StackedLife - Authorized Infinite Banking

024 FUD Main Episode
===

John Perrings: [00:00:00] If you've been researching whole life insurance and The Infinite Banking Concept, you've probably encountered mountains of conflicting information that left you more confused than when you even started looking at it. Today, we're gonna cut through all that noise to address what people call fud, fear, uncertainty, and doubt that keeps people in analysis paralysis and unable to move forward with whole life.

And IBC. By the end of this episode, you'll understand the fear, uncertainty, and doubt around whole life insurance, where it actually comes from, why it's so pervasive, and most importantly, how to navigate through it so you can make informed decisions about implementing The Infinite Banking Concept in your life.

This is Stacked Life, the podcast that teaches you everything you need to know about The Infinite Banking Concept, whole life insurance, and the strategies that make it all work.

And I'm John Perrings, an authorized Infinite Banking practitioner. I've implemented Infinite Banking for hundreds of clients and educated thousands more via my top rated [00:01:00] podcasts and financial resources at StackedLife.com. Okay, so this episode is about fear, uncertainty and doubt around whole life insurance and The Infinite Banking Concept.

Generations of Status Quo Financial Thinking
---

John Perrings: And I think the number one challenge for a lot of people in overcoming the fear, uncertainty, and doubt out there around what we're trying to do with IBC and whole life insurance is really around the fact that it's so very different from the status quo. By far, most people are just kind of taking their money and either doing nothing with it, or they're putting money into a 401k.

You know, there's still a lucky few people out there who maybe get a pension or putting their money in the stock market or into their business or, you know, lately crypto and real estate has become something. But the idea of using whole life insurance, which has been around for hundreds of years, literally, you know, some of the best mutual companies have been around for over 150 years, 175 years.

And that's just in the us. And even though [00:02:00] this product has been around for a long time, it did kind of, I don't know, fall out of favor at a certain point. I don't know if falling out of favor is the right way to say it, but term insurance was really being pushed for the most part when the stock market started to become more popular for regular people. So probably in like the sixties, seventies and eighties. Term insurance was pushed in favor of permanent insurance because term insurance is probably easier to sell as probably more profitable for the insurance companies.

And then I think there was just more of a focus on, the stock market. So, you know, the whole buy term, invest the difference thing started coming out, around those timeframes. And so even though whole life insurance has been around for a long time. I think it kind of took a backseat to a lot of the other financial products out there.

So now you know what's happened over the last, I don't know, 10 years or so you know, becoming Your Own Banker, which is the book that [00:03:00] came out in 2000 that kind of started all of this thing and is really the source material for The Infinite Banking Concept. You know, the book's been around for 25 years, but I think it really started gaining the biggest amount of traction over the last maybe 10 or 15 years.

And it sort of picked up steam with the advent of social media, YouTube, podcasts, and all those things coming together, and it's becoming a little more well-known again. And still though it's a little bit of a foreign concept because everyone has been taught for generations now that the best thing you can do with your money is put it into the market and you'll get some kind of average rate of return, and that's the best way to grow your money over the long term.

So when people hear about Infinite Banking, there's understandably a lot of skepticism about it. And before I got into this business and started doing this for a living, I implemented The Infinite Banking Concept in my own life personally, you know, in my previous career when I was in tech and when I learned about this [00:04:00] originally, there really wasn't as much information out there as there is today.

You know, there was of course the book Becoming Your Own Banker, which is the first thing I read. And then of course I read several other books and, you know, articles and all these other things, including Warehouse of Wealth, which is also by Nelson Nash. A great book, if you're into trying to read as much as you can about this. But there's you know, books and articles and all those types of resources and.

And what's happened now is there's just so much information out there again on social media, YouTube, podcasts. There's all kinds of information out there, and so it was actually probably easier to get your head around it when I was first learning it because there just wasn't as much to sift through. And all the sources that were available at that time were, for the most part, congruent with one another.

Information Overload & Finding the Right Advisor
---

John Perrings: So now what's happened is we've got almost like a mess of noise out there, , with all the different pieces of information. And we have now a lot of conflicting opinions about how things should be [00:05:00] done. And so what I think has happened is that people will go down the rabbit hole of trying to learn as much as they can about IBC and then they get all these different pieces of information and they end up doing nothing with it because it's just too confusing or there's just too much to go through.

It gets a little overwhelming, you know, you've got all these different people saying different things, and that's one of the reasons I started this podcast was to try to cut through all the noise and you know, when I talk to people and they end up working with me, it's usually because they say that I was able to sort of clear up a lot of this, a lot of this information for them.

And so that's really, you know, I appreciate when people say it because that's really what I'm trying to do. And again, when I got into this, the noise was actually in the more about the typical financial planning space. And of course there's still a lot of noise out there about that kind of stuff. But now what we find is there's actually a lot of noise in the life insurance and even the Infinite Banking space

because there are [00:06:00] just so many people, who just go out there and get their life insurance license, they hear about Infinite Banking, they, and they start to say they're doing Infinite Banking, but meanwhile, you know, they haven't even really gone through the certification program with the Nelson Nash Institute.

And I just think it's important and something to keep in mind, Infinite Banking is a registered trademark, so it's kind of like, if you're going to sell McDonald's hamburgers, you probably better be a McDonald's franchise. Right. And, I'm not trying to bash anyone here, there are great life insurance producers or life insurance agents that, don't do Infinite Banking and they're not affiliated with the Nelson Nash Institute and they're great. And you know, I'm not saying that you have to be, certified with the Nelson Nash or you have to do Infinite Banking to be a great life insurance agent. But there is a specific thing we're trying to do with The Infinite Banking Concept and in this space. And just because you can say the words Infinite Banking doesn't mean you actually, in my opinion, have a footing in what we're trying to do and the [00:07:00] principles we're trying to get across.

The unfortunate truth is it really doesn't take a whole lot to become a life insurance agent. It's kind of like, you know, again, sorry, I'm not trying to throw shots at anyone out there, but getting your life insurance certification isn't that hard. It's kinda like getting your real estate license.

It's not that hard. You really just pass an exam and you can get your license just like your real estate license. But I would say the best real estate people out there didn't learn what they know from taking the real estate exam. They learn what they know through experience, working with clients, getting good at their craft. And it's the same in the insurance business. So I don't know if that, if I would call that bad news or not. But these are some things you have to be aware of.

The good news though, is that as long as you buy whole life insurance, not universal products, as long as you buy whole life insurance, it's actually really hard to mess up. That's the good news.

So I'm going to start with why I am doing this, what I see happening out there, and I'm gonna get into [00:08:00] where the fear, uncertainty, and doubt, the "FUD," where that comes from. But I'll say this upfront, believe it or not. It's really hard to mess up a whole life insurance policy. Some can be more optimal than others based on their design, but at the end of the day, especially if you're looking at this from a long-term perspective, there's not a whole lot to be worried about.

As long as you buy whole life insurance, there really are very few ways to mess up a whole life insurance policy. Okay, so that's number one.

But now let's get into the areas of "FUD." Again, fear, uncertainty, and doubt. And I'm going to go a little bit out of order just because I think it flows a little bit better for this conversation, and I'm going to talk about doubt, fear, and uncertainty. So let's start, let's talk about "doubt."

IBC Hype and Sensationalism
---

John Perrings: From the things that people doubt when they're looking into Infinite Banking, one of the things that creates that doubt is the hype and sensationalism that gets put out there.

One of the ways that hype and sensationalism comes into [00:09:00] the conversation is you hear people kind of talk about life insurance, like it's better than anything else you can do, and it's the only thing you should have. You know, you buy this and you're gonna be set up for life and things like, "this is what the rich people do," and you can "beat the banks."

You know, like that kind of sensational marketing. Some wealthy people definitely buy and use whole life insurance, and a lot of times they use it in a different way than The Infinite Banking Concept. I would say that The Infinite Banking Concept is certainly great for ultra wealthy people.

It would add to what they're doing, but I would say that most ultra wealthy people in practice use life insurance more for estate planning and estate tax planning, so that they can more efficiently keep their estate going without paying as much tax.

It's just not really on their radar to use it for Infinite Banking, even though it could be. What we're doing with whole life insurance is we're creating a place where we're storing our cash. Life [00:10:00] insurance is not an investment, it's the place where we store cash so that we can deploy that cash into something with a growth component.

Again, it's not an investment, but it gets a very respectable growth rate, especially for what it is, which is a cash equivalent asset. And for a cash equivalent asset, whole life insurance gets fantastic growth, but again, it's not an investment.

And so what we wanna do is we want to strategically store cash or strategically capitalize, and then we want to strategically deploy that capital to acquire assets, preferably income generating assets. The policy loan is what we use to get the cash from our policy and income generating assets will help service the policy loan for us.

And in this way we get the growth component of our financial life by putting that money into other investments and creating that growth. And so comparing it to things like 401Ks and the [00:11:00] stock market and index funds and all that stuff is really an inappropriate comparison.

I'm just saying this because there's always this battle out there between just by whole life insurance, that's really all you need. And then the other people that say whole life insurance is a "terrible investment."

So I'm bringing this up because there's just no question from the analysis that I've done, that having both in your life, having both whole life insurance and growth assets, you're going to come out way further ahead than you ever would by just having one or the other by themselves. And especially when you start considering getting income from those assets later on, like when you get into the retirement years, you can increase the amount of income you can get from your assets by 50% or more.

It's really quite impressive what can be done when you can combine growth assets with actuarial assets like whole life insurance.

So that's sort of the, you know, the doubt piece from the, you know, the, the whole [00:12:00] life insurance people and the investment people always kind of battling it out with each other. I really don't think anyone worth their salt would suggest that whole life in whole life insurance is the only thing you should have.

We do need to get that growth side of the equation going, but the good news is you can do that. Because when you buy whole life insurance and you capitalize a whole life insurance policy, you can then use that cash value to buy your growth assets.

The other place where doubt gets created is there's a thing where some advisors on the Infinite Banking side prioritize the philosophy of Infinite Banking over the math of, on how it all works. And I know I'm saying this in a way that might sound like I'm taking away from that type of

Philosophy vs the Math
---

John Perrings: thing.

And of course, the philosophy of Infinite Banking is one of the most important things. But another way to say that is some advisors will kind of ignore the math or they won't talk about the math at all. And they'll just say, Hey, listen, it's not about the math. It's not [00:13:00] about the numbers. This is about becoming your own banker.

And we need to focus on the philosophy.

And the thing is, they're right, but I also think that it's appropriate to talk about the math. And so where I kind land on this. I think different people resonate with different reasons for doing this or really doing anything. And some people, they really do only care about the philosophy. They might say, I don't wanna do business with banks.

I want to capitalize my own system. I don't care what the cash value is. Or I don't care what the rate of return of the cash value is. I don't care what the policy design is. But I guess what I'm saying is, you know, they're very much into the philosophy of becoming your own banker. And they're not as worried about the math.

They're more worried about the control that they're gaining and the risk that they're getting rid of. And I think that's great and it's fine. And there are also advisors who speak their language and they're going to be able to help them get through that on a [00:14:00] philosophical level.

And then on the other side of things, there are some people who are all about the math to the point where they even inappropriately try to sell IUL products, universal based products like Index Universal Life, because they think it gets better growth rates than whole life insurance. And so they're all about the math.

They're all about the numbers. And they use highly advanced calculators to put all these different models together. And meanwhile, I think they get kind of lost in the numbers and they completely miss out on the fact that they're gaining this incredible amount of control over their financial life. And it just becomes a numbers game, like whose number is bigger than somebody else's?

And the thing is, there's technically nothing wrong with that either. Like in terms of getting in the numbers. If you like the numbers, I think the numbers pencil out. You know, by the way, I'm one of those guys. I've run many, many, many, many, many models doing different things from real estate, to expenses, to buying cars, to paying for college, [00:15:00] exercising your stock options at a startup.

I mean, I've looked at so many different things and the numbers always pan out. So the numbers are there. So if you're a numbers person it's also legitimate. Like everything I talk about, I guess I like to consider myself maybe having a more balanced approach because I think there's a lot of value in both of these outlooks.

Because the thing is, you know, it is about principles. Like when we wanna look at something, we want to have our financial life based on principles rather than percentage signs, for the most part. But the percentage signs do also matter. I think we should be able to demonstrate how these numbers work. Like here's a policy loan. If you buy this asset, here's how it's going to make that investment more efficient and increase the return on that investment. So, all of those things I think matter a lot.

But it just gets to the point that there are a lot of different types of people in the Infinite Banking world from not only from a, you know, buyer [00:16:00] perspective, but from an agent perspective. And I think it makes sense to find an agent that resonates with you and that gives you the comfort that you need.

So when I'm doing research on Reddit and things like that, these things, these are some of the things that are popping up. And I think a lot of times what happens is somebody might talk to, a person in the Infinite Banking space and they kind of got a bad taste in their mouth, and it's because they got, they found the wrong person, potentially. They found someone who's talking about this from an angle that that doesn't resonate with them. And they kind of stopped there because they just talked to a person who's looking at this potentially from a different angle.

And if they had just talked to one other person, they might have found somebody that, that makes more sense for them. Like maybe they're a numbers guy and they talked to a philosophy guy, or maybe they're a philosophy guy and they talked to a numbers guy. So I think it's a good idea to find somebody who you like and trust.

So getting away from the hype and sensationalism. Now we're going to get into the "fear" [00:17:00] part of fud, fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Policy Design Concerns
---

John Perrings: And I'd say that one of the biggest fears out there actually gets created by the hype and sensationalism itself. And this is a fear of getting a poorly designed policy. A lot of people are worried that they're going to get ripped off or have these high upfront costs or have a policy that doesn't work, or they're not paying the right amount, or they're mostly just going to have a poor policy design altogether.

A lot of people are really focused on getting a "correctly-designed policy," so to speak. And I, I'll go back to what I said earlier. It really is actually hard to get a bad policy, believe it or not, especially if you're working with some of the primary mutual insurance companies out there that have been around for a long time.

And Nelson Nash authorized Infinite Banking practitioners work with solid mutual insurance companies. It's really probably not an issue. However, policy design can be optimal or suboptimal. And I have plenty of [00:18:00] videos on policy design, but I think the main thing I want to get across for this particular episode is that you really just don't have to worry that much.

Now my take on this, if you've watched any of my other videos, I find that a balanced approach to policy design creates the best long-term outcome. And depending on how you're set up, if you have a little extra cash that you can front load into the policy, having a balanced design will beat a high early cash value design from right out of the gate, most likely, and will continue to beat it all throughout the life of the policy.

However, if you don't have any upfront cash to front load a policy, I think a more balanced design is still a better way to go. Because what we know typically happens is our income grows over time. You know, just ask yourself how much you were making 10 years ago, and most likely it's less. And so we need a place and we need a way to expand our system in the future as our income grows.

[00:19:00] When you max out the PUA on a high early cash value policy, it sounds good at first, but it's really going to limit you in the end because the PUA, all that high PUA and the early cash value of the policy, it's really only the best it can be in the early years of the policy, like the first three to five years. After that, it really doesn't matter as much from an efficiency standpoint . Not getting caught up in the high early cash value is going to be, I think, a critical piece of this. And as long as you're thinking long term, going back to the hype and sensationalism that we were talking about earlier, a lot of people treat IBC like a hack where you can pay a premium and have almost all your money back in the form of cash value on day one, and people start to treat it like it's free

High Early Cash Value Trade-offs
---

John Perrings: insurance.

But I can tell you for a fact that the number one type of policy design that causes a lapse are these high, early cash value designs. And that's because they treat it like a hack. They [00:20:00] don't respect it for the high quality asset that it is, and they're only looking at things in one dimension.

The fact remains, if you want to be strategic, do you want to be only strategic today or do you want to be strategic for the next 50 years?

The thing about high early cash value, it's like people really get hung up on the available cash value in the first year, the, or the very early years. And here's what I often tell people: if all things were equal, of course we would want as much cash value as we could possibly have right off the bat.

I mean, why not? Like as long as we're wishing for things, why not wish for double the cash value compared to the premium that we put into it, right? But the thing is, there's no such thing as a "free lunch." Everyone knows this, but a lot of times people forget it when they start looking at life insurance.

Everything is a trade off between cost and risk. And so because we're buying insurance, there are costs to that insurance. And with the whole life insurance company, [00:21:00] the insurance company needs to recover those costs as quickly as possible. Believe it or not, it takes an insurance company around 10 years to break even from the cost of acquisition on a new policy.

And so they need to recover those costs as quickly as possible because they're on the hook for hundreds of thousands, if not millions or tens of millions of dollars,

and the only thing they've brought in is that first premium payment. So they have to recover those costs quickly. So there are costs there that happen in the early years, and any reasonable person would understand that.

And not only should they understand it, they should be okay with it. Because you're buying something here for those costs, you're getting this massive death benefit. And some people might say, I don't care about the death benefit, I only care about the cash value. And to those people I say, well guess what?

The cash value is the death benefit. It's the net present value of the death benefit. So believe it or not, the more death benefit you can have, the bigger your cash value can be. And [00:22:00] so that really does need to be understood. But again, this is not a hack, it's not a gimmick. It's life insurance.

It is kind of boring in the beginning, but once things get rolling, it actually does start to feel like a hack because you're so liquid and you have so much cash and you have so much control that everything starts to feel much, much simpler.

And you can sleep at night knowing that you have this, at least as one part of your financial life built into this incredible asset class.

Another place where fear comes in is, they'll hear these horror stories about lapsed policies and they'll read articles and listen to pundits that talk about the percentages of life insurance policies that actually pay a death benefit. And, you know, there's some validity to that.

Policy Lapses & Wrong Products
---

John Perrings: But the thing to understand about lapsed policies is, you know, there may be some numbers about how many policies actually pay out, but there is a period in time where a policy could lapse and it's actually [00:23:00] okay. You know, for example, like if someone's 85 years old and they don't have any immediate family, or maybe their family doesn't need the money, and then they use the accelerated death benefit riders to pay for some healthcare, things like that.

And then maybe they let the policy go because they've used up all the death benefit value to pay for long-term care or to pay for, a health event or to pay for a terminal illness. But if that's the case, what it did is it created some certainty for the insured or the policy owner to handle all of those things that come up.

And maybe the cash value, maybe there was enough cash value to provide them with some income when the stock market crashed during 2000 and 2008 and the owner of the policy was able to actually create certainty and protect themselves against events like that, the policy has done its job. It allowed that person's market-based assets to come back after the crash and now they're able to keep going in retirement and not run out of money.

[00:24:00] So just because a policy lapses, that doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad thing. But we do have to acknowledge that when a policy does lapse and it is a bad thing, it's usually because someone bought a policy and they didn't have any discipline. They borrowed heavily against it, got over their skis, and they ran into problems where they couldn't pay a loan back.

And so that does happen. We do have to acknowledge that. But the thing is like not all policy lapses are bad. And if a policy does its job, then I think that it's okay for a policy to lapse. So it's all about just understanding the context of some of these things.

Now the last part of the fear side of this is, you know, some people are afraid they're going to get the wrong product and that's a legitimate fear.

With official Infinite Banking, The Infinite Banking Concept from the Nelson Nash Institute, which is the official home for The Infinite Banking Concept, we only promote whole life insurance to implement IBC. Whole life insurance only. Not any type of universal [00:25:00] product index, Universal Life, variable Universal Life equity Indexed Universal Life.

None of those products are appropriate for IBC because they carry more risk with it. Universal products are actually just term insurance as the underlying product, renewable term insurance, so the price changes every year, and then there's the cash side of things that's tied to an index, and that's where the cash value comes from.

There's no dividend with. Universal products and it really is not appropriate for what we're trying to do. So if you want to "become your own banker," we need to have rock solid performance where it can only go up never down. And that's what you get with whole life insurance. IUL, it promises a zero floor on the cash value on the index growth, but what they don't say is that the cost can actually rise.

And so it just depends on a lot of how the policy is structured and it depends on how much you pay in premium. You know, with whole life insurance, you know what you're [00:26:00] getting into and it's going to grow according to how you expect it to grow. So that's kind of the last on the fear piece of it.

Now let's get into the uncertainty component of "FUD."

Finding an Advisor You Like and Trust
---

John Perrings: And I kind of alluded to it earlier where I really do think it's an important piece in finding someone you like and trust.

Obviously the Nelson Nash Institute has all the official Infinite Banking practitioners and amongst those, find someone you like and trust. You know, get to know like their philosophy and how they think about these things. And I think someone who shares with you what the different trade-offs are.

A lot of people will just kind of say things like, I have the best policy design because look right here. I got you the highest cash value in the early years, or the highest cash value in year one. And I think this is kind of bottom of the barrel thinking.

It's kind of like right after college, when I first got into the working world, my first job was selling long distance and it was all about the lowest rate. And that's kind of [00:27:00] how I equate high early cash value salesmanship. It's the equivalent of the lowest long distance rate.

Are we really doing a good job advising people If all we're doing is illustrating the best cash value in year one, and I would argue it's not really advising anyone or giving people any kind of structured or deep type of advice. Because there are trade-offs to getting high, early cash value.

And if people don't understand those trade-offs or worse, don't even know about them, are they really giving you quality advice?

And this kind of ties into another piece, which is the commission conversation. So the other uncertainty, is people really and this is probably one of the biggest things you see out there on the forums or on the internet, where people are really worried about how much commission the life insurance agent is earning.

Agent Commissions
---

John Perrings: And they say, well, if a life insurance agent has a lot of base premium and not a lot of PUA, they're going to earn a higher commission. And by the way, that's completely true. Agents earn more commission on [00:28:00] the base premium because you're selling more life insurance.

And that what, that's what life insurance agents sell.

The thing is, if an agent is designing a policy where the focus is just the highest early cash value, are they really doing the best thing for the client? And it's easy to say, yeah, that's the best thing. 'cause I have the most cash value. The problem is if you design a policy for higher cash value, it simply does not have the potential to grow to what it could be by having a more balanced design with more base premium, that's just a fact.

Over the long term, you will have a much lower, a significantly lower policy in terms of cash value and death benefit than you would if you had a more balanced design. And that's all because you can pay more premium over the years. That will create a much bigger policy.

By the way, the only reason we even talk about policy design is because of the Modified Endowment, Contract limits or [00:29:00] MEC limits.

These are limits imposed by the IRS. If this were the eighties, we wouldn't even have to worry about any of this stuff because what happened was the IRS started tracking that wealthy people were buying a bunch of life insurance and with almost all of it paid into Paid Up Additions. And so what they could do is they could just buy life insurance, let it grow, tax deferred, get to it tax free.

And the IRS was kind of like, okay guys you're obviously no longer doing this for the insurance. You're doing this so you can get tax deferred growth and tax free access on this asset. By the way, if this is true, it kind of tells you that, okay, maybe the wealthy did do some of this, so that's just one thing.

But anyway, all this policy design stuff is because of the MEC limits and if you have the MEC limits, which just means if you pay too much premium for the death benefit that you get over a seven year period, it's called the seven pay test. If you pay too much premium, the policy will become taxable.

Kind of like how an IRA is [00:30:00] taxable, so are these limits that are placed on the policy design, if you go too far with that, you'll MEC the policy. And so if you have these high PUA policies in the early years, you cannot pay more into it or you'll mech the policy. And so that's why a more balanced approach tends to work better over the long term, especially if you can front load it, then you have the ability to pay more premium in the future because the number one thing that builds cash value is the ability to pay a premium that's any premium. In the early years.

PUA does a lot of the heavy, really all the heavy lifting for building cash value, but after like five years, the base premium actually becomes more efficient in building cash value than the PUA rider, believe it or not. So the number one thing that builds cash value is the ability to pay a premium. So where I'm kind of going with this is who deserves a higher commission?

The person who just designed a high cash value policy, which by the [00:31:00] way, anyone can do that, there's no skill involved with designing high cash value policies, showing high cash value illustration. There's just no skill in that anyone can do it. Where the skill involved is, is understanding all the trade-offs and understanding where you're sitting today.

The easiest thing in the world for, someone who wants to buy life insurance like a, a client or a consumer. You listening to this policy, it's the easiest thing to say that yes, of course you need the highest earliest cash value, right? It, we all think we, we need and want that.

But the thing we have to know are the trade-offs worth it.

And that I think, deserves a higher commission. Someone who can help someone understand those trade-offs and understand the big picture of how this is working. I think that deserves a higher commission than just does this have the highest year one cash value. Now, here's the thing: me talking about this, it's like, you know, I've got a little bit of conflict of [00:32:00] interest.

It's easy to think that because I, I earn a commission on this. I sell whole life insurance.

But I can tell you that once I explain the trade offs to people, once I explain those trade offs. No one has opted to take the higher early cash value because that's how significant the trade-offs are. So I think advisors and agents who can help clients see the full picture, the big picture with all the information, don't they deserve a higher commission so that they, the client knows what they're getting into and they know exactly what's happening with their whole life insurance policy. Because this stuff really isn't that easy to explain. That's why there are so many podcasts about this, right? It's not the easiest thing in the world to kind of get people to understand the different components without getting into actually training them on, actuarial science or like getting into the business.

And so these are some of the things that I think create a lot of the uncertainty out there. And I think finding somebody who you like and trust someone who can walk you through and [00:33:00] help you understand what those trade-offs are. And then transparency around commissions and the conflict of interest and all that stuff.

The fact of the matter is at this moment, if you want to buy whole life insurance, you know this could change in the future with AI and everything, but at the moment you will have to work with an agent if you want to buy whole life insurance. So that's just gonna happen. You're gonna have to work with somebody. So they should tell you how their commissions work, right?

Alright, now the other area of uncertainty is, there are a couple things kind of hitting this, you know, like I, how much do you pay and then what do you actually do with your policy after you have it in place and start building cash value.

How Much to Pay & What to Do With Your Policy
---

John Perrings: And one way to look at this is, I'll just ask the question. If you had a place to put money that, you know, gets very respectable, tax deferred growth that you could get to tax free, that came along with a death benefit and all these different protection riders like disability, chronic illness, and terminal illness protection, you know, [00:34:00] gave you creditor protection, depending on the state that you're in, all these different things. If you have a place like that to put money, would you want to put only as little money in there as possible or as much as you could and now hear my words there?

I said, as much as you could, not as much as you can't, right? So it's really just a matter of like how much money do you want to start saving in a strategic manner, and that's just all going to be based on what's right for you and your cash flow situation. That being said, part of the process a lot of times is just looking at what's happening in your financial life currently and seeing if there are any shifts that can be made with your cash flow, either

temporarily or permanently, that could either cover your premium or make your premium bigger or assist you in paying that premium. And so those are some of the things that we do on our end to help people kind of find those premium dollars and land on an amount that makes sense for them to pay. But it really is just a cash flow question, [00:35:00] and it's, at the end of the day, it ends up being pretty simple.

Now, as far as like, what do we do with it? What do we do with our policy now that we have it in place? What do we do with the cash value now that we've strategically capitalized? And the good news is you really don't have to have those answers to get started because the main thing you need

to start doing this is you just have to start capitalizing. You just have to start saving. And when we can strategically capitalize, what often happens is opportunities have a way of finding us. And now with all that said, that, that doesn't really answer the question of what you can do. And the thing is, there are so many things you can do with it.

You know, real estate's a really easy one to tie in with The Infinite Banking Concept. Commercial lending is a really good one to tie in with Infinite Banking. But sometimes investments don't always just take the form of what we typically think. An investment, you know, like a business or a stock or a piece of real estate or whatever.

Sometimes investments [00:36:00] are investing in ourselves, like putting yourself through school or getting a certification or supporting yourself while making a career change into something else, or supporting yourself while you're starting a new business. Investing in your kids' future by having money to put them through college or buy a house that they can live in during college, or you can rent out to some of their roommates you know.

Simplicity & Next Steps
---

John Perrings: Things like that, that are unique to who you are and who you know and where you are at what time. All right. I hope this episode helps clear up some of the "FUD" around, you know, some of the things we're doing, the fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and helps you potentially get out of that analysis paralysis phase because this really is a lot simpler than you think it is. It's really hard to mess up.

And what we really want to do is take an approach that gives us the ability to think long range and create the most amount of control for us over the long term.

So if you find these principles are resonating with you and you'd like to find out how some of these could apply [00:37:00] in your life specifically, schedule a free consultation with me.

I'll take you through a short assessment to see how IBC might benefit you, and if so, what the next best step you can take. You can do that at StackedLife.com. See you on the next one.