283: Double Your Financial Freedom: Bitcoin and Infinite Banking Together with Shaun Somers

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Welcome to wealth on Main street, where conversations about growing your wealth are fun and entertaining. Wealth isn't just about money. It's the skills and the knowledge that we develop to pass on to future generations. Tune in each week to grow your mindset and your net worth at the same time. What if your child's first major purchase was funded through the family banking system that you helped create and your savings couldn't be touched by banks or governments? Well, that's the kind of sovereignty that we're going to be talking about today. I'm joined today by Sean Summers, who's an amazing guy. He's making a second appearance on our podcast. We were just talking before we hit record and how it's been four years since he was with us the first time. So much has happened since then. A lot of people loved your first episode, Sean, because you talked all about the Iron bank. And so we're going to talk a little bit about that. And of course, two things that you're very passionate about, which is infinite banking and bitcoin. So we're going to have a lot of fun and welcome back to the program today.

Well, thank you so much. Very excited to be back.

You know, Sean, we were just reminiscing a little bit and you know, you've now entered a little bit deeper into your journey with the infinite banking process. You're very self sufficient in how you manage things and you look after everything. And you just funded sixth year Premium, so you're entering the sixth year of a couple of policies. You've got a few in the mix. A lot's transpired over that time frame. You were with us four years ago on the show talking about all that you were excited about, about the process then. What are some of the things that's shifted and changed for you from the first time you came on the program to today?

I mean, overall, I'm still just as excited as I ever was about the process of infinite banking. It's sort of a little bit more automatic now. It's no longer quite as exciting to take a policy loan as maybe it used to be. But I still get fired up every time. I can go over to the Equitable website, just ask them to send me a loan. They don't have to do a credit check. They don't really even ask why. They're just like, okay, you're going to have your money and then it's in my bank within whatever one or two days and then I can spend that as, as I see fit.

Right.

I just Love that, that freedom. I love how having the whole infinite banking system of policy set up gives me, gives me and our family so much flexibility, so much financial freedom to be able to do things that really, you know, we would be able to do them maybe, but there'd be a lot more stress, a lot more, you know, you know, timing of things where with infinite banking we can, we have that freedom, lack of worry and just the overall peace about our finances. I really, really, really enjoy it. I love that.

And of course, anyone watching on YouTube will see that you've got a great set of books behind you. You've got Becoming your own Banker, you got Warehouse of wealth, you've got the bitcoin standard, it looks like, if I'm seeing that correctly. Oh, and you got don't spread the wealth right in there as well. So thank you for that. That's fantastic. A great little setup.

And economics in one lesson. Did you mention that one?

Oh, I see. I didn't know the title. I wasn't sure what that one was.

From the title Quality one as well. I think Nelson himself recommends that one in.

Absolutely. That's by Henry Hazlett. And so for anyone who doesn't know Austrian economics, of course, Nelson was an avid believer and steward of Austrian economics. And he suggested that that's the fundamental foundational level, really that everything with the infinite banking concept is kind of built upon is the mindsets and the importance of human behavior, human interaction that happens with that whole economic system and the mindsets around it. And a lot of people have even indicated that really the infinite banking concept is Austrian economics in action. It's a way to implement the concepts of Austrian economics at the UNME level by utilizing the product of dividend paying whole life insurance. And now there's another way that you can do some of that, of course, to the degree, and that goes to one of your other passions. We'll talk a little bit about that today. But you're an avid fan of bitcoin. You're, I would say, go so far as to say a bitcoin purist. Sean, am I hitting that correctly?

I would say so. I like to usually say a bitcoin enthusiast, but when it comes to the field of cryptocurrencies, a lot of people think, oh, I've actually had someone say, well, which bitcoin should I get? But really there is only the one bitcoin. And that is, I do only recommend that. I'm super passionate about that. Probably equally as passionate about that as infinite banking. But yeah, that's what I only teach and help people with. Bitcoin. Bitcoin only. Awesome.

Love it. Well, you know, you, you share with us on the last time in your episode that you've, you, you've given a name to your family system. It's the Iron bank, which anyone who's watched Game of Thrones will recognize that. And of course there, there's a great component there to not only like some of the symbolism and recognition of it, the, the, the solidity of iron, you know, the fact and you know, one of our good friends, James Nethery, he's often fond of saying that iron sharpens ironically and that's why you're always connecting and communicating with other people. It's also probably one of the reasons why you have a great meetup group. We'll talk about that a little bit later. But being able to be a part of our client community, jumping in on some of the quarterly coaching sessions and the things that we do, that's an area where you get to have iron sharpening, iron learning from different practitioners in our community, the individuals amongst spread out across Canada, but also the various advisors that we have working for us. So let's just talk a little bit. What are some of the things that you find has been helpful on your journey as you've been building and growing and developing and practicing on your own by being able to have some of those interactions and participate in some of the ongoing education that we have?

Yeah, I definitely can't stress enough how great it is to have that ongoing support, whether it's through the client portal. There's some great resources there watching. Of course, I do listen to and, or watch these podcasts themselves. Right. Great spot to listen to either experts who are talking, just, you know, members of your team talking about the system, other clients. That's great. But like you said, the chance to step into some of those coaching sessions or groups online through zoom groups, I don't get out to as many as I'd like. A lot of them seem to be Thursday evenings and I do work every Thursday evening pretty much. But when I can, I get out to those and it's always fantastic.

Right.

You're hearing something new or something different and you get a chance to interact with some other members, other clients, I guess, who are also practicing, practicing the system. They're either a little further along and you can learn from them or they're just getting started and maybe you can, I can share a little bit of how I've done things with them. Also going back one of the best parts of the last four years was when we had the event in Toronto, the live event.

Right.

Getting out to a live event. I cannot stress enough how that was fantastic, Right. If I could, I would skip. I don't know. The one live event is probably worth five online events, let's say that, right? A chance to meet Richard in person, Jason in person, Sarblo in person, and just see the presentations, be in the crowd, the excitement.

Right.

I had. I was fortunate enough to have a couple of guys that I shared Infinite Banking with and they became clients and we could all just go together and have a great time. Super great. So anytime you have a chance to get to a live event, and I know you guys have them across the country, get out to one, so that's pretty cool.

That was a fun event. Toronto was a special event and we had a lot of fun. We were there and it was great to actually meet you in person and, you know, you had the whole group with you. It was a blast, you know, seeing you guys sitting together. And we had. I kind of facilitated a little bit of an interactive exercise during that session where it was some planning on the family banking meeting. And we had, you know, groups all over the place, everyone had different names for their groups and there was a little bit of competition element happening. That was a ton of fun. I really appreciated that. So. And having you in the room was a blast.

It was great. Yeah, it was great. And I know that whenever I go to any of these events, just particularly the online ones, and if you're involved, you'll always call on me to answer a question of some kind. So I'm always ready for that. Sean, what do you think? Okay. And I go from there. So it's good times.

It's easy to voluntel someone to participate when I know that they, A, they're going to have a good discussion topic or B, that probability is their willingness to jump in is always there. And that's one thing I appreciate about you, Sean, also for being on the show the first time, coming back to join us again now, a lot, you know, a lot's changed again since you were with us on the first. The first time. Obviously you've got more premiums under your belt, more growth in the policies. Your policy system is really putting on some afterburners here now. But I want to talk more about the utilization and some of the things. So you mentioned that you've recently done a policy loan with your son and that's kind of a momentous experience there. So I really would like you to kind of expand on that. What was the circumstance, how did you bring it up, how did you guys discuss it and what's been kind of the process that you've gone about implementing that with him?

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Definitely momentous occasion, sort of the chance for somebody else in the family to be interested in and want to take a loan in that sense.

Right.

I mean, I know for me we do all discuss it as a family together, but when my son was a little bit younger and my wife isn't as interested in infinite banking as my, as I am, but this was a chance for, for where basically he was able to do that. So I've always thought that, you know, teaching, you know, our kids some financial literacy was really important. So my son's always had a bit of an allowance and he's also had a bit of a system where he would save that allowance. Right. So three jars, pretty common.

Right.

Spending, saving and giving. And for him, his real goal was to get himself a gaming computer or a new gaming computer. Right. So, you know, I guess at the time he was 15 year old boy, very much into the online gaming. We had gotten him a computer for Christmas like I don't know, three years ago maybe. But as technology does, it started to slow down and you know, he was lagging a bit on some of these games, I don't know all the games, but he basically wanted to get a whole new computer system. He wanted to build it himself, you know, kind of thing, you know, I did when I was his age and he was interested in doing now. So through the course of his allowance, as well as his birthday money, Christmas money, any kind of things like that in his savings jar. He had about $1,000 thousand dollars saved up, which is not too bad. And this is January of 2023, I'm pretty sure. Yes. Right. January 2023. He has $1,000 saved up and he's interested in buying a computer. And I said to him the computer was about $2,500, I think. Well, actually I didn't know the amount of the computer at the time, but he had it sitting in a literal jar.

Right.

And being, as you've already mentioned, a bitcoin enthusiast, I said with that thousand dollars you could maybe put that to work and it could easily go up by the time you're ready to get this computer. Timing was right, we were down a bit well off of the all time high from a couple years earlier. So he put his thousand dollars in in January of 2023. And by the time, basically not that long ago, by the time he was ready to get the computer, he had $2,500 out of that. So he had grown 100 and yeah, basically 1.5x or 2.5x itself. So he has $2,500. He's ready to get a computer. However, you know, because again, I've been teaching him about Bitcoin and about, you know, the concept of investing in general. He was kind of not excited to sell his Bitcoin and buy a computer.

Right.

Which is good. You don't want to, you know, sometimes you might want to sell your bitcoin for something that you want, but you should, you should be careful and not do it if you don't have to. And I floored the idea. Hey, you know what, you've got a policy. Like when I first got my system of policy started, I started with one. One on myself, one on my wife, one on my younger son, that's him. And so he had that policy and there was more than enough, five years later, more than enough cash value that he could take a loan out, pay for this computer. And then we set up a system of payments that he agreed upon, that I agreed upon and he was ready to do that. So I floated that idea to him and he thought that was a pretty good idea. And so he did. In I think October of 2024, he started that. He took his loan, took a small loan first to get maybe the, some accessory units that came in first and then took a bigger loan later. He's six months through the one year of paying that off. And if he hasn't missed a payment yet, which of course I'm proud of as well, and overall he still has way more Bitcoin than he would have had if he had sold it all. And he has the computer and he's still making payments and he understands that he's repaying into his own banking system and he's going to be able to reuse that funding again later on for future loans.

I love that. So I love first off the lesson of putting it to work for a larger objective, getting clear on that savings and that goal oriented component so that those are all behavior oriented elements that you've been focusing on, seeing the impact of that behavior over a timeframe, some market timing components there. Of course, with the rise of bitcoin over that timeframe, having the thinking discussion, the clarity to walk through and say, hey, well you could sell the bitcoin or we could tap into another resource and you could let that continue growing. Would you like to do that? So you didn't force or tell him what to do. You had a conversation and you asked thinking questions and those thinking questions turned into a decision making element that allowed your son to say, okay, well, here's what I'd much prefer. He already knew that he didn't want to sell the bitcoin because he'd seen the impact over that timeframe, which if you try to explain that to him and you could have seen the same impact with your bitcoin and explain it to him, would it have landed the same way?

Yeah, there's no way the actual seeing it. You're. When you have skin in the game, you pay so much more attention.

Right.

Which is, you know, why sometimes, you know, you don't want to have to study and study and become the absolute expert on whatever it is you're interested in learning about. Sometimes you just have to kind of start and, you know, get a foundation start and then that having that start foot in the door will make you want to learn more and more and more. Right. So obviously he's paying even closer attention to both how much his loan is left.

Right.

And he has asked me, hey, how much of the balance is left? If I was to pay it off today, what would that be? And I told him what it was and he said, all right, I'm not going to do that just yet.

Right.

So. And that's even with bitcoin's price coming down since the beginning of the year and then up a bit. Right. So he was, he was sort of, it kind of went against him here since the beginning, since December.

Right.

And now it's come back. But he still is looking for the longer term, thinking long term.

That's amazing. And the loan arrangements. So did you work out a printed amortization schedule? Is that how you set it up with him and you went over the document with him, what was the process that you decided on? Because it was about, approximately, about 2,500 is all in what the loan was for, roughly in that range.

Yeah, well, the loan was a little less than that because he did still have some cash left over that he had some. So his first couple payments he was able to pay. Oh, I guess he did. He did make it for about that total amount. I don't think I have it printed out, but I don't know if we actually printed it out, but we took a look at a spreadsheet together and said this is what it's going to be.

Right.

Used an amortization calendar, worked it out. Loans at 9.99%. As all iron bank loans tend to be for our summer's family bank, I generally make them at 9.99%. So I just explained that's what it's going to be, and he would agree with that. And we did. Yeah. So.

And how long of a time frame did you take the payments over? What was it, two years, one year?

It was actually only one year. Well, we did the first smaller loan he did over six months. And then the second larger loan did over a full year. So now he's gone through the first six months. So his payment has dropped by, I guess, like $65 or whatever. And now he's just paying off the remaining $153 a month. I think for the next six months. He has been selling bitcoin to make some of those payments, which is fine. He doesn't actually have a job just right now, just finishing up High School two days ago for grade 11. But yeah, so he has made some small sales there, but because the price is still good, he's still ahead. And so if the price continues to go or he gets a job, finds other income, he's going to be able to keep his asset and deal with his loan.

So he has lots of opportunities and he understood the payments going in. He made the decision. He was clear on it. You went over it. So it was a great teaching element there. He started with a smaller loan because of some things that he needed quickly. And he got a little bit of initial practice, smaller amount, quick practice, paid off loan 1. But in the timeframe of loan 1 being initiated, loan 2 got created before loan 1 was done. Am I hearing that correctly?

Absolutely correct, yes.

Okay. That's a really key teaching point here because sometimes we say loan and people just isolate on this one thing and we look at it in a silo. The reality is your life is moving capital and money at all times. It's a constant flow of in and outs. And you know, you have that when the transmission on the car goes, or you need new tires, usually you need to pay for them right away or you're going to get Uncle Visa to come in and help you for a temporary period of time. So these large transactions take place and they're usually not when you plan them. So in the same way, you're teaching your son a little bit of, okay, well, you can have multiple things going on at once. This one has its own payment, this one has its own payment. So payment one is done. It completed a loan. So he gets to see in a short time frame an end to end solution, the success, the momentum of that happening. And he knows that that $500amount is available now, restored essentially in the bucket of the insurance contract, which has been growing this whole time, so that he can access that again for a future endeavor. And now loan two started. He can see the impact of a payment coming down. There's still a payment in place. So in that, in that, you know, in less than one year, the amount of lessons that your son has learned as he's completing grade 11 are in advance of what most kids learn by the time they exit high school. It usually takes them another three to five years to learn some of these things. And he's got it all nailed down about six months.

Yeah. And he's learned all that in terms of the concept of, in a policy system of policies that he doesn't currently own but someday will own, something very much like it. And obviously he's learned that at age 16. And I didn't learn that till I was, you know, 42.

Right.

Like the concept of, you know, running your own bank, becoming your own banker. Most people never learn that unless they're following this channel, of course.

Now I'm curious was, you know, because you, you do have discussions, you've obviously got the books, you know, they up, up on the wall. You, you know, your son will have learned at some point in time, a number of years ago that this was important. He knows you're talking about bitcoin all the time. He's hearing these things. Whether you're actively in discussion with them or it's just coming up. You're on the phone, you're on a zoom call. People do a drive by and they overhear some things. It tends to settle in the mind a little bit. Has there been some interesting conversations prior to this loan experience that you've had with your son and have you had some inquiries from him about this at a bigger scale at all? I'm just curious, what are, what's being a fly on the wall in the iron bank system like for your son?

Yeah, I wouldn't say that we ever had like had a huge in depth conversation, but it has been a lot of that, like maybe sort of like you said, drive by, like, you know, in terms of both learning about bitcoin and about the infinite banking, you know, we don't talk about either one constantly, mostly because my wife is sick of hearing me listen, talk about it. And I do talk about it a lot Outside the house. So I'm not.

That happens at my house too, by the way.

Yeah, right.

But he's understood that we have a different way of doing personal finance, of doing our finances than a lot of people do.

Right.

The idea of taking loans and repaying loans, more than one loan. Right. Because he's seen the spreadsheet that we talked about in our first podcast together.

Right.

Sort of having that spreadsheet that details all the different loans that you've got.

Right.

Having more than one out at a time, showing that there's a repayment schedule and you've got to pay it back. Which is, of course, the lesson of the Iron bank is that you must pay back your loans. Right. Or the bank. You know, you'll be in trouble with the bank. But of course, I am the banker. But I have to have that mindset with making sure that the customer also me repays those loans.

Well, just identifying yourself as the customer and separating the customer versus the bank owner, it is an important distinction. And the way that you're doing that does matter, you know, And I'm kind of curious. You know, we talk about a variety of ways that people, you know, everyone who starts this process, if they have kids or grandkids, they are automatically, you know, we're fine tuned to want to do things for the younger generation of our family that we often won't even be willing to do for ourselves. And there's this, you know, that parental insight to do that. And a lot of times I'll see folks, they will get policies, let's say, started for their kids at various ages and. But in their mind, they'll then separate that from the rest of their system. It's like, oh, no, this is for my kids. In the same way that they might fund, you know, an resp plan or in the United States, a 529 plan. And they're funding that for, say, college funding. Let's just say they separate this element out and it's kind of like a set it and forget it model. But the reality is it's all capital access, that if there's a way to create efficiency in your life and you can tap into this bucket for something today while you've got kids living in your house for the next 10 years. When they're the most expensive, by the way, is when they're living with you. At least that's what I'm familiar with at this stage of life. Maybe I'll readjust my thinking as my kids get older, but the reality is you can be using that to do things that benefit everybody in that timeframe, rather than waiting and letting it sit on a shelf doing nothing, collecting dust, essentially. So in the same way that you see that we've, we found that some people want to turn the keys over and hand over the policy or transfer ownership, let's say, to that child at some point in time. They're discussing that right out of the gate and they're wondering when the time to do that is. Now, my feelings about that is that I don't ever plan to do that and I have my own reasons for it. Is that something that you've, you know, maybe when you first got started, Shawn, to where you're at today in the journey, has there been any change or shift there for you in your thinking?

Well, for me, just because of the nature of the size of the policies that we have. So we have four policies in the summer's family banking system, one on myself, like I said, one on myself, my wife and my son. And then I opened a second one on myself a couple years ago. Now, you'd have to tell me to date right off the top of my head. And because his is much smaller, he's younger, we couldn't make the premium super huge. So it's not, it was always a little bit smaller. So we didn't need it necessarily to function in the part of the system. So I've always kind of thought of it as that's a little bit his system for some of his use. And I planned from the beginning to sort of like have this, something like what happened happen. He's going to want something and I'm going to suggest you take, take a loan from that.

Right.

So that did end up working out, I guess, pretty well. I didn't know when it was going to happen or if it was going to happen, but that was always something I was kind of hoping to be able to do. And that way we can sort of take a look at that policy online@equitable CA and just say, hey, look, here's all the different facets of this. Here's the, the policy values and everything else. But like you said, I don't really, I was going to even say, like, I don't intend to sign that to have him be the owner of that policy. I'm hoping that because I've taught him well enough, he'll want to open a policy when he turns 18.

Right.

In a year and a half.

Right.

In a year and a half he can get his own policy.

Right.

And in a year and a half. He'll be in maybe college or university, but he'll also have a job. And you know, if he needs some help getting it started, paying, I can help with that, but it'll still, that will be his policy. And then he'll use what he's learned to be able to start doing that in his own life.

Right.

And then, you know, keep going with that. That's. I think I always felt that that was the intention is to build that larger family system.

Right.

Yeah, I love that and I think that's great. And the fact that he's learning the lessons now, he can already start pre planning for it. You know, you're planting seeds and you're just watering the seeds in his knowledge, in his brain, so that he's going to understand what to do at various stages of life. And you, you and your wife maintain control, ownership over the policy you have on him. Well, when you're gone, you know, you know, contingent owner, it'll pass on to your wife and then she would need to make an update on who the contingent owner is at that stage of the game to now position it so that your son would become the owner when she's gone. And then, you know, if that's the natural turn of events, then he's going to end up with it anyway, regardless whether it's a loan on it or not. If he's, if he understands the human elements, human action, the implementation, the utilization, borrowing and repaying the core fundamentals of Nelson's rules that he teaches us, then he will be able to have the ability to do whatever is necessary for that. He can, you know, as he takes care of estate values that happen, he can pay off existing policy loans. Now he's got a policy or multiple that he started on himself that he manages and controls on a daily basis. And he's going to have this other one that's been there since before he even knew it was a possibility in his life, operating in the background. I think that's just an absolutely incredible, you know, big picture methodology that you're creating in the system. I'm, I'm super pumped about it. The Iron bank will live on.

It's true. I am pumped about it as well. I, I feel like I had some good coaches and teachers that told me that this is a good idea. So I want to thank you for that.

Now, you know, I, I want to pivot a little bit to talking about bitcoin because, you know, we mentioned Nelson's five rules, why he created them, how, how they're implemented for ibc. But you have an interesting take on how that also applies to your thinking and your mindset around bitcoin. Obviously a huge fan, huge advocate of bitcoin, but the, the, the things that you learned about ibc, you're applying to the way that you approach bitcoin as well. Let's talk a little bit about that.

Sure. I, I've always been, I've been a fan of obviously ibc, but Nelson's five rules really just resonate with me for whatever reason. It's simple, it's five of them. And they, in terms of what to do for ibc, I think they're absolutely such a great guideline, roadmap, if you will, for what you need to do.

Right.

And I, you know, there's a Banker's Vault video by Sarblo. It was a couple of years ago. Anyone wants to check that out, it's available. I'm sure there's other places that you guys have talked about the, the, the five golden rules. But thinking long range, don't be afraid to capitalize, don't steal the P's, don't do business with banks, and then rethink your thinking. There's the five golden rules.

Right.

And I think that obviously, like I said, perfect for ibc, but I really think that you can relate the same concepts to bitcoin. And one of the reasons, you know, I really think that IBC and bitcoin go so well together because people who do one have the right mindset generally to do both.

Right.

It's just that many people in each camp haven't been exposed to the other.

Right.

I did find IBC first, kind of. I mean, I'd heard of bitcoin, but I never did anything with it until after I started doing infinite banking. And I think that the infinite banking prepped me a bit to be ready when I heard about bitcoin again to say, yeah, that is something that makes sense.

Right.

The ideas of ibc. So starting with like thinking long range, when you're starting your system of banking policies, it's not something that you can immediately get the absolute perfect use out of the day after.

Right.

You can begin using your policy absolutely very quickly, but it doesn't become efficient for a longer time. And of course, it's life insurance. We are thinking about the future. You're thinking about future generations, you're thinking about your retirement, you're thinking about different things you're going to do with the, with the funds that you have.

Right.

And similarly with bitcoin it's something that you do want to have a long range mindset with when you're getting into, right. If you buy bitcoin today, it might be worth less tomorrow, even less the day after.

Right.

But five years from now, 10 years from now, history has shown and I think logically we can really be quite confident that five years from now bitcoin is going to be higher than it is now. You're not buying bitcoin to use, save money for next week if it's something you really, really need.

Right.

It worked out for my son in the saving short term there. But we were also, you know, there's some technicalities where you have after a big drop, you can be pretty sure it's not going to keep dropping forever. It's got to, got to come back up at some point. And over the long term, bitcoin is going to go up because there is an absolutely limited supply and I think that there's an unlimited demand. So when you have an unlimited, unlimited demand and absolutely fixed supply, the price, the value of it is going to go up, the purchasing power is going to go up. So having a long range system of thinking for bitcoin, really, really helpful. Put whatever you think you want to in and have a plan for five, 10 years in the future, future generations. Fantastic. Don't be afraid to capitalize. I know when I first got started in ibc I thought, well, this seems like a lot of money that's now going to go towards premiums. But of course, when you change the way you think, which of course is a later point, you're not thinking about making premium payments, you're thinking about making deposits. It makes sense. You've got to capitalize your policies to be good, to be a good banker. A bank doesn't work unless it has capital to lend out to the customers. Again, me, you, everybody else watching this video, hopefully, and with bitcoin, you know, lots of people that I've found, they'll buy a little bit and they'll be like, well, I've got some bitcoin now, I'm just going to watch it grow. But adding having, setting up something where you're going to buy on a regular basis is I think a lot better that way. You don't care, like you don't care which way the price goes. You're going to buy more when it goes down, you're going to buy a little less when it goes up, but then the price is going up. Just that dollar cost averaging strategy really makes sense. I Buy a little bit of bitcoin every day. Just to set up the way I have it set up. Works for me. Don't steal the peas. Obviously a huge important message of becoming your own banker book. If you're running a business and you just take stuff, your business is going to fail, right? You're going to show the other employees that they can just take stuff and you're hurting the value of your business. When you take the can of peas off the proverbial grocery store shelf and when you have bitcoin, if you just have some bitcoin and it's gone up a lot in value and you think, well, you know what? I'd like a brand new car, right? Do you need a brand new car? No, you don't really. You got a perfectly good 2013 Hyundai Accent perhaps as an example. So. No, I don't.

Just a random example.

Random example which by the way does need new tires. So when you referenced new tires before, that is my next policy loan is I do need a new set of tires probably like next week anyway. You can take from it, right? But bitcoin that you sell today is bitcoin you do not have in the future, right? If you're going to take that out, you're going to have to. You can buy it back. You can maybe think of it as a loan. But I would much rather take a loan from my policy in dollars and repay that than to use any of my bitcoin to buy things. So be careful. You're not just wasting or buying things that aren't of your know, either needs or assets that you really, really feel you need. Don't do business with banks. I love the fact that I don't have to really have any of my savings in a traditional bank in any way, right. I've got money in my warehouse of wealth, right, in my policy system and everything else, or many much, not absolutely everything. I got a pension and some things through work. But a lot of it is, is in bitcoin that I'm in control of, okay? And that's one of the things I teach people to do, is to take that self custody. So you're in complete control. You have that financial freedom. Right now I could, it'd be challenging for me to send say, you know, $6,000 to somebody in South Africa, right? Because just because they might not have a bank account, they might have, might not have all different kinds of things, but I could easily send any amount of bitcoin that I had there and it would take 10 minutes I would know it worked and I would not have any, any concerns at all about getting there. It wouldn't be a wire transfer that gets lost. That happened to me a couple years ago. Our church sent money to Turkey after the earthquake and it literally was lost for like three weeks. They didn't know where it was, I didn't know where it was. And they had to, you know, eventually it showed up. Somehow they got this money. But like, every time I do business with banks, because I have to, I get frustrated and I'm happy that between IVC and Bitcoin, we're really going to put a hurt on the banks. And when I met especially central banks, not a fan of the central banks, funding the inflation, making the inflation that's really crushing people all around the world. But in Canada as well, the central banks in particular, I want to get rid of those guys for sure. So that's point four and the final one. Rethink your thinking, right? In ibc, one of the huge things, the big change in your way of thinking is that you finance everything you buy. Everything we buy is financed. And of course, Nelson has said the concept itself is all about how you think, and it's all about how you think, and it's all about how you think. Changing the way you think about your personal finances, that it's okay to be borrowing and repaying because it's, it's all staying within your own system is, is fantastic. And in terms of Bitcoin as well, moving away, changing that, you thinking of, you know, Canadian dollars or US Dollars as, hey, this is money and it's worth, this is worth something, or it's really worth saving when really every day the value of that dollar is going down.

Right?

My wife, just before I came up here, my wife told me that a can of coffee, apparently, and I, you know, I do, I do some grocery shopping, but I just haven't done it lately. Apparently a can of like coffee is $17. I don't know if you knew that. I remember buying it for 699 on sale. I would wait for it to be 699, and then I know it was $8.99, but you could still get it, apparently now sale is 17.99. Okay, because. And it's not that coffee is more expensive, it's that the dollar is worth less, right? Or some combination of both, depending. But the dollar is worth less each and every day. And that's on purpose. I know. Just I've heard you guys talking about the, you know, the Canadian Budget and how much money is being spent. A lot of that money is just appearing out of nowhere.

Right?

It's. It's printed money. We need to.

It's the greatest magic show that you could go to. You think you go to Vegas to watch a magic show. You don't even need to go anywhere. You can just watch Canadian politics and the whole thing's a magic show.

If you or I had a money printer, we would probably eventually start running it as well and not tell anyone.

Right?

It's a power that is too great. They're just. If we can just. We can afford it as long as we print the money. That's what the government does.

Right.

And I want to put an end to that. I want to save in something that is not going to be debased, and that's bitcoin, because it'll only ever be 21 million. So if you happen to be able to get one Bitcoin, you have one 21 millionth of all the bitcoin that's ever going to exist. If you have the same amount in dollars, 140,000 Canadian dollars. That's 140,000 over. Who knows?

Infinity over question mark. Question mark, over question mark.

Right.

Because it's a different amount today than it'll be next year.

Right.

Your share is always going down. So like I said, those are the five golden rules. I think that they all work. They have a bitcoin corollary or whatever you want to say. And. And I'm excited about being able to mesh the two systems together in a way that I think really works.

Phenomenal explanation. I love how you went through each and every one and provided a context on both sides in a really perfect way. And again, it comes from your insights and having to see the two different tools or elements. Bitcoin as a tool, a tool for exchange of value, and then infinite banking as a process, as a concept, with the utilization of a tool. That tool being dividend paying, whole life insurance. But the conceptual elements that tie you to the implementation of it, which is a lot of people seem to be confused thinking that a whole life insurance policy is the infinite banking. That is not correct.

I know. Yes.

It's just a tool. It's the way that you behave, interact and think about the utilization of that tool in your life that becomes the infinite banking concept. Now I want to talk really, you know, now that you've brought up bitcoin and give us such a good example, you launched and started hosting meetups in the Niagara area to help people get into both community conversation, learning and helping one another out around the elements of bitcoin. Talk to us a little bit about why you started that and share a little bit about the meetup group that you have.

Yeah, so a bitcoin meetup is basically just that. And there's such a website, the website's called meetup.com. there is such a thing. And so that's where the name meetup comes from or, or maybe they made that because the name was already there. But there's whether on that site to find it, but you can find ours. It's basically just a gathering of people who like, like interests.

Right.

And you know, we like bitcoin. I went to a bitcoin, a couple of bitcoin meetups and earlier on so 2021, maybe 2022 and it came up that, you know, an exchange that I'm a part of or an affiliate for Bull Bitcoin, it's my favorite Canadian exchange, they said hey guys, if you are interested start a meetup and we'll give you some, some startup, you know, swag that you can give away some support to do that. And I did that. So basically in, in December of 2022, right? No, November of 2022, we started our meetup in Niagara Falls, right. And basically I just said hey guys, we're, we're having a meetup at local bar and people just came and hung out and you know, we talked about bitcoin and all kinds of other things because you know, just like with ibc, the people who show up are interesting people, good people.

Right.

And you have so many different things that you can talk about. And so it isn't always just about answering bitcoin questions. You'd be surprised or maybe not how often infinite banking comes up.

Right.

Every once in a while. I call it an infinite banking meetup. Because when, you know, when you have some guys that have been around, been to a few meetups and you know them a bit, you know, we're not just non stop talking about bitcoin. There's only so much you can talk about on a given night, but something else might come up like, like infinite banking. And you know, I've given away or sold some of the guys becoming your own banker book that I happen to have available from you and I know some of them have been very, very interested in that and even started up some policies I think. So that's what we do and we've been continually doing that since that time. We've missed one month, I think January of February of 2023, do we miss? But other than that, we've had a meetup every single month. Every once in a while too, two meetups and we get together and third Wednesday of the month, generally we get together, talk about bitcoin. Recently or last year, I guess the establishment that we meet at, they started accepting bitcoin as payment. So that's super cool, right? You can go there, get yourself a beverage and a meal, and you can pay for that with bitcoin. So it's pretty fun.

And do you think you guys had some of the inspiration for that establishment to make that change?

Yes, I mean, I'm quite confident of that. Like the one guy that has been helping me with the meetups for the past year, he had a bit of an in at that restaurant and he encouraged them to accept bitcoin, which they started doing. And that's when we moved the meetup to be sort of semi permanently there because we want to support businesses that support bitcoin. So. But there are other places locally. My goal is to see 21 local businesses accepting bitcoin this year. Right now we're only at about 8, but we got one more that's right now in the pipeline about to get started. So looking forward to that. And we'll be having our next meetup out their way in St. Catharines on July 2. So it's going to be cool.

Oh, that's fantastic. I love hearing that. Now you've been doing a little bit of bitcoin coaching as well, because you've developed this. You know, you're surrounded by so many people. Again, you mentioned your favorite exchange and stuff. So talk to us a little bit about that. And you know, if some, if someone wanted to come out to the meetup group, is it available for anyone who's interested in bitcoin or maybe already has some that they can come out? Obviously not everybody lives in the Niagara area, so we're probably talking to people more localized. And I'm just curious, maybe, Sean, have you had anyone cross the border from the United States who's in that neck of the woods and pop into your meetup?

Yeah, good question. We have. We have had some. At least two guys from Buffalo came over to one of our early meetups at the, at the riverbank there. And sorry, Riverbank Tavern is where we meet up and they do accept bitcoin. Those guys did come over. We had one guy who was regularly coming over from Niagara Falls, New York, when we had it in Niagara Falls. He's since moved away, but he did that. So I liked at the time to call it the Niagara International Bitcoin Meetup. As a result, I am obviously to come to our meetup. You're probably going to want to be relatively close to the Niagara region of Ontario. But there are meetups all across the world. Really. If you're in or around a major city or even not a major city, look for a bitcoin meetup near you and they will be very, very welcoming to newcomers, very welcoming to people who've been, who've been in bitcoin for a while. One of the biggest bitcoin meetups in probably the world is in Vancouver. So not too far from you. So anybody out that way? You know, I know Calgary's got a great community, Montreal has a great community, but there are bitcoin meetups going on all across Canada, all across the United States. Take a look. Do a Google search, check on meetup.com, look on Twitter, ask, you know, if you contact me, ask me, hey, is there one near me? I'll. I'll take a look and find, find it if it's there, if you want me to. Any of those things. It's a chance to get together. And much like we talked about having, meeting up in person for with our IBC people is fantastic. Meeting up in person with bitcoiners is fantastic.

I love that. Now obviously, you know, people can go search those things. I think there's a way that they can learn more about it if they want and go to a nice, simple, easy site you've got set up. I think it's IronBank CA.

Is that right? IronBank CA. You can check there or lock8bitcoin.com I should have mentioned that too. I do have that coaching and you know, support business for bitcoin there. Either one. Both of them. I just made a little blog post saying, hey, check out the Niagara bitcoin meetup. So all the details are there for that. And yeah, if you're interested in getting started with bitcoin, I can assist you with that. Or if you're already have. You're already set up with bitcoin, I can help you go a little bit further. If you're interested in. If you just want to talk about bitcoin or infinite banking, even set up a free consultation, I'm happy to talk about both. You know, it gives me someone to talk to about bitcoin. Like I said at home, kind of run out of people to talk to sometimes.

Well, I know you and I have had a lot of amazing conversations. Every time we get together, I always learn something new, especially around the bitcoin realm that, you know, I'm not paying attention to all the time because I have my focus more, much more in the whole life space than I do on what's happening with satoshis, et cetera. So I appreciate all of the conversations that we've had, and you absolutely are a wealth of knowledge. So, Sean, I just absolutely appreciate everything that you're doing, how you're creating community, you're bringing people together, and you're sharing Nelson's message, Nelson's concept, whether that is in relation to bitcoin that you love or the infinite banking that you love, really, it's about the core elements of that human behavior and the five golden rules that you walked us through so effectively today. And I truly appreciate you for that. And I think a lot of people that are surrounded by your circle and your community also would thank you for the efforts that you put forward as well.

Thank you for your kind words. It's my pleasure to be here, as always. And, yeah, helping people is just my favorite thing to do. So hopefully.

Well, I don't. I'd like to know, you know, if somebody was brand new or looking at, you know, maybe they're just discovering this podcast for the first time, they're just entering their journey, or they're learning about the idea of infinite banking. What is something that you would recommend for them? What resource, other than Nelson's book would you point them to directly as a way to start really beginning to acclimatize themselves to this way of the world?

Other than Nelson's book, I would recommend that they. If they're looking to get into ibc, obviously there are other books. Your books are fantastic. Yours and Jason's books are fantastic. Really, really enjoyed those. But checking out these, the YouTube, whether it's bankers Vaults or Wealth on Main street, there's just such a wealth of information in those. I would highly recommend that, of course, they should get the book if they have a chance. Becoming your own banker, there's really no substitute for reading that. I do really, really encourage that. But you don't have. If you want to. If you're more of a visual learner, you want to learn through some videos. Check those out. Reaching out to Ascendant Financial, having a chat with a coach is amazing. They're probably going to suggest you read the book as well. But just getting some of those, that information, I think really is really key to get going with that so one way or the other, going to ascendantfinancial ca learnibc ca. You can watch a wonderful seminar there, I think. And yeah, reach out to somebody and start the journey of learning. Because until you start, you're not going to get to your destination.

Sean, absolutely love it. Thank you so much for everything that you do. Again, you may not know it, but you've probably helped a lot of people, hundreds and hundreds of people get their journey started with bitcoin. And certainly a whole whack of people are getting started in the process of financial independence that they're creating, separating themselves from the big machine of giant banks and central banking and the inflation creation machine, you know, the creature from Jekyll island, as we like to say, and position themselves to have more autonomy, more control of their life with Nelson's ideas, with the infinite banking concept. Thanks again for being on the program today. I really appreciate you. I can't wait to have you back and learn more about how things are growing and developing, both with bitcoin, your meetup and your ongoing system that you've been building for your family. So thanks again for being with us. Those of you watching on YouTube, you're going to see amazing new video that just popped up. Go ahead, click that. Continue that incredible journey of learning. There is no such thing as having arrived in knowledge.