thin air because the federal government, the federal reserve, said that you guys can do this. If you get a dollar in, you can loan out 10. Now you think about that from a customer’s or a client’s standpoint. Is their money at risk. Yes, it is. There is so much stress on that money. That’s why you hear about banks going down all the time. A life insurance company, on the other hand is when you put a dollar in, they have to have a dollar set aside for death claims and the life and death claims, dividends, et cetera, et cetera. So there is absolutely zero stress on that money at all.
Chris Bay:
So when a person, let’s say that Joe, we’ll just take Joe as a name. Let’s say that Joe is issued a policy. At that point, day one, if he were to pass away, that company has to have the ability to pay that death claim. Right?
Mike Everett:
Yes, they do.
Chris Bay:
Okay. And they’ve got to have, by law, they’ve got to have reserves.
Mike Everett:
That’s correct.
Chris Bay:
Can you talk a little bit about that number? The amount of reserves and then also really the companies that we work with and how safe they are.
Mike Everett:
The average life insurance company is required by law to have at least a hundred percent in reserves, a hundred percent. So that means that you have to have a hundred percent of the money set aside so if everybody dies on the same day, guess what? We can pay a hundred percent of the death claims.
Chris Bay:
Even in a catastrophic event.
Mike Everett:
Even in a catastrophic event.
Chris Bay:
They have to be prepared for that.
Mike Everett:
That is correct.
Chris Bay:
Yeah.
Mike Everett:
But the companies that we work with have 600 plus percent in reserves. They have six times more than anybody else out there in order to make sure that there is absolutely zero stress on your money plus the fact that they can actually guarantee that they will honor the contract that they have made with you through whole life insurance.
Chris Bay:
Yeah. It just came to mind, a lot of times and what’s out there in terms of financial conversations and stuff, the term diversification comes up, and people will ask from time to time, they’ll say, well, Chris, don’t you diversify? And my way of thinking is, well, the reason that we diversify a lot of times is because there’s risk.
Mike Everett:
That’s correct.
Chris Bay:
But if there’s no risk involved, is there a need to diversify?
Mike Everett:
None.
Chris Bay:
None.
Mike Everett:
Zero. Nada.
Chris Bay:
Now, if I have cash value, I can use that for a lot of different reasons. Right?
Mike Everett:
Absolutely.
Chris Bay:
What are some of the ways that people utilize their cash value?
Mike Everett:
Well, we show them how to take policy loans against their policy to pay off credit card debt, to pay off student loan debt, to pay off auto loans, and even mortgages. So imagine if we were able to actually utilize a policy loan to get somebody debt-free how simple would their life be?
Chris Bay:
Okay. So one is turning the wind current that we’ve talked about in previous podcasts.
Mike Everett:
That’s correct.
Chris Bay:
That’s one. What are some other ways that people use their cash values?
Mike Everett:
Well, some of the, sometimes what they do is they use them to go on vacation. They use them to pay for their kids’ college.
Chris Bay:
So living expenses.
Mike Everett:
That’s exactly right.
Chris Bay:
So once you’ve paid off debt, you can then utilize it for what we talk about the second pillar. And that is financing your life. Right?
Mike Everett:
That’s correct.
Chris Bay:
What about businesses? Business opportunities?
Mike Everett:
Well, it’s amazing when you have a pool of cash available business opportunities find you, so you’d have the freedom to be able to invest so to speak in another business, whether it be real estate or whatever you choose.
Chris Bay:
Nelson talks about the golden rule in his book. What’s that golden rule mean?
Mike Everett:
Those who have the gold, make the rules.
Chris Bay:
That’s right. So there’s opportunities for people. And we have clients like this that they have started business opportunities, utilizing their cash value and their policies. They’ve taken loans to start businesses. They’ve used it for real estate. And let’s just say, somebody loves the stock market.
Mike Everett:
They can go do that too.
Chris Bay:
Couldn’t they borrow from their policy, against their policy…
Mike Everett:
Yeah. That’s correct.
Chris Bay:
… take a loan against their policy and go invested in this great stock that they heard about, they got a tip about? They’ve got the guaranteed growth from their policy, plus the death benefit. Right? And yet they can still take a loan against their policy and go and invest it in this great tip that they got.
Mike Everett:
Absolutely.
Chris Bay:
So there’s all kinds of ways that they can do it and limit their risk factor and actually be safe with their money as well. And have lots of flexibility with it. Well, Mike, thanks for talking through that. A lot of people wonder if it is sustainable, if everyone started doing it. And clearly as you’ve explained, it’s very safe. Life insurance companies are built for this kind of thing. Please join us in future podcasts. I’m Chris Bay joined today by Mike Everett, the founder of Life Success & Legacy. Check out our website by the same name, Live Success, and Legacy. If you have not read Nelson Nash’s book, Becoming Your Own Banker, you can get a copy of that on our website. We highly recommend that you educate yourself in reading that book and utilizing some of the other resources we have on our website.
Nelson states, “This phenomenon probable limited the achievements of mankind more than anything else. When this ‘thing’ infects us, we stop growing, stop learning. We turn off or tune out the ability to receive inspiration — because we ‘already know all there is to know.'” If that doesn’t make you stop and ponder for a moment…
Nelson was right, though. Our ability to learn and grow is almost always hindered by our human nature, or the arrival syndrome. Watch and listen as Mike and Chris go deeper into this incredibly short, but packed chapter about that ‘thing’ that is infecting us. You will certainly walk away glad you did!
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In this #tbt post, Mike and Chris talk through a question we get all the time. Is Infinite Banking too good to be true? Honestly it’s a question most of us have asked too! Take a listen to this podcast, and we feel you will be pleasantly surprised that our goal is not to ‘prove’ someone right or wrong, but it is to educate and re-educate. Skepticism is expected, and even welcomed! Enjoy this gem of a show!
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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.
Hey, Mike. In all the conversations that we have with people, there’s several questions that continually come up. We talked about another one in a different podcast earlier. The one I want to tackle right now is pretty common. And it is once people start to learn about this, especially after they’ve come to one of our boot camps, they say, “This sounds too good to be true.” Right?
Mike Everett:
We hear that all the time.
Chris Bay:
All the time, yeah. So when you first learned about IBC, you read the book and everything. Did you have the same feeling?
Mike Everett:
Well, being an entrepreneur, I didn’t have the same feeling because I always look a little bit on the super positive side of everything. So after I got done with the book, the second time, I literally thought I’m leaving a career and I’m doing this full time because it did sound too good to be true. But I thought, okay, I was 50 years old. I’d been doing what everybody else was doing. I was putting money into my 401K, my IRAs and mutual funds. I even had a stock account, but yet wasn’t getting ahead. So there was a part of me that said, “Yeah, it sounds too good to be true.” But there was a part of me that goes, “Wow, if this thing works…”
Chris Bay:
Well, let’s be real. Knowing different personalities and such, your personality is going to be a quick start. I mean, you’re going to see something and you’re going to process it in the snap of fingers. You’re like, “This works. I want to get into this. Let’s go.”
Mike Everett:
Yeah, let’s go.
Chris Bay:
But not everybody’s like that.
Mike Everett:
That’s right.
Chris Bay:
Present company included.
Mike Everett:
That’s right.
Chris Bay:
So for some people it’s not this, “Wow, I’ve tried all this.” Not everybody was at the stage of life where you are when you were introduced and not everybody’s had a chance to try all those things. And so, all they’ve heard out in the media and in the financial thinking is different ways to manage money. Then they get introduced to IBC and the common question is, “It sounds too good to be true.” Right?
Mike Everett:
That is true.
Chris Bay:
So talk to us a little bit about those kinds of things. When people come to us and they say, “It sounds too good to be true.” How do you talk to them about it?
Mike Everett:
Well, I get back to some pretty basic stuff. Is number one, you got to think long term. You hear that thing, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Well, we take a different approach and we think you ought to do some more research and spend some time with us and let us educate you. Because if we can somehow educate you, you’re going to be able to see IBC in a different light. And one of the things that Nelson has said that is IBC is caught not taught. There’s a certain portion of us that can learn that, but there’s a certain portion of you that says, “Golly, this just sounds right.”
Chris Bay:
That’s how it was for me. But it took me a long time to get to that point. And part of my, I mean, just being honest, part of my stumbling block was that it used whole life insurance. And from my previous exposure to financial information, whole life insurance was the worst place in the world to put money.
Mike Everett:
We hear that all the time.
Chris Bay:
Absolutely, right? So we tell people to research it. We tell people to educate themselves. We tell people to come to our boot camps, go to our websites, all those kinds of things. Right?
Mike Everett:
That’s right.
Chris Bay:
Now, do you push people to make a decision?
Mike Everett:
No, absolutely not. We want people, we want husbands and wives, we want partners to be fully on board with each other.
Chris Bay:
Talk about that husband and wives thing.
Mike Everett:
Well, I’ll tell you what I learned. I learned the hard way. Me, being an entrepreneur type, one of the things I want to do is just get out and talk to people. I want to talk to anybody and everybody about IBC. That’s how excited I am about this. But learning that the hard way was tough for me because sometimes I would just go and see just the husband or I would just talk to the wife and I can tell you exactly what’s going to happen. Is if I talk to one without the other, I’m going to have to tell the other one the same exact thing and spend the same exact amount of time with them again. So we really believe that husbands and wives are going to do this together. They are going to share in the experience before they proceed. We will not talk to one spouse or the other without the other one.
Chris Bay:
I just had a conversation with somebody recently and it was the husband and we were talking about IBC and he was wanting to meet. And he’s like, “Yeah, my wife trusts me and all that.” And I said, “Let me give you an example. Let’s say that your wife and you have talked about doing some counseling, okay? And your wife goes to a counselor and they’ve had maybe three, four sessions. So they’ve developed some rapport. They’ve gone a little deep. They’ve had those conversations and then they invite you to the next session. How effective is that going to be? How comfortable are you going to feel? Right? Is there going to have to be some going back and covering some groundwork with that?” And this is the same thing.
Mike Everett:
Yeah. That’s why we don’t push the sale.
Chris Bay:
We don’t. And we really are pushing for mutual purpose, mutual understanding with the couple. And it doesn’t mean that both parties have to know every cell of every spreadsheet and all that, but we want to help them get on the same page because we talk about this all the time, this is so much bigger than just numbers.
Mike Everett:
It is.
Chris Bay:
And what is one of the top stressors to a marriage?
Mike Everett:
Money.
Chris Bay:
Absolutely. So if we can take away, or at least reduce one of those key stressors in a marriage, how much power does that give to a couple?
Mike Everett:
It is truly unbelievable. My wife and I have experienced it ourselves. And I know that you guys have as well.
Chris Bay:
Absolutely. Yeah, that’s good.
It’s interesting when, we do our boot camps, this is almost a quote from your mouth. You say, “We want you to be skeptical.”
Mike Everett:
Absolutely.
Chris Bay:
Why do you say that?
Mike Everett:
Well, part of it is, if somebody comes in a little bit skeptical, what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to educate and then we’ve got to educate again. And then we’ve got to educate again, because we believe that education is the key piece to why somebody would think that Infinite Banking would even work. Because we were taught to be skeptical about everything with our money.
Well, what we’re doing is, in this education piece and this, we are teaching people. We are empowering people in a way that no other financial group is doing throughout the entire U.S.
Chris Bay:
Yeah, when people come to our boot camps and they see us wearing shorts and tennis shoes and we’re goofing around and having fun, talking about money and things, they’re always a little surprised, but it’s refreshing. People laugh. They leave having… They’ve had a good time. They haven’t felt pressured. And they feel like they walked away with a new perspective on money and really with hope.
Mike Everett:
Well, this is why we offer every other Tuesday, a webinar free of charge, regardless of what state or where you’re at in life. We offer those every other Tuesday, you ought to go to lifesuccesslegacy.com and check out, under bootcamps, and find out when our… Tuesday evening from 6:45 to 8:00 PM Central. It’s unbelievable.
But when we aren’t doing our Tuesday evenings, we do these boot camps. We do a boot camp one, which is really just a gigantic book review. And then we do a boot camp two, but this is where we offer people a live version of exactly what we do. But we do it in a fun, no pressure atmosphere, where you can ask questions. You can be skeptical. You can throw things at us if you want to. We want people to be skeptical. We want them to think, “Golly, this just does sound too good to be true.” But once they get in and they find out that they can control things in their own way, it’s unbelievable what happens.
Chris Bay:
Yeah, so it really is too good to be true, isn’t it? It actually is true and it is good.
Mike Everett:
That’s right.
Chris Bay:
That’s right.
Well, thanks for listening. Again, we point you to our website, lifesuccesslegacy.com and check out some of our other resources that we have there. I’ve got some other podcasts for you to check out as well. Thanks again for joining us.
In this #tbt episode Mike and Chris break down the reasons so many of us have never heard of Infinite Banking. Mike separates it into three main points: 1. Nelson didn’t write Becoming Your Own Banker until 2000. 2. There aren’t enough IBC practitioners. 3. Third, it takes time and energy to educate yourself about IBC. This includes potential clients and agents. In other words, it’s too time consuming.
What can we learn from this? Well, if you want to be the one in charge and control of your own money and financial future, you have to educate yourself. You can’t rely on the ‘old way’ of thinking and expect different results than what we’ve all been subjected to for years. The other take-away; using whole life insurance as a cashflow vehicle isn’t new. It’s just that we’ve never been taught about its power, until now.
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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. Hey Mike, over the years as we have talked with people about the Infinite Banking Concept, there’s lots and lots of questions that come up. There’s one that we hear frequently, and that is why haven’t I heard of IBC before, right? Have you ever heard that before?
Mike Everett:
I’ve heard that so many times, it’s unbelievable. Yeah.
Chris Bay:
And it’s a legit question, right?
Mike Everett:
It is.
Chris Bay:
Personally, I had never heard about it until, back in the day when I was an elementary school principal and I went to one of my dad’s, who was a business owner in town, and I said, “How do you manage your finances?” And he said, “Have you ever heard of Infinite Banking, IBC?” I said, “No.” So right there, I was thinking, why haven’t I heard of this? Why has no one taught me this?
Mike Everett:
Well-
Chris Bay:
You hadn’t heard of it either right?
Mike Everett:
No, I hadn’t.
Chris Bay:
Yeah.
Mike Everett:
Well, there’s several reasons probably why people haven’t heard about it. Number one, Nelson didn’t write his book, Becoming Your Own Banker, until 2000. What he did though, was he utilized the Infinite Banking Concept for about 20 to 30 years prior to writing his book because he wanted to know that it worked. Secondly, there’s not enough practitioners, guys like us, who are effectively teaching the Infinite Banking Concept. Third, most of the people, and this includes potential clients and advisors, don’t take the necessary time to educate themselves and understand the true power of Infinite Banking or IBC.
Chris Bay:
Right, right. Now, let me ask you this. You and I had not heard about Infinite Banking beforehand and Nelson hadn’t written his book until 2000, but were people or organizations or somebody out there using the concept in general and then Nelson added to it? Corporations were using this, right?
Mike Everett:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Chris Bay:
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Mike Everett:
Well, individuals, corporations, businesses have been using this for centuries, actually. All that Nelson did was, he refined the process through Becoming Your Own Banker in the Infinite Banking Concept. And all he did was he learned that there was a better way to engineer or reallocate the money inside the life insurance policy. It’s really that simple.
Chris Bay:
Yeah. So I always think about Nelson, the key pieces that he added is he looked at how a dividend paying whole life insurance policy could be designed more effectively for financing our own needs.
Mike Everett:
Yeah.
Chris Bay:
So that was one of the things. And then he brought that together for a common people and taught banking concepts along with it. And that’s really what he’s done for us.
Mike Everett:
Well, and the crazy thing about it is, the question is why haven’t I heard about IBC before? Nothing in our conventional financial wisdom leans towards this. Nothing. But yet, all it is is taking a 250, 260 year old product and re-engineering the way the policy works and making it so the individual, the company, the corporation can learn how to control their own money by investing in themselves.
Chris Bay:
So I’m going to ask you a different question now. I haven’t heard about it and we’re saying conventional financial wisdom out there is teaching other things. Why is the financial institutions out there, financial planners, investment companies, all those kinds of people, why are they not teaching this concept?
Mike Everett:
Because they won’t make as much money, and they’re not taking near, near enough time to educate themselves. It’s too much work.
Chris Bay:
You know what I love about IBC personally? Is that it is about autonomy. It’s about me having control of my money and not everybody wants to take that control. When you look at traditional financial planners and that kind of thing, it’s managed money. It’s me giving control to somebody else.
Mike Everett:
You have given all of the control to somebody else. And that kind of just goes back to the thought process is, we know that this isn’t for everybody and we’re okay with that. So the question that we always ask people is, where do you store and invest your money?
Chris Bay:
Yeah, that’s a good question to ask.
Mike Everett:
Yep.
Chris Bay:
All right. Hey, thanks for spending the time. For those of you listening, check out some of our new podcasts coming up. As always, we encourage you to go to our website, lifesuccesslegacy.com. Got a lot of resources on there available to people. Check it out.