Infinite Banking Meets Creative Real Estate Investing with Anthony Faso and Cameron Christiansen

Welcome to the Smart Real Estate Coach Podcast, your source for actionable, real-life, practical investing advice. Each week we help you make a quantum leap somewhere in your business, your finances, and/or your life. Subscribe, leave a rating and review, and learn more at smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com. Good morning and welcome, smart listeners, to another podcast masterclass. I'm Chris Prefontaine. I'm your host. As always, you're stuck with me. Got 2 guests today. I said to Zach and the team, I've been on a lot of podcasts. I'm going to be on theirs soon. These 2 gentlemen I'm going to introduce you to where there's 2 hosts, but it's rare for me to have 2 people on where I'm interviewing 2 people at the same time. We get that treat today. Today, we're going to hang out with Anthony Faso. He's a CPA and Cameron Christensen, and they're the founders of Infinite Wealth Consultants and they host the Infinite Wealth Podcast. Now, I love talking to this audience and I love interviewing these guys for our audience because the 3 Payday System that we've trademarked and how we eke out profits lends itself extremely well to then have sort of, I'll call it buckets of cash where you can deploy. And some of those areas to deploy would be the infinite banking. Let me give you a little background on these guys, then we're going to dive in and have a— you're going to love this chat. Anthony's a former Army veteran. So, thank you for your service, for sure. Former CFO and a self-described recovering CPA. You're going to hear me dive into that, why he calls himself that. And he realized after the crash, like me, that true financial freedom isn't found on Wall Street. I don't know how long I've been screaming about this, guys. A stock can go to zero. With infinite banking, it won't and can't go to zero. And with real estate, it won't and can't go to zero. Your house can't go to zero. Cameron was a small business owner for over a decade, and then he turned Sort of into the infinite banking and passive income generation. After what? Like most people, after frustrations with just traditional crap and traditional advice. So with over three decades, just like us, just like me, with over three decades of combined experience, these two are recognized as the nation's foremost authorities in this infinite banking space. I only have people with, if you notice, decades of experience. The last guest was Jim Oliver, similar niche. 30-something years experience. Okay, so these guys, we're really bringing you people that know how to tear this apart. Now together they combined sort of the, the Robert Kiyosaki's principles and the Nelson Nash principles. That's why I love, like, for us, the creative real estate combining with this infinite banking, become your own banker. Uh, absolutely amazing. So without, uh, going on and on and on, these guys are awesome. Um, with that as a little backdrop, guys, welcome to the show. All right, Cameron and Anthony, welcome back to the show. And with that as a backdrop, let's dive right in.

Let's go.

Let's do it. We're looking forward to it.

You know, in the intro, Anthony, I got a kick out of it. I don't know if I said it in the past, but the recovering CPA thing, we got to get a definition of what that meant in the bio, the recovering CPA, because that's a new one on me.

You know what it is? I kind of feel like I feel like taxes are the mob. They keep pulling me back in. I always, I have that affinity for taxes, but when I had my CPA firm, I mean, I was teaching people more of their traditional way, which maybe a lot of your listeners might have started. Let's max out our 401. Let's pay off our mortgages. More of that traditional financial planning. But then, When '08 happened and my 401 turned into 201.

Yeah.

And, I saw the devastation, but then I also saw people that actually excelled during that time. And so, that was an enlightening experience to me where I kind of pivoted from more of the traditional financial planning per se to more following more Robert Kiyosaki, getting outside of Wall Street, creating passive income, more than monthly expenses. And I would tell you, Chris, I never thought of myself as your typical CPA. You know, I don't have the green visor or the pocket protector. I actually have a personality. So that's just a little play on words to let people know I'm just, I'm not your traditional CPA.

Well, and I love as part of the answer, you embedded the '08 thing. Because as I said in the intro, you guys know, I mean, I'm big on experience, right? And you got With the 3 decades, it just mirrors what we do here. And I just love it. So, thank you for weaving that in there without me asking. Can we do this, guys? Let's— I don't know if you guys can chime in, but let's kind of define the whole infinite banking thing because every time I do a video, I make all these assumptions that people go, what are you talking about? So, let's define it for them and set the scene in that sense first. Now, we'll dive in.

I would tell you, You want to go, Cam?

No, I was going to say, go ahead. I like your credit card analogy.

Well, I tell you, here's kind of how I state it for most people, because it really isn't that complicated when we really break it down. However, Chris, let me ask you this. Do you use— do you use a rewards credit card?

Yeah.

Why don't you just use your debit card or cash?

Because of the rewards. Right.

Yeah. Because you're like, hey, I'm going to buy this thing anyways. I add one extra step, a credit card, I get some extra bonuses, something miles, cash back, or whatever. I say, if you can understand that, you can understand infinite banking. Because all I do is we view our infinite banking is really, we're storing our— we got to store our cash somewhere. And with infinite banking, we store them in a high cash value life insurance policy. So, just like with the credit card example, I view my policies or my infinite banking system as my rewards credit card for buying assets or particularly real estate. Instead of using the credit card, I use my infinite banking policy. Instead of getting miles, I'm getting uninterrupted compound interest. Like, imagine with your listeners all the real estate or assets you've bought You know, you've taken that money from cash and you broke the compound interest curve every time. But what if since the beginning of your investing, your money, your down payments could have compounded during this whole time? You know what? You'd have more money, which would allow you to do more deals, which would allow you to get to financial freedom even faster.

Wow.

And in essence, really, because We got to store our cash somewhere. Most people store it in a bank because it's safe and liquid. And then when that opportunity comes, they withdraw it and buy the asset. And then that asset produces cash flow. It's got to go somewhere. We put it back in the bank, build it up so we can buy asset 2. All we're really doing with infinite banking is instead of storing it in somebody else's bank, we're creating our own bank in the form of high cash value life insurance. It's still safe. It's still liquid. However, it's going to earn a higher rate of return. It's tax-free. In most states, there's some level of asset protection. But the beauty of it is we don't need to withdraw the cash for the down payment. We can borrow against our policy. So we still have that house. We still have that down payment. And we still have our cash value continuing to grow.

I got a question that just popped in my mind, you guys, on that note, Anthony, 'cause someone asked me this. There was, I don't, I forget if it was your show, it was one of the Infinite Banking shows. And they said, okay, compare, they came through support actually, compare, how'd they phrase it? Compare what you just said essentially, compare that to, I have a stock portfolio and I can borrow on margin. Let's say the question was similar. So could you address that?

Yeah.

'Cause it was recent.

Yeah, happy to. I can jump in there fast if you want to add something. Oftentimes, right, is people will acquire assets wherever they have been told to, right? So a lot of times you'll see assets acquired like an equity in a house, right? So everybody's familiar with how a HELOC works, right? We build up, we go to the bank, we ask for a loan. We're not liquidating that asset. The example that you just asked is like a security-backed line of credit. Chris, essentially the assets that they've accumulated so far are in some sort of brokerage account and they want to take a loan against it. One of the biggest things that you'll notice is usually the percentage of that's available in a security-backed line of credit. With a security-backed line of credit, you're going to go in there and you're going to ask somebody for a loan and they might lend you 60% of the value of that account. And the reason behind that is because of the volatility That you see from that underlying account, which is that brokerage account. If you do the exact same thing, you have those same dollars that are sitting in a policy, you're going to have access to 100% of that account value because the account value in life insurance does not change. It's very boring. It's very static. It's going to increase at a very defined rate year over year. And so that's going to be the biggest difference that you're going to see. The second one is that You don't own kind of that line with the security, that brokerage account that's giving you that line of credit. They can call it at a moment's notice. With a policy loan, you are part owner. If you read that contract, we're working with mutual insurance companies. And so there's no instance in which an insurance company can ever call that loan.

I love it. I love it. And it was simplified how you said it. So thank you. I wanted to make sure Because I'll get that from stock people, right? Oh yeah. All the time.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um, so in the intro, as you guys just heard, I was saying one of the many reasons I love the concept is, and the whole system is, I can say to a new student, I want you to just comment on this, you guys. I can say to a new student who might not have much saved up yet, look, our payday system, the 3 paydays, you know, take X percentage of payday 2 and X percentage of payday 3 and keep dumping it in. How small can they start with infinite banking?

You know what? I would say we just want people to start, Chris, because they hear this concept. It sounds strange. It sounds too good to be true. You know, the best way to figure this out is to try it out. So, we just want people to try and our job is to show them how great it is and then they come back for more. But I would say, at a minimum, I would say it's 10 times your age per month.

10 times your age per month. Okay.

Let me do the math for Cameron. Okay? So, if you're 40 years old, right? That's $400 a month. But also realize, I mean, it's going to take some time before you could really purchase an asset or Or do something with it. So what we typically recommend is tell people just redirect whatever they're saving. Typically they're like, hey, when my money's coming in, I'm going to save some, I'm going to invest some. Well, with infinite banking, it can do both. It can be a great place to save and store your liquidity. But also we want you to, to take advantage of those opportunities. As some of— as soon as an asset comes available, We want you to hop on it because the key thing where people get confused is I know we're just storing their capital in life insurance temporarily, right? The main— this is what we call— this isn't an either/or. We're not saying put your money in life insurance or real estate or the stock market or whatever your asset of choice is. This is an and asset. We have the ability to do both. We got to store our money in the policy, But then you can leverage against it to finance your assets.

I love it. I talk all the time with these guys in our community and the listeners hopefully about some of the different programs we have. And recently I opened up this private club, right? I do it every now and then when my wife says, okay, take on some more work if you want. So I open up to like 6 private people and it's usually expensive, but they just work with me privately. And I remember the last invite I did, the last opening I did, 5 people said, yep, let's do it. But one said, No, I can't take on any more debt. And I called him out on it. And I just want you guys to kind of address the bad debt versus good debt or bad debt versus investment is what I told the guy. But you know where I'm going with that? Do you want to address that?

Sure. Bad debt versus good debt. Bad debt, I would say just blanket coverage would be like consumer debt. Anything that's dragging us down that isn't producing some sort of income for us. Good debt, as you know, is some sort of investment that's going to derive income for us. Man, the example that you gave, I can't think of a better investment to make than education, right? If somebody's going to go and take a loan and fork money out for an education, that's probably the best example that they can make. So.

Yeah. And I think, I'm glad you called him out, Chris, right?

Is, man, he's got to get in that group. You got to make those investments.

I actually did a few months after that because I, you know, I'm pretty blunt. So I called them on it. You guys just did. But I think it's important because sometimes I'll get calls from prospects on this topic and they'll go, yeah, I got beat up, or I got beat up in '08 like you. And I'll be like, okay, well then you got to change something. Like, so they still see it as debt and you just got to change your mindset around that. So I don't know how we— thoughts on how they do that mindset-wise? I don't know. What do you guys think?

I would say, you know, we have the same way because oftentimes, you know, people, they go through our education and our training and they set up these policies, but then they don't want to take a loan, right? Because they have that, they have, they have that head trash. And so that's something that, that, that we have to tackle for some people as well. But, you know, how we handle it is, you know, maybe a little different, but we talk to people as, you know, we're creating our own banking system, you know, and is a loan an asset or is it a liability? I mean, most people are going to say a liability because that's what it is to them. But to a bank—

Right.

A loan is an asset. So, when you're both, It kind of washes itself out. But really, Chris, the big deal is it's that head trash where we've been taught that debt and leverage is bad and to pay for everything in cash. And so, the downside of paying stuff in cash is you're breaking that compound interest curve. And if you want, you can do things with cash. It's just going to take a heck of a lot Heck of a lot longer. If you want to go fast, you need— you can use leverage and debt smart, or should I say smart, and use it to your advantage. And then that's where— I mean, if you read Rich Dad Poor Dad, oh, it's kind of over here, is it cut off in the screen? You know, we're big fans of Rich Dad Poor Dad. You know, you kind of need to listen and really do the math. And what I will say, when people do get struck or struggling, because I have a client who wants to pay cash for a property, but even if he's going to use a policy loan, right, he doesn't want to use leverage. But we kind of laid it out, you know, by he can buy one property, okay, or which his was like $250,000, or he can use leverage and he can control $1 million of real estate. Now that appreciation is off of $1 million, not on $250,000. But the thing is, that's on a spreadsheet. And Chris, unfortunately, I wish we lived on a spreadsheet. It would make life so much easier, but we don't. So kind of what I'm working with this client is let's put our toe in the water. Maybe let's leverage, maybe put 50% down. Or just kind of try it out. For those people, I think the best teacher is going to be experience and for them to take action and move forward.

Well, yeah. And it even magnifies more the example you gave of leverage, one versus however many you said they could buy. When you talk about the way we buy, as you guys know, on terms, man, you could leverage so many properties with little money. And if you're doing it through the infinite banking, it's just like a multiplier. I don't want to say infinite, but it's pretty ridiculously strong.

Well, and even like, because like with, we love what you guys are doing because eventually, you know, a lot of our clients are using their own capital at the beginning, right? But if you're successful at this, you're going to eventually run out of capital.

Yeah.

And then so you could just stop there or this could be a win-win because if you can help these people out or you're using some investors' money, where they're getting a good return. But that's how you're going to grow, is that you're going to need to use leverage.

How can, like, let's say the listeners are, they're either new to infinite banking or like me, I had a crap policy 10 years ago that the infinite banking world fixed, right? And said, but I didn't know back then. So if they are listening now and they have the wrong policy or they haven't even started this, How do they, besides, I'm gonna ask you guys to give your info so they can contact you, but generally speaking, how do they know what's not good and what's good other than they gotta hook up with someone that's been doing it for 3 decades like you, I would assume, but anything else they should look out at, uh, look out for?

Yeah, I'll jump in there. Um, one is they, the, again, uh, I'm, I'm gonna tell 'em to jump into our course. We'll give access to it here at the end of the call. Well, And the best thing that they can do is educate themselves because most of the time people are going to go and they're going to get excited about this idea. They reach out to the closest individual that they know that does policies, and most of the time they don't have the expertise on how to design it. And so that's where they end up kind of in that situation, Chris. But to answer your question specifically, what I would tell them is to look for the amount of cash value that they have in the first couple of years. And as a percentage of what they put in premium, they should have somewhere in the range of 60 or more percent of whatever they put in there that's showing up as cash value. A poorly designed policy is where we put in money into premium and we have almost $0 showing up in cash value. After, so yeah, that's just negligence on, you know, the, the agent, the advisors. kind of point of view, not knowing how to design that policy. So, um, that's what I would tell them. Look for the amount of cash value that you're going to have in the first couple of years.

I think, Chris, what I would tell you, if you didn't work with somebody that was infinite banking focused, yeah, your policy was not designed for infinite banking. Because most of the time, I tell you, whole life can be a good product. Whole life is typically or traditionally designed for death benefit.

Right?

It's designed for your family later, right? You're not going to have cash value to really year 3 or 4. And when people bash and have negative thoughts about whole life and infinite banking, they're really— it's there. And I would concur with their thoughts, but it's about traditional whole life. The way we're designing it is very different.

Yeah.

We're designing it to minimize that death benefit and maximize cash. You're going to have cash from day 1, and we have clients utilizing their cash value on day 30. But an agent, unless you specifically tell them you want it to be designed cash-heavy, they're going to design it for death benefit. For one, that's how they were taught. But also, that's how we get paid, right? You get paid really more on the heaviness on the death benefit. The way we design a policy is we're getting 1/3 the commission of these other guys are getting. And because that's one of the biggest complaints, people will say, oh, well, they're just— it's a high-commission product. The way other people are designing it, I would agree, but we're getting a third, or they're getting 3 times as much commission as we are. So, we're intentionally taking a haircut. But the difference is people with traditional whole life view this as an expense. This is, again, to help their family later. But with infinite banking, this is helping their family now.

No, I love your candor and that's why you guys are on the show because that's how we are as you know, right?

Yeah.

We just expose it probably to the point of pissing off competitors because they go like, what are you telling people that for? The same as you just did. So, I appreciate that very much.

Yeah.

You guys, so I don't forget, I got maybe a question or two and then I'll ask you guys whatever you want to share. But first, tell them how they can reach you, literally anything you want to share, links, course. I know you have a gift for them. Which is tremendous. So give 'em up, give it to 'em.

Yeah, we have an online course, right? Some people are more than happy to reach out to us directly. We can give you a link for that. But we do have an online course where if somebody's just learning and wants to take that first step on education, they can go to our website, which is infinitewealthconsultants.com/smartrealestate. When you go there, we're going to give you access to the course. Once you get in the course, there's going to be a whole bunch of videos Anthony and I've created. And when you get in there, it's nothing salesy. It's all educational. Um, it's just us educating you guys on infinite banking and how it's going to be a good fit. Once you get in there, there'll be a button in there that you can click if you do want to meet with us afterwards, but that's going to be the best resource if somebody's looking to kind of take that next step, Chris.

Yeah. Awesome. No-brainer, guys, for the smart listeners. No, absolute no-brainer because we could talk for another hour and a half. But the point is that you want to get on the phone with these guys and explore and sort of have a discovery call for yourself too.

Yeah.

And dive into the course headfirst. What didn't I ask you guys? As always, I'll leave it because I can get into a flow and then go, okay, I didn't even hit what they wanted to hit. So, what didn't I ask you or any nuggets you want to share as we wrap?

Well, I would say, Chris, one thing I would like to say, infinite banking is not for everyone, but the people that it are, it can be a great tool. And what I would encourage your listeners is to don't listen to opinions, focus on facts. Look into this and see if this is for you and your family or not. And a very simple way, non-intrusive, non-selling, is to take advantage. We have— you can get free access to our course after IBC 101. I think the Runtime is like 35 minutes, right? You will know after that, hey, this thing is not for me. You're going to know really quick. Or you're going to be like, this is interesting. I want to learn more. I think if you're going to be an investor and you want to get that passive income more than your monthly expenses, you need to evaluate Infinite Banking. You owe it to yourself to determine, hey, this is for me or it's not. But, the only way to do that is to learn. And, we're given free access and we're not going to call you, we're not going to bombard you with anything because our theory is infinite banking doesn't need to be sold, it just needs to be told. And, that's what we're trying to do is to get out the message.

And, just so I can put my stamp on this, you guys, Listeners know this by now, most, unless they're new. I don't bring people on, forget the experience that we already addressed, but I also don't bring people on that stuff that I don't do. I mean, I own policies personally in this arena. I own policies for the business and I have each of my grandkids, I dump money in for a policy on a monthly basis. So yeah, this is something you guys need to take a serious look at, or you are going to look back a decade later and go, oh shoot, I kind of missed the boat on that one. You know, whatever age you're at. So Cameron, any last minute thoughts on your side?

Yeah, I'd say they've been, most of the listeners probably have been playing the wrong game, right? And they're coming to that realization. They've been doing the 401, they're doing the IRA, they go down that road 10, 15 years and they're like, you know what? I have no idea how this is going to turn out for me. I have no influence I can exert on this to make it perform any better. And so that's usually when people start to transition and start to look into real estate, something that is tangible, that they can control, they can add value. And that's when they also start to come across infinite banking because infinite banking and using that policy as a place to store cash is just a tremendous complementary piece to the real estate. So as you guys go down this road, like Faso mentioned, man, consider looking at infinite banking, adding it to your portfolio, and it's only going to increase your returns.

Love it.

Love it.

Love it, guys. Thanks for being on. And Give them the link one more time for the course, please. The free course.

Yep. InfiniteWealthConsultants.com/SmartRealEstate.

Awesome, guys. Thanks for being on. Appreciate you. And I look forward to seeing you on your show. I already told everybody, as you heard earlier, to write that down and go subscribe. So make it a great week.

Go make a fantastic day.

All right. That wraps up our time together today with Mr. Anthony and Mr. Cameron. Always good to hang out with those guys. Guys, couple free gifts for you. Please take a note here if you're driving. It'll be in the show notes. You can go back to it. 2 things. If you do not have our books yet, I say this every show, they're free and that includes no shipping. We ship it at our cost. Go to 3paydaysbooks.com/podcast. So, that's the number 3, 3paydaysbooks.com/podcast. Also, we have a workshop that I did and I said to the team, let's continue to put this out because Nobody's breathing down your neck and watching you go through this and, you know, having to sell you something. This is just a free workshop that I did that I think will give you— it's not going to get you rich quick tomorrow. It's 30 minutes, but it'll give you a nice 10,000-foot view of what we do. Go to smartrealestatecoach.com/masterspodcast. Make it a great week, guys. Definitely rate and review us. We take that very, very seriously and we review that every single week and really, really value your opinion. Go ahead and share this episode with literally everyone you know because they should get their fingers on this infinite banking concept. They will thank you for it. Make it a great week. You know, guys, for years I've been at the business now, 34, but for years we had some rent collection things in place, we had bookkeepers in place, we had marketing to go to all these different websites. Now we simply go to prosperity.io. It was built with us and you in mind. You can market your first property if you're brand new. You can scale if you're already in the business, but you can market your properties across 50+ platforms in one click for way less than hiring a pro. You can easily collect rent online, so it's like an escrow service for you. You can track payments, you can get monthly reports so you know how your investments are doing, or if it's your first investment. And no tech headaches, no guesswork, just smart tools to help you grow with confidence. Get started now at prosperity.io because every point All right. Thanks for tuning in to the Smart Real Estate Coach Podcast. If you got value from today's episode, guys, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a future episode. It literally takes one nugget to access some of the things we're doing. And when you're talking the amount of the size rather of the paydays, it's an opportunity cost that you can't let go. So don't miss an episode. And for goodness' sake, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Yeah. All right.

Thanks for to tuning in. hear it. If you're ready to find your best path for getting started on your real estate investing journey in general, head over to smartrealestatecoach.com/getstarted. We're going to help you take the guesswork out of your next steps. See you in the next episode.