5 Financial Leaks in Your Family Budget

I'm not building an asset that's growing daily. And given my family access to more and more capital through our own banking system, I'm going to have to use my own cash or borrow from somebody else. And the minute I use my own cash, that growth is gone forever. I can never get that money back. Not just the money, but the growth potential. That's the unseen that Canadians don't see.

At the time of this recording. It's right at the end of July, it's summertime, it's hot. People want to get. Go on vacation, they want to get out there, they want to do stuff. But do you always plan for those kind of expenses? Be honest. The answer is no. So today, my colleague Roman and I are going to be sharing the top five money leaks for Canadian families. Stick around to the end of this video, and Roman and I are actually going to share with you a bonus sixth money leak that a lot of people just don't think about. And, and you know what? I'm even going to kick in and share a little bit about how we actually tighten up some of these money leaks. So stick around. You're not going to want to miss this. So here we go. Let's dive right into it. Roman, I got to tell you, I just experienced this the other day. Money leak number one birthdays. Roman, I know that you have. Yeah, right. You have a big family. You have seven children, you have a wife, you have yourself, of course, but I know dads come last, right? You, you got eight birthdays. Not even talking about your extended family. You got eight birthdays you got to think about every single year. That's a big money leak, isn't it?

It is. We try planning for them. We try, you know, getting, you know, presents a little bit early. We still need to come up with, with some, some money to organize, you know, to have guests over. And my girls love, you know, inviting their schoolmates and stuff like that, so. Because they won't have parties, right? So who doesn't like parties?

You're exactly right. Because, you know, sometimes, you know, we plan ahead. We have an idea. Oh, yeah, the kid's birthday. I did this almost every time. My wife told me. Oh, yeah, okay, we got $300 for the birthday or whatever that number is. Well, what does it end up being? Probably twice as much. Just the other day, my lovely wife, we went out for a nice dinner for her birthday. And I mean, it was a nice dinner, but I mean, it cost us almost 300 bucks just to go and have that dinner. So what Roman and I will do is we'll share some of the ways that Roman and I make sure that we actually tighten up those leaks so that that money doesn't leave the family. You know, you have a certain amount of cash flow every month, and hopefully you're spending less than you're making so that you're committing to paying yourself first and putting money aside. But Roman and I both often meet with many clients who earn more than they, quote, need to live off of every month. But then they can't figure out exactly where did all the money go? So that's why we're sharing the top five money leaks in Canada. So birthdays, number one. Roman, what's money leak? Number two?

Yeah, number two is activities for us, definitely. Because my children, you know, they love spending time somewhere, you know, attending some places, see new cities, new museums, new. Whatever it can be, right? Just being outside, going to museums and.

Having fun. Right? When we go to museums, we have to buy for. We have to buy admission tickets, right? We have to travel there, we have to buy gas, we have to have a car in order to get there. So it comes with a small price. But at the same time, we have to plan for it. We have to basically have this money ready, and. And when we spend this money, we have to make sure that we replenish the system. We basically get ready for a new one, for a new one, for a new one.

You hit the nail on the head with a couple of things. Course, we want to. First of all, we want to give our kids everything, don't we? We want to teach them good values. But I don't know about you, Roman. I didn't grow up with a lot, and now that I can provide a nice family or a nice life for my family, it's sometimes really difficult to have the discipline to say, ah, you know, we can get that later, or let's plan for it. They want something. I want to treat them right. But you also, you said, well, first of all, you let kind of a bonus one out there. Gas, Right? Gas is a big expense because we have to get to these different places, but we're doing all these activities. The other thing you did is a little bit of foreshadowing. You said, we need to make sure that we account for that and we replenish the system. So we'll touch base on that a little bit later. Now, the thing that I was going to share, though, is that these activities, you go and you go, hey, you know what? Let's go to. We Have a place in Calgary called Callaway Park. And when you go to Callaway park, it's just like a little, you know, like whatever rides and stuff like that. But when you get there, it costs X amount of dollars to get in. But then they say, oh, well, you could get a season pass just like what you said. Well, maybe we planned on spending X amount of dollars on admission, but then we multiply it because it's a deal. But we don't always plan for those things. Right? So that's a leak. That's kind of one of those money leaks that can happen. We want to get out. We want to enjoy life. But then, you know, you just can't account for every expense. Have a system, have a process in mind to track that expense. And of course, we're talking about the process of becoming your own bank or the infinite banking concept in Canada, how we can put more money to work for our family and recapture the expenses that leave us. So that's what we're talking about when we talk about replenish the system. And Roman and I will touch a base on that a little bit more later on. Let's dive right into money leak number three. And I don't know about you guys and your family, Roman, but one of the things that you, you know, you're sitting around on a Saturday, you're with the family, maybe you don't have an exact plan in place. What do we want to do, guys? Let's get out. Let's enjoy life. And somehow, some way, you wind up at the mall, and now you've got this unplanned shopping trip. I don't know about you, but our family, yeah, you got to buy clothes, you got to do all that stuff. But we're big on lego. In fact, you can kind of see in the background I just added a new tool or a new piece to my display. I got the Infinity Gauntlet just the other week. We spent over $400 on new Lego Roman. So that might seem like a lot of money to people, but if you're a LEGO fan, you know that it doesn't take a whole lot to rack up a lot of. A lot of cost for lego. But a money leak number three, Roman shopping.

Sometimes we go to Costco, and my children love, you know, toys, and we will also go to, you know, a toy shop to maybe shop for something that for me, it is not necessary, you know, purchase. But for the children, it is important to have something that they can play with and, you know, maybe to gift someone because not only, by the way, going back to number one birthdays. It's not only just our birthdays, but if they get invited to birthdays, guess what? They have to come up with some presents. Right? So again, so toys, shopping, Costco. This is something that our children love going to and then just love buying. Buying things for house, for playing, and for fun.

Roman, you did what they call in comedy. They call that a callback. You went to back to number one. You're exactly right. I didn't even think of other people's birthdays, not just my family. But if, but if the kid gets invited to a birthday, well, of course, now you gotta go buy a card or a gift or put money in a card or something. Right? So you're exactly right. That should have been the money leak. Because we kind of planned for our own birthdays. Even though you might spend more, but you don't always plan. Your, your kid comes home, they're excited, like, hey, I got invited to a birthday and guess when, dad, it's tomorrow. Saturday.

Exactly.

Yeah, you're exactly right. So we have to, you know, we like to go out and have a good time. We go and do some shopping. You know, I was on a road trip in most of the month of June, and we got the chance to go to Montreal and spend some time there. And my lovely wife went into a shop and she found something that was this beautiful handmade, one of a kind, because an actual artist made this nice jacket. And she comes walking to the front of the store, and I'm kind of standing outside just trying to get some air. And I knew right away, and I immediately thought, oh, gosh, how much is this going to cost me?

Exactly right. So she found a really nice jacket that we got for her, but that wasn't a planned thing. So that was just some shopping that was sort of impromptu. And that is money leak number three for Canadian families.

And the money leak number four is some sort of big events or festivals which happens once a year usually, or maybe twice a year. And then we will go there to have fun, to spend time and to spend some money as well. Right? Because when you are going to maybe like a hockey game or maybe if you go into some sort of festival, like a Calgary stampede. I know that you wanted to share about that, Vern.

We naturally go and we buy things. Some buy. Buy something at that festival, right?

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. You know, you're, you're going to the Calgary Stampede. I go, I, I say that I don't, but I somehow wind up Going there every single year. You have the gate admission alone, I think it cost us a hundred and thirty dollars just for my family to get in the gate. Can you imagine? So just to get in the gate before you had any fun whatsoever, before you went on any rides or bought any tickets, you pay 130 bucks just to get in, depending on the day that you go. And then, you know, you think, you think that you're, you got it figured out because you've been there so many times. But what is there? There's all the food trucks and there's the, there's the, the games. I always think that I can get past those games, but those guys are really clever when you're going by. They get your attention and then all of a sudden it's five bucks for one round or whatever it is. So the costs rack up a lot. You want to go and enjoy some of the treats and some of the different foods. And I actually had a client of mine who reached out to me and she bought concert tickets way back in like October, it happened to be during Calgary Stampede and she said, hey, do you know anybody who might be interested? I can't go. So I asked my wife and my wife says, oh, I would love to go. So that was another unexpected expense that came as a result of Calgary Stampede. So yeah, these, these annual events, maybe you take your family even to just, you know, once a year. Almost every, you know, city or town has some kind of a, you know, the rides come in or the circus or something like that will happen. Before I get into moneyleak number five, which is a big one, we're talking about the process of becoming your own banker. The infinite banking concept in Canada. If you have not got a copy of R. Nelson Nash's book, make sure you go to the post description below and get yourself a copy. But even better, you can go to watchibc.com that's watchibc.com to get instant access to a 90 minute webinar that will give you a high level understanding of how you can go about tightening up these money leaks in Canada and making sure that you and your family are recapturing the cash that you're presently losing today. And make sure you get to put that money to work to grow some wealth long term with an engineered outcome. Roman. So here we go. Money leak number five in Canada. Well, what do the ladies like to do? Let's be honest, not to be men, women, not to segment. But I'll be honest, I'm not the one who's making the house look pretty. Roman, I'm not the one who's out there, you know, doing the landscaping and all that kind of stuff. We got to paint walls, we got to put in floors. We got to do those things to improve our home. But there's also things that just break all the time when you have a house. Everybody thinks that. People think that having a house is better than renting. But I'll tell you one. There's a reason why Robert Kiyosaki calls your primary residence a liability. Because it's always taking money out of your pocket.

Isn't is true, Veron? You're absolutely right. You know, I left for a small business trip this, like, past. Past winter, and when I came home, one of the, you know, doorknobs was actually broken because my. My lovely wife decided to, you know, just.

Enter this room. And then for some reason, it just broke for. For no reason. And then our cooktop went this year. Our fridge went this year. So it is an endless, you know, process of breaking, breaking, breaking. Our faucet broken just recently. So this is something that I have to budget. I have to think of, you know, setting money aside for those repairs, those breaks, those, you know, things that get older. They naturally get older, and that you have to replace them.

You're exactly right, Roman. It's just how it is. Right. I actually have. On August 11th, I have my. My. Who happens to be a client of mine, but my plumber is going to come by here and take a look at my water heater because it's currently leaking. You know, we. I had a faucet as well that went. I needed to get some work on. Done on my. My. My toilet because my. My house is now 12 years old. So it had a little bit of a leak. So there's always something. In fact, our refrigerator a few years ago, I don't know how many times our dishwasher has broken. We've actually gone for literally years at a time because we were so annoyed and frustrated where we literally just washed every dish by hand, which I actually hear uses more water somehow. So, you know, anyway, we got the dishwasher repaired, but it's just a constant thing. There's. There's money always leaking for money. Leak number five, which is home improvements. My wife just did a nice little landscaping product project. Place looks beautiful. But you're exactly right. If we don't plan ahead for it. Have you ever seen that movie up? It's a great movie. It's an animated movie, but there's this couple that it shows them when they're really young and they're growing together and unfortunately, don't want to give away the story. Spoiler alert. But the older fella, eventually his wife passes away, but they have all these plans and they have these jars where they put money into, and it's like the annual trip. And they want to do this and they want to do that. What happens, Roman? The jar keeps piling up, but then they need to use the jar because the water heater breaks. They need to use the jar because the dog got sick. So the money always goes up and then boom, it's gone. And that money is constantly getting interrupted. You're not growing that money. It's just sitting there. And then you end up having to use it for other things. Well, guess what, folks? Canada life happens. Your water heater is going to break. You're going to need a new refrigerator. In fact, I need to replace my bed, Roman, and that's a huge expense. So if I'm not building an asset that's growing daily and given my family access to more and more capital through our own banking system, I'm going to have to use my own cash or borrow from somebody else. And the minute I use my own cash, that growth is gone forever. I can never get that money back. Not just the money, but the growth potential. That's the unseen that Canadians don't see. When you use your own cash, you are transferring wealth away from your family that you didn't even know that you're transferring. And of course, if I have to borrow from somebody else to repair my fridge, well, now I have to make a payment to somebody else. And there's another money leak, a monthly payment that's just flowing away from me. So by implementing the process of becoming your own banker, the infinite bank accounts up in Canada, you can not only grow money uninterrupted every day, but you can really tighten up these money leaks. And I'm going to, as I said earlier, I'm going to share with you exactly how we take a systematic approach to make sure that we're being responsible bankers and we're always replenishing our system and really tighten up those money leaks. But, Roman, they made it to the end. Close to the end of the video, we went through the top five. So we promised you that we were going to give you a bonus number six. So, Roman, what's moneyleak number six in Canada for Canadian families? Yeah.

For a family like mine, a big expense for us is health insurance. So because I'm self employed. I don't really have an employer that pays insurance for me, which was the case a couple years ago. But right now I have to pay for, for all expenses, either out of pocket when we go to see a doctor or a dentist, or my children need a pair of glasses or maybe dentures and anything we have, or maybe even an ambulance. Right. So there was a year where we actually paid for ambulance twice a year. It was like $400 each time. So right now I decided, you know what, for me it makes sense to have health insurance in place where I'm paying monthly about $410 per month. And then I know that we will go to dental office and then the insurance will cover at least 80%. I still have to pay out of pocket about 20%. But then.

It is a huge expense for us because if you multiply 410 times 12, that comes to about almost like $5,000 per year, right?

Yeah. Yeah, that's a huge expense. You're exactly right, Roman. I've spent over the last probably three or four years literally thousands of dollars on my, my son and my daughter's teeth. My daughter has glasses. Like these are things that show up. And to your point, I hope everybody was okay, Roman, but you know, you don't plan for an ambulance trip. You know, I did a video that you'll get a ton of value out of. If you look at the playlist beside us here. My colleague Richard Canfield and I did a video in the past where we talked about planning if you knew something was going to happen in the future, like we're all going to die one day, that's a 100% occurrence. So I plan for that ahead by purchasing life insurance. This is the tool that we use for implementing the process of becoming a real banker anyway, a dividend paying, participating, whole life policy, ideally with a mutual insurance company. Well, I have an engineered outcome. I know that my family is never going to have a bad financial day as long as I'm here or after I'm gone because I have that life insurance tool. But we have disability insurance, critical illness. I don't know if I'm going to get sick or hurt. I don't want to, but I need to protect myself, of course, and my family. So I put measures in place, and I know you have as well, to make sure that if those things happen, that we're going to be looked after. But nobody plans to get sick, nobody plans to get hurt, nobody plans to die early, and nobody plans that they're going to have an ambulance trip and that's an out of nowhere. That's an expense. That is a money leak for Canadians. So I hope everybody is okay. But by implementing the process of becoming your own banker. Go to watchibc.com to get a 90 minute webinar to learn more about how that's done. But we're planning ahead, Roman, for these unseen and unexpected costs that will inevitably show up. So you're exactly right. Health insurance, dental, trips, all that kind of stuff. Prescriptions in some cases, that stuff all costs money. And it's kind of like a need. It's not necessarily a want. Right.

A vision test only is about like $100 per child or per person. Not necessarily per child. But I mean it can be. Can be very costly, so. Exactly. So we are planning for those. And guess what? I am actually taking policy loans to flow this cash, this expense through my banking system. And while I'm spending insurance companies money, my own cash is what is growing every single day.

Every single day. Sorry to. Hey, Roman, you know what? I get that we're right almost out of time, but I made you a promise. Canada. You. That's a great segue, Roman. Why don't we do this? Why don't we expand? Stay tuned. And we're going to expand on what I'm about to show you. I'll do a full video walking people through how I manage my family banking system, Roman. And if you want to join me, that would be excellent. But let me just quickly share my screen and I'm going to give a quick example of how I'm able to help button up these money leaks to make sure that money doesn't escape my family. I'm flowing all these payments from my own. You can see at the top, McCarty Family bank policy loan tracker. Like Roman said, we're borrowing money from our own system, our own policy system. While our cash value grows every day, we're using the life insurance company's money to pay for things like what do we need? What did I mention earlier? Summertime. We want to have fun. We want to stay stampede. We want to go out with our family. Stampede. I hope I'm okay to name drop here. We went to the Blake Shelton concert, but in Calgary right now it's going to be about 31 degrees Celsius today. So we need an AC unit. I could go and buy the AC unit and put it on a credit card and send all that money away from my family. But no, no. I access a policy loan from our system it cost us about $1,000. This system tracks the interest that I'm recapturing in my own system. Instead of giving up that lost opportunity cost or paying that interest to someone else, Roman, I choose the repayment schedule. I choose to pay it back this particular loan over a 12 month period. And I have my final date here is showing. It tells me exactly what my monthly payment needs to be. So all I got to do is look up, up here and I know what my policy loan payments are every month. These are just payments, Roman, that would have been going to someone else's bank anyway or money that I just would have spent and not replenished in my savings or whatever your tool is where you save capital. I save it in my own private warehouse in my policy system. So I have a loan repayment. Oh, am I on the right one? I have a loan repayment that is, that is scheduled and I can track exactly how many payments that I have to make. If you look at the balance real quick. Oops. If you look at the balance here quickly, Canada. If I Change this from a 1 to a 2, my balance automatically shifts and my payments go from 11 down to 10. So all I have to do is spend a few minutes every month, Roman, updating my tracker and I can make sure that I button up all of the money leaks that are leaving most Canadian families today. So go to watchibc.com to get access to a 90 minute webinar where you can learn more about the process of becoming your own bank or the infinite banking concept in Canada, and you can create an engineered outcome and make sure that your family creates systematic, indestructible generational wealth.