27. The Infinite Banking Concept Suits Everyone – Client Series

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Well, welcome, welcome to another episode of Wealth Without Bay street, joined by my amazing colleague, co host Richard Canfield, coming to us live from Chilliwack, British Columbia. Having recently just relocated from Alberta and getting settled in with his amazing wife Heather and children and family. It's just awesome. So, Richard, thanks for being here with us via satellite. It's great to have you here. And for all of our listeners who are on the YouTubes and the Facebooks and the LinkedIn and all the other platforms of podcast.

Downloading tools, whatever those may be, I'm sure they're all wonderful. We are the sound world. That's it. Thank you, Richard. We are just super excited and so honored to have with us as part of our Wealth Without Bay street client series, discussing the process of becoming your own banker, the infinite banking concept, Mrs. Sandy Baird. Sandy, welcome. It's an honor to have you with us.

Well, thank you, Jason and Richard.

We are just one of the reasons, among many, that we're so excited is that you've been practicing this process yourself, your husband Lance, for a number of years. Can you give our listeners just a bit of insight into how you were introduced to the process and what your journey with becoming your own banker has been like up to this point?

Well, it was. This is now our fifth year of practicing the infinite banking system and I was introduced to it actually quite by accident. I was listening to a local radio program one morning that was unrelated to your own and didn't turn the radio off soon enough before the next program that was being aired that morning was yours. And I became intrigued enough that I listened throughout. It was an invitation to attend the seminar, the day long seminar to learn all about how the infinite banking system worked, although those words were not used. In fact the words were used were whole life insurance as I recall. And immediately afterwards I called and had a chance to speak with you and you squeezed me into the next available webinar and that was the start of our journey in learning how to use the infinite banking system through the whole life policies that we currently own. And that would have been just over about four and a half years ago. And ever since, yeah, ever since we have been using them and they now have become essentially our personal banking system.

I just, I was. Sandy, thank you for sharing that. Because I was preempting Richard, prior to this episode, I said, one of the things that Sandy does so well is that she. She tracks the progress that's being made in her system. She has implemented the process, She's a practitioner. And you just, you really have grown accustomed to making this a lifestyle. And so what has been, you know, maybe one of the single best advantages that this process has presented to you and to Lance at this stage in your lives?

Well, there have been many, but I think the one that has to top the list is that adopting this system has provided the two of us with peace of mind with respect to the rest of our lives. Really, we were kind of late to the game in that, you know, we didn't kind of catch this train until we were in our 60s. And perhaps that's a bit of a plug for clients and prospective clients of yours who may be thinking, well, I'm too old for this, because that is definitely not the case where as long as you are alive and you have expenses, this system can work for you. And every single policy is personalized so that your own circumstances are taken into effect. And we're just so happy to have, for having had the opportunity to meet you, Jason, and to partake in the webinar and to learn that, in fact, we weren't too old for this. And now, as a result, we feel confident that we will never outlive our money, that we will never, you know, have to suffer through.

Terrible living conditions in assisted living facilities and things like that, because our policies now will provide for us the means to be able to be taken care of no matter what the future might hold.

That is amazing, Richard.

Very powerful, Very powerful. And I.

Between now and then, of course, we're going to spend as much of it as we can.

Because the one thing that attracted me to it in the first place was the living benefit part. You know, I. We've always been insured, and I always thought, well, yeah, sure, if I were to lose my husband, I. That wouldn't be so much fun to have all this money to be able to spend all by myself. And so I thought, yeah, well, what I would really like is to have access to insurance proceeds while I'm still alive and while my husband is still alive.

Wonderful, Absolutely wonderful. And you know, you addressed a good point there. R. Nelson Nash, God rest his soul, one of the things that he used to share, just in humor, although we thoroughly believed he was being quite serious at the time, he would say, you know what, I want to get to the stage where my final check bounces and it's payable to the irs.

And so you can truly spend your life living by embracing this process. And I recall those early conversations that we had and you just. One of the things that was, it just really solidified it for me that we had a basis to work together is the level of clarity that you seek and that you truly understand. The more that you see this process, the more you see you didn't see. And it requires that ongoing journey of learning and growing and asking a lot of great questions, which is something that I really enjoy every time that we connect.

Well, I think Jason, you can attest to the number of questions that I have asked and in fact sometimes the number of questions that I have asked more than once. Because it seems that initially it's just getting started, right? I remember my first policy loan, I was quite cautious as to how is this going to work and how is it that a loan is a good idea because you know, loans were never a good idea in our other world. And we've since come to understand that policy loans are good. And then it became a case of, okay, so what happens if we would like to spend some money on lifestyle? What happens when we get older, you know, what if we live for another 30 years? What's that going to look like? And you answered all of those questions thoroughly, despite perhaps being haven't asked them, you know, more than once. And yeah, every time I get an answer and I do some more reading and I take a look at my policy statements, I just gain a better understanding of how all of this works and how good it is.

That speaks to Richard right behind you, that banner, that amazing banner that you have now for people who are tuning in just via audio, Richard's got an amazing banner of the book cover of the number one best selling book by the late R. Nelson Nash. Becoming your own banker. Unlock the infinite banking concept. And R. Nelson Nash developed, pioneered, founded this process. And the two most important words in the book title, Richard, are your own. You got it. And so Sandy, you are just a testimonial to truly becoming your own banker.

And, and this, this flag actually used to hang on my flagpole that I had and I, I sent a picture of it when I the day I remember I. I sent a picture of the day that I hung it on my flagpole to Nelson. And since. Since now I don't have a flagpole in my new location, so I'm gonna have to go get one. But at least I've got it. You know, one of the first things that happened when I got to the new place was I put this up, of course, because you gotta. You gotta show your banker pride everywhere you go. And I'm so honored, Sandy, to hear the thoughts that you've shared with us already so far, because a couple of things that really stood out for me is, number one, that you're never too old to get started doing this, and you have to kind of start somewhere. And just that you identified that confidence that the system is providing for you and your husband, Lance, and that assured aspect of your life, because it sounds like prior to that, in a previous financial realm, there were concerns about marketplaces and how they can shift and that sort of thing. And I'm guessing now that you're doing this process, lots changed since you got started. We're in the middle of, or maybe hopefully getting to the tail end of a global pandemic. And if you were to contrast today's world for you versus had you been in the same situation five or six years ago in other types of markets, how do you think you would have been impacted by this pandemic?

Well, I'm sure I would have been impacted in much the same way that I have heard other people have. We have people across the street from us that have said, you know, we've lost $100,000 since mid March.

Oh, boy.

In fact, it may have an impact on when we can retire. Someone else said, you know, we're in trouble if we live past 90.

And we were in that world, but we're not in that world anymore.

Right. And that speaks to the peace of mind that, you know, it's unfortunate that it's happening to other folks, but, you know, when's the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago. The second best time is today, of course. So, you know, kudos to you for taking that action step, reaching out, hearing the program by accident, not turning Jason off, listening through the program, and then taking the actual proactive step, which is to reach out and actually attend that live session. So. And the other thing I heard you identify, which I think is really critical, and we're kind of a bit of a broken record around here on our podcast, but you identified that you're always still learning, you're still reading. Yes, you're asking some of the same questions again, but that's partly because it's not just about hearing the answer again. It's that you've read some more and your frame of reference has expanded to be able to maybe enhance your discovery altogether. Would you agree with that? Does that sound about right?

Well, absolutely, you know, I mean in the last month or so I have learned about what's termed an insured retirement program. And with Jason's help I've learned that we will have the option to make use of the equity in our home and a commercial loan from our friendly neighborhood bank together with our policies because of their guaranteed cash values, which again, like I said, will give us the option to finance our lifestyle in the years to come, which is the peace of mind that, you know, is simply enhanced. Because for us one of the things that we have contemplated is selling the home that we've lived in for the last 30 years. However, with real estate values being what it is and where we are living, we're just not really that interested in selling in a market where we wouldn't get a really good dollar for our property. And so we're prepared to sit tight. And if that means indefinitely, then we have a plan or at least we have an option to implement a plan that will help us to fund a lifestyle no matter where we live.

Isn't that good?

It's powerful.

Powerful, yeah. So we can move or we can, or we can stay put. It doesn't matter. It won't have a bearing on how well we live and whether or not we will be able to afford it.

That's amazing.

The word option is something you really identified there. And that statement is like we will have the option to. That is a perfect statement. And fill in the blank. The capacity to be able to say that in such a powerful, confident method that you've just done for us I think is a really underrated aspect that people are missing in their financial life today. So you clearly identifying that for folks who might be listening in, I just.

Think that's wonderful and it's much better than the, you know, we have no alternative but.

Big, big difference. And you know, Nelson used to share that how much this, this created a very peaceful, stress free financial life. And if I may, Sandy, just take you back a number of years to when you first had the opportunity to hear Nelson speak. What were some things that came up for you after having spent some time with Nelson?

Well, here was a man who not only took the provisions of his own life insurance policies to heart and instituted what they have contracted within them that he took it upon himself to teach other people. In fact, he had two full careers. The first one is a forester, and the second one in the insurance industry. And it was fascinating to hear what he had to say about how it impacted him personally because it wasn't so much. I mean, certainly, you know, the proceeds of whole life insurance policies and annual dividends was one thing, but he thankfully took it upon himself to teach and to create a foundation whereby other people could benefit simply from learning how better to use cool life policies. Because, you know, we had go live. We had one policy in particular when we were first married, and the agent never mentioned anything about cash value and loan provisions and, you know, anything like that, living benefits. There was never anything said about those kinds of things that I'm sure were inherent in that policy as well.

Well, most definitely. Yeah.

We're just, you know, so thankful that I happened to leave the radio tune that day, because then we met you, Jason, and you were the first insurance agent we've ever had who actually took things above and beyond and explained how these things work. And for us, it has meant the difference between worrying about the future and not worrying about the future.

Oh, wow. Thank you. We're all honored. You know, I'm surrounded by so many wonderful teammates, and they. They all bring, you know, their unique capabilities to everything that we do for our clients. And we just appreciate you and Lance so much and, you know, questions. Repetition is our best teacher. And so you. You had addressed that where you said, you know, I've asked the same question a number of times, but Richard hit the nail on the head. Your frame of reference expands because the more you see this process, the more you see you didn't see and.

Yeah, and what would you share with people who might be thinking, you know, I've maybe heard a podcast somewhere, or maybe I've been invited to read Nelson's book or, you know, someone's mentioned this process to them. What advice would you give people who are just really at the very beginning stages of understanding or seeking to understand what this process of becoming your own banker really is?

I would urge them to pursue an understanding of how it works and start to implement it, no matter in how small a way, at least to begin with. Because time is your friend when it comes to whole life policies and the infinite banking system. And the longer you have until you reach age 100, the more time your policy will have to increase cash values. Because, as you know, the life insurance contracts are designed in order that the cash value equal the death benefit at age 100. So if you start when you're 20, like I wish we had.

You will have 80 years of growth. Whereas if you don't start until you're 60, of course you have less time, but you do nonetheless have that growth. So it's a case of give yourself the time to learn how it works. Instead of shrugging it off as being too inappropriate or whatever the case may be, learn how it can help you. And you'll be ever so thankful because you've heard me say it before, Jason. I mean, we're in our 60s. We've been married 42 years. If we had been enlightened even 20 years ago, we would be approaching millionaire status now. Wow.

Well, congratulations, by the way, on the 42 years, because that's absolutely. That's absolutely fantastic. We love hearing about things of that nature. And one of the things that we, you know, we have our clients, many folks will approach us and they're at that stage of life where you guys are first discovering this in that period of time in their 60s, and they're often wondering, well, should I get a policy on my older children or my grandchildren and start there? Because, quote unquote, the premiums will be cheaper. And these are some of the common questions we get when people are initially reaching out. And certainly there are some opportunities where it makes sense to do that just because you want to have other members of the family insured there another body to deal with as part of your overall family system. But oftentimes, if we lack the actual proper coverage at a certain stage of life, well, one of the best places to get it if you really want to create that legacy and that ripple effect is right at the you and me level. And so I'm, I'm really glad that you guys are set up in that fashion. But for anyone who's tuning in and listening, there's many people, typically in the family line, that you may want to consider ensuring for the advantages that'll provide. And you can create what Nelson says in his book is an even distribution of age classes. And it's something that comes from his forestry days. Now, Jason, do you want to chime in a little bit with the even distribution of age classes and how we see that play out in the lives of our clients when they look at ensuring over generations.

Oh, goodness. Gosh, we could do a whole episode just on that. In fact, maybe we should, you know, for the context of, of our conversation with Sandy, I mean, we. There Isn't a single client, not one that we interact with, who at this stage of life being either pre, pre retirement or early retirement or just really full on hitting your stride in retirement. Not one client has ever connected with anyone on our team and said, I wish we would have started later in life.

And then it's beginning to think about all of the generations that come after and your expanded family. Because Nelson shared something many years ago. Richard, you will recollect this. He said, you have to have a way to filter out all of the financial noise that goes on out there in the world. There's a lot of people telling you to do things with your money, Sandy. Take your money, hand it over to someone else who thinks they can do better with it than you can, and then hope and pray you get all of it plus a return back at some point in the future. And don't, don't worry about the tax man. The tax man will let you know how much taxes are owing at the time that you're ready to access the money. And Nelson would say, I always hear that word, diversification. People say, you know, you shouldn't put all your eggs into one basket. You should diversify. You should be in stocks, bonds, real estate, xyz, whatever those investment vehicles are, those products. Nelson said, Jason, I have 48 policies in my family banking system. I've insured the lives of everyone that I have a beneficial interest in. I'm diversified in lives, insured.

And one day death will come. And when it does, a tax free windfall shows up when it's needed the most. And when that tax free windfall shows up, Nelson used to always ask the question, will that not erase some of the previous mistakes that we've made financially over the course of our lifetime?

And so, you know, an even distribution of age classes and creating a system of policies is all part of the implementation of this process. What you and Lance are doing such a great job at in your lives is that you really, truly recognize that A, your money must reside somewhere, B, you are taking control of an ever increasing.

Percentage of the banking function in your lives as it relates to your needs. Has there been a single day, Sandy, since the inception of your policies where the cash values have gone down?

I can say you say to you without hesitation, no, because I track it every business day.

That's what I was getting at. So Sandy is she has this system in place where she monitors her program. She looks at it on a daily basis because she really, truly is intrigued on what's happening, what's going on, how's my system growing? And to have that peace of mind that there's no pandemic, no stock market manipulation, no government intervention, there's no one or no organization that can take any of that value that's accumulated away and it just keeps going up. And so how much money do you want residing there?

It begs the question, right? Because your money must reside somewhere.

One of the reasons why I track our policy values so carefully and on such a daily basis is because our policies have in essence become our banking system in the truest sense of the word. Because we're now at a point where our monthly income is transferred into our policies and then we take out policy loans for our lifestyle expenses. And if you policy loans are good.

Commercial loans, not so good, bank loans, not so good policy loans, they're great. And the reason is that any revenue that the insurance company derives by issuing policy loans to policyholders is redistributed to the policyholders on an annual basis when they do their accounting.

And that participation comes in the form of dividends. And one of the contributors is, how did we do as a business this year? Did we have more money left over than what went out? If so, we've got some surplus here. Let's take a portion of that surplus and earmark it as a capital reserve to weather Things like COVID 19 and the financial crisis of 08 09, the Great Depression, 30 recessions, the tech bubble burst in the early 2000s, the Spanish flu, H1N1 SARS, to name a few. And then let's take the remaining portion and distribute it to all of the co owners of the insurance company and we'll call it a dividend. Isn't that good?

Yep.

Richard, and the additional advantage of the fact that those policy loans are completely unstructured. So you and Lance have the complete decision making process around how and when you will make repayments on that. And it sounds like based on your daily monitoring, you're very in tune with when and how you should be doing those things because you've actually planned it and you've thought it through. And so I love hearing about that because a lot of people ask us these questions and how they might go about doing that, but everyone's situation and their expenses and their incomes are all a little bit different. And so the answer is it's how it's going to work for you. And you found the niche model that you and Lance are working with that's obviously very, very effective. And that's the key. But that has happened through the repetition of the education that you're doing and that you're so, so bullish on attacking it sounds voraciously almost on getting the depth of knowledge that's required to really implement this process properly. So kudos to you for doing that and for you and Lance being such a great team because it's really important to have a team of people around you and that team can be folks that ascend in and Jason, as he's identified, but also the team that you have around you in the home who's helping you with the process and really in that communication realm where you're taking the idea of where a lot of people money and our spending patterns are a bit of a taboo subject. And because of that we often tend to have certain levels of failure in our financial life. But the more and more we communicate and talk about it, we always increase our potential and what's available to us because we've really taken the ability to have a good conversation about something that really is important and making it important.

Absolutely.

Have to agree.

I would share. Richard, I would invite you to share with our listeners because Sandy had mentioned that having gone through an education process and hearing how the process works and being in a classroom style setting during COVID it's simply not possible right now. But Richard, can you share with our listeners an opportunity for people to go through that education process much like Sandy did?

Yeah, absolutely. We've been getting a lot of people asking about that. So a great way to do that is to register for the masterclass that we've put together. So you want to go to wealthwithoutbaystreet.commasterclass, you'll be able to access it there. You get a copy of Nelson's book shipped right to your door. There's a complimentary session to have a discussion with a IBC coach and a variety of great education pieces that's available there for you to go through in a kind of video format. There's some FAQ components, there's a lot of content that's there available. There's even a section that's around doing this for children, young, young kids, young children. So there's some very, very good information in there and we're getting some good feedback from folks who've taken the masterclass so far.

That's excellent. And Sandy, if I may invite you, do you have any, any parting words for our listeners? Any, any wisdom that you would like to keep communicate forward to the world?

The world.

I think I would simply repeat that for anybody who's contemplating whether or not they should proceed. I would say don't hesitate even if you take, you know, just a small step to start and allow.

Allow yourself to learn as you go how this works and then progress by adding policies as you are able to. Because for us, biggest benefit, as I've said, has been peace of mind. And the biggest regret has been that we didn't have this opportunity or didn't learn about it and take advantage of it 40 years ago. So as I've heard you say, Jason, in 10 years time, we won't be able to say, or you won't be able to say, well, you didn't hear, you know, you weren't aware of it. Learning about it now. And so act, act now, act now, even if in only a small way, because you will thank yourself in the years to come for the benefit that it has, that it has the capability of providing.

Wow.

Thank you, Sandy. And we always like to end our client series interviews with a very, very powerful question. Now, again, we give credit to Dan Sullivan, who, who's one of the founders of Strategic Coach. He's been coaching established and successful entrepreneurs for decades. And he wrote a book that really talks about hero. And so, Sandy, not all heroes wear capes, as you know. And you might not think of yourself as a hero, but every time you create value for other people, you're benefiting people and making life easier or better for them in some way. And I can absolutely assure you that listeners who have tuned into this episode, you have provided them with value. And so when you think about how you've benefited other people and added value to them, the question we have for you is who do you want to be a hero to?

Who do I want to be a hero to?

Yes.

Well, let me say that to those family members who will be remembered upon our passing, I would hope that they might consider that we're heroes.

Because they will be blessed.

Wow.

Well, there you have it, our listening audience, another episode of Wealth Without Bay Street. Richard, any closing remarks that you'd like to share?

I just want to thank our guests today as part of our client series. Thank you, Sandy, for joining us. We appreciate you sharing what's, what's true for you, what's become so important for you with others. You are literally blessing others by just the virtue of sharing your experience and your knowledge as it relates to your needs and giving people perspective on how it may relate to theirs. So I appreciate that and I thank you kindly for doing so.

You're most welcome.

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