Debt Free ISN'T The End only the beginning

Then we have how to find the right HELOC series. That's still going on. I think I'm about 30+ states in at this point. This is really great for new clients and those who aren't clients yet. And you want to do the strategy, you want to leverage a line of credit, you want to accelerate debt much faster leveraging a HELOC. This right here, I'm telling you, is saving people so much darn money. It's giving you the entire framework on how to find banks. I can't tell you how many times I've had people say, I can't find a bank in my state. Well, now that excuse is going away because I'm going state by state in this playlist. And then every video I've done so far, I provide a framework on how to find a bank, how to DIY. Then I do it myself on the video. I research it, I share my screen. I show them what I'm typing in their state, even though I don't even live in their state, and I'm finding banks even though my IP address is in Florida, and I'm finding banks. Understand that when you do a research in your own state, more banks will pop up. Okay, so that's huge. And then I give my recommendation. I give like, okay, if I was living in Arkansas, here's the banks that I would most likely go with. Okay, so that's really cool, working on that. Next update for you is annuities. So many of my clients are approaching retirement now, especially if you've been working with me since 2019, 2020, 2021. We've got a 5, 6, 7, 8 year relationship going on. Many of my clients from that time frame were in their 50s or late 40s. Now you're like 5 years out from retirement, you're 2 years out from retirement, you're at— you literally just retired this year, you're about to claim Social Security, whatever it may be. And for the last 5 years or so, what have we been just laser-focused on was eliminating debt. And in that time, many of you have paid off 2, 3, 4, 5, $600,000+ worth of debt. And that's amazing because that puts you in a high cash flow position. But then what has happened is, in a way, we neglected the investing side of things, the, the wealth building side of things. So during my personal journey of learning more outside of debt elimination, I've been learning about retirement income planning. So income planning in retirement to say, how do we not only pay off debt, continue to have our retirement accounts grow and compound, and then mathematically solve for a guaranteed amount of income that we can live off of for the rest of our lives so that we never have to worry whether or not we have enough money each month. Majority of the clients I work with, including you guys here present, your strategy was, well, if I just remove all these debt obligations, that's 30% of my income, that's 40% of my income, and Logically, that makes perfect sense. If I remove 30% of an obligation out of your income, and at retirement your income drops by 20%, by 30%, whatever it may be, but your expenses were already below what you were making then your math was telling you that, okay, if I get rid of all this debt, income goes down because I retire, I collect my pension, I'll have my Social Security, I'll have some retirement, I'll be completely debt-free. And because you're doing velocity banking, you also have capital liquidity. You had your line of credit or your HELOC, and then maybe somewhere along the way you started your whole life policy. And you're building that. Now, for some, it worked out. For others, what I'm seeing is paying off debt prior to retiring is not enough. Why? Well, no one foresaw COVID. No one foresaw interest rates going crazy. No one foresaw that inflation would go all the way to 15-20%. We have seen historical increases not only in our consumption items but also in our assets. Property values, your property taxes have gone up tremendously, your homeowner's insurance, your car insurance, those things over the last few years. Some of those items, some of those ticket items have gone up 40, 50%. And if you were already kind of middle class income or closer to higher middle-class income, paying off debt almost— it eradicated all that cash flow because your electric bill doubled, your homeowner's insurance went up 50%, your property taxes went up 35%, this went up, you know, then you go into gas and food and all the other things. So now you're like, shoot, I'm debt-free, I'm 62, but I still don't feel comfortable actually leaving this job just yet. So for those that are in that position, annuities is that gap filler. That's one item. There's definitely others as well, but annuities are a powerful gap filler that comes with a guarantee. There's no other financial instrument other than whole life insurance comes with the words guarantee in the contract. So when you look at all of your retirement accounts— Roth IRAs, IRAs, 401s, brokerage accounts, money markets, CDs, cash on hand— none of those things come with guarantees. Though that doesn't mean they're bad instruments. Yes, I still want to use those things. As it pertains to your retirement, we've got to figure out how do we strategically roll some of that hard-earned compounded money into safe, guaranteed cash flow location. An annuity can be that vehicle. And in other words, an annuity is a pension. That's what a pension is. An annuity provides guaranteed income for life no matter what happens. And then there's other little riders that we can throw in there like long-term care, impairment rider, all kinds of things that you can— we can do. But basically we are solving for full replacement of your guaranteed lifestyle expenses with guaranteed income. Then your abundance would be your retirement accounts. I can take income, I'll extract income out of there, and that's abundance living. Then in retirement, when you finally leave that W-2 full-time position, and then let's say you work 20 hours a week at a church and they pay you $30,000 a year or something like that, or $25,000 a year, that's your play money. So you would have annuities, Social Security, maybe a pension from the government or military if you were a part of that, or a large corporation. Those 3 things are the only guaranteed income products out there. Annuities, pensions, Social Security, or, or welfare, government welfare programs. So that could be VA income, disability income. If you're part of that, we want that money to supply your guaranteed lifestyle expenses. Wants and needs, you know, if you get more, great. So your wants and needs part would get covered by the wealth you created that you also take a distribution, turn that into income. And then your active income that keeps you healthy, keeps you social, keeps you active. Because we don't want to retire to the couch. We don't want to retire to the TV. We don't want to retire to nothing. That, that can lead to depression, disease, death. We don't want that. We want to retire to something that brings fulfillment, that brings joy, that brings happiness, that keeps you active, healthy, social, That could be volunteering at the church, that could be working at a nonprofit 20 hours a week, something manageable. That could be mentorship, coaching, starting a business that you choose your schedule and whatever you make, you make. And having that can— again, it goes into like tax strategy, saving tons of money there. So in the annuity world, due to where rates went, that there were some winners. So during the rise of interest rates, who did it hurt? It hurt people who needed debt, who were borrowing to get mortgages and things like that, but it tremendously helped retirees lock in guaranteed income at these high distribution rates. So annuities again, for the right person, the right age, the right amount of money needed, are producing very high guaranteed payout rates. We're talking 8, 9, 10% in some cases. There's also historically high bonuses being paid out. So say, for example, you got $500 grand in your 401k, you got a million dollars in your retirement account, and you roll the bond portfolio, you roll the cash part, you roll the money market, you roll the, the fixed money, the safe money that's in that 401, typically 60/40, right? 40% of your money in your retirement accounts is usually bonds, fixed income, cash, things like that. That's only earning maybe 3, 4, 5%. You roll that money out into a guaranteed vehicle, annuities, and then it's able to spit out an 8% income for life. You compare that to the whole entirety of your 401k portfolio. If it's worth $500k, $100 million, the safe distribution rate is only 4%. So you are taking less income with more money. Versus the annuity, you only need a portion of that million to produce roughly the same amount as that million would normally produce on a distribution, and then have it guaranteed for as long as you live. And if we live a very long, healthy life and that annuity burns out, it still keeps paying even though you ran out of money. So if you rolled over a million dollars, you roll over 200 grand, 300 grand, 400k, into an annuity and it paid out a certain distribution, 7-8%, whatever the number is, and you divide that $400K over, say, 15 years or so, the money, that $400K, would have gotten spent. But then you live an additional 10+ more years, you're getting way more than your $400K, right? Just keeps producing, and then you don't have to think about it. So for those in that position, I'm already having conversations obviously with you, so I already know who you are. But for new folks, new clients, that's on our minds now. That's actually on the forefront of the conversation when I'm, when I'm working with someone that wants to pay off debt but they're 55 years old. So I'm only— we're only 7 years out from retirement, let's say. We're now having the conversation about How much debt to eliminate? What makes most sense? And then how much money do we allocate toward accumulation, compounding wealth, creating more income? Does it make sense to maybe not pay off all our debt before we retire? Maybe leave the mortgage, pay everything else off. Once you've paid everything else off, continue to invest will let the guaranteed income that we're able to create pay off the mortgage. And then once the mortgage is gone, now you have additional cash flow. So we're having those conversations now because pre-COVID you could technically become debt-free, then invest and save and live a good life. That formula is being broken due to what's happened the last 6 years. COVID, different conflicts around the world, crazy inflation, interest rates going high, all these, all these different things. You— we've also, depending on what state you live in, you live in New York, live in New Jersey, you live in California, you've been getting ripped apart with taxes, different policies. That's, that's affecting things. I'm having clients move out of certain states going to lower tax states to save, to save money. Okay, so we're seeing that as well. That's an update there for you. Patricia had a question. She says, I have an FNG fixed annuity. What is your take on FNG? I think FNG is a life insurance carrier. So by the way, all annuities are typically provided by insurance carriers. From what I understand. And ideally, we want to get an annuity with a mutual carrier, preferably. When you get an annuity with a non-mutual carrier, I think there could be some risk there. And I think the, the risk is how the performance of that product the incentives, because when you're working with a non-mutual carrier, you have the owner of the company, the policyholders, you and I, and then you have the shareholders. So if it's a publicly traded insurance carrier that sells annuities, that company at the end of the day is always going to do things in the interest of the shareholders to increase shareholder value, even at the expense of the policyholders. Same goes for if you're going to purchase a whole life insurance contract, you want to work with a mutual carrier, not a non-mutual carrier, because if you work with a— if you have a whole life with a non-mutual carrier, you're competing with the shareholders in terms of the dividends and what and how your whole life performs over a long period of time. So the same thinking would need to be applied to annuities. So if we were to look it up together, FNG is not a mutual company, it's a publicly traded stock company operating as FNG Annuities and Life. So the company trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol FG. So Fidelity National Financial, okay, which holds 71% of the company, which with the remaining shares traded publicly on the market. So for you, Patricia, I would, I would look into this. We can do a, a deep dive, Patricia, where we can evaluate the annuity. So actually, thank you, that actually brings up another great point, um, Patricia, that I forgot to mention, but you just helped me remember it. So say Patricia got an annuity pre-COVID when rates were really low. Her guaranteed payout is based off of those rates back then. Now that rates have risen, she could renew or rewrite that annuity without spending any more money, and she can roll it into a new annuity according to today's rates, and she could lock in a new fixed guaranteed rate without doing anything. Literally just roll into a new annuity and lock in a higher payout. Isn't that crazy? So let's say Patricia had a $100,000 annuity and the guaranteed payout was a 3-4% distribution, and she's had it for a couple years. She rolls it same $100,000, maybe it grew to $110,000, rolls it, gets a bonus of $20,000. So she gets a bonus of $20,000, now is $130,000 in that annuity, and the new guaranteed payout is 7.5%. So when she turns on the income in that annuity, it was originally illustrating at 4%. She just went up 3 percentage points. That literally is a couple hundred dollars increase in income without her taking on any more risk, without her adding any more money, and it's all guaranteed. So those of you who have annuities that you inherited or you purchased years back, you can come back and renew that annuity, roll it into a new rollout product. You might stay with the same company, we can shop around. And so I have a service, I have a team with software that will literally scour all the companies that are providing annuities and go for the most attractive one. Um, my only like thought process— again, I'm not an expert on annuities. I actually believe I might have a client who has an annuity with FNG, so it's, it's a concern. It's definitely, you know, because you're— to your question, it's like, hey, what's your take on it? And I'm just thinking from like my life insurance, whole life perspective, that okay, if I'm gonna buy a whole life policy, I want to be with a mutual carrier because I know the only people who are getting paid is the owner of the company and the policy owners. I don't have to compete with shareholders. I don't have to share the profits. So since FNG is not a mutual company, I know off rip, even if they're having a a great product or whatever the case may be, that I'm still competing with a publicly traded company. It's totally worth comparing FNG Non-Mutual and compare it to a mutual insurance carrier and see, can I get a better price, right? So Patricia, if you want to do that, we can have that conversation. The other thing I like to do is joint work. So let's say you have a relationship with with that agent and you want to keep working with them, you can bring them in and say, let's, let's work together, right? So I'm not in the business of taking business. I don't like doing that. Whenever I have clients that say, I don't have a relationship with my agent, they left the business, they're no longer in there, they passed away, they switched industries, whatever it was, then it's like, okay, I'll take you on because you technically don't have an agent. But if you are working with someone, family, friend, whatever it may be, can bring them in on the conversation with me, and we can do the work together and give you the best product according to what, what you have. So that's another big update in the annuity space, is rates are increasing, payouts are increasing because of where rates are today. So that's huge to do a little audit there. We literally can get more income without having to spend more money, take on any more risk, and we find the carriers that make the most sense. Hopefully that helps, Patricia. The last one I have is my new coaching program that got launched right before my sabbatical. It's now on the website for you to view. I'll just share my screen and take a look again. If you're already a lifetime client, you ignore this. You already have access to me, everything, so you don't have to pay any more money. What I did roll out that's, that's different— I'm obviously, I'm not doing lifetime anymore, so that's only for certain people. You get lifetime access to all my courses, okay, and group coaching workshops. You have lifetime access to all that. My coaching program was an intangible service. So you, you know, you pay, you exchange your money, and you get me directly. You get my time and my focus and attention. You get all the wisdom, all the knowledge, all the education, implementation, the accountability. Now I rolled out credits because I figured these are things you're gonna have to do anyways in your life. So I'm like, What if I set up a program where you invest and then I give you money back, essentially, in the form of credit toward the services that you're gonna need to have done, period. So I'm playing with this right now. This is like truly testing this out where you invest in the program, it's $4,000, or you break it out into payments. It's 1 year of coaching with me. It says 8 phone calls, but I put a little sentence there that if we need more calls, there's no additional charge. So don't feel limited to 8 phone calls or making a decision based off of, off of that. It's more of a standard. I want to be able to talk to you at least every month, every other month. That's the goal. If we talk 2 times, 3 times in a month, it's literally just as needed, because certain people will need more help than others. So I'm just creating that standard. So within that $4,000, say you invested $4,000 with me upfront and you don't have a CPA, you don't have a tax strategist, so you're going to get a free tax strategy session with someone on my team. So it's like if you keep within the Finance Geek ecosystem, you get rewarded. I've been able to broker strong partnerships and relationships where I am able to provide you a discount on these services that you already pay for and you're not getting the best service, or you're paying at a high cost, and I can reduce that cost and give you a better experience. So I'm gonna provide a $400 credit towards your tax filing, and that would be in the first year, right? That wouldn't be every year because you're only investing $4K with me. So that'd be the first year you get that free tax strategy session. I'm giving a $540 credit towards establishing your Revocable living trust, will, power of attorney, healthcare directive. Getting those documents done are incredibly important. Then I'm providing 1-year coverage of identity theft protection, $3 million worth of coverage for 1 year. So I'm paying for that in advance, and then should you decide to keep it, and you, you would renew, right? Comes with a ton of other monitoring services, like monitoring your credit, monitoring your social media accounts, everything.