Mike and Chris are digging in for this multi-part podcast on Equipment Financing. For those of you who wanted numbers, here it is. This chapter really starts unfolding the benefits of using Infinite Banking by providing multiple examples of the same situation. This episode is foundational, you may want to listen twice!
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In this episode, Mike and Chris go into one of Nelson’s most intriguing chapters and, for that matter, opening sentences of a chapter. If you’re a veteran follower of the Infinite Banking Concept, you know what it is. For those who are new, you’ll have to listen to find out!
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In this #tbt podcast that originally aired March of 2018, the reigns are taken from Chris Bay and handed to Michael Crawford! We drill down into how Chris and his family got started, where they had taken IBC up to that point and more! Take a listen and see where Chris was three years ago in his IBC journey. This is a fun one!
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Michael Crawford:
All right, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Michael Crawford, and yes, you may have noticed I am not the voice of Chris Bay. That is because today’s podcast, if you’ve been following our podcast series, is on our team, and Chris Bay is the next victim.
Chris Bay:
Nice. Nice.
Michael Crawford:
He is in the hot seat, as it were, and we’re going to go through a little bit about how he got started in Infinite Banking and tell a little bit of his story and give some insight into how it’s working for him and where he sees it going. How are you doing, Chris?
Chris Bay:
I’m doing great, yeah.
Michael Crawford:
Awesome.
Chris Bay:
Doing great. Love talking about this topic.
Michael Crawford:
Yes, you do. You’re not used to the position though, right?
Chris Bay:
No.
Michael Crawford:
You’re the one asking the questions.
Chris Bay:
I’d much rather be asking the questions, but I think our story will connect with some people out there.
Michael Crawford:
Absolutely. I agree 100 percent. So let’s dive in. I want to start from the beginning. Your story is unique in how you got started, and I think it’s pertinent for a lot of people. Because we all have different stories on how our money came to be where it is, and learning a little bit about where yours came from and how you took advantage of your next steps with the Infinite Banking Concept, I think the people would like to hear about.
Chris Bay:
Yeah. Well, at the time when I was in introduced to the Infinite Banking Concept, I was working as an elementary school principal, and my wife and I had worked pretty hard and made a lot of choices and sacrifices to be single-income family so that we could invest in our two daughters. And so at the time, we actually had been practicing the teachings of Dave Ramsey for actually about seven years. And I will tell you, that was a source of frustration and a source of conflict in our relationship, and the word you use in your podcast was hope.
The hope for us was so far down the road using this approach, Dave Ramsey’s approach, that our hope was very little. We were not going on vacations. We were not going out to eat very often, and it was really frustrating. And I was working my tail off, doing the best I knew how to do to provide for my family, but we were not doing it very well. I remember, Sean reminds me that we were negotiating with medical care providers who were providing services for our daughters and for our family because we didn’t have the money to pay it, so it was tough.
Michael Crawford:
Right. And so when you talk about the stress, was it the stress that you were experiencing in your financial picture that led you to investigate alternatives?
Chris Bay:
Yeah. In fact, I remember there was a teacher that I was working with, and this would have been back in 2007, the fall of 2007, and she had taught for over 30 years, and she came in and said, “I’m going to retire in the spring.” We were celebrating her career. And she came back in in the… Sorry, that was the fall of 2007. In the spring of 2008, so think about the world and financially what was going on, she came back in and said, “I’m not going to be able to retire.”
Michael Crawford:
Hm.
Chris Bay:
Yeah. I filed that away in my brain, because I thought… Are we good?
Michael Crawford:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris Bay:
Oh, okay. I filed that away in my brain, because I thought where we all have been told to put our money, it’s not safe.
Michael Crawford:
Right.
Chris Bay:
And so I’m working my tail off to do all this and I’m putting it at risk. Who’s to say, depending on the timing of the market going up or down, that it’s going to be there for me when we need it?
Michael Crawford:
Right.
Chris Bay:
I didn’t have a solution at that time, but I knew what the world was doing, all the things I’ve been told and taught was not working. The buy term and invest the difference that we hear from Dave Ramsey all the time and others, I didn’t want to go that route because I had seen it doesn’t work.
Michael Crawford:
So that was 10 years ago, because it’s currently late, well, middle fall here in 2017.
Chris Bay:
Right, right.
Michael Crawford:
And so that was 10 years ago today. Kind of give us a timeline from that point until you officially got introduced to infinite banking and how that took place.
Chris Bay:
Okay. It probably was a little over seven years, probably between seven and eight years ago that I was introduced to it. It was actually from two different conversations with dads, two separate dads that were volunteering in our elementary school where I was a principal. And I had developed trust with them, relationships with them. One was a business owner in town, and I asked Dave, I said, “Dave, do you mind me asking as a business guy how do you think about and manage your money?” And he said, “Have you ever heard of the Infinite Banking Concept?”, which I had not. And so he said, “I’d really recommend you check it out.” Research, I heard that and I don’t even know if I dug into it much at that point. It was probably about two months later that I went to another dad, and I asked Doug, and I said the same question, and he came back with the exact same answer.
Michael Crawford:
So two different sources.
Chris Bay:
Two sources, same answer.
Michael Crawford:
Got you.
Chris Bay:
The Infinite Banking Concept. So I said, “Okay, how do I learn? This is crazy that two of you have told me this and I’ve never heard of this. What do I do?” And he said, “Well, you need to read this black book, Nelson’s book, Becoming Your Own Banker, and you need to get ahold of this guy who lives down in Baldwin.” And I said, “Who’s that?” He said, “Well, it’s Mike Everett.” Well, crazy thing is, I actually had known Mike Everett back when I was in college. His niece and I knew each other in college, and so I had met Mike through Heather. So anyway, started, got ahold of the book. In fact, I think Mike gave me the book, and we always charge people for the book so they have a little skin in the game to read it. I don’t think I actually paid him the 20 bucks until like a year later when I was actually a client of his. But that all comes out in the wash anyway, right?
Michael Crawford:
Right.
Chris Bay:
So anyway, for us, unlike you and Mike Everett, I’m the slow guy, and we all joke about it here within our team. But I’m the slow guy, and Shawn and I, my wife Shawn, we researched this thing inside and out. I read the blogs, the websites, the pros, the cons, Kiplinger’s, Forbes. I read everything about this thing.
Michael Crawford:
Got you.
Chris Bay:
And Mike was coming to our house and teaching us the concept about once every month or so. This took place over a nine-month period, and it was actually Shawn at one point, my wife, grabbed my arm. She said, “This just makes sense.”
Michael Crawford:
Yeah.
Chris Bay:
And so at that point is when we made the decision to go ahead and start our first policies.
Michael Crawford:
Okay. So to recap there, you kind of had something stuck in your brain in 2007 when the financial crash occurred.
Chris Bay:
Yep.
Michael Crawford:
A couple of years later, two individuals who you trusted both of them on separate conversations told you about Infinite Banking Concept. So it only took you, what, four years to make a decision on something?
Chris Bay:
I didn’t have the solution at the beginning.
Michael Crawford:
Got you, yeah.
Chris Bay:
That’s right. That’s right. No, but I’ll own that. I’ll own that.
Michael Crawford:
No, fair enough. But 2000-what, ’11?
Chris Bay:
Yeah, probably.
Michael Crawford:
’10, ’11-
Chris Bay:
Yeah, somewhere in that.
Michael Crawford:
– is when you got your first policy. Can you tell the listeners your story on how you capitalized it? Because the way you guys capitalized it is actually very beneficial to many of our existing and potential clients.
Chris Bay:
Yeah. Well, in our boot camps, we always tell people, “You’ve got a pool of money somewhere. You may not know it, but you do.” I didn’t think I had a pool of money.
Michael Crawford:
Right.
Chris Bay:
We had been doing Dave Ramsey, so we didn’t have a whole bunch of consumer debt, smaller things, those kinds of things, but we had our mortgage.
Michael Crawford:
Right.
Chris Bay:
Well, as we started looking at things, we actually had equity in our home. And so what Mike helped us do is put together a plan where we could leverage. And I don’t even remember if Mike suggested it or we came up with it. I don’t recall, but we leveraged a home equity line of credit to get our first policy. We started four policies; one of myself, one on my wife, and one on each of my daughters.
Michael Crawford:
Okay.
Chris Bay:
And that was really important for a couple of reasons. One, my wife had previously had thyroid cancer and she was now cancer-free for 10 years, and so we were for sure starting a policy on her.
Michael Crawford:
Absolutely.
Chris Bay:
And we saw the power of you start a policy on somebody when they’re healthy, because you never know. I mean, she was young.
Michael Crawford:
Right.
Chris Bay:
So you start a policy as soon as you have the opportunity to, and we have other team members that’ll talk about that.
Michael Crawford:
Absolutely.
Chris Bay:
So we started four policies. We leveraged the equity in our home and took out a line of credit, and that’s how we got our policy started. Yeah.
Michael Crawford:
Okay, so you used the HELOC or home equity line of credit to capitalize your system. Tell the listeners going from a nine-month investigation to what kind of policies did you guys do?
Chris Bay:
Well, people who work with us will soon find that we have no secrets. We will show our policies, our policy loans, cash value. We have no problem with doing that because we’re just full disclosure. Mike was not suggesting this, by the way.
Michael Crawford:
Right. Absolutely.
Chris Bay:
He was suggesting, I think, maybe like a $20,000 annual premium policy for us. Well, as I learned through my investigation that premiums are deposits into a system that I own and control, and so do I want my deposits to be large or small?
Michael Crawford:
Right.
Chris Bay:
Secondly, I know because of the power of compounding interest, the sooner I start and the bigger I start, the better.
Michael Crawford:
Right.
Chris Bay:
So Shawn and I actually leveraged the equity in our home, and we started cumulative premiums for our four policies of $50,000 a year in life insurance premiums.
Michael Crawford:
Wow.
Chris Bay:
Which people hear that and they just freak out.
Michael Crawford:
Absolutely. Well, I mean, I think anybody would have a reason for pause when they don’t understand the end game or if they’re thinking short-term, which is one of Nelson’s principles. And so you only really had your mortgage to eliminate at that point.
Chris Bay:
Yeah, because part of that was I was still working for the school district.
Michael Crawford:
Oh, right.
Chris Bay:
So I had Kansas Public Retirement. We call it KPERS. I had 403b’s through the school district, but I couldn’t access any of that because I worked for them.
Michael Crawford:
Exactly. And so it was locked up tight.
Chris Bay:
It was locked up tight. Man, that fired me up, which spurred me then further in my investigation of IBC.
Michael Crawford:
Exactly.
Chris Bay:
Because I was thinking, “This is supposed to be my money and I can’t access it?”
Michael Crawford:
Right.
Chris Bay:
That was really frustrating.
Michael Crawford:
No access to your own money, so you use the HELOC. You start huge $50,000 annual premium policies cumulatively. Give us a synopsis of where you’re at along that timeline after you started your policies.
Chris Bay:
Yeah, it was about probably two and a half, three years later, and I’m now, instead of reading educational literature in bed at night, I’m now reading things on infinite banking and Austrian economics. Here’s the thing. It’s a beautiful thing when your wife has such confidence in you, and she turns to me in bed and says, “You know, you’d be really good at teaching people that.” That opened up all kinds of possibilities, and so we made the decision to… Actually, I resigned from the school district three years after we started our policies. I remember having the conversation with Mike Everett in his office, and he thought I was going to warm up. You know, “What are you going to do? Do this on the side?” We didn’t. We burned the ships. We went 100 percent. Remember, I was single income after 22 years in the school system. Completely resigned and left to go 100 percent commission. When I tell people that, you’ve got to know that I believe in this concept 100 percent.
Michael Crawford:
Yeah, and I think it shows that you were dedicated to helping other people change their lives the way yours had been changed, right?
Chris Bay:
Yeah. It’s incredibly powerful.
Michael Crawford:
Absolutely.
Chris Bay:
My daughters, I’ve got a freshman in college now, which we’re using our policies to strategically do her tuition and all that. I’ve got another daughter who is a sophomore in high school, and much like you, they’re never going to have to borrow money from an institution.
Michael Crawford:
It’s very refreshing.
Chris Bay:
Yeah.
Michael Crawford:
Yeah.
Chris Bay:
So we’re changing the trajectory for our families.
Michael Crawford:
Yeah. Well, okay. I’m going to wrap this up, but I want to ask you a question that people often ask us, and that is, how long did it take you when you first started to get out of debt? Because we’re all fighting the wind current, as we say. And if you’ve listened to our other podcasts, you’ll know what that term really means, but it means basically the debt in our lives and the things that are working against us in our life financially. How long did you and Shawn have your policies in place before you had paid off all of your outside debt?
Chris Bay:
Well, we’re a little different, because we couldn’t get access to our pool through my 403b’s and KPERS and things like that. Had we been able to get to that, we probably could have turned our wind current the very first month.
Michael Crawford:
Right.
Chris Bay:
But we couldn’t get access to that.
Michael Crawford:
Right.
Chris Bay:
So we were leveraging the home equity line of credit. So for us then, when I resigned from the school district, I did get access to those dollars. Then we were able to turn our wind current on our mortgage, the home equity line of credit, all of that, 26 months. We could have been debt-free of outside debt month one, which sounds crazy to people.
Michael Crawford:
Yeah, absolutely.
Chris Bay:
But I want to say this. When we did access our 403b and our KPERS, we got all of it. We went after all of it, so there was huge taxes, huge penalties. But I want to tell you that we recouped, by turning our wind current and using IBC, we recouped all of those taxes and all of those penalties in eight months.
Michael Crawford:
Wow. Eight months.
Chris Bay:
Yeah.
Michael Crawford:
Not even a year for you to recoup all of the debt that was incurred, associated with not the debt, but the taxes and penalties that were associated with your qualified plans.
Chris Bay:
Yeah.
Michael Crawford:
That’s amazing.
Chris Bay:
Yeah.
Michael Crawford:
Well, Chris, thank you very much for giving us a piece of your story. You’ll hear more of all of our stories in future podcasts as we continue to work through the Life Success Legacy team, and introduce you to their stories and how we all got started. For those of you who are continual listeners, you’ll know that we always suggest if you haven’t read Nelson’s book that we have a copy of it on our website, lifesuccesslegacy.com. Keep your ears and eyes peeled for future podcasts. We look forward to our next adventure. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Bay:
Absolutely. Thanks.
Mike and Chris work through the second half of this awesome chapter by going in to depth on Nelson’s vehicle purchase example. They drill down into the C/D method and the Infinite Banking method, since they are the only two ways to be ahead in the scenario. What might surprise you is the difference financially.
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In this episode, Mike and Chris dive into Nelsons chapter titled ‘How to Start Building Your Own Banking System.’ Part of Nelson’s brilliance is how he can bring high level economics down to the you and me level. This chapter is no different. He compares five methods for purchasing a vehicle, something we’ve all done. Mike and Chris unpack these methods and give insight into what Nelson was truly trying to get across. Which, by now we certainly know, is that Whole Life Insurance is the most advantageous place to house your money. Listen for Mike and Chris to give personal stories in this one. You might be surprised!
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In the wrap up of the Create the Entity section, Mike and Chris discuss Universal and Variable Life in relationship to Infinite Banking. They talk about how Nelson felt about those products and the reasons why he had those opinions. Enjoy!
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In the third part of Creating the Entity, Mike and Chris expand upon Nelson’s idea of having multiple policies to accomplish the long term goals of Infinite Banking. They also reiterate how Whole Life Insurance is misclassified. Pay close attention to this one. The principles are integral into the success of Infinite Banking and center to Nelson’s teachings.
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Chris interviews Mike Everett in the first of our team interviews. We cover the gamut and think you’ll enjoy this #tbt post!
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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.
Chris Bay:
Thanks to our listeners for joining us today. This next set of podcasts are going to be a little bit different. What we want to do is we want to introduce you to the team members of Life Success & Legacy and our stories as to how we got introduced to the Infinite Banking Concept. How we learned about it, how long did we study and research it, how it’s impacted our lives, et cetera. So today what we want to do, and each of our stories is unique and diverse, and you may find that you connect with some of these different stories because we all have very different stories of how we were introduced to IBC. Today what we’re going to do is focus on Mike Everett, the founder of Life Success & Legacy and how he was introduced to the infinite banking concept. How it’s impacted his life and where he is today with his IBC strategy.
Chris Bay:
So, Mike, why don’t you start off with telling us, take us back to the day when you were introduced to the Infinite Banking Concept. How old were you? Where were you in life? With kids and that kind of thing.
Mike Everett:
Well, I had just turned 50 years old and I was a little bit disenfranchised with where I was in my career in the property-casualty business. And then I had gone into Applebee’s after church one day and all of a sudden this guy made a beeline over to our table and said, “Hey Mike-”
Chris Bay:
So you knew him?
Mike Everett:
I did.
Chris Bay:
Okay.
Mike Everett:
I did.
Chris Bay:
Okay.
Mike Everett:
Yeah. He basically asked, he says, “If I could show you and Linda a way to recover the entire cost of all the cars you purchase the rest of your life, would you be interested?” And I said, “Well, who wouldn’t?”
Mike Everett:
Long story short, he sent me the book. It came on that following Wednesday in a Manila envelope. So I opened this envelope, out comes a book, out comes a letter that tells you exactly how to read the book. And the book we’re talking about obviously is Becoming Your Own Banker by Nelson Nash. And along with all of that, there was a bill for $22 there. And I literally hollered in at Linda. I go, “Honey.” I said, “He sent us a bill with the book.” This is a book he wanted me to read. So I was a little upset about it. So I just took the bill and I tore it up and I threw the trash. So literally I threw this book over by where I do all my reading and this was Wednesday. So Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday came along. Right after the news, the book somehow made it to the top of the pile.
Mike Everett:
And so I said to Linda, she was getting ready bed and I said, “I’m going to read this book.” I said, “I’m going to read it tonight.” Because it was only 92 pages. So I started in on it at 10:30 at night, began to read it and-
Chris Bay:
Oh, wait a second because that goes against everything we tell people.
Mike Everett:
It does.
Chris Bay:
Please do not read this book after eight or nine o’clock at night because it’ll mess with your sleep.
Mike Everett:
Well, let me just tell you, after my first reading, I was so excited. I did exactly what the letter said and I read it a second time and finished my second reading at 1:30 AM and immediately went in and woke my wife up and said, “Honey, I know what I’m going to do for a new career.”
Chris Bay:
So, you weren’t just thinking about how this could impact your financial life. You were looking at it in addition to because it was so powerful to you.
Mike Everett:
It was.
Chris Bay:
It just made sense to you.
Mike Everett:
It did. As many of the people who know me, I’m the guy who jumps off the high board and I don’t really check to see if there’s water in the pool. So literally I have decided at 1:30 AM that I was changing careers, just like that. But it wasn’t a giant shift in my career change. I went from property-casualty insurance to dividend paying whole life insurance. So it was all in the same family, just a little bit more specific, a little bit more focused.
Chris Bay:
Yeah. That makes sense.
Mike Everett:
I woke up at 7:00 AM and started calling this guy’s office at 8:00 in the morning only to find out that their office doesn’t open until 9:00. I left three voicemails between 8:00 and 9:00 AM in the morning, I was that amped up about it.
Chris Bay:
So you went to work with him?
Mike Everett:
I did.
Chris Bay:
Okay.
Mike Everett:
I did.
Chris Bay:
Tell me about just your personal IBC experience. When did you start your policies? How did you get started? Those kinds of things.
Mike Everett:
I immediately did two applications the first time I met with him within that first week. I decided to do a policy on myself and a policy on my wife. But then all of a sudden it dawned on me, I didn’t have any money. So I had to figure out how to go get money. So literally I went down to the bank and one of the loan officers-
Chris Bay:
This is going to be exhibit two of what not to do, right?
Mike Everett:
It is.
Chris Bay:
Are there future exhibits?
Mike Everett:
Well, I’ll just tell you. I went about it a different way, let’s put it that way. But there’s a really great ending to this story.
Chris Bay:
Absolutely.
Mike Everett:
I went down and borrowed money to do policies for my wife and I. Number one, I tell people don’t do that unless you have equity in a place that you can use. I had no equity. So I borrowed money, started my first policies and then off we go.
Chris Bay:
Yeah. So at that point, tell me where you were in life with family. And what was your thought process in terms of how is this going to benefit you or family or who’s going to benefit from this?
Mike Everett:
I think my daughter was a sophomore or junior in high school and my son was already out of college. So this was a pretty big shift for us because I had started to then think about infinite banking in a completely different way.
Mike Everett:
First off, when you buy life insurance, normally you buy life insurance because you love someone. It is that simple. You’re actually not buying it for yourself, you’re buying it for the people that you love and care about. So when I was buying my policies for Linda and I just knew deep down that these were not for me, they were for the next generation.
Chris Bay:
So you didn’t see how this IBC thing was really going to benefit you in the meantime?
Mike Everett:
No.
Chris Bay:
Okay.
Mike Everett:
But let’s just go back to Nelson’s number one principle, think long-term. So I knew when I was purchasing the policies that somewhere down the way my family was going to benefit.
Chris Bay:
Right. So talk to me about implementation of your IBC strategy. How did that go in the early years?
Mike Everett:
Well, there were about 25 to 35 of us. Some real small number where we literally, we were learning this thing as fast as we could. We were going around wherever Nelson was, we’d go. We’ve needed information because literally it felt like something so new and so different. But yet it was so exciting because we just needed information. So literally we were doing three, four, five seminars a year and going to places wherever Nelson was, or having him come to Lawrence, Kansas and learning about IBC. It was pretty darn exciting because nobody had ever taught me about something like this that can set people so free in their financial life.
Chris Bay:
Yeah. So fast forward for me now, how long has it been since you started your first policies?
Mike Everett:
Well, I just paid my 13th premium, so 13 policy years. But I’ve only been in this for a little more than 12 years and this is all part of the learning that we help with clients learn. But, so I started out with two policies. I think in the first year I had five policies. I borrowed all the money to do this, which I was telling you, I was an idiot. But…
Chris Bay:
How’s that played out for you now?
Mike Everett:
Well, now it’s played out unbelievably because what happened was, as life grew and things changed quickly, so did a number of things in my life that made it easier to purchase additional policies. Now we have 16 life insurance policies. They’re not all on me. I’ve got some on me, some on Linda, some on Kurt, some on Karen, some on the grandkids. So-
Chris Bay:
I know at one point Nelson had 49 life insurance policies and now you’re up to 16 policies.
Mike Everett:
16.
Chris Bay:
That’s right. Yeah. Have you learned a few things from the time you started that you might put in the category of wisdom that you can share with your clients-
Mike Everett:
Let’s put it this way, let’s go back to day one when I went to the bank and borrowed money. Now, because of the way we’ve assembled our team and the learning curve that I’ve gone through and the things that were misfortunes to me, can greatly benefit the clients that we work with. We can see a little bit further down the road to where we can help somebody avoid the mistakes that I made.
Chris Bay:
Absolutely. Mike, thanks for sharing your story. When we do our live boot camps, when you do share your story, it always has the room just rolling. And at first, just honestly, it used to freak me out because you just messed it all up so bad. But the beauty of it is, even as bad as you messed it up in the beginning-
Mike Everett:
It still works.
Chris Bay:
… it still works.
Mike Everett:
It does.
Chris Bay:
That is what’s amazing to me. So thanks for sharing your story-
Mike Everett:
You bet Chris.
Chris Bay:
… appreciate that. To the listeners, our next podcasts are going to be you getting a chance to know the rest of the team of Life Success & Legacy and how we got introduced to this crazy thing called the infinite banking concept. Check out our website, lifesuccesslegacy.com. And if you have not read Nelson Nash’s book, Becoming Your Own Banker, we cannot encourage you strongly enough to do that. Thanks for joining us.
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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