14. Confessions of a CPA

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.

Okay. We are excited for another edition of Wealth Without a Baby Street. We are joined today by an author, incredible individual. I'm super pumped about our recording session. Today we are joined by Brian Bloom. Brian is a CPA at the America Group and he is often referred to as the advisor's advisor. He spends a lot of his time coaching other financial advisors and he provides hands on coaching, actually meeting with the advisor and their clients with real life interactions. We're so blessed to have him with us today. The topic, among many things, wherever the conversation takes us, is going to be about this incredible book called Confessions of a the Truth About Life Insurance. And you know, there's a variety of iterations I believe of this book, Brian, that maybe you can share with us. I've seen a multitude of subtext titles out there that I think are just all phenomenal. And so this book, as I was preparing for our conversation again today and going through the work again, I just kind of got hit up the side of the head like a ton of bricks again with some just fantastic knowledge. And so the way that you've constructed this book and put the information together, just absolutely phenomenal. So we're blessed to have you today.

Sure. Well, you know, it just is a testimony to the lack of creativity of a cpa. You know, we're still transfixed with numbers. You ask us to be creative and we can only come up with one book title. So the book title is Confessions of a cpa. That's why you see the subtitles and if people can see my background, the first version is what's in my background right now. And that's just the basic financial concepts that we've all been taught to be true and why they're not true, why they don't work out in practical life. And so that's this first version of Confessions are the first part of the series, I guess Confessions of a cpa. The second one, the one that you have held up, the Truth About Life Insurance is really exciting because most people don't know. They don't know they can live with their life insurance. They think they got to die in order to get something out of it. And that's the furthest thing from the truth. And then the third one is very interesting. It's called the capital equivalent value of life insurance. And that explains what I would call an intra marker. So when we get down using our life insurance, and I like to use it for retirement, but is in any investment, if you don't get to the top of Mount Everest, you can't get back down again at the rate of cash flow that you want. And so with the capital equivalent of life insurance tells you is what's. What is the top of Mount Everest? What is that intra marker? What is that rate of return you have to receive between now and age 65 so that you can take distributions the rest of your life? Because if you don't get there, you don't dare take out what you think you can.

Well, and it's so important to be so prepared for the descent because that's where most people die.

On a Mount Everest climb. Yeah, the most casualties are on the.

Way down a slippery slope.

Well, more so not only on the way down, it's on the way down after you've gotten to what you think is the top. Yeah, you know, 56% of all the deaths on Mount Everest, the real Mount Everest, occur after the climber got to the summit.

That's right.

That's disastrous.

Definitely. And one of the questions that's been burning for us, Brian, is what inspired you, what inspired you to, to get this message out to the general public and what would you like to confess as a cpa?

Well, you know, it goes to the difference between short term planning and long term planning. And a cpa, you hire from year to year. And so I was always taught to get re engaged for the next year. So if I did your income taxes for you, you hired me to lower your taxes in that particular year. I was no dummy. I knew that if I didn't get your taxes down, I wouldn't get the job the next year. So I always concentrated on the short planning. How can I maximize your refund? Well, then I started looking at the fact that I was still doing tax returns for people who are 85 to 90 years of age. And I'm going, holy cow, number one, when's enough enough? And then number two, these people are signing income tax returns and they don't even have the mental capacity to be signing anything yet. We're asking. And I go, so what happened? Well, is this all this short term planning? And so I switched gears and I did this longer term planning. You know, when do you want to pay your taxes? Now or for the rest of your life? And if you're going to pay them for the rest of your life. They're a whole lot less if you manage them today and not just let the government charge you whatever they want to charge you in the future. So that's my confession.

One of the things.

Thank you for sharing that. Because we talk to people often about when you look at. There's a whole wide variety of financial tools that people can utilize to achieve an objective. And we most commonly say that that particular financial product, whatever it is, it's not that it's good or bad. It just has its own set of characteristics in terms of liquidity, tax consequences, volatility, accessibility guarantees, and so on and so on. And so can you share with us when you discovered. So when we look at a tool like that, we specialize in implementing a process. So we utilize dividend paying, participating, whole life insurance. When did you discover, Brian, that this was a tool that had attributes that you thought would resonate so well with your existing clients and serve them in a positive way?

1989. That's specific.

That is spot on.

Thank you.

We did not pre send our questions to Brian in advance of the interview.

So there's obviously a story that goes behind that. And back then I had a young family, and I had just had my second daughter, and they both still fit in the backseat of my sedan. And I just got it paid off. Wonderful. I'm all set to go. And so I was taught by a very wise person that anytime you free up a debt payment that you have to make, you should voluntarily make that to yourself. Okay. So I took my $214.06 a month car payment and I bought a life insurance policy. And I did it because it sounded like the right thing to do. And so I did. Well, lo and behold, the head gasket of that car blew its gasket. And I needed. I needed a new car. It wasn't worth fixing that thing I needed by. And then not only that, but my wife hit me up, and the next one was going to be a minivan. So not only did I lose my car, but now we're getting this minivan of all things. And so I couldn't afford the $214.06 life insurance premium anymore. I needed that to go for the car payment, the new car payment. So I called my life insurance agent up and I said, hold the horses. Let's reverse this whole thing. I can't afford to do that. And then he said to me the magic words. Well, when we set all this up, I thought you said you had another Life insurance policy that you started when you were in college. And I said, yeah, I do. He said, bring it in. So I brought it in and he showed me how to buy that minivan from my life insurance policy that I bought when I was in college. And I could either pay it back or not. I could pay it back on my terms. I could pay just interest only. And so we kept the new policy going and I got a new car and, and that's when I figured all this out. At least that's when it started to sink in, what I could really do in my life.

That is a wonderful story. Thank you for sharing that.

So good.

And just for our listeners benefit. So if you find yourself thinking, hey, you know, Brian sounds like an interesting character and he's written some great material that we can assure you, we would love to get a copy of Brian's book Confessions of a CPA in your hands and we have plenty of copies available just for this particular episode and anticipating a huge response. And so whether you're a CPA listening and love to hear your thoughts, Brian, on why CPAs often miss this strategy or if you're just curious, you're curious to learn a different perspective from a CPA on how this tool can be an advantage to your household or your business, just go ahead and click through to the links that are provided in the show notes and we'll make sure that we ship a copy of Brian's book right to your front door. So Brian.

Why do CPAs often miss this strategy? You network with so many professionals in the industry. What's your perspective on that?

Well, because we're cheap and we're arrogant, that's why. How's that for an ims?

See a cpa.

Brian, we appreciate your candor.

I feel like we need to have Brian as a regular contributor. I agree. You fit in really well around here.

Well, okay.

Goes with the concessions.

You know, I'm going to piggyback on that question.

What would be, I guess, you know, you take, take someone who's an accounting professional. What would you have? What advice would you provide to them?

No, no, no, no. That's where we missed the vote. See, that's why we're arrogant. You don't tell me anything.

Right.

I tell you. You pay me to give you what my opinion. We are trained to sell our opinion, not even our fact. We give you an opinion on the status of your financial statements. In our opinion, we adequately reflect the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You pay us for our opinion and so therefore we're very arrogant. And rightfully so. You know, we've got all this good training, but then we paid dearly for our education. And consequently, if you start telling me something, you're telling me I wasted my money, and that appeals to our cheapness. We're cheap and we're arrogant by training. And that's where everyone misses out on understanding their cpa. And that's where a CPA misunderstands themselves. Because if you're cheap and you're arrogant, you can't learn anything. But if you're humble and you're willing to have an open book or an open mind or set aside your misconceptions or set aside your misbelief. Disbelief. Set aside your disbelief. Oh, my goodness. With a CPA background.

We have so much left to learn because we're all taught the same way. And again, why? What I was taught to be true has turned out not to be. That's the original volume of Confessions of a cpa.

It's so interesting because in the forward of your book by Michael Kinsey, I'm assuming he must be a colleague of yours. I mean, a beautiful quote. The most expensive thing a person can own is a closed mind.

Yeah, right.

That is so true. And, you know, clients rely so heavily upon their CPAs as a trusted advisor, and you know, our philosophy, much like yours, Brian, is that there's no such thing as having arrived in knowledge. There's always something new to learn. So if you feel like you've arrived, it's really all downhill from there. But if you can continue to receive the inspiration to learn something new, then that creates an advantage not only for the CPA as a professional, but by proxy for their clients, because they rely so heavily upon them for guidance, whether it's a yes or no as it relates to implementation of a strategy or utilizing a particular tool or combination of both. And so for CPAs who are tuning into our podcast right now, what would you say, Brian, has been the biggest advantage to. To you in embracing, you know, this. This tool and the utilization of it? What would you share with CPAs who are tuning into our podcast?

Yeah, so two things. So if you know everything, when you're driving your car, which piece of glass do you look out? We look out the windshield, you know, everything. But why do we have a rear view mirror and a side view mirror, but we have those mirrors to check our blind spots? What I would encourage our CPA friends to do is just tilt your head a little bit. Just tilt your head. Look out that side view Mirror and see what's sneaking up behind you that you can't see because it's in your blind spot. Now, I'm still pretty old fashioned and I have a radio and I listen to the radio, okay? And it's amazing how that dialogue works because sometimes the radio station gets off just a little bit and it gets fuzzy. But all I gotta do is take that dial and tweak it a little bit. That's all a CPA has to do, just tweak it a little bit and get it back in tune with how money really works. Not how we're taught how it works, but how it really works. So as you're going down the highway of life, tune that radio a little bit to make sure you stay on that station and don't miss what's in your blind spot.

That is wonderful advice.

Beautiful.

And you know, if you think of. Because we often talk about it, I know Rich is going to get into something pretty powerful here from your book in chapter two. But if we think about the power and understand the power of compound interest, just to digress for a moment. Well, compounding knowledge is equally as effective, you know, if you're serving others in the way that know that we do. And so, Rich, why don't you lead us through what you wanted to talk about from chapter two from Brian's book. It's really powerful.

I'm absolutely going to do that. But I love that, the tuning the radio analogy because it's also really helpful if you're tuning it. That makes rocking out in your car so much easier. But in chapter two of the book, you really dive into the basics of opportunity cost as kind of setting some of the foundation for the remainder of the book, which I found is very good. That's something we discuss with our clients a lot. And you identify that every dollar spent is a dollar that can never be saved, invested, earn interest or be spent again. And neither can what it earned while it was in your possession. And that's just such a powerful statement. And then later in the book, you know, around page 44, you kind of hit it again where it's every time we spend a dollar, we transfer the potential miracle of compound interest to someone else. I just like, I like triple highlighted that statement. I just love that statement. It's such a golden nugget of information and so expand a little bit on opportunity cost as you see it. And maybe the missing link, I guess for the average North American who's missing that component in life.

Yeah, well, that's why Einstein Missed it. Einstein calls the miracle of compound interest the eighth wonder of the world. It doesn't work. And it doesn't work because we spend it. And it's not only that we spend our money, but we're spending what it could have earned, and that's where all the power is at. So if we learn how to harness our own money and never spend it and let it compound, then we actually have the eighth wonder of the world. And I call it the miracle of uninterrupted compound interest. Now, you got to get into, okay, so why do you save money if you're not going to spend it? And that's where you get into some of the strategies where you understand the difference between math, money, and wealth. You know, math is just pure numbers. I mean, I could guarantee a 25% average annual rate of return over the next four years and put the money in my mattress and prove to you I got 25%, but hand you back exactly the same amount of money. That's math. Now, money, on the other hand, is when we see the dollar signs in our miracle account, we think we can spend it. Money is the theory of spending. And so we start to spend our money, but we're also spending all the compounding that happens later on. And wealth is understanding how the money that's in that account can be leveraged in such a way that it can be spent over and over again, and you never miss the compounding. And that's what people have to understand. They got to take that leap from spending to wealth, and you just have to learn how to leverage their money.

That is so powerful because we're, you know, for folks who are tuning in, we're still right in the midst of this COVID 19 pandemic and the impact that it's having on households and businesses and, you know, the economic destruction as a result. But, you know, we haven't had. We haven't had a single client call us once during this pandemic to tell us that they were frustrated that their policy cash values kept rising every day.

And so this I was sharing with Richard, and I'll share this with you as well, Brian. Like when the crisis first, where we saw the social distancing measures and everything that was being introduced, we reached out to one of the Mutual Life carriers, the primary Mutual Life company that we do business with, and we asked the chief financial officer of that company, hey, listen, we're hosting a live Q and A webinar with our clients. What would you like us to share to the existing Policyholders. And without skipping a beat, he said, let them know this is exactly what we're built for.

Sure, it is incredibly powerful and it's not what a bank is built for. I mean, if you think back to the last time we had this big economic Crisis, it was in 08 when it was a financial crisis. And if you remember back then, banks weren't lending money. Now today they are, they are lending money. But the lessons that were learned in 08, those small business owners didn't have to worry this time whether the banks were going to lend money or whether their business continuation insurance was going to pay. Now most business continuation insurance policies aren't paying a dime because this is.

This is a God event or something. You know, it's uncontrollable. So they're not paying. But people who implemented what I call the business continuation opportunity back in 08 now have the ability to lend, borrow money from their own life insurance policies against their debt self. And they can continue to pay payroll, they can pay their rent, they can, they can pay their overhead until business starts to ramp back up again. And they're the ones who are going to survive because they can dictate when they pay back their policies versus a bank who's going to put the screws to them and tell them when they have to pay it back and they're still going to go out of business.

Oh, you pre answered one of my Questions about Chapter 9 in your book and accounts that you can collateralize. And I was going to ask you, well, what is the value to a business owner who has access to these unstructured structured loans?

The value is in staying in business.

You got it. And one of the things, Brian, that.

We teach, especially our business owner clients so much like the insurance company, so here in Canada, the insurance companies are required to maintain. I'm going to get a little technical here, Richard, forgive me. They're required to maintain a minimum continuing capital surplus reserve. And so what we've embraced in our business and what we're teaching our business owner clients and is to embrace the same philosophy. So your money must reside somewhere. If you're storing capital inside of a policy or a system of policies and you're building up this growing pool of financial value and you have that available as a continuing capital surplus reserve, not if, but when your business is interrupted.

Or sentenced to death.

Right.

You've got the capital reserves to carry you through. And so it's in chapter five. You mentioned principle number nine. If the government wants to limit something that I want to do, then it's probably in my best interest to do as much of it as they will allow. Could you expand on that a bit for us, Brian?

Yeah, no, without a doubt. I mean, the best opportunities are the things that are scarce.

And you know, the government, they're kind of squirrely about it. They don't want to let the cat out of the bag too much. And so they do put limits on things that are in their best interest, but it's also very much in their best interest. For instance, what you can put into a qualified plan, what you can put into a self directed IRA or, or a SEP or something like that. Yeah, there's limits to that. But they also know that eventually you're going to be transferring the miracle to them. And so they're very interested in you getting those things started, even with some limitations, because they know they're going to get the miracle down the line. So they're kind of okay with that. But if a life insurance company is limited by a government in terms of how much life insurance they can sell you, well, then I got to wonder, so why would they limit it? Well, it must be good for some reason that they're very interested in. And if they're very interested in it, if it's like from a government perspective, it's probably, you know, if it's in their best interest, it's probably not much in mine and vice versa. And so I'm very interested in that. If you're going to limit me, I think I want as much as I can get.

So powerful. And again, for the benefit of our listeners tuning in during the podcast, you find yourself thinking, hey, this sounds really interesting. I'd like to discover more about it. Let's make sure that we get a copy of Brian's book. It is amazing. It is written for.

The general public and it's a great read. Confessions of a cpa. Click through the link. We'll make sure that we arrange to have a copy shipped right to your front door. And again, Brian, we can't thank you enough for being so generous with your time.

You know, one of the things I love too in your book, and it's near the end and this is a common question, as I was reading through it again, it's like we get this question all the time and it comes up in different formats. But if this is so good, why isn't everyone doing this? And so I love that the pickup that you have is like, well, the people that are that do know about it are doing it right And So how are you finding that when people either reach out or they get a copy of your book, you must create some wonderful conversations with people who had never seen this. They, you know, the flashlight of what was possible hadn't been shone on this particular area of the financial world for them, and now it's been exposed. It's kind of like you've, you've opened, you've cracked open a doorway for them to a financial life they didn't know was possible. What are those conversations like?

Well, there's a lot of understanding that has to take place. I mean, the real answer to that question, why isn't everyone doing this? The real answer is everyone who understands does. The key isn't that word understanding. And that's the role of your financial professional that you work with. It is their job to help you understand how this works. Because this is out of the box thinking. This is not how you've been trained. This is not how a lot of your advisors have been trained. This is not how your CPA has been trained. This is out of the box thinking. And it takes time. It takes understanding. And so, but if you do understand it, you're gonna, you're gonna go with it, and you're gonna be very happy with it now when you really understand what it is you did. Because a lot of this is gonna be okay. Yeah, Jason, I believe you. Okay, let's go forward. Or rich. Yes, let's go forward. But the day you really grasp it is the day that you tell your advisor I can no longer afford the $214.06 premium payment because I needed to pay for that new car. And then you realize, wait a minute, I've already got it in some other life insurance or I have it in this life insurance policy and I can buy my car from my dead self.

Isn't that what you do? That's. I mean, yeah. So I just bought a second home yesterday. Okay.

Congratulations.

Awesome.

So we bought a condo near where our kids live and our grandkids and whatnot. We're gonna bop back and forth and we got to talking about that, and I told my wife, I said, listen, I'm buying this from your death benefit. If you die, I'm just going to get that much less, but I'll have the house, so what difference does it make? I'm buying this from your dead self.

And you're going to get all the, all the memories while you and your wife are on planet Earth today to spend that quality time, which you can't do.

I want to wait for that half a million till when she's gone. And I don't have it. I don't have her to enjoy it with. Heck no. If I can do it now, why not? I'm just going to get less in the future. Who cares? Yeah.

And you can't take the house to heaven with you.

So it's true.

Well, you know what they call that stuff up there?

You know, they say you can't take it with you. Right?

Yeah.

You know what they call it up there? No. Pavement.

Streets of gold. Right. It's just pavement.

Right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

There you go. Love it.

So good. Brian, what are some things outside of some of the questions that we've asked in reference to specific parts of the book? What are some key takeaways that you want the reader to grasp from the book?

Uninterrupted compound interest. Secondly, uninterrupted compound interest. Third, uninterrupted compound interest. Don't screw it up.

I mean, it really. It's that simple? Yeah, really that simple. And then find the leveraging tool that will allow you to do that. And right now.

It'S your home and it's life insurance. That's it.

And of those two, you walk through very clearly in the book what, you know, what are the qualities of how you can access that capital. And clearly, based on the great list that you have there, the policy is by far the best quality of collateral because of the unstructured loan capacity that the total autonomy and control that the end user has, the policy owner or the business owner or whoever it is that is in control of that instrument. I mean.

It'S such a liberating way of financial life.

And you know, the other thing is, if you really understand that home and the reverse mortgage opportunities of the home, well, then you can structure your life insurance contract to basically run out of viable money coming out of it at age 85, because if you live to be 86, 87, you still got the home to do the reverse mortgage on. So it's. It's kind of like a fail safe. Because the last thing you want to do, and I want to make sure that people hear this, you have to die. With a life insurance contract in force.

The contract cannot die before you do. If that happens, there's huge tax consequences. So if there's a fatal flaw to any of this, it's drawing down your life insurance policy too fast.

But the house is a great fail safe.

So the takeaway that I hear there is that you still need to be.

You still have to have the financial stewardship in place to think logically and methodically about how you want to live. And it still resonates to you have to accumulate capital somewhere, someplace to be able to have a drawdown or whatever kind of impact to fund that retirement lifestyle. But you have to be mindful of it.

Yeah. Think about the radio. You got your hand on the dial, okay. And you're taking distributions, and the insurance company has to reduce the dividend rate a little bit. So you gotta turn the dial down a little bit. The insurance company increases the dividend rate. You can turn the dial up a little bit. So you're always tuning your policy according to what the current dividend rates are.

So it's not hard. You have to pay attention. Yep.

Yeah. And we always say that, you know, you need a good coach. You need a good coach to help you understand how to implement a process using this wonderful tool, this wonderful product. And the very first chapter of your book, Brian, is why Life Insurance. And how would you summarize that?

Well, now I got to remember why I wrote that.

You know, why life insurance, you know, it's been around forever. I mean, when you think about is the industry that bailed us out of the Great Depression, and even prior to that.

It'S been the rock upon which all of our financial abilities have been founded. I mean, even if you think back to. I can't remember if it was.00 or 08, but there I think it was 08. And you had some insurance companies fail. Well, those insurance companies that failed were the ones that had divestified or diversified into all kinds of different things, and they got into some loan programs that weren't the best. And what. But you know, remember what bailed out the life insurance companies that ran into trouble? It was their whole life. Life insurance policies, the car block, they were the. There was the crown jewel.

Yeah.

And they sold those blocks off in order to generate the capital to save the rest of the company. But that was their crown jewel. And that's. I don't know if that's what I said in the first chapter of the book or not, but that's why life insurance.

Well, yeah, I mean, in addition to what you just shared now, I mean, you talk about the fact that insurance is all around us. You've got auto, home, you know, business overhead. You mentioned earlier, property, casualty, all these different things. But.

What I always share, especially when I'm speaking with a business owner, client and their cpa, and Brian, I hope that you agree, is that if we're looking at the balance sheet. So we take into account everything, right? All the inventory, all of the equipment for the business, all of the things that we need to operate. But the most important asset, the owners of the business aren't anywhere on the balance sheet.

So how do we.

Right.

How do we utilize this tool? And again, for the benefit of our listeners.

We specialize in the sale and placement of dividend paying, participating whole life insurance and have been doing so since July of 2009. And that is an instrument that Brian just attested to if you look back in history. Spanish flu, Great depression, swine flu, H1N1, SARS, 30 recessions in the past century, most recently 08 09, 2000, to name a few. Not a single documented instance that's ever been brought to our attention of a dividend paying participating whole life policy owner with an in force policy, seeing their policy values go down, not once. And so your money must reside somewhere. So what does that tell you people who understand that your money must reside somewhere? What better place to have it reside than inside of an entity like that?

Where do you park your car?

In the garage.

Why don't you just park it in the driveway?

I like to secure it.

It's cold here in Canada and it's.

Very, very cold here. Yes, cold. It's going to snow on it, it's going to rain on it, the sun's going to beat down on it. But you put it in the garage to what, protect it?

To protect it.

Yeah. So why not put your cash in the garage to protect it and then back it out of the garage and use it for something?

Right?

Yeah.

So, you know, I don't do a lot with stocks and whatnot, but you know, there's been some industries that have been down 70% while the whole market's down 30. You know what? I backed that little baby out of the garage.

Well, when you have ready access, capital opportunity will track you down.

Yeah, but it was protected. It was protected for such time like this. Back that baby out, go buy a second home. Back that baby out, go buy a stock. Stock raises in price. Sell the stock, go park it back in the garage.

So simple, it's not rocket science.

Right out of the box thinking. Because this is not how we're taught, right?

And all the while you're not interrupting the compounding growth of your own capital. That's the key.

Because it's my dead money.

That's so good.

I love that.

We're so going to be using that from now on. One of the Things I love that you said too, is that, you know, the understanding you focused on. That key point of that one statement was all about understanding. There's an incredible YouTube video there with the backwards bicycle we use frequently. And one of the premises of it is that knowledge does not equal understanding. We can know something or know about something. You might have knowledge about it, but just because you know it's out there doesn't mean you actually understand what's going on. And we find that quite frequently when we get contacted from advisors in the industry.

Right.

And CPA and accounting professionals, and often. I mean, we've even had conversations in the past. I mean, I don't think it happens the same way now where you have a business owner and they're prepared and want to go ahead and do something because they understand their business generally more than anyone else does. It's their business. But, you know, the deal or whatever's going on kind of gets. It gets kiboshed by that accounting professional who claims to know about it but.

Doesn'T have understanding and you can't. Where understanding really comes to play then is when you acted upon it. Because you can have all the knowledge in the world. You're going to have all the understanding in the world. If someone's handing you a gift, what do you have to do? You have to receive, you have to take it, you have to receive it. And that's the big challenge to get people to have the knowledge, get the understanding, but then actually to act on it. And that's so important once.

And speaking of action, again, you know, for our listeners tuning in and thinking, wow, this has been a lot of value and it sounds really interesting. I'd like to discover more knowledge. Then we'd love to get you a copy of Brian's book, Confessions of a cpa. Again, we can't stress enough. This is an amazing read and we'd love to get a copy to you. So make sure in the show notes that you click through Take action. As Brian shared and following, having read the book, you know, speak to speak to one of our team members on how you can, you know, translate this knowledge into understanding and to take action and implement it in your household or your business.

Absolutely. Now, Brian, you know, I'm curious, you know, you have colleagues all across, I'm sure the continent, primarily focused, of course, in the United States, but I would imagine that you go to conferences and you certainly, well, during the COVID times, I guess you would bump elbows from a distance with colleagues probably here in Canada as well. You Know what would you share with anyone, I guess, in your accounting profession in Canada in relation to how they could learn more about this? I mean, this book obviously has a lot of overlap between both countries because we're so similar in most areas. Do you think that there would be. I mean, I know there is a substantial value for any Canadian professional to have access to this, but what would you share with them, I guess, more specifically about any of those differentials or, or how they could maybe reach out to ask more questions?

Well, it's in their mind. They've got to be willing. Like I said before, you have to set aside your disbelief and be open minded, be teachable and see if you can't learn something new. And if you can, then embrace it and run with it. Hey, you know what? If you can't do it, if you just can't grasp this, that's okay too. You know, it's your life, it's your money. You get to decide what's true and what's not true. And God bless you, go for it. But at least have an open mind and explore something new and unheard of. You know, life insurance is not unheard of. I mean, it's been around for a century, so it's not something new, it's just what's new about it is understanding its real power and how people are beginning to talk about it because they're finding out that what they thought to be true about life insurance wasn't true. And now that they better understand it and they act on it, the first time they borrow from their dead self to go buy something, they go, wow, I get it now. Thank goodness I had the faith to move forward with it.

Great statement. So, so powerful. With that in mind, Jason, do you want to kick off.

Our commonplace show ending question?

Well, I think yes, I'd like to do that, but before we do, I just wanted to ask you, Brian, any parting thoughts that you'd like to share with our listeners? Knowing that we have a really diverse, growing audience.

We're picking up a lot of listeners actually in the United States as well. We have many colleagues down there, as you have colleagues up here who also have some wonderful podcasts, some great friends of ours who are actively sharing this powerful message about the utilization, the true utilization of capital accumulation within a power whole life policy and how you can do so much with it. Love using leveraging against your dead self, as it were. I already know there's a couple of people I'm going to call after this and be like, you wouldn't believe this amazing interview we just had. So, yeah, I guess I'm just curious, I guess. What other comments would you share, I guess, with the people that are listening aggregately across the board?

Yeah, these policies work best when they're overfunded, when you put in more than you have to. Okay, so if something's good for me, man, I want to put as much as I can into it. But where do you get the money from? And what I want to do is I'll leave you with this. Watch your debt. Now, I don't mean your necessarily consumer debt, even though that's not really good debt, but watch your future debt.

And the future debt is if you don't have to pay something today, if you have to pay it down the road, make sure you know what the interest rate is. Because the largest debt that people here in the United States incur is at an unknown interest rate. I mean, who would ever borrow $10,000 and not know the interest rate or when it's due?

But here in America, we do that all the time. Every day we go to work and we put money in a tax deferred retirement account. Here we get a tax deduction. Well, it's not a. Yeah, it's a deduction, but it's better known as a tax postponement. That sounds anonymous.

But it's really a debt. It's a debt to the government. At what rate? Don't know. When do they want it back? Don't know. Whenever they want it. I had a couple in my office and they were very, very proud that they were debt free. I mean, they heard the train, they heard the sound, and they were debt free. And I explained to them what their million dollar IRA really was. And I've never seen the sharpest elbow ever before. But she took her elbow and she went.

Did you know that.

She thought she was debt free? Right. And all of a sudden she realized she probably owed $300,000 of debt.

So watch your debt. Watch your debt. Don't enter into debt arrangements where you don't know what the interest rate the financial institution is going to charge.

You're voluntarily joining into a partnership with the tax man, either Uncle Sam, in your case, or Uncle Trudeau, I guess, as it is here, the CRA or IRS and. Exactly right. We don't know. We do not know what the tax rate's going to be at the time that we have to start withdrawing that money down. And it's not within our control. There's no way that any one of us in this Conversation can go and dictate the terms of what that that rate will be. And that is a scary, scary thought.

Do you know what the tax increase here in the United States was last time we had a depression like we're going into and we're spending trillions of dollars. The last time we did this was. Was right after the Great Depression and we had this wonderful. I can't remember what Roosevelt called it.

New Deal.

The New Deal. That's right, the New Deal. The New Deal. The tax rate the year after the New Deal was put into practice went up 116% at every tax bracket. Wow. 116% tax increase.

That reminds me of that H and R Block commercial where the proctor, the guy walks into the proctologist office and he says, ooh, can't help you with that. That's tax paying.

Yeah, I'll share too that. You know, you've heard the saying that there's. What are the two certainties in life? Death and taxes.

Yeah.

Except death is the only thing that doesn't get worse every time politicians meet.

All right, so, Brian, one of the things that we always like to end our show with, first of all, again, we're just so grateful that you're here with us. Thank you so much. We're very blessed to have you here with us today. And we like to talk about not all heroes wear capes. And so you might not think of yourself as a hero, but every time you're creating value for others, you're benefiting people and making life easier or better for them in some way. And so our question to you, Brian, is who do you want to be a hero to?

I want to be a hero to my grandchildren's generation.

And I think that what we've discovered through this whole thing of life insurance, forget about how you can use it from your dead self and all that good stuff, But I really believe that my generation has screwed up the overall finances for so many people with the debt that we've taken on here that our kids and our grandkids aren't going to have a chance unless we leave them something behind to give them a hand up. And if I can structure my retirement in such a way that I know there's going to be money left over for them even after I've spent everything I wanted to spend, that's who I want to be a hero to. Because I think we've kind of screwed them over. And I want to be able to give my kids and my grandkids a hand up and life Insurance will let me do that. It just happens to be the product that I. That I use, but I use it. It's the most efficient product for me to live with. It's also the most efficient thing for me to die with.

So powerful.

Wonderful. Thank you for that.

That's another episode of Wealth Without Bay Street. And so again, we give our sincere thanks to Brian Bloom, author of Confessions of a cpa. And as you listen to this episode, we've mentioned it a number of times. If you found yourself thinking, this is really, really good, these guys are speaking to me. I need to get more information and to expand my knowledge and to take action. Then just click through in the show notes. We'll make sure that we arrange to get a copy of Brian's book shipped right to your front door. And once you've had an opportunity to read it, you'll be invited to create a time to meet with one of our team members and take a deeper dive into your own situation. And if you read it and you choose not to do that, that's okay too, as long as you leave happy.

And don't forget that you can always check out the masterclass we have available at wealth without bay street.com for.

You.

Can kind of get a bit of an understanding and an overview as to how people, certainly in Canada at least anyway, are implementing this process in their life and utilizing the capacity of their future dead self while they're living on planet Earth today.

We need to change the opening chapter of our masterclass. So, Brian, we would love to collaborate with you more and if you're agreeable, we'd love to have you again as a guest on our show. We just, we enjoyed it so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And we Special Shout out. We appreciate your assistant Kelly for being so gracious in the booking of this as well. She was a pleasure to deal with.

She does a great job. She happens to be my daughter.

Oh, well, she's terrific.

She's wonderful. Absolutely.

All right, thanks again, Brian. We appreciate you.

Thanks. Bye, guys.

Bye.

Bye.

Thanks for listening to the wealth with Elbay street podcast where your wealth matters. Be sure to check out our social media channels for more great content. Content, Hit subscribe on your favorite podcast player and be sure to rate the show. We definitely appreciate it. And don't forget to share this episode with someone you care about. Join us on the next episode where we continue to uncover the financial tools, strategies and the mindsets that maximize your wealth.