129. The Wrong Way to Structure Whole Life Insurance in Canada

You are listening to the Wealth Without Bay Street Podcast, a Canadian guide to building dependable wealth. Join your hosts, Richard Canfield and Jason Lowe as they unlock the secrets to creating financial peace of mind in an uncertain world. Discover the strategies and mindsets to a financial future that you can bank on. Welcome to part two of our two part episode that we did with my friend Vern McCarty where we in part one from last week we had a great conversation all about the original tax free savings account and we went into some conversation about some ways you can create more efficiency on different aspects of money that's already flowing through your life in this episode. Well, Vernon and I are going to get our rant on and we're going to talk a little bit about what's been being said out there by some other advisors out in the Canadian marketplace and some concerns that we have over how it might be financially damaging or impactful to Canadians who aren't getting the right level of coaching when it comes to the process of becoming your own banker. Stay tuned. Let's get our rant on and I hope you enjoy. For folks listening in, you'd just be amazed how often people have some kind of an insurance or insurance product and even if it's not whole life, but there's, there's value there, good value. It's, it's either been doing okay or doing well. And they could have been tapping into it for 10, 20, 30 years and just had no idea. And I'll give you, I'll give you another quick story, Vern, because I think stories are important because they're real. I was on with a gentleman not that long ago. He, he was getting a policy with another advisor and that advisor decided to get out of the business. They made a transition and so they, they ended up coming to me and we found out through all these different insurance policies that they have, he had been paying everything monthly, 100% monthly on all these. And it was like seven or eight different policies and they're at various things size, some are like critical illness. There was like, I think there's a long term care, there's a bunch of different, like life insurance, you know, most of which was whole life insurance. So he had value in there. They weren't monstrously sized policy, but that's fine. They've been building up over time. But because they were paying monthly this entire timeframe and they had all this value built up plus they had other like savings, they were basically paying give or take because of the company that they were with about seven And a half percent more money than necessary on every one of those policies. When we did the math on it, it was almost $2,500 a year.

Wow.

In other words, for basically the better part of 15 years, they'd been paying an extra $2,500 a year unnecessarily because no one sat with them and said, you could take a policy loan and you could pay all of these annually, and then you can make the exact same monthly payments that you've always been making, and you're going to make now the 7 1/2% that XYZ company is making off you for the privilege of allowing you to do this monthly. Now, every company's a little different when policies were sold. They can even be different, but on average, it was a lot of money. If you had $2,500 a year back in your financial life for 15 years, what on earth could that have done for you? Go ahead and leave a comment in the comment box and let us know what you would have been able to do with 2,500 bucks a year for 15 years. And then if you're still alive after those 15 years, what else would you be able to do moving forward? Well, I know one thing you could do. You can certainly get a policy for 2,500 bucks a year. And if you did that for 15 years, it would have accumulated capital and it would have accumulated death benefit. And it's going to create a legacy event. And it's like, it's just like, oh, it's just like a snowball effect. But the problem wasn't, is because they had no idea, no exposure. Nobody told them they weren't having regular meetings with a coach, with an advisor. Yeah, they'd gone through, they'd bounced through like four different advisors. There wasn't a single same advisor's name on the, on any of the paperwork. And so they're kind of let out there, you know, hanging in the wind. And they're jaded by that experience, which I understand that's a common thread for people, but recognize there's these little subtle things of efficiency that you can do in your life. And all of a sudden, hey, there's an extra 500 bucks a year. Boom. There's a thousand bucks a year. There's $252,500 a year. And that sort of thing happens for a lot of our clients. When we meet with them. All we're doing is they're not, we're not changing what they're doing. We're just Changing subtle adjustments to make more efficiency onto what they're doing.

Yeah, exactly what you said. I mean, I have to pay home and auto insurance. I don't like it, but I have to. I used to pay 420 bucks a month. Now I pay. Now, unfortunately, I'm with one of those companies that has that green logo you were referring to earlier. That's my, the insurance provider. And they don't give a discount on that. Home and auto insurance.

Right.

And I, and I heard that from a client once. He goes, oh yeah, I called my insurance company. They don't give me a discount if I pay annually, so I'm just going to keep paying monthly. I said, okay. Did you were just going to change it to annual because there was a discount or is it that the money that's leaving you, that's the problem? I don't, I mean the discount would be great, but I don't give a crap about the discount. I want the capital. I don't want two automatic debits coming out of my bank every, every month. I don't want that lost control. I don't want home and auto insurance being ripped out of my bank, every bank account. So I just access the policy loan, I pay the annual premium and you better believe I just redirect the money back to my own system. I was already paying it anyway and now like again, increased death benefit cash value, all, all the rest of it. I'm, I'm controlling the process, I'm controlling the payment. It's really empowering it.

And I've heard that from a lot of people that, oh well, my, my company doesn't offer a discount. You can call people and they'll say that. But then when you actually get the numbers and you do some third grade arithmetic, almost like not, certainly not every time. But my experience has been 85, 90% of the time there is some kind of a discount. Maybe it's 3%, but it'll say something on the statement. But then when you actually do the real math of what the savings value is, often it's as high as 8%.

Yeah.

And so you know, it's, it's a, it's, it's just like, well look, you want to go chase a rate of return on some investment and you're, you're hoping to get 8 to 10%. But meanwhile over on this side, you're just watching money leak out of your life that you could simply just stop and make an instantaneous 8% return by changing one thing to your point, Rich.

About Those critical illness policies. And I mean, I have all that type of insurance. My most valuable asset today is my ability to earn an income. Because I don't know about you, but I'm dependent today on my income. So you better do whatever you can to ensure and protect that asset, right? So if I get sick, if I get hurt, I don't have to worry about paying the bills, right? But I used to pay all those premiums on my two kids, on my wife, on myself. I used to pay all those premiums monthly while the insurance company, the life companies that I have those policies with, you know, they provided a discount or they charge you more when you do monthly. So I just flipped around, grabbed a policy loan, paid all those off. So there is, I call it my debit to deposit ratio. Rich. You know, a few years ago there is debit, debit, debit, debit, debit, debit, deposit, debit, debit, debit, debit, debit, right? There's all this money just flowing outta the bank all the time. Now. It's, I have like, maybe there's just a couple things I can't change. They won't take my money. So I have like two, maybe two automatic debits coming outta my bank and there's a few more deposits, which is nice, but there's a lot of, lot less debits. I still have to pay for a lot of things. I've eliminated third party debts and stuff, but just by shifting, you know, I did eliminate, like I said, some third party debts, my truck payment, but by shifting from monthly to annual and getting rid of some of those debits, and by implementing the process of becoming your own banker over the last 18 months or so, there's about 3,000 plus $3,000 a month that is no longer automatically leaving my family. Like, how much of a difference would that make for you? Like, it's, it's just incredible, man. Like, it's. Anyway, I don't want to beef it up, but I'm, I'm like, you know, you're, you're what, 10, 12 years into your journey?

Yeah, I'm, I've made a ton of mistakes along the way. I'm sure there's more in my future.

Same here. And hopefully so because you're, you either win or you learn, right? But I'm, I'm like, I'm like a third of where you're at. I'm like, I'm like four really. I've had policies longer than that, but actually implementing the process and expanding my system and really, you know, getting after it and getting things done. I'm like four years into my journey, so a lot of these wins are really fresh for me. Right. It's like, holy snap, like just two years ago, like I said, the lack of control, the amount of money that was flowing out, still trying to kind of figure things out. And my system has gained momentum. I've built up more policies, I've achieved more objectives, and now it's just like I go into my bank and like I said, it's boring. There's no transactions going on. Except for when I get paid like today, I immediately take that money and fire it off to a policy I have. I always joke with my clients and I say, yeah, if I showed you my bank account, which from time to time I do, you'd think I was broke because I got about this much money sitting in the commercial bank.

Yeah. Nelson used to say he wanted the, you know, when he passed, he wanted the final expense check to bounce. You know, he didn't want, he didn't want to owe anything to anybody. He didn't want to have any. He didn't want to own anything. He won't have any assets. He wanted it all just to be insurance. And, and recently on our most recent quarterly client community coaching event that we did a few weeks back, we actually had a story that we were able to relay to our, to our clients in that private setting we call the Tale of Two Dads. So David Stearns, who was Nelson Nash's son in law, he did a, he did a great presentation on his own father and Nelson Nash as his father in law. And they're, they're two kind of parallel lives. They were similar age, they had similar kids and grandkids and, and, and you know, you know, they were, both were in the army at one time. They had very similar lives. The big difference was how they prioritized things where their focus was. You know, I found out that Nelson actually got his very first policy when he was 14 years old and he had his parents listed as, his parents listed as the beneficiaries. And then he got another one at 16, and then he got another one at 19. And so when Nelson passed away, and this is three years ago, he had 17 death benefit checks. 17 death benefit checks were cut to various people. What, you know, a couple went to some organizations, but 17 death benefit checks and 28 policies, 28 policies were still in existence after he's gone. They still are around today. That is a, I mean, just think about the legacy of that Just imagine if that was something you could provide. You could leave behind 17 death benefit checks. Tax free money showing up when it's needed the most, solving all kinds of problems. The government's not getting a single dime of any of it because you got to choose who the beneficiaries were and you've created these other policies and you're now be able to hand them off to the life insured or the parent, whoever owns that thing. Like there was three policies on ex business partners that were passed down to family members and so 28 additional assets with ready available access to cash and accumulating death benefit, a secondary tax free event that's impending in the future all transition down to another generation. That is unbelievable. And the only thing that differentiates people from creating that is right here. It's not about how much money that's running through your life today. It's not about how much your income is. It's about how you're thinking about everything and where are you prioritizing things that matter to you in your life. Everyone is already spending all financial resources on what he or she believes is best. It has to take a or change in priorities to recognize controlling the banking function as, as Vern and I have talked about today as it relates to your needs, your needs is the most important thing that you can do financially. Once you've done that, you can do every other financial thing in life that you already are planning to do or want to. That is the power of the infinite.

Banking concept or the. It's not a tax free savings account. We got to be careful what we say. But we, we joke and say the oldest tax free savings account in Canada.

It can be when you do it right. And the reality is it doesn't have the same limitations and deposit minimums and the fact that you can only take money out one time per year and then wait till the next year to put it back in, et cetera. None of those stupid, you know, things that can restrict your autonomy and what you want to do with your own financial life are involved in an insurance policy sometimes.

Don't you get? Oh, by the way, I just wanted to make this quick note because otherwise they're going to forget. But sadly, you know, we were talking about something, you know, your clients who had policies, My clients who had a policy. My client who had a policy from before. Sadly we get on calls with people who are 40, 50, 60 years old and they're like Vern, like my dad gave me one of these things when I was 19, had it since I was like 2 years old, he gave it to me. What? Or he dad died or whatever, cashed it in. He goes, man, if I would have known then what I know now. Right? But side, side note, I was just going to say, first of all, Nelson, correct me if I'm wrong. Did, did, didn't he have. He had a heck of a lot more policies than 18 at one point. Like he bled a lot of those down, didn't he?

Or 49. At one time he had 49 policies.

Yeah. So, you know, people talk about retirement planning or passive income time and they go over and what happens at passive income time, man. Like, that's why I have a system of policies. There's so many different things that I can do. So that's not a different conversation. But again, it just gives me a whole lot more options. And then, you know, we talk about that, that legacy piece and we talk about all of the banking function and all the things that have always basically been around. Right. What's interesting about these policy systems, they've been around longer than any, basically any asset class other than maybe real estate. They've been around for longer than anything. And we are now in a position, rich, where sometimes it's, it's frustrating or I get annoyed with, you know, quote the system because what do we have to do? We have to help people unlearn and actually think about things. We're not pitching policies or pressuring people. We're helping them think. And the reason why people are not sure about whole life insurance or they're still skeptical somehow, even though it's nearly 200 years old is because way back before you and I were even born, or we were at least really little kids, all these fancy tools and products started to get invented that are, quote, unquote, better and have more higher rates of return. Really all it is is less control, lots of risk restrictions, all these other things. I'm not saying that everything's bad other than whole life. I'm just saying it's interesting how like depending on how old you are, your parents and grandparents likely had whole life policies 100 years ago, 75 years ago. Like that's where PE people knew that this was a strong, smart asset to have, like gold or whatever. But it's like that's where people saved their money. All these fancy products weren't around 75 years ago. But then the, the, the, I think it was Jason's wife. One time I heard this quote, she said that people, people consume what's put in front of them.

Right.

You don't hear about whole life insurance or it being a strong asset class or what a great tool it is. You hear rates of return and borrow at this, and mutual funds and cryptocurrencies and all these other things. Again, not saying all that stuff's bad, but that's what you hear about. Those are the things that are marketed. The insurance companies, God bless them, they do a wonderful job at creating these amazing products, but they do a really crappy job of letting people know that they exist. So that's part of what we do, right? We help educate people and help them understand and learn and unlearn so that they can do more things. But I just find that fascinating and also frustrating that not to get into the whole like, you know, people slandering the policies 80 years or 40 years ago to try and make other products and tools look better. And heck, that even prompted the insurance companies to invent new tools to try and, quote, compete with the marketplace. Right. And again, not, not shooting down any of those types of products either. If it's the right tool or the right fit for your objective, it's a great policy. But it's like these things are just time tested and true and they've been around forever and yet still people go, it's a scam. I don't know about these things. And even advisors themselves, Rich. I get so frustrated with some of these guys who actually have no clue how the tool actually works. All they want to do is talk to you about a dividend or a dividend rate or the interest rate. I, I go, look, take.

They also don't, they also don't know how the dividend works and what are all the components that go into that go into paying one.

They don't even know how the dividend works. And God, don't, don't get me wrong, like, I, I love dividends, but to take the dividend and flush it down the toilet, Rich, are you still slamming tons of cash into these policies all day long? All day long.

I have a bigger impact on the result of the policy than the insurance company ever will have.

I don't care about the dividend. And when I get into, I don't, I don't, I don't get into these argumentative conversations anymore. When I was much younger in the business, I would.

But when you, like, I think much younger. Like, yeah, three years ago, four years ago. Much younger.

Well, yeah, a few years ago. Well, much.

We're gonna have to work on your concept of time, Vern.

I think, well, here's the deal. My, my, I would say that my growth in the business the first eight years was like. But the last four years has been like this, right? So four or five years ago in my mind I was much, I was definitely much younger. But my point is, is when I get into conversations with these guys and they want to talk about the concept, the process of becoming their own banker, isn't it interesting that it always, always, always comes back to the product? All they want to talk about the product and the dividend rate and the boring rate and all that stuff. And I say, look, you told me everything that I need to know. It's clear to me that you A, don't understand the tool and B, you have no idea what this process is about. So best of luck. I hope you do good work out there.

Now that you've opened up that can of worms. Do I have. I'm going to rant on something for a minute. I think we talked about this the other day, but I, everything you're talking about just kind of like really activated me for something. So recently a video was sent to me and it's a Canadian individual who is a mortgage professional mortgage broker. We need those. It's a great, probably has a great business, but he's also licensed as an insurance advisor. And my interpretation, and I could be wrong, happy to be wrong, is that he is a mortgage broker. That's his primary business and a part time insurance person. And so that's cool, no problem there. And I, I believe, you know, as our friends James and Ryan would say on their, their podcast Banking with Life, that they have angelic intentions. In other words, I believe that this person wants to help people and go out of his way to do that. But he's got a video talking about the right or the correct way or the only way to structure policy for the purposes of infinite banking. And it's about 10 minutes long and unfortunately you can't even get past the first minute without finding a bunch of holes in it. And I don't believe it's because the person's being intentionally deceiving of people. I think it's quite literally, it's just a lack of knowledge and understanding and a lack of experience with the actual products themselves. And so what's interesting is, you know, he goes on to talk about, he uses some screen snips of a particular company, a green company, and he's using the first year cash values. Well, here's, here's the wrong way to do it. He shows a couple screenshots of the very first line of an illustration. And then he says, but. And then this is slightly better. And then this is slightly better. And then there's this one, it's obviously the best. But he goes through it so fast that you also can't see what's happening. You don't see how the death benefit is rising substantially and you don't know why it's happening. He doesn't mention about the other mechanics and he goes to talk about why this one has so much more cash value in the very first year and clearly it's better. But then he doesn't go on to say, oh, by the way, this company doesn't allow you to take a policy loan in the first year. So it doesn't matter how much cash in there because you can't get access to any of it. Doesn't mention that. He doesn't mention that that particular company, although I'm sure they have, they have a great product. I personally own one of those policies. I'm very familiar with it, so do you. And that they can't possibly get a transaction correct any time that you send the money to do a paid up additions, can't apply it properly. Anytime you send money to do a policy loan, they can't apply it properly. So you have to wait an extra one, two, three weeks, sometimes a month to get someone to actually apply the transaction you sent in the way that you, the policy owner, told them you wanted it done. Meanwhile, you're receiving letters as a policy owner saying, hey, we got your money, here's what we did with it. Not with that, because it's auto generated by a stupid computer system. And then you're frustrated because it's not working well. And if you're frustrated, it's not simple, it's not easy, it's not peaceful. And they have a weird loans process. They're inconsistent on actually getting people's policy loans to them. It takes. Sometimes it goes really fast, sometimes it's really long. I personally have experienced that myself. In fact, I'm ready to go do a transaction of about 26 grand I'm going to fund into that particular policy this year. And I'm hesitant I'm going to do it, but I'm hesitant because I just know already after doing it enough times just how much of a pain in the butt it's going to be for me to get someone on the line and say, I sent you an email, I did it the way you want, I told you before I did it. What's going to happen. I sent the transaction. You're supposed to apply it to paid up additions. You've done it wrong, you've applied it to the loan or you put it some other place.

I have to get fence account.

Yeah. My, myself or my assistant has to go in and get on the phone with somebody, make sure they do it correctly, then wait and follow up and follow up and follow up until it's done right.

Yeah.

And we have to pound them and hound them and finally you get someone in the company who knows it that you can rely on to get it done. Boom, they're promoted or they move on to somewhere else and you have to train a new person, an administrator at that company. It is the most frustrating thing in this business that I have dealt with, bar none. And there's more things I could go into. But that's. None of this is mentioned in the 10 minute video. And he's isolating this one company. By the way, it's not a mutual company. Now we always want to do business with mutual company but there's certain circumstances where people can't do that or it doesn't make sense. And for me I'm, I want to make sure that I have a policy with most companies because I want to know what the problems are. I'm putting myself in the testing phase before my clients have to go through it. There's nothing that I'm going to have a client go through that I wouldn't personally go through.

You know what, here I'm going to.

Go on my rant a little bit more. There's another company recently, they launched a new power account. Good, great, great news. They've never ever had a dividend paying policy ever. They've launched a par count. They've launched a new whole life company because they see where the market's going, the market share, they want to get some of that business. So it's good news for us because if you have term insurance with them and you are uninsurable, there's an option for you now that wasn't there before. This is great, this is really great news. However, they don't have a loan form. No one's requested a loan. The thing's been been available now for 18 months. They've got two products you can purchase. They don't have a loan form. They don't even know how to get a loan. They've been hounding their head office. No one knows how to take one. They don't even know what the interest rate is. They haven't declared an Interest rate for loans because no one's taking a loan.

Crazy.

They, they, they funded the account, they seeded the account with I think $10 million of money from the parent company. Right. In the illustration there's a, there's a paragraph that says, by the way, when you know this company, the parent company reserves the right to take our seat capital out when, wherever we're ready. Basically, once the, once this thing is growing enough. So in other words, as soon as they get enough people in there paying money and the account gets large enough, they can pull their $10 million back out. Well, that's called dilution. So how is that going to impact future dividends? And when are they going to do that? Nobody knows. Like there's all these unknowns that, that you. It looks good on paper, it looks good in an illustration. The illustrating tool is fantastic. But what's the actual reality of doing business with this company? Who do they support? What's their focus? Are they there for the policy owner? Can the policy owner get questions asked? Can they deal with someone? These are things that are far more important when you're in this process than what the freaking illustration says. Hey, do I have an online login where I can log in and see what I have available in loan and loan amount or loan outstanding, or what my paid up additions are, or where I can go and access my in force illustrations? Do I have one of those? Well, guess what? There's only one company in the country that has that today that I'm aware of. The other ones don't have squat. They're in the fricking dark ages now. Are they going to create one?

Probably.

You know, modern technology and all. Like we've got, we've got fricking virtual worlds being created in the metaverse, for crying out loud. And an insurance company still can't give you access to see your freaking insurance data. It's absolutely insane. One company's got it figured out and they've, they're investing R and D to make it even better. Imagine that. Oh, hey, guess what? They're a mutual company. Great. Hey, guess what? They're primarily focused on their whole life insurance product. Wow, Amazing. Hey, they have a defined loans process. Isn't that great? It's like, look at all the stackable things that we can do. And people were like, no, no, this company over here is the best company to do it with. I'm sorry, that is inaccurate.

Oh, Rich, now you're getting me fired up.

They said this table right over the.

Companies that, that, that, that have Been around for a hundred plus years. And also to your point, so did, did they, did they get into whole life when the market was really hot and get out when they decided, oh, we're paying too much out to buy policyholders or, or is that their game? Do you want to go and get yourself if you're trying to make the NHL or, or go to play in the NFL, do you want to go and get like a personal trainer who is athletic and a fit guy and he trains people all across? You know, if you're fighting in the ufc, you're not going to go get a guy who, who trains football players and trains hockey players and does, maybe they have a specific niche that they train those guys on. But my point is, you know, a guy who spends a couple hours a week holding pads, or do you want an actual fight coach, or maybe a guy who's even got some experience in training fighters or somebody who's maybe even been in the Octagon or the ring themselves? Like, you want somebody who, that's their game. You don't want somebody who kind of, oh, yeah, you know, oh, MMA is picking up. People are really busy. Well, let me go start training MMA fighters now because I'm with, Hockey's kind of cooling off or football's cooling off or whatever it is. That's kind of what some of these insurance companies do. There's a specific company that you're referring to, the Big Green Monster, that you, you're the one who educated me on this. They created this whole life tool because the market basically made them do it. They're like, oh my gosh. It's like, look at, look at what's going on out there. We better get back in the market. They get in, they get out. They get in, they get out. So that's the point is there's certain companies that are like, this is their game. They understand what they're doing, they get it. And they're not like going to switch tomorrow because something else is, it's the, what do you call it? It's the shiny object syndrome. No, they, they understand the game, they understand what they're doing. And that might be a company that you might, would, would rather consider doing business with.

I, I, I'm so glad you mentioned it because that was on my, like, in my back of my mind. It was in the, the Rolodesk of things I wanted to rant on. And you, you took it there. So, so going back to the, the Big Green Monster or whatever, again, these aren't bad Companies, these are great companies, have great insurance products. I have a policy with many of these companies. Vern, you've got a policy with multiple companies. Our clients have policy with these companies. There's not, there's nothing wrong with them. What is inaccurate or incorrect is to make bold, ridiculously stupid statements that this is the only way to do something without having any understanding of a client's needs, objectives, insurability, what they want to accomplish, what they have to work with in capital, their need of immediate use of capital, any of these other dynamics. And so going back to this, I'm going to say asshats Video, who. I'm sure he's a nice guy and all, but unfortunately he is, he is, he's gonna, he's gonna bamboozle and he's going to interfere with the brains of people and they're gonna get a crappy product that they don't understand and they could put themselves in a serious financial harm. And here's how. In order to manipulate the illustration with that particular company to create this extra cash capacity, you have to do something that could create a massive taxable event for the client. And if they're not educated and most clients don't remember what they're told 10 years ago, some do, some don't. I don't know. I can look back 10 years ago to things I was told probably by my parents that I don't remember. I'm no different than anyone else. I understand this, though, because this is all that I do. Now. This particular company, if you have a death benefit with a combination of whole life and some term insurance, you can put a lever on it and you can manipulate the crap out of it. The problem is the life company that can't get a transaction right. Can't really tell you when that problem is going to exist. And no one can give you a straight answer on how to warn you that when you go to reduce some of the term insurance at some future point when you're going to be in a taxable event scenario and you can run some illustrations to kind of get an idea. But the problem is people don't know what they're going to do. So if I all of a sudden wake up one day and I phone the life company and say, hey, you know what, guys, I'm going to get rid of that term insurance I've got, I've already put too much money into my personal contract that I will have a taxable refund event on that contract today, right? Now, if I did that today on one that I own now. I know that that problem is there. I also know how to deal with that problem, how to mitigate that problem, how to handle it and the timing of those things. Most advisors have no earthly idea and they're certainly not explaining it to their clients. We keep hearing that because we're, we're having people reach out to us, say, I've got one of these, can you tell me what's wrong with it? I'm like, well, I can tell you some things. You might not like what I say, but I'm going to be honest with you. And so those potential taxable events are, can be so ridiculously damaging for people. They have no earthly idea it's going to happen. And advisors unfortunately also don't understand that's going to happen. And they're not educating their clients. It's not because they're trying to be bad people. They're not, they're, they're good hearted, they want to help. They believe they're doing the right thing. All the power to you for helping your client get insurance and doing the right thing. But you may be unintentionally misleading them because of what you don't know. It's what you don't know that's creating a big, big fat problem. And if you're not there to coach and educate them, which by the way, we're already hearing that there's a lot of people who have policies, they're not getting any coaching, they're not able to contact their advisor. Their advisor is not telling them about these things. They're telling them to go get a third party bank loan right away and all this other kind of stuff. And they're not really being educated on implementation and usage of the tool. And they're certainly not experiencing the transactional problems because they're not even funding the money into the policy. They're not doing loan repayments. They're not focused on understanding the importance of what Nelson taught us as fundamentals. Then talking about what you said, Vern, you said that this, you know, particular company, they left the participating insurance business for a good period of time, about 11 years. They had a PAR policy, PAR product. You could, you could buy one new on their shelf. And then they just said, boom, closing the doors. Anyone that's got an existing one, you're good, you're fine. We're managing it, no problem. We're going to go and create a brand new product which is basically a mimic. It's a mirror image of par, but it's non par, but we're going to do all the same things as par, but it's not going to be par. Why would they do that? Well, because they're a stock company and they did it for the benefit of stockholders, not PAR owners, stockholders. And so they sold that product and sold that product. They made claims of what they were going to do. And at 10 year mark, they had some 10 year, kind of like guarantees on some of the performance. And then at the end of the 10 year mark, interest rates were way lower. And so boom, the performance dropped like a hot potato on that product. Imagine that. Never seen that happen before. And, and then right around that same time, they said, oh, you know what, hey, PAR is doing pretty good. Let's go launch a new par product. So 11 years later, they bring PAR back to the mix. So they reopened their, their PAR block and they created a new product for it. Now the product has some good features, it has some cool stuff to it. Company could use some work as far as how their administration operates. I've already stated that in my rant. But the product has some, has some features that can make it, you know, functional and viable or whatever. Here's the thing. Who is who, who is their master? Who are they jumping for? Who are they looking to support? They're looking to create profits for stockholders because they're a stock company. So their master is stockholders. They're chasing quarterly share profits. They want to make their, their quarterly announcements that look at how good we're doing as a company and our dividends we're paying for our stockholders, which means their master. They have the tale of two masters. Is it the PAR owners or the stockholders? Well, a company that was big on par leaves it entirely, sees the market trend and says, oh geez, we got to get back in that business and then jumps back in. You got to be a little suspicious about what's going on. So I've had conversations with people from that company, some of them that work in higher levels. And I know the reason why. In fact, I've had conversations with actuaries at that company. One of the reasons that they've reopened that power contract is because they didn't want to lose market share on all of their other list of products. If you sell group plans and critical illness and long term care and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all these, this laundry list of other products. Well, now if you have that other product on the shelf, you get that business back. So if people were going to go do term conversions, they were going to do all these things. All that business that would now would start to go off the books, that advisor would take it to go sell it with other companies. Why would you just come to the one stop shop? We've got everything you need. Yeah, we've got par, we've got that, we've got this, we've got all of it. And so it's. It was them focused on retaining market share for the other products, not the par product that now creates profits for who Those other products create profits for stockholders, not for par owners. The par little segment is its own little bubble. And so it's only what happens in the par that stays in their par count. That is not the case with a mutual insurance company. So again, you want to go and promote the best policy and the best way to structure a policy, the only way to do it is this way. And you're going to show one company who, by the way, that same company. Here's another thing. Back in like 2013 or 2012, some asshat at that company wrote an article about how infinite banking is suspicious and bad because he didn't read the book. I also know that I've validated that. And he took a little bit of information. He jumped to an absurd conclusion because he was looking at how people were marketing it. Some bad advisors marketing it in a certain way. He didn't actually look at the fundamentals of what was being talked about. And he's making assumptions about product, not about process. So they don't support the concept. They jumped out of the par market. They jumped back in. They want to support stockholders. They can't get a transaction right. There's a potential big taxable problem with the product if you design it the way that people are showing. And I'm sure I could list off a variety of other things.

Yeah, that's really good, Rich. This is awesome. And that's what we've been talking about. The rant is exactly that.

Right.

So there's so much focus on the product versus exactly that, the process. Speaking of which, you just rang a bell for me. I actually need to connect with you at some point and pick your brain on a case that I'm working with, working on because I have a. I may have a client who bought one of those policies from someone. And it's interesting when you know, they're in the conversation portion of it. I'm chatting with the guy, he's like, oh man. He's like, none. I didn't hear any of this stuff. Like when I'm just I wasn't saying, oh, that's all bad. I was going through my own process and showing them, you know, what we do and how it all looks. And he's like, in fact, I don't even think I knew he had a policy right away. I can't remember that exactly. But he's just like this, this is what I was hoping for. I just didn't know any better. I was working with this guy, not receiving any coaching, and that is, is what it is. And now I'm. I always. I don't know about you, Rich, but I really don't like to cancel policies, especially when they're in. Even if it's term or universal. Like, I always look very closely and we have good conversations to determine does it actually make sense?

Yeah.

And now it's, it's really challenging for me because I'm like, long term. Yeah, it's a good, it's going to work. It's going to be something. Right? It's a good, It's a tool. Ultimately, yes, it's a good tool, but it's like brand new and it's not structured very well. And there's, you know, what I'm getting at, so we could talk about that later. And I had another guy that I was chatting with, Vern, met with this guy 13 times. He had nothing but time for me. I signed the policy paperwork, we get it all done. Have not heard from this guy in 13 months. I can't get a hold of a.

Guy, 13 meetings to get the policy in the books and do business with somebody. And 13 months later, still can't, can't get a hold of the person afterwards. It doesn't make any sense. It's totally irrational.

He, he might have, he might have exaggerated, but he did say, he said, look, I met with this guy like 13 times. He basically said to me, he goes, vernie had all of the time in the world when I, when we're in the beginning stages of it. And then as soon, by the way, the way that this policy was designed. In fact, I redacted the information, but I shared some of that info with you. Completely asked backwards.

I know the one you're talking about. And it's, it's, it's. It's financially damaging to the client is what it is.

Yeah, it's. And no, no financially damaging. No coaching. Hasn't heard from the guy. And the problem with that is, too, again, another. We're just, we're just going off now, but it's like we're constantly Competing against this stuff. I'm not saying, like, I've got a little halo over my head here. I'm just saying there's a very specific way that we do things and how we coach people and we're involved. And the client portal we've created in the quarterly coaching sessions and regular meeting invites and reminders to actually connect with our clients. And oh, by the way, we all have policies and we practice the concept, kind of an important thing. But then we have guys out there or guys, gals, people in the industry who are just like, oh, what, becoming your own banker? Gosh, that sounds like a pretty good marketing scheme. That sounds like a good way for me to sell some policies and, you know, say all the right words and all that, you know, like, that's always going to happen in any industry. But it's, it's just, it's just one of those things that we constantly deal with. And it's very frustrating because, you know, you talk to someone and they're tainted now. Like you said, like, oh, no, I heard about that before. I talked to a guy, got screwed out of it and whatever, whatever. And then, you know, then you got to try and pick up the pieces. And sadly, sometimes you can't now help that person because they're convinced that this is bad and you're evil type of thing.

Right. So anyway, yeah, it's unfortunate these things do happen. And again, we're not like, we don't, we're not trying to, we don't be slanderous to any, any of our colleagues, any people in the industry. If you're in the industry and you're helping people get insurance and you're helping protect their families and you're, you're, you're doing things to try to help people. We appreciate you that. That's what's there. What we, what we are trying to say is we're not perfect. We're always growing and developing and getting better. But recognize that you can too, okay? And be receptive and be open to some coaching. And if you want to be out there and you want to be touting from the mountaintops and the rooftops that you teach the infinite banking concept. And you, you, you, you want to see Nelson's vision out in the world. Well, first off, you better have read Nelson's book A Whack of Times. Well, like, like at least 10 times. Because if you haven't done that, then what are you doing at all? Period? You should have applied and been accepted to or at least, at least reached out to make application to the Nelson Nash Institute. To join the Institute, you have to go through an interview process. Be aware of that. They don't accept everybody. You better have your own policy, and you better have taken a policy loan and you better have made loan repayments. If you haven't done those things, you have no business at all teaching this concept to any human being, Period. That's my belief, that's my opinion. You know, opinions are, take, take it as you want. And you better recognize that if you're making statements like, this is the only way to build and design a policy, you are simply wrong and incorrect. Because everybody's got a different financial juncture and we're all sorting through our own stuff. And so if you get clear on objectives and you understand other dynamics about insurability and creating options for the future for people and limiting ginormous potential tax landmines that could happen when you structure a policy, etc. Etc. Then you know, you're, you're, you're actually doing the hard work. You're doing what's necessary. But you can't just stay that, hey, there's a blanket. This is the only way building design a policy. And when I hear that kind of stuff, I'm, I'm not going to sugarcoat it anymore. I think it's. And that's not how we should be doing things. And if you're doing that, I'm not calling you out. What I'm asking you to do, I'm asking you to just think through it a little bit, bit differently. Think about what you're doing and understand or recognize, is there a way that you could be doing it better? Is there something you could be doing differently that could support your clients more? And just ask yourself that question. You know, I think we do a really good job here, but I also know we all have room for improvement. I believe that I can improve in everything that I do, Vern. I know that of you. You're a constant. You. You love coaching. You take things in. You're always trying to improve. And the more that we do that, and we also help our clients understand they can do that. We're all getting better. We're all growing. We're all moving towards a better and brighter future. And I envision that for our industry because this is a phenomenal industry and we can help people in an amazing, amazing way. Everyone, everyone that's got an insurance license, you can do some tremendous good for folks. You just gotta recognize that you can do it. And you gotta, you gotta, you gotta get started, you know, in the. In the right way, in my opinion. So that's the end of our rants today, Vern. Unint. Unintentional rants are pretty good.

And. And I don't mean to be abrupt, Rich. I. This was awesome. I do have another call I got to jump on here, but I can't wait to see how our team breaks this up and probably has a lot of different pieces that they could put out from this. So I'm pretty excited about it.

All right. Hey, thanks, brother. I appreciate you. And for everyone tuning in, appreciate you guys as well. Have an amazing rest of your day and a great weekend.

Back at you, Rich. Thanks. Take care. Cheers.

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