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.

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, in our last podcast we started to talk about the policy design for Infinite Banking. And one of the phrases that you used is, “What’s more important to people? Is it cash, or is it death benefit?” And obviously, for most of our life, cash is more important than death benefit. So now what we want to do is dig in a little bit more into how we design the policies to emphasize the cash value, and then how that is utilized to, for example, turn the wind current, or, people use their cash value for investment purposes, retirement purposes, a variety of things. So can you talk a little bit about the two pieces of a policy design, and what I’m getting into is the base portion and typically what it generates, and then the paid-up addition portion and what it generates.

Mike Everett:

Okay. Traditionally, once again, life insurance was designed almost 100% for death benefit. So one of the things that Nelson discovered was, if you can reengineer or rearrange the way the premium is allocated internally with the policy, there are these two pieces that you’re talking about. We have the base premium. The base premium purchases almost 100% of the death benefit in the life insurance contract. So basically what you’re doing is, you’re taking a certain percentage of the premium and you’re allocating it to what we call the base premium.

Chris Bay:

So in a traditional life insurance policy, most, if not 100% of that premium, is going to go to base-

Mike Everett:

That’s true.

Chris Bay:

… and so it’s going to be 100% going towards death benefit.

Mike Everett:

That’s correct.

Chris Bay:

Okay. So how is this different?

Mike Everett:

Well, then Nelson realized that there was a way to actually create cash in your life insurance contract by adding a piece called the paid-up additions rider. This paid-up additions rider, what it does is it creates almost 100% cash value available in the contract that people can access. Now, there is a certain portion that purchases a little bit of death benefit. Remember, it’s a life insurance contract, but yet, I asked the question again, what’s more important right now, cash or death benefit? We’ve all said cash. We’ve said this a number of times, but we want to reiterate this to the people listening because cash is king, and if we can get access to that cash in some sort of way, and still have the life insurance contract in place, why wouldn’t a person want to do this?

Chris Bay:

Let’s put this into specifics for people. Let’s say that I come to you and I say, “Hey, I want to start an Infinite Banking concept policy. And I want to be able to put, I’m going to say, $10,000 annually into this policy.” Break that out for me, then. If I’m putting money into it, when do I get access to the cash value that I can then utilize for turning wind current and other things?

Mike Everett:

Well, if you were going to put $10,000 in, then there’s a certain way to allocate these dollars. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take 40% of those dollars or $4,000 of that 10,000, and we’re going to buy the base portion of the policy. Then we’re going to take $6,000 or 60% of those dollars and buy the paid-up additions rider. Now, the easiest way to explain the paid-up additions rider is the Apollo rocket. You know, when it goes up into space, it gets up into space and it’s on the Apollo rocket. It’s got these turbo boosters. Well, after they get up into space, what do they do with the turbo boosters?

Chris Bay:

They drop off.

Mike Everett:

That’s exactly correct, but they need those two turbo boosters to get the rocket up into space. With the way that Nelson created the Infinite Banking concept, you need the turbo boosters or the paid-up additions rider in order to get this thing up and going.

Chris Bay:

So it’s flooding it with cash.

Mike Everett:

That is correct. Now, your question was, when do you have access to that cash? With the companies that we utilize, you can have access to that cash within the first month of starting your Infinite Banking Concept policy.

Chris Bay:

Now, when you say that you’re talking about an annual premium, so someone would pay the full 10,000 upfront.

Mike Everett:

That’s correct.

Chris Bay:

We also have clients who, for various reasons, they decide to do a monthly premium. So would they get access to that money right away?

Mike Everett:

They would not.

Chris Bay:

Okay.

Mike Everett:

Because, the way you explain that to people is, if you were going to write a check on your checking account, how much can you have access to? With whatever you’ve got in there?

Chris Bay:

Right.

Mike Everett:

So if you have somebody who pays an annual premium, they have access to their portion or their 60% of their policy when they pay that premium in the first 30 days. But if you have somebody who goes on a monthly plan, it’s going to take them the full 12 months or annual premium of monthly payments in order to have access to those dollars. In the great big scheme of things, it doesn’t make any difference.

Chris Bay:

Yeah. Yeah. So, if I understand correctly, when we put a chunk of money in, I’m going to get access, or I can borrow against my policy-

Mike Everett:

That’s correct.

Chris Bay:

… and really that’s a loan. It’s called a policy loan, but it’s not really money from my policy. It’s really a loan from the company.

Mike Everett:

That’s true.

Chris Bay:

And they’re using my policy as collateral, which is an unbelievable trade of this is that our policy stays fully intact and it continues to compound and grow for us on the full, let’s say it’s $10,000, even though I’ve pulled out a loan for $6,000.

Mike Everett:

That’s correct.

Chris Bay:

So, we’re never interrupting the compounding interest of our policy.

Mike Everett:

Eighth wonder of the world.

Chris Bay:

It’s unbelievable. Now, some people might say, “Well, I just put in 10,000 and I’m only getting access to six.” Well, let’s talk about capitalization and thinking of our policies as businesses a little bit.

Mike Everett:

Well, we’re going to go back to Nelson’s three main principles. Number one, you’ve got to think long-term. Remember, Nelson was trained as a forester, so he thinks 20, 30, 40, 50 years in advance. Infinite Banking is a long-term thought process, so we tell people, “If you’re not in this for the long haul, this is not a good thing for you.” But number two, you can’t be afraid to capitalize. That means that you have got to put some money into this thing in order for it to work. If you think traditionally about life insurance, and it doesn’t matter if it’s term or whole life or universal life, most of the financial gurus out there say, “Let’s buy as much death benefit as we can and put as little premium in there as we can.” With Infinite Banking, it is completely opposite. We’re wanting to flood this thing with as much cash as we can get and get as little a death benefit as possible in order for you to be able to access the cash efficiently in your own life.

Chris Bay:

In fact, we call our premiums, premium deposits because it deposits into a banking system, really, that we own and control. So, if it’s a deposit into your banking system, do you want that deposit to be a little or a lot?

Mike Everett:

I want it to be a lot, but we need to be careful here because, this is called the Infinite Banking Concept. But we want to reiterate that we’re life insurance guys, and you are purchasing a life insurance policy. And in that purchase, you are creating absolute control of that contract. So you get to decide or control where 100% of that investment goes when you access that cash through a policy loan.

Chris Bay:

Okay. I want to take you back to your analogy of the space shuttle.

Mike Everett:

Correct.

Chris Bay:

Or the Apollo, or whatever it was that you used. And you talked about those booster rockets falling off. And that is what we call the flexible paid-up addition rider.

Mike Everett:

Correct.

Chris Bay:

That flexible piece is an important word. And you talked about, on the rocket, those falling off. Does the flexible PUA, the paid-up addition rider, do those ever fall off the policies, and why?

Mike Everett:

Well, once again, it’s called flexible because you have the flexibility of deciding what you want to do with that. We personally would like people to leave that flexible paid-up addition rider on there, but we can adjust the premium or keep it flexible enough to where you have a place to put some additional cash if you want to. Or you can actually reduce that to a minimum flexible paid-up addition rider payment of $100. Remember earlier we talked about 6,000, but then it goes to a hundred. So that creates a whole bunch of cash flow on your side of the fence, so to speak, when we help you understand how the policy is designed.

Chris Bay:

Yeah. It’d be easier if we had some visuals for people to teach them this next concept. But in theory, if we think of our policies as businesses.

Mike Everett:

Correct.

Chris Bay:

And let’s say we’re in the business and let’s use McDonald’s as an example. Obviously McDonald’s started with one restaurant. Well, now they’re everywhere across the world, right? They franchised them. So if we think of our policies as businesses, are we able to franchise our policies?

Mike Everett:

Absolutely.

Chris Bay:

Nelson, I think, we know this. I’m not sure he says it in his book, but at one point he had 49 life insurance policies.

Mike Everett:

That’s correct.

Chris Bay:

And I think you’re up to what? 17 now?

Mike Everett:

16. Almost 17.

Chris Bay:

Yeah. And in, gosh, seven years, I guess of doing my plan, we’re up to six policies. Explain to people why in the world would they want to start adding additional policies?

Mike Everett:

If you look at your policies as a business and your one policies or two policies or three policies are doing well, why wouldn’t you want to go and start more? All we’re trying to do is create a system to where you control 100% of your own cash flow. So, bottom line is, Nelson on page 48 talks about expanding the system to accommodate all your income. He’s helping people think through, why in the world would you want to continue to build policies? But the way we design the policies is, your policy is going to get better every year, regardless of the economy, regardless of the financial landscape in our country. So if that’s true, why wouldn’t you want additional policies at certain time periods as you’re growing this thing?

Chris Bay:

And, theoretically, we’re able to show people that they could actually start a additional policy of roughly the same size every five years without any additional cash out of pocket.

Mike Everett:

That’s true.

Chris Bay:

And so, eventually, aren’t they going to be capped on how much life insurance they could get?

Mike Everett:

There’s a possibility of that happening, but it really takes a large number of years. 15, 20, 25 years before they really need to worry about that.

Chris Bay:

Okay. And obviously we coach people through all of that.

Mike Everett:

That’s correct.

Chris Bay:

That’s part of the strategic planning that we do with people. My great topic, for some people this may be a little too much in the weeds for them, but I think there’s probably some folks out there that, I know this for a fact, that they like to understand the design of the policy and why it’s different than a traditional life insurance policy would be designed. In the future podcasts, what we’d like to do is get into some of the applications of how people are utilizing their policies in their life for the different ways that they do that, whether it’s for business, addressing debt, college financing, things like that.

So, to our listeners, thanks for joining us. Lots more information on our website at lifesuccesslegacy.com. If you haven’t got yourself a copy of Nelson Nash’s book, Becoming Your Own Banker, you can get that at our website as well. We encourage you to read it. Come back and join us again.

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.